Halloween Trick-or-Treating Alternative

Where can you find family friendly fun followed by an adult costume party and midnight movie, all under one roof? If you live in the DFW area, you will find it at the Arlington Museum of Art. The local group of artisans, that I am part of, that will be running the Happy Holidays Gift Store as part of AMA's holiday exhibit, "Scenes from the Nativity", during November and December is donating their time to man one of the Trick-or-Treat stations being adopted by local groups. If you are in the area and want an alternative to trudging around the neighborhood, come join us for Fright Night at the museum. (more details, straight from AMA below)

Friday, October 31, AMA turns into Museum Scary on Halloween night and we invite YOU to join in the spooky fun!

From 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.: Join AMA for an alternative, indoor Halloween experience for your little ghosts and goblins.
--Main Gallery: trick-or-treating booths, FREE for children under 14 (bring a sack/bag/pail for candy)
--Basement: games and activity booths - $1 to $2

From 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.: Get a sitter if you need to and come back for an adult Halloween party. $10 if you DON'T plan to partake of adult beverages, $15 if you DO plan to partake of adult beverages. And to get everyone in the holiday spirit, come in costume to get $2 off adult admission!
--Mezzanine:
-----Gallery one: take a peek into your future with our Fortune Teller
-----Gallery two: food, drinks, and candy bar
-----Gallery three: fun pics in our zombie infested Photo Booth
--Rooftop Gallery: outside deck open until midnight, costume contest for gift card prizes from local businesses (Grease Monkey, The Sanford House Spa, and others), and the midnight movie starts at 12:00 a.m. (of course!) when we will show the original 1968 black & white horror classic, Night of the Living Dead.

Snags for Wildlife

What is the first thing you think of doing with a tree that has died on your property? My guess is that you plan to have it taken down and hauled off. If you have enough room and if and when that dead tree falls it would not likely cause any damage, I want to encourage you to leave it in place instead.

Many birds and mammals rely on tree cavities for nests, shelter, preferred perches and storage. Some live trees do have cavities but it is the dead trees or snags that provide the majority of the cavity space needed by wildlife. Knowing this, I leave my snags when I can for wildlife habitat. I did have a large sycamore that succumbed to drought removed many years ago because it had the potential to take out my tack room when it fell. You do have to carefully evaluate the potential for damage from a snag when it falls before deciding to leave it in place.

And snags, because they are dead and decaying trees, will fall. We had a storm with hurricane force gusts earlier this month and I lost portions of two snags that I had left in place. While we were cleaning up a portion of one of the snags that had fallen, we discovered another critter that benefits from the cavities in snags, honey bees. Another section of the snag we had been clearing had come down nearby and come to rest still standing fairly vertically. It had a very large number of bees that seemed to be forming a living scab over what most likely used to be a more covered cavity. They were a docile bunch and bees are beneficial so I did not want to have them removed from my property if they were likely to be ok after the partial destruction of their home.

I had a chance a couple of days later to speak with a honey producer that was very knowledgeable about how bees cared for themselves in the wild. The advice I received based on my input to the honey producer was to watch them to make sure the repairs were progressing and that they should have enough time to get their house in order before winter hit. They do seem to be making great progress building new honeycomb. Having a chance to watch them up close, I have seen many bees returning with full pollen sacs and even saw one bee doing its dance to communicate with the others in the hive.

I'm glad I have been able to provide a place for a wild nest of honey bees (especially since they are a docile bunch). I never noticed they were in that old snag until the storm brought their home down to eye level.

Fall Flowering Bulbs

Three bulbs that produce showy flowers that appear in my garden when the rains return in the fall are spider lilies (Lycoris radiata), magic lily (Lycoris squamigera), and oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida). The most common spider lilies are red, however if you search you may also find them in white, yellow, peach and pink. Magic lily is the tallest with good sized clusters of pink trumpet shaped flowers. Oxblood lilies can be planted to create a spectacular swath of red.

Not only do these bulbs produce beautiful flowers but they are really easy to care for. As long as they are not being overwatered, they will come back for you year after year without needing you to do anything else to them after setting them in place. (In fact, mine never get any supplemental watering in my north Texas garden.)

If you know someone with a large clump of one of these bulbs and if they would be willing to share, you can divide them in the spring. You can find info on how to do this in a previous blog post.

Thanks for the Treasuries - September 2014

Five Etsy shop owners, one Etsy member and one Etsy team let me know that they had featured one or more of my items in treasuries during September. Eight September Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my creations. One item showed up in two different treasuries. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during September. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below a link to the Etsy sellers that let me know they had featured one or more of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like. You will also see information about the TexasFriendsTeam that also featured an item of mine.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the links of anything that catches your eye.

