WIP - Greens

I worked about 3 hours this morning, after a vigorous walk in the snowy woods with my dog.




I experimented with mixing greens before I started and settled on the Light Hansa with Prussian blue. I've simplified the background and now... traaaaalaaaalaaaaa!
It's time to work the red.

Work in Progress: Tomato Cage

Ok, so here's my next great painting, World! 

It's winter, it's cold, 
I'm stir-crazy... 
let's go 
back to the summer 
and try to remember

tomatoes 
on the vine.

Well, it's a start, but I'm getting hung up on the twists of the wires.  I should loosely work the background right now, I think. Loosely, don't work it to death.

Merry Christmas!

PEACE ON EARTH

Tin Finished

He seemed to like it. I was aglow driving home from having delivered it. Always a good feeling to finish a job.

I would have liked to have had more time with it. But here it is, for what it's worth...

Christmas Eve Countdown

OKay... it's noon.  I got up at 8. And I've been going non-stop ever sense. Right now, at this minute I'm taking a breather. Whew...so far I've walked the dog, made the cheese ball, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, did the laundry.... ohhhhh... that's like an hour each. That's not good.

I'm dying to start on the finish of this decorated tin project. It's been interesting. I should have photographed the steps. But I'll have a picture of the finished tin later today. Stay tuned.

Rich has been a great help. He vacuumed while I walked the dog. A great favor! I owe him one. Now he's smoking a turkey for dinner tonight. We've got company coming and I still have to finish this tin before they get here, by 4 at the latest! So why am I blogging, for pete-sake??!!

Here I go to bake my brownies and cut my veggies and then, if I'm still standing, I'll paint rose leaves.

Screaming My Head Off!

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch (detail)

Oh, NO!!! HOW did it get to be December 23rd already? 

I'm getting desperate here!  The tin I'm painting (see post below) is probably 90% done, but it's those blasted roses that are hanging me up. 

I've never enjoyed painting flowers, and I've never tried to paint roses (too compli- cated) --- well, there's a first time for everything! And as I struggle with these three roses, it really makes me want to continue on with painting them until I get good at it. For the time being, though, I just hope the man likes my work. And I especially hope his wife likes it, because apparently this tin was hers when she was a little girl. Maybe it's a child's lunch tin, of the old-fashioned kind. I don't know.

I really had planned on finishing this tonight, but it's nearly midnight and I'm dog-tired. I'll have to find time to complete it tomorrow, even though it'll be Christmas Eve. I told him I could deliver it around four. But tomorrow I'll be busy cleaning house, making a cheese-ball, walking the dog, and baking brownies for the hunting buddies. 

Rich bought himself a smoker for Christmas, so tomorrow he'll break it in by smoking a turkey.  Jacob and his girlfriend are coming for dinner tomorrow night. I told Rich I wanted a year off from holiday cooking, so he's doing it. Going to keep it simple, turkey sandwiches. All I have to do is make the cheese-ball and a veg tray.

So that's why I'm screaming!  I have a deadline looming, and so much to do besides. I think I'm losing my mind!!!

Oh, once we get home from church, I plan to sleep all day Christmas!

Work in Progress - Small Tin

This is my first commission all year. I was first presented with the project on Dec. 12, so this is a rush job if ever there was one. I was asked to paint an antique tin, and thankfully the man (who's having this painted for his wife as a Xmas gift) already had it sanded and primed. I decide on a folksy blue background. Tomorrow, when I'm sure the second coat has had adequate dry-time, I'll start painting.  I've never painted on metal before. I hope this isn't a disaster!

There are to be 3 evergreen trees, with snow on the ground, on the two sides because they used to have a Xmas tree farm. The man asked his wife what her favorite flower was and she said a rose.  He said, I thought your favorite flower was the daisy. Oh, well, yes, but that was when I was young. The rose is my favorite now, she says.

So there will be a daisy chain curving around both ends, her favorite flower when she was young.

On top, on the lid...he wants the reddest roses I can paint! Three of them, to represent their three children. Aw, man, not red! Any color but red! How do you tell someone this is a design disaster? But the thought is so sweet and he insists the roses be red. I'm going to make them really fill the space of the lid, also with some greenery, so maybe the light blue background won't be as noticeable. I think the blue works well with the other elements of the design. Anyway, I sure hope so!

WHAT THE...!

