HUGE SALE

"Lighthouse" on sale in my shop. Click here to view.

I am clearing out some of my older original paintings. I hate to part with them, but I need the space! I will start listing them one by one, at deeply discounted prices. The one above is a 24x30 inch. The colors are cobalt, greens, and oranges.

BlueGreen Butterfly

"BlueGreen Butterfly" for sale. Click here to view.

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We always celebrate 2 Thanksgivings, as both my husband's and my families live in town. I got on the scale this morning, and it was not pretty. 2 Thanksgivings means double the turkey - which I don't eat much of, but, a whole lot of pies and yam casserole. Plus, we went to a B'nai Mitzvah for a set of twins, so we ate more yummy food there. Anyhow, all this randomness about food has nothing to do with my butterfly painting that I recently put in the shop. The painting is very textural. I don't sell it, I may put the whole series on my dining room wall. I can envision it - 3 rows of 3 or 4 of the colorful butterflies....

Cupcakes for Two Peanuts and a Tween

My youngest (pictured below middle) had a friend(below right) over the other day. My oldest (left) and the two peanuts decided to decorate cupcakes. My youngest, an aspiring chef, has been BEGGING for a cupcake painting. So, in the style of one of my favorite painters, Wayne Thiebaud, I painted one as a Christmas present.
I had so much fun with it, I painted another one for her friend as a birthday gift. Her friend's cupcake painting below:


I didn't want to stop. I was having fun with all the whimsy. I thought it wasn't fair for my youngest to get a cupcake painting, and not give one to my older daughter. So I painted this one below: (shhhh, these are all Christmas presents!)


I haven't told you all about all the cupcakes I had to decorate for my older daughter's birthday party. She had a sleepover. Here are the cupcakes:

I'm not a baker, but my kids love to do it. So I help them. I got instructions for the above cupcakes in this book:
To be honest, I like to look at cupcakes more than eat them. Too much buttercream frosting for me. (I like whipped cream on my cakes more.) I may paint some more cupcakes. It was way too fun, and they put a smile on my face!

Weekend Plans

My husband cleaned up the yard and trimmed up some trees a few weeks ago. He left some branches out for me, because he knows I LOVE using branches. See the crabapple branches out above? Perfect for the Christmas decor. I laid out a scarf that I'm using as a runner to catch any falling crabapples. (Need to iron scarf) I've learned that if I leave them alone and don't move them, they will dry right there on the branches.

My youngest has been asking me all month the put up the Christmas tree. This is finally the weekend. She is so excited. We have an artificial tree, because I start holiday decorating so early. Why bother with all the work if we can't enjoy it for a while? Plus, my first job out of college was working for a major insurance company as a claims adjuster. I'm not good at remembering to water my plants, so watering a big ole real tree...it would probably end up all dried out by mid-December, start a fire....

Have any of you all started your holiday decorating? I can't wait for all the blogger holiday links to start, so I can peek into all of your pretty homes!

Carillon Beachside

Some of you know that my family and I vacationed the last two summers in Florida's panhandle. The town is called Carillon, and one of the posts I wrote was on the beach house once owned by designer Suzanne Kasler, and how my friend was able to rent the beautiful home for a week.

Anyhow, a few months ago, I received an email from a woman who's husband developed Carillon. She somehow found me through that post I wrote, and wanted to know if I had any paintings that were inspired from that town. Since this was right after our vacation, I had a ton of paintings in my head. The one I sold her was this:

It is a whimsical scene of the town as viewed from the sea. I spent a few hours on a paddle board (basically a surf board that you stand on while paddling with an oar) in the ocean on one of the days, and I was able to see the cute homes from a different vantage point. I knew I had to paint it, but with a bit of whimsy.

My client gave the painting to her husband as a gift, as his heart is still there. I hope when he sees the painting, he knows he helped make some beautiful memories for many families. How amazing is it that one can randomly meet people like this while blogging?!

Turquoise Peacock

"Turquoise Peacock" for sale. Click here to view.

I just got out my Christmas bins. I'm planning on sorting and weeding all the junk I've accumulated over the years. I'm glad I made it out of the storage room alive - if you saw all the stuff in there piled 9 ft high, I'm sure you would call the fire department. It is a fire hazard and a danger to all who enter!

Anyhow, I'm thinking turquoise and chartreuse for Christmas colors this year. I can't wait! The peacock above sure looks different on the blog than it does in Etsy. The colors more closely match the blog than in Etsy. More of the rich jewel tones of turquoise, greens, and fuchsia. I had to look up the spelling turquoise and fuchsia. How sad is that?

Enough rambling - have a great weekend everyone!

5 Min later - I fixed the color problem in Etsy. For those who are interested, I viewed the image in "monitor RGB" for Etsy in the proof setup view in Photoshop. Trial and error.....

Poppy Field

"Poppy Field" for sale on Etsy. Click here to view.

I love the red set against the greens. Here is another one of my fields for sale. Thanks for looking!

Thank You - an Etsy Treasury

Thank you to Danielle Jewelry for including my Chandelier in Grey original painting in her "Chandeliers and Lace" treasury! Click here to view the painting. Click here to view the treasury.

Restocked

"Purple Field" on sale. Click here to view.

Hello everyone! I've restocked my shop and will continue to stock new artwork throughout the next few weeks. By the way, the art show/boutique was a bit of a disappointment for many vendors, myself included. Well, time to pick myself back up and figure out other ways to get my work out there.

Speaking of time, I forgot to set my clock back Saturday night. The one day out of the year when I allow myself to sleep an extra hour, I was up getting in my work out at 6 am before church, when I realized that it was actually 5 am. And to think I thought I had slept in. I usually set my alarm at 5:20, but I "snoozed" a couple times. I like getting up early. My friends think I'm crazy. I'm going to have to wait till next year to get that extra hour. Bummer.

I love my big clock above. It's 4 feet in diameter. Did I set that hour back? I better go look.

I've been painting a lot of fields lately. With lots of texture. I will be listing them soon. The one above is called "Purple Field". Very original, I know.

Thanks for visiting, have a great Monday everyone!

Preparation

Hello everyone! Sorry for my absence - I am preparing for an art show/boutique this weekend. I will be taking everything out of my Etsy shop tonight, and I will re-list by Monday. Any of you locals who are interested in coming down, I will be at Cherry Hills Community Church (3900 Grace Blvd. Highlands Ranch) on November 5th and 6th.
I know I'm a little behind, but I thought I'd post pictures of our little gang on Halloween night. These pics are post trick or treating. My oldest was a talking mime - an easy costume to put together. My son was an ipad. It was actually an easy costume to make. Here's the back:

See my oldest checking out her loot above? She's busy analyzing. I let them keep 15 pieces each, and we are donating the rest.

My youngest was an owl. The colorful kind, because that is just her personality. This was a little more time consuming than the ipad, but it wasn't too bad. I found the cute hat at Claires. Here are her feathers:

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I will re-stock my shop by Monday, and I will have more art in there as well. Thanks for all your support!