Cousinpalooza & Other Wonderful Things!

Once a year we host a summertime celebration of our grandchildren. It's a day of fun and food and I have an absolute wonderful time hosting this event. Renting a bounce house... hanging out with kids... seeing them play games or climb trees or just be kids!

This year our crowd was made even more special with dear friends! That made the day a marvelous experience, and my wonderful niece-daughter (I claim part ownership of her) set up a FAIRY HOUSE creation experience in the garage. Let me add here that it poured all morning, the first major rainstorm in weeks, and there was no going outside in the thunder and the lightning, so the garage fairy house building was a huge success! God bless Mandy for taking charge of that (and not killing people, always a good thing!)

Grown-ups and kids created fairy houses to tuck around the farm gardens so that fall visitors will explore and find wee homes (and not-so-wee homes) tucked into places. We used tree stumps, flower pots, bark, branches, jewelry, rocks, polished stones, bits of moss and weeds, paints and a ton of acrylic caulk to fasten things in place because few glues work for exterior use!

Here are some fairy house pics!

And then there had to be cooking... and men gathered around the grill (which was just outside the garage in case of more rain) and people gathering and making things, and talking and laughing...

And kids, of course.

Beautiful kids!

Badminton.

Beanbag toss...

Candy! :)

And kid-friendly food including chicken nuggets and hot dogs and hamburgers and salads and veggies and a huge fruit bowl...

It was a great day. A marvelous day! And son Matt ended it with a few fireworks to enthrall those who made it to dark....

A perfect end to a beautiful day.

We have some far away grandkids who couldn't be with us, but we'll see them this fall and have fun with them... When the fledglings branch out to other parts of the country, we really, really love the few times we all get together. Especially if there's no funeral involved... and yet, funerals and weddings do have a way of pulling folks together.

Still working on the farm while finishing my first mystery for the Savannah Secrets series.... it will come out next May and it's just a delightful group of stories, set in old-world Savannah and points nearby! I am so honored to be part of this!

Until next week, where I'm going to talk about our pasta shop in town. Yes, our sleepy town has a pasta maker, and it's the most wonderful pasta....

But more about that next week! :)

Until then, have a great week as summer winds down to a cool and breezy September. And God bless you, every one!

More fairy houses!!!  This is a fairy condominium complex, created by Mandy!

And then young and not-so-young artists at work:

Multi-published inspirational author Ruth Logan Herne is busily working on the farm during the day, books during the wee smalls, and looking forward to the busy fall season when all this hard work comes to fruition with beautiful displays of pumpkins and family fun! Find her on facebook, visit her website ruthloganherne.com or follow her on Twitter which is the oddest thing there is, isn't it? It's soooo Twitter-fied!