Weekend of Creative Inspiration

It's the unofficial end of summer, and with a nice 3-day holiday weekend, I grabbed any opportunity to fit in some creative play.  I enjoyed some kitchen adventures canning, had an artist's date to see an amazing exhibit at the Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens and started an e-course on blogging.


           

     Apple butter

                  Jars of applesauce, apple butter and tomato soup

My garden continues to offer an abundant harvest of tomatoes, beans, melons, eggplant and raspberries.  I also was able to come by some tart, green apples so I spent a very sweaty Saturday stirring pots over a hot stove canning tomato soup, applesauce and apple butter.   I think all that steam provided a bonus facial, but I sure looked a mess while I was working.

As a cooling treat I was able to have some of the melon that came from this year's garden.  Sadly our crop of French heirloom cantaloupe is only two this year, but we've had our best season ever for watermelons and still have 4 more to come.


My artist's date was to visit the beautiful Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens in Washington, DC.

Gardens at the Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens

As I walked through the gardens, I saw lots of inspiration for next year's garden at my much humbler abode.

 Japanese gardens at the Hillwood Estate Museum

But the main reason for visiting the museum on this occasion was for the  Prêt-à-Papier exhibit.  As the brochure describes, this is "the most exquisite" art exhibit of period costumes made from...paper!  The artist, Isabelle de Brochegrave, takes ordinary paper and paints, braids, crumples and pleats it until it looks just like fabric.  It is really quite amazing.   The exhibit runs through December 30, 2012 so if you are in the DC area, I highly recommend a visit.  

Two of the amazing dresses in the   Prêt-à-Papier exhibit.

And heading into the fall, I'm excited to be taking the e-course Blogging from the Heart led by Sushanna Conway. .  

As I've just started on this blogging journey, I thought it would be a good idea to learn from someone with much more experience than I so our journey together will be memorable and hopefully spark your own creativity. I look forward to sharing what I learn in future posts.    

Thanks for stopping by!

Flowers in the garden at the Hillwood Estate