First Snow 12-17-12

Beary is always  bewildered by the first snow of the season, which was yesterday. He's standing on the NEW PORCH, watching snow come down and listening to the swish of it on the tin roof. He probably still has faint memories of his play-yard, which is gone (and I'm happy to say, we have less mess coming indoors now). 

This is the gourmet corner of the new Man-Porch, where the man-cook burns his meat.

Sold a Painting

I was pleasantly surprised to learn 

I'd sold a painting at last week's Gallery Hop.

"Four Bins"  7"x14" acrylic on canvas

I just knew someone would want this little farm scene. 

It's SO "Summer in Illinois"!

Self Portrait Project

My Self-Portrait

 2006 - Graphic Design Class

We were to take pictures of ourselves, then prepare some graphic that tells the world who we are. As I understood the project we were supposed to use very small photos (like tiles) in our design. That's what I did anyway.

You Read It Here First!

I never thought I'd see the day!

I (and everyone I know)

grew up on them.

But by now, everyone knows 

that the Hostess corporation is history.

  
WHAT? No more TWINKIES?
DING DONGS  gone?
No HOHOs for Santa this year?
WHAT will people DO?

I probably won't do anything.

Hoarding is already over by now.

Store shelves are bare.

I don't like the sugary confections

Anyway, so this is a non-event for me.

There are bigger, maybe better, things

just around the corner.

Give us this day our daily treats.
We're gonna find them anyway ---
Don't you dare hide them.
And don't you be raising prices 
on everything else 
to make up this shortfall 
in profits either.

This is the day before Thanksgiving,

and I'm so big-time thankful 

it's at somebody else's house.

I only need to put together

a collosal batch of green bean casserole,

in the morning and we're good to go.

Oh, and a secret batch of Lil Turtle Yummies, 

for the hosts, if I can stay out of the Rollos.

I bought two bags of the special pretzels I need, 

and two bags of Rollos, one of which

I've already clawed into.

So, not to change the subject, but do you like pop-tarts?  I don't, especially. They're OK.
My husband often eats them for a quick break -fast, so there are usually some around.

I toasted me an unfrosted brown sugar variety, 
and put it face down on a plate.
Then I laid 4 unwrapped Rollos on those toasty -hot backs and let the candy melt. This is Finger-Fun Food, fans!
With a clean fingertip, push those Rollos around, painting melted chocolate with them,
sculpting stringy blobs of caramel,
and making a yummy hot frosting 
on an other-wise bland snack-treat.

I can see this going viral.

In my opinion 

(the final authority on the matter),

the combination of melted Rollos 

on toasted pop-tarts

beats S'mores hands down.

But then again,

I never did care for marshmallows.

No Day Without a Line

My Sketchbook from a college drawing class - 2006

This is the front cover of my college sketchbook during one of my drawing classes. Besides drawing from life in class, we were required to keep a separate sketchbook on our own, to turn in at the end of the course. There had to be at least 50 sketches in it, or the person's overall grade would suffer.

I had to laugh at all the students around me scrambling to fill their sketchbooks with any kind of scribble during the final week of class. Model mature student that I was, I had kept mine up-to-date, not with just random doodles, but finished pencil, ink, charcoal, colored pencil, collage and even acrylic paint drawings.

I wrote on the front cover a favorite quotation about art which has meant a great deal to me, long before I knew about Apelles of Cos, back when I was a budding artist of 5 years old. As a little child, I wanted to grow up to be an artist.  I had a grown cousin who was a professional artist, and his advice to his little cousin was "to be an artist, you have to practice drawing every day".  So writing the Latin inscription on the cover of my sketchbook was a reminder to sketch or work on finished drawings each and every day (at least while I was in this particular class).  The Latin quote from Apelles is: "Nulle dies sine linea" and it translates, "No day without a line."

"Tenacity" ink/brush (5.5x8.5 inches)

Apelles was a great Hellenistic Greek painter, said by some to be the "greatest painter of antiquity". He was court painter to Phillip ll and his son Alexander lll of Macedon during the 4th century BC. Legend says that no matter how busy his business day had been, he never let a day go by without drawing at least a line, usually an outline of some object.

Sketches and drawings are not meant to be finished works of art, although they certainly can be. They are private places to experiment with new techniques, brush up skills, and to record what we see at the moment, to take back to the studio to inspire more finished works of art. Daily use of a sketchbook soon becomes an unconscious habit, and the artist will feel naked without it.

Reddy2Wrk!

If tools could talk,  that's how they'd say it.

