Book pages

Curling up with a good book and a huge glass of ice water, under a ceiling fan, seems like one way to beat the heat here. Watering the flower garden in the morning before the sun hits all is certainly the only way to navigate around outside right now. And being thankful that we have air conditioning, and cold clean water is also the way to handle this heat. Being thankful, yes that is a big way to handle life's discomforts. Which brings me to the book I want to suggest to readers...

29 Gifts: how a month of giving can change your life by Cami Walker

This is a really thought-provoking book, written by a young woman with MS, who uses a suggestion from her spiritual teacher to help her to cope with her illness and the limitations it imposes upon her life. She actually becomes much stronger by practicing this idea every day, and this little book becomes much more, a gift to all readers. She has spun off a website from her blogging, which purposes to "revive the giving spirit in the world", www.29Gifts.org. Check it out for yourself and try some giving too!

Critter beading

Maybe it's because it is such critter-filled summer, what with all the happy butterflies, bees, dragonflies, squirrels, birds, stray cats, etc. filling our back acres, but that's what happened to inspire my latest beading projects. Found a gorgeous butterfly focal that looked art-deco-ish, so added some onyx beads to it, and made--"Art Deco Wings" for a special sister-in-law. Then saw a picture in firemountaingems.com of a creation made with glass spun squirrels and birds, so adapted that to put together my own version of "They Live in Trees", and gave that to darling daughter while we vacationed in Maine. She loves squirrels. To me, they are cute, but annoying pests with our bird feeders--I think the blown glass squirrels are much easier to handle!