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!

Christmas Festivities

Hello Everyone! We have a dinner every Christmas with some close friends. This year our friends Katy and Tim hosted. I had to take a picture of their pretty table. I didn't take the picture with a flash, (the flash makes everything look garish to me!) hence the yellow looking walls. Here's Katy below:
They are such a fun couple - we always have lots of laughs.

Instead of seeing Santa this year, we took a picture by the side of his cabin. None of us had the patience to wait in line:
I think I'm pretty much ready for Christmas. The baking and cards have all gone out. I just need to wrap gifts and clean the house for Christmas brunch with family here at our house. Are you all ready?

Holiday Parties

We're going to my husband's company party this weekend. So, of course the first thing I think of when I heard of the event was, what to wear? It's cocktail attire. Instead of buying a new dress, I'm going to wear something out of the closet. Something simple and black. The problem is I've gained 5 pounds since I wore the dresses I have and everything is a bit tight. :( On a 5 ft frame, every pound counts! Maybe if I accessorized with a pretty purse, it will be a nice distration from my mid-section?

"Choices" for sale on Etsy. Click here to view.

Have a great and safe weekend everyone!

Semi-homemade Donuts

"Donuts on a Saturday Morning" in my shop. Click here to view

A few Saturdays ago, my husband, who loves breakfast and grew up with a mom who actually prepared breakfast every single day, decided to prepare a smorgasbord of breakfast items. I don't know what got into him. Really. There was soooo much food! His spread included biscuits and gravy, sausage, scrambled eggs, and donuts. He enlisted the help of these two:

My son did not help, but wanted to be in the picture:


The donuts were semi-homemade, made from a Paula Deen recipe using refrigerated biscuits. They were fried in peanut oil, which smelled the house and made me sick the whole day. The kids had fun, and memories were made.

Have a great weekend everyone! (I don't think donuts are on the menu this weekend. Not homemade anyway! )

A Wintery Mantle

This year, I decided to go for a more Wintery scene for the fireplace mantel. I painted a mountain aspen scene, with lots of texture. I pulled some of the chartreuse and blue colors from the painting and purchased some velvet chartreuse colored pillows ($10 each at Cost Plus), and used some silvery-blue pillows that I already had.

To go with the Winter theme, I used some leftover crystals from the chandelier project on some branches I cut from our trees. Here’s our mantle last year:

It’s a completely different look this year. It’s a nice change from my traditional red that I’ve always used. Here’s a closer up of the mantle this year:

I’ll probably teak it some more as the month goes by. For now, I like the more simple look. By the way, I’ve linked this post up to Layla’s mantle party. Click here for some more holiday mantles!