Ladders stand at the ready! Let's knock this deck together!
A long hose drapes the fence, prepared to flood the hot tub on command!
A flimsy, cheap, faded green, plastic lawn chair beckons the slacker to dare sit down!
And at far left, my wrought iron outdoor painter's easel stands neglected, as always...

Adoption is Amazing

Today is NATIONAL ADOPTION DAY --- whose motto is "Celebrating a Family for Every Child." The purpose is to remind people that there are 100,000 children in the foster care system awaiting permanent homes with loving families.

I'll be the first to admit that when we found out we'd never celebrate the birth of our own baby, we wanted to adopt an infant. We considered an older child, but there's just something about the whole parenting process that would feel missing without the experience of a baby. We didn't rule out an older child, though, as we filled out the endless forms and endured the licensing procedures. We kept our options open, believing the Good Lord would send us just the right child.

To make a long story short, the journey to parenthood was filled with some pretty big pot-holes. At one point, after five years of waiting, we even dropped off the waiting list at the adoption agency. 

We located a teen-age drug addict who wanted to put her baby up for adoption. It was an uneasy feeling, wondering how badly the baby may have been damaged by the mother's addiction, but we felt we'd finally found our baby. If the pre-delivery excitement was euphoric, the let-down was devastating. She decided to keep her baby. Enough said.

We made an announcement to the family that we were suspending our search for a baby and putting our family-building plans on indefinite hold. One needs time to mourn a disappointment so deep. We told everyone that unless God left a baby on our doorstep, we were going to consider that maybe we weren't meant to be parents.

No sooner than the words were out of our mouth (and the tears dried from sad eyes), then another expectant mother came along. She was in college and even though the baby's father would have married her, she was torn and unsure. She wasn't ready to be a mother or a wife yet. She also lived in another part of the country and was considering two other couples as prospective parents for her baby. We exchanged letters with the baby's biological mother, were interviewed in person by a family member who lived in our area, and prayed with all our hearts.

I could never thank the young lady enough, who chose us to be her baby's mommy and daddy.  It's 24 years later. She went on to finish college, marry a different man, and they've had a large family together. But her sacrifice of her first-born fills my heart with great admiration and thanks. Blessings all around.







These are pictures of our wonderful son through the years. The greatest day of my life was when that baby was placed in my arms at 2 days old. He made a family where once there was just a couple in love.

A Carousel of Time

Don't have much to rap about today, 

so I'll leave you with a pretty song:

Photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/  Thanks, Jon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzXyoeKOcx4&feature=BFa&list=FLSg-xvyNWB2Of7wbYVQEZRg

To My Little Sister

Today is my "little" sister's birthday.

Today is also National American Teddy Bear Day.

 

CINDY-BOB & TERI-BEAR, 1983

Teri-Bear
If you see this...
if you ever google my name
and find my blog,
PLEASE
give me a call!
Life's too short
for the distance
between us.

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY

TERI-BEAR!

Peace Pilgrim

South Shore of Lake Superior, Washburn, Wisconsin

"There is a well-worn road which is pleasing to the senses and gratifies worldly desires, but leads to nowhere. And there is the less traveled path, which requires purifications and relinquishments, but results in untold spiritual blessings."
~Peace Pilgrim

http://www.peacepilgrim.org/pphome.htm 

I Ache...

I ache
sometimes
to be 
somewhere else.








I wonder
sometimes
who
I could be.

~C.C. Godar

A Salute to the Troops

detail, Civil War statue, downtown Central Park, Jacksonville, IL

Besides being Veterans Day, the official U.S. holiday that honors all its armed services  veterans, today is also Death/Duty Day. It marks the end of World War 1, and remembers all who were lost in that war, regardless of nationality or what side they fought on.

Why have I never heard of this? Why would the sum total of all I know about WW1 fit into a sewing thimble? Why wasn’t I taught about this part of history in school? Was it not considered history back in the 1960s? Or is it that teachers enjoy teaching about the American Revolution and the Civil War so much that they lose track of time and don’t get around to 20^th century?

Death/Duty Day? 

A sort of strange name, don’t you think?

But then again, war is kind of incomprehensible too!

Dem Bones

I tried to publish this yesterday, on Halloween, but kept running into problems.  This is an ink drawing I made for a friend who collects Day of the Dead stuff.

Happy Halloween Birthday

Happy Halloween Birthday to My Granny in Heaven!

