What Could You Give for Valentine’s Day?

Paper Engineering

Six of us learned the art of making fancy boxes at an eat-and-craft pre-Super Bowl party. We stuffed dainty portions of cookies or candy in them to make the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Of course, we ate them right away.

paper engineering
This little box held a three-inch brownie. Perfect for a little sweet tooth.

In retirement our friend, Helen Bauer has taken up several crafts that she teaches to Boys and Girls Club Members. These activities align perfectly to S.T.E. A. M. or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics as students solidify and apply their knowledge of fractions and three-dimensional geometry.

Helen donated her time and all the materials to make these boxes and all the goodies to go inside of them to the Woodlake High School Foundation. Thank you, Helen. We had a great time.

The creative part of our box making experience involved fancy papers and stamped designs. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject. There are lots of those. Stampin Up (SU) demonstrators give away their templates, measurements, but the products can be costly if you get hooked like Helen.

If you want to learn more about making boxes online check out Pootles, Sam Donaldson’s website. For advanced boxers try Julie DiMatteo, the Paper Pixie. Helen also recommended Mary Fish at Stampin Pretty. Jeanie Stark at Just Stampin, and Susan Itell at Simple Stampin. I also found a Pinterest site by Nancy Bates.

Equipment Needed

paper engineering
  • Instructions Type “stampin up youtube” into your search engine.
  • Cutting /Scoring tool
  • Tombow glue
  • double-sided, narrow sticky tape
  • scissors
  • paper clips
  • 80-110 lb cardstock
  • DSP or Designer Series Paper
  • Burnishing tool to crease edges – sharp fingernail works
  • a pad of 11 x 18 graph paper
  • something to put in the boxes as gifts

Our Boxes

  • Paper Engineering
    A little box, a little wine, some cookies and a bit of lunch. It was lots of fun.
  • paper engineering
  • Paper Engineering

Click LIKE if this brief post inspired you to do at least one of these things.

  • Have fun with friends and/or family
  • Work on your fractions
  • Be creative
  • Eat before you box, not during
  • Take a class where the materials are provided.
  • Laugh at your mistakes.

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Unusual Perspective: Looking down on the Town.

I think Helen is an extraordinary photographer. What do you think?

MonoZone.Online

The view from Clitheroe Castle.

The medieval Keep of Clitheroe Castle has dominated the skyline of this Lancashire town for over 800 years.

These  pictures show the view of the town and surrounding countryside from the viewpoint of the castle.

Unusual Perspectives, looking down over Clitheroe from the castleUnusual Perspective 1 ©HelenBushe

Unusual Perspectives, looking down over Clitheroe from the castleUnusual Perspective 2 ©HelenBushe

monochrome, unusual perspectives, CB&W, Clitheroe castleUnusual Perspective 3 ©HelenBushe

To see more variations on this theme from bloggers worldwide, head over to Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Unusual Perspective.

Thank you for visiting me at MonoZone.Online

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Where to Find the A Unique Dining Experience Near Sacramento

High Hand

When you visit a new area, do you use Yelp or other applications to find restaurants to visit? Yelp gives the High Hand Conservatory (website link) in Loomis, CA four stars, and TripAdvisor gives it four and a half stars. Traveling and Blogging Near and Far gives it five stars. 

High Hand

To get to the spacious, moderately-priced cafe, you’ll weave your way through a beautiful nursery wonderland. We arrived at a good time, about 8:00 on a Saturday, after the early birds but before the late risers. Timing is everything. The food and service were so fabulous that I forgot to take pictures and enjoyed my meal.  You can check out their menu on The TripAdvisor website.

High Hand

As much as I love food, the atmosphere made the experience unique. We ate in the covered courtyard, open to the garden vistas and could hardly wait to tour the outdoor and enclosed nurseries as well as the shops housed within the long metal building called a Fruit Shed.

High Hand

Have you ever bought a grocery-store succulent and two weeks later it turned yellow and the leaves withered and fell off? I’ve done this. Neither spritzing nor ignoring it seemed to halt the dropping leaves. If you enjoy succulents, you could pick out small ones and plant them yourselves at one of the outdoor stations.

High Hand

 You could find more than unique gifts here.  Classes for arts and crafts fill up quickly. We walked into one class, and several participants allowed us to photograph their gourd projects.

High Hand

For my quilting and knitting friends, one of the stores had plenty of “yard goods,” as my grandma used to call fabric.  Loomis, CA would be a great place to schedule a retreat and come for classes or just to sew together. 

High Hand

If you watch American Pickers, the cost of junkyard cars and parts seems out of range for the average buyer, but nothing draws attention in a professional garden or nursery like a great old car.  The cars in this nursery did not have a  price tag. To complete your home gardens, you could find fun garden art at High Hand. I loved the lasered shovel. Ideas are free.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of High Hand. Pictures don’t do it justice. It’s only about a twenty-minute drive north from Sacramento to the small town of Loomis, CA. The two hours my family and I spent at High Hand went too quickly. I’m ready to go back. Want to join me?

