I’m delighted with my brand new website and blog! Saying goodbye to my old site designed by my daughter is a bit sad, but it needed updating. She’s busy with two businesses now, as a massage therapist and photographer, so Jenny Medford of Websy Daisy created this gorgeous new website. Happily Kara’s vision is still present. The still life on the home page of my “stuff” is her creation.

Thank you Jenny and Kara!

This has been a busy summer. Besides working on the website, I completed my picture book A BEAR’S YEAR, which sold to Schwartz & Wade. I finished a first draft of a YA novel, and am starting revisions. I’m planning for the release of my picture book TAKE ME TO YOUR BBQ, which is coming out next spring.

In the midst of it all, I traveled to the Pacific Northwest to attend a retreat hosted by Erin Murphy, for her clients. This year it was at Port Ludlow, a beautiful resort on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. I’ve gone to all but one of the six retreats that have been held, and  each year feel like I’m getting together with old friends. The retreat is a high point of my year.

Something was strange this year, however.

On the second day, everybody started wearing these crazy hats!

Colin Murcray and Ruth McNally Barshaw

Cynthia Levinson and Conrad Wesselhoeft

Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Phil Bildner and Jeanne Mobley

Even Erin was wearing a hat, along with Phil Bildner, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Carrie Gordon Watson

So I decided to join the party. Here are Kristin Wolden Nitz and I in our fascinators.

I found it fascinating that these little hats are called fascinators. I’d been calling mine a poofy little thing you wear on the side of your head.

After the retreat, my husband joined me and we went to Vancouver, BC where there were all these laughing guys. Could they tell we were tourists?

Here’s some of the beauty of the Pacific Northwest that we saw.

Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC

And something perhaps strangely beautiful, and definitely interesting.

The Gum Wall in Seattle

This is only a small section of an entire wall filled with gum. A person could go nuts trying to guess how many wads of gum are stuck on it.

Picture this: As I’m preparing to shoot this picture, lots of people are standing behind me chewing gum they bought from a guy who sells gum to people to put on this wall. The gum chewers wait until I snap the picture, and then giddily spit the gum into their hands and leap to stick it on the wall.

I finally tore myself away from the gum wall, and now I’m back at home, getting back to work, my spirit renewed!

Hope you’re having a beautiful and interesting summer, too.