Animal Kingdom - Flamingoes

Dixie Marshland Too page kit by Elizabeth Weaver. www.dsp.me

Love Is; Bird Song Value Collection by Lauren Bavin; www.dsp.me

Love Is; Bird Song Value Collection by Lauren Bavin; www.dsp.me, originally uploaded by GailS_DSP.

Feature Article

Like many scrappers, I often dreamed of being published - whether for my layouts, my photography or maybe even a little journaling.

Every submission a hopeful scrapper sends in to a magazine is a competition of sorts - to win a coveted spot in a publication. Something that shows that your work is viable, acceptable and yes, even attractive.

I have won a few such coveted spots in the years I've been digital scrapping - Scrapstreet, Ready; Set; Create, Memory Makers (a real, compensated spot in their print magazine! as well as several Idea Gallery Inspiration spots), Somerset (another print magazine) - but in this case, I am honored and humbled to be the sole winner of Scrapbooking.com Magazine's June Vacation layout contest.

My layout was scrapped from the heart - this one was not done with competition in mind. It was just one that I really loved creating - and that the folks at Scrapbooking.com felt was worthy, and that you might like too.

Here is my layout, and a link to the magazine article is here: Vacations Layout Contest Winner

Baby Doves

It's been a busy few weeks for us! On June 29, a pair of mourning doves decided to nest in my balcony flower box. So we have had a bird's eye view of the new eggs and hatchlings, which came into the world yesterday and today. I'll catch up on the photos later - but here's a video I just took a few minutes ago. The one on the left hatched this morning. It's pretty windy here today...it was sitting next to it's sibling, but I caught it crawling under mama's feathers for shelter.

We're having twins!

Yesterday, we found that a couple of mourning doves had 'moved in' to my balcony. The Mama laid two eggs, due to hatch around July 13!

Nature Center & Arboretum Visit

I hit the nature center yesterday, and the Arboretum today, for a good walk and some camera practice...a wonderful afternoon! All by myself...peace, quiet, no work. :)

NSD and a Walk in the Park

National Scrapbooking Day (May 3) has come and gone...I hope you all found some wonderful bargains out there and had fun at all the NSD activities! I know I did!

I was out on a nature walk photo shoot yesterday at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The wildlife was pretty scarce, but it was a sunny, semi-warm day, in the 50's, and I spotted a raccoon and several birds (chased a cardinal around briefly, and chased a flittery, young yellow finch around as well). Here's a layout I did featuring the finch.

Sweet Surrender page kit by Lauren Bavin; word art by Tina Chambers.

Como Conservatory

Today, Mike and I went to Como Conservatory for the annual garden show. It was a beautiful day today (and the first of my vacation)! Here are some photos from our day!

Wow...it's November!?!

Well, we've been busy with our usual pile of leaves the past couple of weeks. We've even endured a few snow flurries (the first was Oct 14!)

Mike and I did take a trip to the Minneapolis Zoo - my first visit there - on September 26. It was a gorgeous day and a wonderful visit. Here is one of the three SHARKS we saw at the aquarium there:

We also saw the Dolphin show...I absolutely loved it! I'm so glad Mike made me go ;)
Not much else going on, I've been working on opening a new store which should go live next week. More info on that later!!

Love to all!!
Gail and Mike

Bunny Update

The bunnies are still here. They moved around the corner of the house and found a new home under the house. I'll have pics to upload later!

Bunny update

The bunnies have grown so much over the last week. These are the most recent - and probably the last - photos of them. They finally left their nest last night, and this morning they were gone. If you click on these photos you can see them bigger - the one on the left is from Tuesday...the batch of them napping. The one on the right is from last night - one bunny still in the confines of the garden bed, and the other is just outside of it, in the rocks.


We hated to see them go, but nature will take its course. It's just as well with us since we will be in Grand Forks this weekend and not able to keep much of a close eye on them.

Have a great weekend!!!

Bunnies and Fireworks

I went out to water my mums on Friday - and AFTER I was done watering, I found these:
Baby bunnies!! Well....here they kinda look like drowned rats. They are only a few days old here - their eyes weren't even open the first day I found them. The only reason I was able to spot them was because - bad me - I must have filled their nest with water so they had to stick their little heads out to breathe. Fortunately (or not - depends on your point of view) - they all made it. So I've been careful watering now. They had their eyes open Saturday and are getting bigger already. So far I've counted three for sure and maybe four.

On Saturday, we went to Taste of Minnesota in St. Paul. In addition to tons of junk food (including roasted corn, ribs, gyros, shrimp-on-a-stick and spiral spuds), there was live music (they have three stages) - we saw Los Lonely Boys (pretty good band, we saw them with Santana last year) and The Association (do NOT pay money to go see them - ever! They can still sing the songs, but believe me...they do NOT sound the same! LOL)
Finished off with fireworks - here's one of the shots I took.

No huge plans for the fourth here....working today, and planning on going to the lake in Bloomington tonight to see our city's fireworks display. Hope you all are having fun and have a safe and happy Holiday!!!

XOXOX
Gail and Mike

Babies to Be!

Mike was out in the yard yesterday trimming and mowing. He went to attack the bushes in the front yard......fired up the hedge trimmer...and instead got attacked himself when our resident duck, Henrietta, flew out of the bushes and right at him! Needless to say, he dropped everything and backed off.....she hung around a few minutes hissing at us then flew away, but knowing she and partner Mort have been hanging around, I peered into the bushes and found out why - there are 11 babies-to-be in her nest!

Here is a picture of the nest - what we could see without disturbing it. I'm sure there will be more pictures soon - duck eggs take 28-32 days to incubate and we think she's been there a week or so nesting. Looking towards the end of the month before the whole brood appears.

xoxox
Gail and Mike

Well, the cold weather is finally moving out and spring is in the air once again. I survived last weekend without Mike and got a bit of outside work done...Apparently, Henrietta approved, as she brought her nine babies over and refused to leave! In spite of Mike mowing the lawn, she just hauled her younguns behind the evergreen and layed low until he was done. Haven't seen daddy Mort around, though. 

I took this picture at the Como Park Zoo last Sunday. He kinda has that "f**k you" attitude that ya just gotta love! 

A couple of our recent visitors - this was taken in our back yard last week. I tried to feed them, but the squirrel stole the food. :(