Meet Lil Stella

Well, almost 6 weeks later, we got her back and it was worth the wait. They did such great work, made us a custom rock guard and some other things that were really above and beyond. Her name is Lil Stella, which is my two Grandmothers names, both of whom gave me such wonderful camping memories growing up. I thought I'd share a few pictures from my camping youth in dedication to them.

This is Grandma Stella fishing, which she loved so much (once my Grandpa managed to talk her into trying it!).  We usually camped at Eagle Lake, which has amazing trout. My younger brother and sister and I are below in our tent there.

 This is my Grandma Lil, with me and my sister Michelle in front of the Prowler.  So many happy memories camping all over California in that 5th Wheel with she and our Grandpa.

We're going camping next weekend, I'll post my final "after" pics then as I haven't had a chance to get the inside back in order. It's been well over a hundred degrees here for the last few days - it was like an oven in there.

I have almost no art to show for myself, although I did complete one necklace, below, and started more this past weekend. I used to make mosaics, and still have tubs of broken vintage dishes, and I had the idea to do a tiny mosaic inside of a bezel. 

We also were doing yard work in preparation for getting the trailer back, as our backyard had become a construction zone.

Here's the yard spruced up and ready for Lil Stella to come home.

And lastly, I'd been very focused on caring for our 11 year old Basset Hound Claymore, who most of you have seen before in prior posts.  He'd been rapidly declining for a while and we lost him a couple of weeks ago.  I don't need to say more about how hard it's been, any of you dog lovers out there understand, but I wanted to post a last picture of my precious boy, doing one of his favorite things.