CorkyCrafts
If you have a wine connoisseur who happens to appreciate hand made items, look no further than this shop.

HotDogCrafts
Check out the variety in this shop, Christmas tree ornaments, big bold papier mache necklaces, button dangle earrings, anklets, scrabble tile necklaces & keychains.

JewelryByNaLa
Vintage style and industrial chic jewelry with delicate florals thrown in for good measure are a good description of the lovely jewelry you will find here.

RoughMagicals
This DIY Jewelry Supply is home to beads, gemstones, handmade findings, books, tools and more, as well as vintage costume jewelry and handcrafted party favors.

TICC
Find an assortment of handmade crafts in this shop such as jewelry, crochet, candles, ornaments, leather and woodworking.

TXFriendsTeam
Past, present and future Texans are welcome and encouraged to join this team. The only real rules of the group are to promote friendly, The TX Way, and be respectful to all who participate.

Citizen Scientist Opportunity - Invaders of Texas

While the Invaders of Texas program focuses on gathering data about invasive plant species, it does have information on invasive animals, insects and pathogens on TexasInvasives.org too. I'm sure most readers are well aware of how problematic the insect invader, imported fire ants, has turned out to be. They have caused the decline of the beloved horned lizard, inflicted painful bites and been a financial drain. According to Texas A&M AgriLife, "the impact of red imported fire ants in the state of Texas is estimated to be $1.2 billion annually". Plant invaders can wreak just as much havoc on the economy and the environment.

Scientists are striving to understand the range of different invasive plants in order to try to develop a plan to deal with them. Texas is a large state and many more eyes and "boots on the ground" than there are scientists involved with this work are required. This is where you can help. Become a trained citizen scientist for the Invaders of Texas program. This can be done online or at an in person workshop. If you are interested and in the DFW area, one such workshop is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014 at the River Legacy Living Science Center in Arlington. If you complete the training, you will have the tools to be a part of this important research.

If you don't live in Texas, your area most likely deals with its own set of invaders too. You can find some links to programs outside of TX on the Texas Invasives' website. Even if you don't currently have the time for the citizen scientist project, you can educate yourself about invasive species from the databases on Texas Invasives and others linked to from the site. (The plant invader pictured here is bahiagrass, introduced to the U.S. in 1914 from Brazil and my yard by some passing critter a few years ago!)

Design This – Lampwork Fish Earrings

After a long day of shopping, have you ever gone back to purchase something that you had decided would be perfect, only to find that it (or the last one) had already been purchased? I have learned the hard way to pick something up that catches my eye until I decide whether I want to purchase it then or continue looking and be ok if it is gone when I come back. Since many of my creations are OOAK, I have had the same thing happen in reverse when potential customers came back and were disappointed when that perfect something was already sold. Luckily there are times when I can create something similar to suit their needs.

This scenario happened last year when I participated in the Happy Holidays Gift Store at the Arlington Museum of Art. A pair of lampwork fish earrings on bright blue niobium ear wires sold not long before someone else came in looking to purchase them. Luckily I still had some lampwork fish beads and I arranged to be at the store with them when this potential customer could meet me. I let her pick out a couple of pair of fish beads that she thought went well together. My intention was to make earrings out of both sets and let her pick which pair she wanted and put the other pair out in the store. I used the already sold pair of fish earrings as inspiration for both new pair, without copying them directly.

Two pair of earrings were made and shown to my customer, but neither pair ever made it into the store. My customer liked them so much that she decided to purchase both pair. I have since made a couple of additional pair of lampwork fish earrings on niobium ear wires. One pair features black, pink and yellow fish while the other pair highlights pink, aqua and yellow fish.

I'll sum up saying that the moral of this post is that if it looks like you have missed out on purchasing that special something, especially if it is from an artisan, don’t just walk away disappointed. Talk with the artist to see if they can recreate the item or create something similar for you. If they can, it is a win for both sides.

Thanks for the Treasuries - August 2014

Three Etsians and one Etsy team let me know that they had featured one or more of my items in treasuries during August. Five August Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my creations. One treasury even included one item from each of my shops. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during August. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below a link to the Etsy sellers that let me know they had featured some of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like. You will also see information about the TexasFriendsTeam that also featured items of mine.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the links of anything that catches your eye.

HotDogCrafts
This shop has added a new line of big, bold, papier mache necklaces to their offerings.

TICC
Find an assortment of handmade crafts in this shop such as jewelry, crochet, candles, leather and woodworking.

WildTravels
Find a perfect gift for any adventurer or wanderluster in your life: Adventure Photography, Wanderlust Prints, Typography Art along with Wildlife & Landscape Photography

TXFriendsTeam
Past, present and future Texans are welcome and encouraged to join this team. The only real rules of the group are to promote friendly, The TX Way, and be respectful to all who participate.