Monday, May 12, 2008

May Challenge

Wild Trillium in Tennessee on the AT
Mountain Laurel on the AT
Bluets in the Roan Highlands, Tennessee
Firepink in Virginia
Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly sitting on a Wild Flame Azalea


Soon you should all receive the May challenge package. Sorry it is so late! When I think of May I see all the beautiful wild flowers in the woods popping up and the lovely flowers blossoming in the yards all around me. So what better subject for May than FLOWERS. I hope all of you take time out of your busy schedules to go take a walk in the woods and really look carefully for all the glorious flowers that peek through in the wild. I hope your walk will inspire you to take pictures, make sketches, or write a poem about what you saw. To me, there is no greater flower than a wild flower. On to the challenge; I made a small scrapbook for each of you and sent you related flower themed items for you to use in your scrapbook. As you can guess the scrapbook should have its theme around flowers. A couple of summers ago our family had a wonderful trip to California and we visited Huntington Gardens in the middle of LA. It was spectacular and none of my pictures did it justice, but when I got home I bought a small scrapbook and centered it around those gardens. The scrapbook is for you to create any way you would like but I would like it to have flowers as your theme.

Feel free to add pages or just use a few of the pages as you like. I did include a few pressed flowers but you can add to them by pressing some of your own. One of the best and easiest flowers to press are pansies which you can buy now at the garden centers. I sent info on how to press flowers and tips on how to make potpourri, hope sometime this summer you will be able to try them. One of the things I sent was a sticker sheet of flowers and leaves. They are double-sided stickers so you can use glitter or micro beads to show them off. By the way it was a Martha Stewart product.

The beautiful pictures were taken by Andy on the AT trail. All of them were wild flowers and they all were taken in the month of May. Hope you can find some beauties on your own hikes.

Here are a couple of quotes I found:
"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow." Abraham Lincoln

"Earth laughs in flowers." Ralph Waldo Emerson

3 comments:

Ames said...

Hi Karen I received my package yesterday and am loving all the goodies you put inside. I am really excited because this will be the perfect challenge for me while I'm in Hawaii...I can only imagine the beautiful flowers I will find there!(I leave MONDAY!!) I too have been enjoying the blooming trees and flowers...in fact this morning I picked 3 bouquets of tulips and other various flowers to share with my friends. Nothing beats not having to pay for such an eye catching gift! Can't wait to get started! Enjoy these next few weeks of lilacs and their lovely sent!

Becca said...

Yes, flowers in bloom and lots of lush green landscape is one of the benefits of all the rain we get here. Good job mom, I like the pics you used. I got my package! I plan on doing some pics on the tulip festival, and maybe my gardening endeavors here.

swell.life said...

This is an awesome idea, Karen! And yay, I didn't have to wait an extra week to get my package...It's here already. :) I'm so excited about this challenge. All of the flowers that grow around here are still so new and exotic to me. Now I have motivation to actually look up the names of the beauties that bloom here!