Summer's over already? Nope, not yet!

I'm starting to see things like mums and little round, pumpkin-like squash trickling into the stores this week. So it has me wondering, where has summer gone?  I have to admit, the image of pumpkins and falling leaves stirs some excitement in me.  Fall is definitely my favorite time of year, however I'm just not quite ready to give up on summer.  Yet.

 

I've been going through the photos on my camera and found some very summery pics.  These were from a day trip to Carlyle Lake, the lake in my home town.  We try to get there at least once a year for some sand castle building.  

 

 And of course I always seem to find my way to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis at least once (okay, several times) a year.  This summer was particularly a good one, because the Gardens began selling some of my hand painted pendants in their gift shop! (yay!).   

 This year they have a Chinese Lantern Festival at the Gardens.  It's truly amazing to see and well worth the trip. 

 

 

 

 I've included some photo samples of some of the hand painted pendants I sent over to the Missouri Botanical Garden's gift shop.  It was a fun challenge to create some new pieces for them.

I also found this photo on my phone.  It's interesting to see just what I can find on there, sometimes random pictures of sidewalks, etc. show up and I have no idea how they got there.  Although, there are lots of times I think I'm taking a picture and it turns out to be a video.  Phones can be so fun.  Anyway, I thought it would also be fun to include these "before" drawings of some summer items I painted and scattered throughout this post.  Some I painted in watercolor, some are acrylic.  Actually, there might be a mix of both here and there as well.

So for those of us living in Southern Illinois, close to St. Louis, MO (hey, that's me!), we know how August temperatures and humidity tell us we aren't even close to being into fall yet, no matter what the stores are selling.  Of course, come September 1st all of that changes and mums and pumpkins are fair game, no matter what the temp is!