It was cool to be a kid with a grandma
whose birthday was on Halloween.
But she made a big fuss about the Halloween part,
not her birthday part. She was selfless, that way.
She helped us cousins put together our costumes,
then sent us off to the Halloween parade
while she stayed home to welcome the trick-or-treaters.
I wish I had a picture of her to share...
She looked like a little old witch,
but she was 100% sweet, with a heart of gold.

During the Great Depression,
her house was well-known
to the vagabonds in Hobo Jungle,
down by the tracks
on the east end of town,
as a place to get a good, hot meal.

She never refused anyone help,
even though she had eleven children,
at least half of them still young enough
to be hungry mouths at home to feed.
Three of her boys were in the world wars.
That must have been hard on a mother.

She was strong, and dependable,
able to run a boarding home for the elderly,
cook three big meals a day, and
do the laundry in the shadowy basement on Mondays.
I loved to help her. Her hands smelled of bleach.

Through the years, I don't remember her getting out much.
(I guess I take after her in that way.)
She'd rather stay at home, busy.
There was always someone on hand who
she could send to the store down the street.
I can't remember her going to church, either,
but she loved Jesus and she lived her faith
in the way she cared for others.
While the rest went to church, she stayed at home
to prepare the traditional Sunday family feast,
(and who knew how many
of her children and grandchildren would show up?)
complete with three meats (chicken, beef, and ham),
homemade noodles, taters and gravy,
vegetables from Uncle Willie's garden,
and an assortment of desserts that boggled the mind.

As a child growing up during the fifties
in her big, old two-story house,
(at least part of the time, when my parents were
going through their many pre-divorce dramas),
I never thought to wonder where all the food came from.
I never thought about money at all.
"The Lord will provide," she always said
(and apparently He did). "It ain't no sin to be poor,
honey, but it's mighty inconvenient."

What I have wondered about, many times,
is how it felt to be born at the end of the 19th century
and live almost all the way through the 20th.
What amazing things she saw come into being!
What changes she lived through,
what history she witnessed!
What would she think of the world these days?
I miss her, but I'm glad she never had to experience
this old world in the sorry shape it's in now.

I'm thinking of this amazing, beloved woman
on this, the 122nd anniversary of her birth.

In Need of Love

Today is NATIONAL CAT DAY, founded in 2005, to remind people that approximately 4 million cats end up in shelters each year, with up to half of them eventually being euthanized. I adopted my two sister kittens from a friend.

If you’re thinking about getting yourself or your children a pet for Christmas, please consider adopting a cat or kitten from a shelter. Dogs are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re a lot of work and need a lot of attention too. Most cats lead very simple lives, are quiet and affectionate, and clean. 

And please, if you do get a pet --- have it spayed or neutered as soon as possible. With so many unwanted, abandoned dogs and cats roaming around, we sure don’t want to add to their number, do we?

Beary Loves It Outside!

Beary is such a quiet dog when he's in the house. The perfect gentleman. But when we go outside, he's hyper and full of curiosity. He wants to go, go, GO! 

But I've found the perfect anchor for him. It's a very heavy stand that my son made several years back, when he was still motocross racing, to put his bikes up on when he worked on them. The legs are heavy iron, and the thick, wooden "seat" adds to the weight of the thing. With Beary tied to it, I can work in the garden or the greenhouse without worrying about him wandering off, and he can still enjoy playing with his ball and spending time in the fresh air and sunshine.

The Cabin at Lake Jacob

When my son was little, he and his Aunt Debbie built this tiny log cabin out of corn tassles. The rocks came from the southern shore of Lake Superior, brought back from one of my retreats. The shrubbery...well...a little PhotoShop on the jar of mums sitting behind the cabin.

I wish I could go to Lake Jacob and find my son and my sister there, in this little cabin, just as they were back then, twenty years ago.

I'd cook us up a fine kettle of ham hocks and beans, and a big pan of cornbread. Then we'd fish all afternoon on the rocks at the edge of the lake...

End of Summer Blues

Last spring my husband planted blue morning glories on both sides of this piece of fencing out by the garden. Mistake #1: He planted them too closely and didn't thin them. Soon the fence was covered by vines that just would not stop growing.  Mistake #2:  I found out that I watered them too much, which caused them to continue to vine out, but form few flowers. (I actually found the empty seed packet where I read this tip.) So I held back the water, and started getting a few more blooms.

Now autumn is flying by, and the morning glories have been a disappointment. We've already vowed to space them properly next year and not overwater. Recently we had a frost that killed many of the green leaves on the vines.  

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.

