a drop in the bucket

I almost didn't write this, it has been a year since I was here last. The year flew by!
          
I only have x amount of time to do any writing and the last year has been focused on illustrated letters to loved ones and working my way through daily morning pages in the system designed by Julia Cameron, called The Artist's Way  http://www.amazon.com/The-Artists-Way-Julia-Cameron/dp/1585421464     

My mornings are generally rushed so it's not a pleasant flow with the morning pages. The point is to empty your head of all the extraneous mish mash thoughts first thing in the morning so your creativity can take a deep clear breath and start fanning the flames of inspiration to your now cleared, receptive mind. That's the theory.

I have journalled in the evening for years, but that's all thoughts about what happened after the fact. The morning pages, on the other hand, aim to help you start your day with a fairly clean slate so you can make your best of it. I feel that it's worth pursuing, so I'm still trying.



Today our family celebrated Mother's Day by meeting for a brunch at a favorite local restaurant. The kids were scrubbed and on their best behavior, and we had lively discussion about the performance of everyone's baseball teams, fishing from the bank versus fishing from a boat, lawnmowers, bacon, and lots of other details of life. I loved every minute of it. My boys are SO busy with their kids, it makes our time sitting down to share a meal that much more precious to me. My own mother is long gone, except in my heart. I planted some of her favorite flowers in my garden to honor her. She is sorely missed and lovingly remembered every single day. So yes, my Mother's Day has been a happy one.

Made a recent change in employment when I decided I had fought the monster one hour commute long enough. It has been so good for me to switch gears, meet new people and start learning new things. Like Jimmy Buffett, I see my professional life as a kind of Swiss Army knife, with all sorts of different blades / skills rolled into one. I can wrap meat, prepare and display produce, collect tolls at the toll booth, run a photo shoot for a catalog, print and mail 15,000 newsletters, press check spec sheets at 3 a.m., tell a parent that their child has been suspended from college and offer them comfort, or teach someone how to use that new software that is the whizbang newest thing to come along. You want an oil painting to donate to your favorite cause for a silent auction? No problem, I can whip it up for you. And if you need a morale booster, I will set up an event with entertainment and the tastiest catering you can imagine!

Mostly though, I just want to be out in the world, making a positive difference, one day at a time.

Thanks for stopping by. Tell me what you've been up to!

A Turn of the Wheel

What a whirlwind the spring semester was around here. We set a new record for numbers of cases heard in response to various wrongdoings on campus. I hope that isn't indicative of a social change, some of this mischief is seriously concerning. Clearly our freshmen of 2013 were not prepared for what awaited them in the final exams, and our athletes have a lot to learn about living peacefully in polite society.

I have spent the majority of the last year knitting - not much time for anything else but work and sleep. Even as the months passed and little league baseball season started up, I was hauling the knitting out at the ball field and sweating with its fuzziness in my lap during the playoffs in May.

FINALLY  my watercolor muse has resurfaced, after lo these many months, and I am going to spend some time with a watercolor journal / sketchpad type of plein air kit while we are out camping this summer, to see what we shall see. It will be a nice change of focus. I have been gathering up my supplies to make a couple of travel kits, one to take on the camper and one to take to work - during the summer there is plenty of time to sketch on campus.

In a completely unrelated topic, I was thrilled today to run across an Irish coat of arms for my (Irish)
family name at this website ->  http://houseofbrianboru.blogspot.com/p/obrien-clan-heraldry.html   . It fascinates me, and of course I have done many years of ancestral research along and along. I hope to contact the gentleman who is in charge of this website and see what more I can discover about our Irish connections to King Brian Boru and the O'Brians. I love Ireland, and the Irish people.

With watercolor brush in hand until next time - take care of you and yours! 

Challenged

Hello again, and thanks for checking in.

I am occupied these days by tremendous changes in my health and lifestyle. We all take our health for granted until something goes south, don't we. I have a long way to go but have excellent help and I am working my way back a step at a time.

We are neck deep in winter here in Tennessee, and I am counting the days until the annual Lawn and Garden fair at the state fairgrounds. By the first of March we have seen our first daffodils and long for more; this show delivers it. There will be 3 - 4 big exhibition buildings jam packed with full sized, fully landscaped gardens. Many will have water features, some are whimsical, some are really, really over the top. I recall one that had a waterfall that cascaded from the ceiling of the building, it was spectacular. Last year I was impressed with a Japanese meditation garden that had a little bamboo water feature, it was so calming.
Wanted to carry that one home with me!






Another favorite feature of this show are the vendors, everything from herbalists to antique dealers and all plant related things in between. I usually carry home a sackful of seedling herbs and a seedling tree or two to add to the forest around our house. What a happy tradition!

Hope you are enjoying the moment and looking forward to spring as well. 

Success comes with Hard Work!!

About 6 years ago I was visiting friends in Lexington, KY and met a dynamic young lady who worked at the University of Kentucky campus bookstore. She was dating the son of my friend and was a bubbly, lively person to be around, I liked her right from the start. She was writing short stories in her spare time and submitting them to magazines, but hoped to become a full time writer some day.

This past week I found one of her novels in my local public library and squealed out loud, I am SO proud of her. She has done it!

