Salmon love, or lack thereof

I thought I'd share something different for a change, since I actually remembered to take my camera with me when we went to visit these salmon spawning grounds during the salmon run recently in my hometown.  Millions were spent recently on this area from what I hear, and there's a beautiful overlook created with benches and picnic tables and there are trails along the river and paths down to the water, it's really lovely. I don't feel like these pictures capture the scale of it.  Looking down into the water, where there wasn't too much glare I could see lots of huge salmon all doing their business, which as it turns out is not real romantic and does not involve any bodily contact.  No wonder they have such an ill-tempered look about them!

The life cycle of a salmon, done in lovely tile.

And what would a post be from me lately without some Christmas items - at least we're getting closer to the actual Christmas season so it's not quite so jarring.  Only a week and a half til my holiday art show, and I've been busy busy.  So busy in fact that I got industrious and packed most of what I've made into boxes, and then realized I hadn't taken pictures of quite of few pieces, but oh well.  Here's a few that weren't packed yet since they weren't done.

I've made several of these tiny scenes in old hand strainers, I'm quite fond of them.

Vintage bottle brush tree that I added old mercury glass beads to and attached to the top of an old jelly jar.

This is an old wooden file drawer that I used to create this scene. The half-tree is very old and fragile, so hopefully will be safe in the box.  The music in the back is an original of Winter Wonderland that was my Grandfather's from his large boyhood collection of sheet music.