It was looking pretty sorry until yesterday, when I went out to the garden and was greeted by this amazing sight! All it took was a few warm days to coax this incredible abundance of blossoms!

Alas, tonight will be a killing frost, so I'm "singin' the blues."

My Multi-Ethnic Pasta Meal

Italian lasagna,

with breadsticks made from French bread,

and a fresh garden salad from our All-American greenhouse.

Life don't get much better than this!

Mangia!

Today is:

WORLD PASTA DAY 

and 

NATIONAL BREADSTICKS DAY.  

photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/   Thanks, Jon! It looks delicious!

Guess what we’ll be having for supper tonight?

The Many Facets of CC

I love taking pictures, and so I brought together a bunch of my favorites and made a self-portrait of me with them. The self-portrait was time- consuming.  I dashed around in front of my camera, taking about a hundred shots of me with the candles, before I came up with a decent shot I could use.

This Looks Interesting!

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, 

if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, 

if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,

rejoice, for your soul is alive.  
~Eleonora Duse

The Seasons, They Go Round & Round...

Here we are, in the second autumn of our green-house. Lots of salad greens, spinach and onions. Delicious tender salads!  The tomatoes aren't doing so well though. A couple are dying, but we've had a lot of tomatoes from them anyway.

Now we look back at the things we did wrong in the garden, as well as our successes, and start making plans for Garden 2013.

Earth Laughs...

Earth laughs in flowers.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"

Whatsamaddawidja?

CC left me locked up in that red box all summer! That stupid red Wolverine Boot Box she's so proud of...she thinks it's the perfect home for me. Ha! CC, whatsamaddawidja anyway?

She finally let me out to play today, and I thought about running away. If I could just find a way to get to town.  I know Kathy would never treat me this way. But, as Cat Stevens sings, "ooooo, baby, baby --- it's a wild world! And it's hard to get by just upon a smile, girl..." 

Yeah, I guess the Boot Box is okay. At least it's clean and has that manly smell of leather that I love so well.

Hello, Kitty...Wherever You Are!

This is the story of sister-kittens. The fearless, affectionate one is Katmandu (Katty) and the shy, antisocial one was her split-faced, calico sister KittenYahoo (Kitty). They were adopted together, and life for the first three years was fairly normal for the two "outside" kitties. (We have an "indoor" dog.)

Then the sisters started fighting. Ugly, spiteful spats. And Kitty got tired of it and moved out. She's come back a couple times in the past several years, but Katty always chases her back into the woods. We haven't seen her for at least a year.  (When we first moved here, a neighbor's spayed female cat took up residence with us. It does happen that cats leave home for greener pastures, or whatever it is that felines hanker after.) I hope she found herself a good home.

And so, today, NATIONAL FERAL CAT DAY, I send out good vibes and love to KittenYahoo, my feral cat.

Happy Columbus Day

detail of Dickeyville Grotto, Dickeyville, Wisconsin

Another awesome example of American folk art that I’ve stumbled upon in my travels is the Dickeyville Grotto, on the grounds of Holy Ghost Church in Dickeyville, Wisconsin. Father Matthias Wernerus, pastor of the parish from 1918 to 1931 built this incredible grotto and shrines from 1925-1930. Objects from all over the world (colored glass, gems, bits of antique pottery and porcelain, stalagmites and stalactites, seas shells, starfish, etc.) encrust beautiful stone-and-mortar shrines --- a dazzling wonderland dedicated to the twin ideals of Love of God and Love of Country.

Patriotism Shrine, Dickeyville Grotto

While most of the exhibits are religious in nature, the Patriotism Shrine features depictions of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln.

You Can Tell

You can tell when I'm sick. 

Just look at all the months 

I've had this DAILY blog.  

I faithfully posted 

daily 

from the day I started (12-1-2011) 

almost all the way through April. 

I got sick in February, 

was diagnosed 

and Rx-dosed March 1st. 

I was hopeful! 

Now I finally knew 

what was wrong with me. 

And I could get well.

Six months later,

I look at the list of months 

when I only posted half of the days

or less

and I think that tells the story.

Bad Luck?

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all...

~song from the old Hee Haw TV series

Superstition says that if you hang a horseshoe like this, 

all the good luck will pour out.

Smile!

Today was World Smile Day, in honor of the original, yellow Smiley Face created by Harvey Ball of Worcester, MA in 1963. I celebrated with smiles for my husband, and I colored this poster I downloaded from the Smile Day website.