A Very Special Easter Gift

I hurt my back a few days ago and could barely walk.

I'm not sure if I pulled a tendon, sciatic nerve, or muscle, but I'm relatively sure it wasn't anything to do with bone.  Either way, it's taken several days to really be able to move around much, and even though I'm still very stiff and it's hard to bend, I had the need to run to the store yesterday.  When I got to the parking lot entrance, I stopped.  Fortunately there weren't too many vehicles behind me, and traffic on the other side was slower to react and stop until a lady in a white SUV stopped.

Why? Well, God in his infinite wisdom decided that we needed or deserved a VERY special Easter gift.  I'm not sure how long I was stopped, perhaps 10 minutes or so, but I patiently waited for a momma and a large group of baby ducks to hop off the curb and cross.  The littlest duckling was very slow and unsteady and possible exhausted from the energy to burst out of his/her egg, and kept laying down and then running to catch up and lay down again.

It was instinctual for me to be concerned for the family but as I couldnt move well, I had little I could do to try and help the little family along or check on the littlest one.  After they'd crossed, I continued on to find a parking place, and was happy to see that the lady in the SUV had pulled off and gotten out to see if anything further could be done to help the family to whereever they were going.  Driving to the store was all I could do, so I waited in the car and could only see the SUV where it'd chosen a good place to stop with flashers on on the other side of the road.  I knew that the little duck family was somewhere on the other side of a new building that had gone up, but I couldn't see if they were all ok.  So there I sat waiting.

Once I was able to go again, I saw that the lady in the SUV was following at a little distance from the duck family, I think to ensure if they were to try and cross the larger and busier road, to help with traffic.  I was happy to see that someone cared and was able to intervene on their behalf.  I did, however, get pictures of the lovely little family and I'll share my very special Easter Gift with you all!  Hopefully you enjoy it and had very special Easter gifts of your own.

Feel free to share your special Easter Gifts, I'd love to see them too!

Spring has Sprung

I love flowers....well all kinds of plants, so this time of year is nice.

Unfortunately, I can't have plants of my own because I tend to kill them........  So I guess I can live vicariously through the coloring books featuring plants.  I wish I had my mom's talent with growing things, but I don't so I choose to not torture any plants trying LOL.  My big brother has a reasonably good hand at growing things.  I guess I'll just let nature do its thing and enjoy it that way.

I have two books to share with you today.  One is Johanna Basford's Secret Garden and had lots of lovely plants, gardens etc. shared in different ways.  Some are even styled in the mandala type of format.  The pages are lovely and thick so using markers and pens might fare well also.  I did notice a little ink bleed in some areas, so I'd use page breaks to prevent bleed onto future pictures you'd wish to color in.  Her Christmas book was technically one sided though the back of pages were light greyscale designs between the main pictures, but the Secret Garden book is two sided.  Both books have lovely thick pages that any medium would work well on.  I'm not the greatist with markers, I do notice when I color I have some fiber break down, so there may well be a technique of using them that avoids this effect, but I don't know of any.  If your chosen medium is markers, this would be a good book to use them with.

I did get away with not having to color all the lead in items because the cover is a removeable dust cover, and I'll likely color it at some point, but it didn't fall into my "rules" of things to color first.  The book cover is a cardboard one, and also didn't fall into the rules, because I'm not sure that coloring the brown cover would be viable....though I may try that as well at some point LOL.  I'll share the first actual picture first as it's a garden picture, and in keeping with spring it'll be a lovely one to help bring in the time of growing.

The second book is another from Sherri Baldy.  Again it features double copies of single sided pictures to do with a friend or family member.  I still wish they were perforated edges, but as long as you're careful you can tear out the pictures if you wish to use them that way.  This book is the My Besties Steampunk book.  The pictures are very cute in her usual style of big eyed lovelies that are quick and easy to color with most pages having larger accents that are easy to see.  I enjoyed coloring the one I'll share here, and used tissue to blur the edges and blend colors a bit.

Hopefully you will enjoy today's entries, and get a giggle from our way round the "rules", I look forward to hearing all about your adventures in coloring too!