Weekend Tidbits

Hello everyone! I hope you had a great weekend. We had a nice, warm, sunny one. The calm before the storm. It is cold and icky out right now!

This little gal completed a 3 1/2 year music program this Saturday. Yippee! This is a program where the parent has to sit in the group lesson for the hour and help teach their child. There is a lot of dancing and floor sitting involved. My feet fall asleep when I sit on the floor. And dancing....

As a gift for our teacher, I painted this. She loves to garden, and well, you get the picture with the watering can and the music coming out of the flowers.

To think my youngest started this program when she was 4 years old. Now, on to privates - no more sitting on the floor!

The little one let me take some pictures of her this weekend. She loves getting her picture taken, and I love taking pictures. I did some photoshop magic and used some textures from the Florabella Collection.

She got bored after a while and started picking at her tutu. I hope her willingness to let me capture her on camera doesn't go away like it did for her siblings!

Speaking of siblings, this little man had a great game. Amazing to me that just a couple years ago before his heart surgery, he was so uncoordinated and did not want to do any sort of sports at all. It brings tears to our eyes when we think that he was just so dizzy from all that heart medicine.

He also played some soccer with our oldest - the one with the passion for the sport.

That's it for the weekend - I'm always wondering where it all went. I hope you have a great Monday!

A Model Home Art Studio Tour

Hi everyone! I was going through some pictures, and I thought I'd post an art studio in a nearby model home. These were taken a couple years ago. Please excuse the photography - I probably took them with a flash - I know - a big no no, but this was before I learned how to take interior photos without a flash.

The studio is in a loft area above the kitchen. This is what you see when you go up the stairs.

On the opposite side is this. I had to show you all the ceiling and the fun lights.

A place for canvases and other supplies. You can see the family room from here. If this were my studio, I would probably install some glass so I could still get the light, but not the noise.

I love the big sink to wash all the paint off with:

 I hope you all have a great weekend everyone!

Courage Cupcake

"The Courage Cupcake" for sale. Click HERE to view.

Poppies in Pink

Here's another poppy painting:

"Poppies in Pink" for sale. Click HERE to view.

Have a great Monday everyone!

Poppies

"Whispering" for sale. Click HERE to view.

It must be the fact it's Winter, and I am so needing the warm sun right now, but I've been painting a lot of poppies again lately. This one is finally varnished and ready to go! If you look at the listing on Etsy, you will see 2 versions. One is lighter, and one is darker. They are the same painting. The reason for that is that my PC and my MAC each show such different versions of the same painting.  The color variations from monitor to monitor make it difficult to accurately portray my paintings on line. 

Anyhow, I hope you all have a great weekend!

Mini Donuts in the Dining Room

"Mini Donuts in the Dining Room" for sale. Click here to view.

Sometimes it's nice to eat a donut (or two) in the dining room! It feels a little fancy!

Cupcake Anyone?

"Tiramisu Cupcake" for sale. Click here to view.

I love tiramisu. It's by go-to dessert when we have guests. Next time, I will try to make a tiramisu cupcake. Espresso infused cake with a marscapone frosting. Chocolate shavings and raspberries. Yum.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Snow Day

Yesterday, our school district had a snow day - we were all excited about it! My eldest decided to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. There goes my New Year's resolution! My latest poppy painting makes a great backdrop - a little contradictory for the kind of day we had. The painting will be for sale after it is varnished.
Backing up to Saturday, we went skiing, while the 2 older ones took snowboard lessons. My oldest is in the pink ski helmet. The pic was taken with my i phone.
So getting back to yesterday afternoon, the kids spent some time outside in the snow. (I forgot to lower the exposure compensation when I took this. )See that big snowball that my younger one has in her arm? This is what happens when someone decides to throw the snowball. Some snow wrestling:
I love the 4 day weeks!

Red Velvet Bundt Cake at Bookclub

"Red Velvet Bundt Cake at Bookclub" for sale. Click here to view.

I am in a book club. It's been about 12 years or so. It's not a highly intellectual one. In fact, sometimes we don't even read the book. Some of the books we've read are easy reading "by the pool" books, others are so good we will go back through parts of the book over and over again to figure it out, and some are so dull, we can't even finish it. The book discussion will last from 5 minutes - "did you read the book? did you like it... so what's new with life?" to a full on " i did some research on that time era the book was referring to..."(this is not usually the case)

Really, the whole point for the club is just an excuse to get out of the house, get together....and have dessert. A couple of months ago, the hostess purchased a red velvet bundt cake at the bundt cake shop. There are a couple of bundt cake shops in town; I guess with the altitude here, real cakes are hard to bake. The cake was as yummy as it was pretty. So anyhow, a long story of how this painting came to be. I was inspired by that red velvet bundt cake at book club - thus the title of this painting!

Have a great weekend everyone!

A Fresh Start

Whew! I just took everything off my Christmas trees. My family is still off today, and life will resume as we knew it tomorrow. It's been a great 2 weeks, despite waking up with Fibromyalgia aches for most of it. Diet and lack of sleep always triggers these aches. With the holidays being over, now, like most of you, I am ready for a fresh start. Organization, healthy eating, exercise, my spiritual walk, being a great mother, wife, enriching my brain, and finding purpose are some of the items on my resolutions list. I haven't touched my paint brush in 3 weeks, and I ache to get back to the studio. We'll see what kind of creativity 2011 will bring!