弘前さくらまつりHirosaki Sakura Matsuri

弘前さくらまつり 

Hirosaki Sakura Matsuri 

Hirosaki Cherry Tree Festival

I loved this festival! There was great food, great atmoshphere, great flowers! I did go into it knowing it was going to be PACKED, so I was expecting that. I think if you didnt know that you might freak out... there were people everywhere. I dont think I will be saying much, the photos say it all... enjoy!

Spring on the Nature Trail

These are some photos from the Nature Trail here. It is early spring and stuff is alive and I love it! This is at the beginning of the trial where the ground is alot higher and dryer... later the pictures will be more from a swampy boggy area. This misty rainy look is really what spring is like here, we have a few days of sun scattered in but it is always misty rainy and foggy. We had an essay contest at the youth center and one of the kids wrote that what she loved most about spring was the rain, because it means summer is right around the corner.

Remember to look at any photo full size just click on that photo

There were tons of fern emerging on the trail, it reminded me of New Zealand except of course they are not the size of my face.

Thick Stemmed Wood Fern

This is down in the swampy boggy area

Nodding Anemone

Red Trillium

Asian Skunk Cabbage

Asian Skunk Cabbage

Japanese Mountain Fern

Eastern Skunk Cabbage

Vidal's Lady Fern

False Hellebore

Scarlet Leaved Vibernum

Pine

Sakura Yabusame (Cherry Blossom Horseback Archery)

Sakura is the Japanese word for Cherry Blossom and Yabusame is a type of mounted archery in traditional Japanese archery. An archer on a running horse shoots three special "turnip-headed"arrows successively at three wooden targets. Every spring there is a Sakura Yabusame festival in Towada (about 45 min. from Misawa). In the two years we have lived here we never made it to this festival so I really wanted to go this year. Unfortunately it has been a fairly cold spring and the cherry blossoms were not quite out yet. All the pictures look kind of bland and brown but imagine this crazy warrior woman archery on horseback in a sea of pink blossoms... petals blowing in the breeze and coving the ground almost like snow! It would have been amazing. It was still cool but not quite what I was hoping for. 

So like I said earlier each rider gets three shots... there are three targets down this path they ride, after each shot there is someone with an umbrella... a closed umbrella means a miss and an open umbrella means a hit!

I thought this girl was very pretty and she looked so happy and proud to be competing!

After the first few passes I decided I wanted a better view so I climbed a tree! Surprising? No. 

Me in my tree

This lady was really good! Bullseye!

After watching out fill of Yabusame we wandered around the rest of the festival... it was pretty small so I am talking like 5 minutes of walking... but the first thing I found was a SAMURAI!!! I called me up to him and but his headdress on me and we did a warrior pose!

Then he decided to cut Derick in half!

We then visited the horses... I think this was Derick's favorite part.

Easter Eggs

This is a project that I started over a year ago... I wanted to make some really cool easter eggs that I could use for a couple of years so I wouldn't spend tons of time every year making really intricate eggs... My thoughts were make some super fancy ones and then every year just makes some simple ones to go with them.

sooo...

I figured I could just blow out some eggs and use them for a while... blowing out eggs is a lot harder then people say... or maybe I am just bad at it... well now that I think about it everyone and everything said it is hard... but stuff that normal people say is hard is normally pretty easy for me... not this... it was hard.

AND this was all happening about a year ago... because of course I am always late... I started this right before easter... not enough prep time... and then Derick shattered his leg and spent two weeks in the hospital and 2 months on bed rest... so I had a bowl of blown out eggs sitting in my studio for a year... lame.

BUT the good thing is this allowed me to travel back to the states (for my sisters wedding) and purchase a sheet of vinyl while I was there... which was critical in my egg decorating plan... so here is what I did... I chose two different designs for my eggs... I chose plaid and blossoms... I was planning on dying them two different colors so I put on one set of vinyl stickers... like so...

I used a craft punch on the sheets of vinyl for the blossoms and then just cut some electrical tape into small strips for the stripes

Dipped them in yellow dye (20 drops yellow food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) And then I let them dry... took those stickers off put on a new set in new spots overlapping parts of the old spots... and put those in pink dye (5 drops red food coloring, 1 cup hot water, 1 tsp vinegar) but I only left them in the pink for a few seconds because it was so much stronger then the yellow. Let that dry then added a few touches of glitter!!!

Spring in the Garden

I am frustrated... a guess its a good frustrated... I have more adventures and sweet photos then I have time to blog about. Its better then having nothing to blog about... but still sad. There are so many cool things that happened this winter that I still have not posted about... and now its spring... and I cant bare to talk about winter anymore because I am SO EXCITED about spring that you guys will just never know what else happened this winter... oh well...

and on that note... ITS SPRING... here is look at whats going on in my garden! 

(everything is coming back from last year besides the pansies)

Pansies in a pot

Sedem

Lime Green and Black Clover!

More pansies

Hyacinth breaking through 

Beach Bonfire

So when I heard we were going to a beach bonfire I was excited... and not just because it was a bonfire on a beach!!!! which is awesome all on its own... but I had been wanting to take nighttime photos of a fire... to practice my long exposures... I brought by tri-pod and this is what I came out with...

I think this one turned out really cool especially with the sparks and that pink streak in the sky

The couch we put in the fire... before we put it in the fire

The couch in the fire... you can the back and the armrestSparks from the fire!

SPRING!

Kona and I went for a hike on the nature trail to see how the spring was going... it was going pretty good, I think these vines growing up the trees were super cool!
AND THEN WE FOUND THESE CRAZY PURPLE THINGS... Caitlyn I feel like these should have been growning at the graveyard you should have been married at. They were everywhere

BRIGHT GREEN! These were really bright, they grew alongside those crazy purple things!
And of course Kona had the time of her life... like she always does!