High Hand
Featured Puzzle

If you are interested in having one of these pictures as a puzzle, check out my puzzle website. If you have a picture from your travels you’d like to turn into a puzzle, you can make it yourself or send it to me, and I’ll set it up for you.

New Adventure – Puzzle Me

Adventures become a venture – creating puzzles from my travel photos.

“This Was So Much Fun.”

Ever wonder what to do when you have company and it gets dark, and everyone’s on their cell phone except you?

Our son and his girlfriend came this weekend, and I set up a mat and got out a simple, 300 piece puzzle and started working on it. Soon all four of us were thoroughly engaged. 

My son said, “This was so much fun. I haven’t done a puzzle since I was a kid.”

First Three Puzzles

Puzzle
This picture of the Double Take Rose  from the Woodlake Rose Garden is now a puzzle.

His reaction inspired me to create some puzzles from a few of my photos and give them as gifts and also try to sell them.  It’s easy to do, and not too expensive. The price to purchase them is about the same as I’ve found in stores.

Puzzles come in several shapes and sizes.

Since I use my iPhone for taking photographs most of the time, I’m limited to creating small puzzles. Now I have a great excuse for sorting through all my photos and pulling out ones with better resolution. 

Puzzle
Sedona, AZ Bell and Courthouse Rocks

What Do You Think?

To purchase puzzles, click here.

Woodlake Kiwanis and Partners to Assist in the Woodlake Rose Garden

Do You Love the Woodlake Rose Garden?

Yes, the roses are still beautiful. They need our love and care to get them back to their best.

Kiwanis Seeks Partner Organizations

This bush had lost its shape with wild branches growing out of the rose bush.

 People come from all over the world to enjoy the National Park. Right on the way is one of the largest rose gardens in the state of California. Formerly part of the Woodlake Botanical Gardens, the Rose Gardens have fallen on hard times.

The City is not able to care for the 2,000 + plants in this part of the Botanical Garden with the personnel and time they have to spend on the gardens. Rather than giving up on this California Treasure, Kiwanian and rose expert, Chuck House, makes plans to put his knowledge of and love for roses to great use in the Woodlake Rose Garden.

Rose after the October 27 Kiwanis One Day pruning and weeding

 On October 27, twenty-seven Kiwanians and youth from Builders and Key Clubs cleared weeds and trimmed most of the roses bordering the parking lot.  What Chuck hopes is that, like Kiwanis, other organizations and their student and neighboring club volunteers will choose an area in the garden to work in about one day per month.

Woodlake and Tulare County can buff this garden back to perfection. In only three hours a month using 10-50 adult and teen workers, interested groups can make a measurable difference in our City and County’s Treasure started by Woodlake Pride and Manuel and Olga Jimenez.

Chuck House Has Subdivided the Garden to Manage Its Care

Chuck’s plan is to subdivide the garden into workable sections and ask organizations or individuals to take one small section and maintain it. He has made a detailed chart of the sections and counted the plants, both dead and alive.  Organizations, businesses, or individuals can schedule Chuck to come and explain the plan to their group. Kiwanians have chosen to care for Section A, the area around the parking lot. (above)

In the section above, Chuck started pruning the rose bushes. Cutting back the wild growth, stimulates the plant to produce more flowers.

The City gardeners, one or two people, usually only get about one day per month to work in the garden. It took twenty-seven Kiwanians and friends aged middle school to 77, three hours to weed half the parking lot area on October 27. The new plan for community service encourages each group to bring in volunteers at least one day per month. 

Much better after weeding and pruning on October 27.

Kiwanis has scheduled a workday on Saturday, November 17 from 8:00 – 11:00 am to finish weeding from the east end of the parking lot to the gate. This will be our regularly maintained area. We welcome your help with this.  For those who like to bring your own equipment, you might want gloves, arm protectors, and your choice of loppers, clippers, shovels, rakes, and hoes. The City will provide a few shovels, rakes, and hoes if you forget.

Is it worth it to have our roses back? Picture taken November 12, 2018.

To Sign Up to Help

Please call me, Marsha Ingrao, if you can help us on Saturday. 559-303-9241. Or sign up on our Facebook Page @WoodlakeKiwanis1. We will have snacks and water available. 

Rose Societies in California

According to the Northern California/Nevada/Hawaii District, “There are twenty-five rose societies make up the Northern California-Nevada-Hawaii District of the American Rose Society.” They have over 2100 members, almost 200 Consulting Rosarians, 11 Rose Arrangement Judges and 64 Horticulture Judges. The Northern California-Nevada-Hawaii District is a Benefactor Patron of the American Rose Society.

Here are a few rose society websites in CA. Does Woodlake need a Rose Society?

Are you interested in preserving Woodlake’s roses?

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