Meet Tiffany Reisz. She specifically writes adult-only erotica, and was writing it well BEFORE the Fifty Shades novels appeared. She is quite successful in her genre and is now in a relationship with a fellow writer, so they are able to travel together a good bit. She has bid the retail job market adios and is her own boss with her own booming business.

So if you are awake in the middle of the night and need something to read, you might try downloading one of her short stories - or not - it would probably keep you awake...   ;)

I love, love, love to see people succeed by the hard work of their own hands. Way to go, Tiffany!

http://www.tiffanyreisz.com/about/

Showtime!

It's time for the class reunion art show, it's in the old home town! I am excited, not for myself but for the fellow artists that will also be there. I have known them all since childhood and it's really keen that we'll be in the gallery together.

I wanted to post a little bit in case anyone wants to know more about what I've done with painting.

My best, and last, watercolor, The Good Life, from 1999:

I found my true niche painting with oil after having dabbled in watercolor with great frustration. (My sister, on the other hand, loves working with watercolor and has made beautiful pictures.) At the time I began I was working full time and taking care of my father, who was in the final years of his life. I needed an outlet that would remove me completely from all the stress, and learning to paint did the trick. I lived for those classes with my wonderful teachers. And mostly I gave my work away to whoever asked - my best friend, my husband, my grandson.....my most favorite one, Tulip II, was donated to a silent auction for a charity fundraiser. I hope it is hanging in a really beautiful home somewhere. That's Tulip II posted on the banner of my blog.

Here's my first oil, Flippers, from 2006. If you know me, you will recognize the subject, they are my favorite shoes:

 

and lastly, here is a peek at a current oil in progress called Dad's Roses, this is one I will keep!

 

 

That's my painting progress in a nutshell. Thanks for looking!

 

Til next time-     ch

 

 

 

 

A Summer of Milestones

Well now, this has been a summer of milestones.

After many years of working in harness, we took the step to join those who enjoy camping in travel trailers. We did it mostly to have it to share with our kids and the grands; but also to help us re-learn to turn off our work ethic sometimes and get some badly needed rest. Stress is a terrible thing to give your life to! In our new owner reverie we proudly stuck a University of Kentucky sticker on the window and named her the 'Wild Blue Yonder' but with a few miles under our belts now a better description might be 'The Money Pit'. That's how hobbies go.

We've taken her out 4 times now, and the kids have had her out twice. It has taken us this long to get the hang of all the prep and setup that is involved before you can finally sit down, put your feet up, and exhale deeply. Our last site was a beautiful lakefront spot where the kids could fish and the rest of us kicked back to watch the sun go down and stars come out while we talked of all manner of things. It is such a good time to spend with family, nobody is rushing about or fooling with their cell phone (except Amanda!). 

It is also time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of my high school class reunion. How quickly the time has passed! I am one of those people who moved away from the old home town and look forward to seeing those people who were my friends for so many growing up years. An interesting feature of this celebration is going to be a show at a local art gallery, spotlighting the creations of our classmates. We have some accomplished painters in the crowd, as well as potters and fiber artists. I am showing two of my early paintings (the others since have been sold, alas) and some of my current fiber work, along with my big spinning wheel.

Spinning, along with dyeing and carding the fiber, have been my biggest interest for the last couple of years. I have travelled a lot to learn different techniques and meet some of the most interesting people, it has been wonderful!

My drive to keep learning and doing new things is so strong. I am converting a bedroom into a studio and have found that it's already to small to hold the necessities of knitting, crochet, oil painting, beading and jewelry making, fiber collecting, carding, spinning, collecting fabric, sewing, quilting, and working embroidery. So many ideas, so little time.  :D

 And so, we will go to the 40th class reunion to remind us that friends are very precious, and remember the best of the good old times.

Be safe and thankful!

Cooking with the Grands at Christmas

Every year at Christmas time I am careful to reserve time to do some crafting with my grandkids. Sometimes we make pictures, sometimes we make ornaments for the trees, sometimes we make little gifts for various parents. This year we decided to do something for the 6 dogs in the family. By checking on Pinterest I was able to find a simple pet healthy recipe, so I assembled our materials and yesterday we baked Puppy Cookies for them all. Here is the recipe we used : http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2007/11/03/gone-to-the-dogs/ ,

It took me back to the days when my boys were preschoolers - I was a stay at home mom and I made them biscuits from scratch so often for breakfast that I began using a variety of shapes of cutters to make the meal more fun for them. The dog bone cutter was a big favorite then, and yesterday it came in handy once again.

 Mixing up mushie stuff is always thrilling for little people. The messier it looks, the more they like it!

When you start adding the dry ingredients the dough becomes very stiff, so big brother had to tackle stirring the mass into a big gob of dough. Look how intense he is on his mission! 









We also gave him the duty of rolling the dough out flat so baby sister could cut out the shapes with the cookie cutter and put them onto the cookie sheet for baking. She was so very careful!

We filled up two big cookie sheets with dog bone shapes and carefully baked them. After they cooled we counted them out and divided them equally between our four households where our 6 furry friends work so hard to take care of us. We held one out to try out on Pupman, who was anxiously waiting to get his treat when he heard the magic words: PUPPY COOKIE!

The recipe doesn't mention it but I think it's a good idea to store these in an airtight container in the fridge. When I got home to my two four footed babies I gave them each a cookie and they seemed very happy to have the treat.

Nine more days until Christmas......