Fever

Here is an journal page inspired by the week I was sick. Other than this I haven't been inspired by much. I think I'm procrastinating because I want to paint a portrait of my daughter but I'm afraid I'll do a horrible job. So I don't do anything at all. I hate that about myself.


Fever
Originally uploaded by LittleBit-ATCs

Catalog Girl

Here's a my practice piece, a portrait painting with acrylics.  It's a page done week before last, before I got sick. 

I'm just learning to paint portraits with acrylics and I never realized how hard it would be to paint the shadows and various tones of the face. I've painted flowers before and it wasn't this hard.  I'm such an impatient person, and having to paint over several days is tough.  I should probably take a class but I'm more of a self taught person. (Hey I need an excuse for why it doesn't work.) I was thinking I should probably post a copy of the photo I was painting from but I'm not sure I want you to see how really bad my painting is.  What do you think? Should I? 

Last week was a waste as far as anything, including art, was concerned.  I was sick, sick, sick with 102 fever and the flu, I guess. Not sure exactly what it was that made me so sick that it had to be burned out of my body and had to take a whole week to do it.   All I wanted to do was sleep.  UGH...I hate sleeping, especially sleeping during the day.    Thanks goodness that's over. 

That's all for today, thanks for reading.

From Zentangles to Fashion

Can you tell I like this style? I can't seem to stop drawing these. I usually draw them while watching TV.

This page was inspired by my little fashion crisis this weekend. I just wasn't sure my outfit was right for the party we were going to on the USS Hornet. It was labeled a Semi-formal event but I'm just a casual girl and so I just felt wrong. As it turned out not too many were dressed in semi-formal attire so I fit in. But not before driving my husband a little nuts. Oh well.

Thanks for reading.

A thing of beauty, a source of frustration

We've had an interesting weekend.  Ever since we moved into the new house we've wanted to change our kitchen faucets.  The old ones were ok enough but because of the extreme hard water, there was a lot of residue on them that was hard to remove.  So we chose this weekend to change them out.

We didn't just change the faucet, we also bought a new garbage disposal, new shut-off valves, all new drain pipes...everything under the sink was to be brand new including new tile for the cabinet floor.  We reasoned that we shouldn't do things half-assed, we should make it all brand new and pretty.  It was probably a good idea considering the hard water deposits on the faucets but My Guy is not a plumber and he hates plumbing but he also knows it shouldn't be all that hard (if you know what you are doing...ha ha)

So Saturday noon, off we went to the local Home Depot list in hand to buy the faucets and the plumbing supplies we needed.  Some $400+ later (who knew it could be so expensive) we were outta there and on our way home to get to work.  My Guy, turns the water off at the main valve, and started taking things apart only to discover that the shut-off valves we bought were the wrong ones, so back to Home Depot we go.  And while we are there, we might as well get... well, you know how it goes...$$$ cha...ching.

We get back home to find a puddle of water under the sink. What the heck???  We had turned the water off at main valve, there shouldn't be water under the sink but there it is, a big puddle of water.  We mop up and discover that the ugly cabinet flooring/tile can't be scraped up because it's wet and it takes heat to dislodge it.  Now we have to wait until morning for it to dry so it will come up without destroying the cabinet bottom.   My guy does what he can under the sink and before you know it, it's 7 PM and too dark to see under the sink.... where did the time go? 

Sunday morning we have our coffee, read the paper, do our usual Sunday morning stuff before getting started. My Guy is finally able to scrape the old tile off the cabinet floor so I can do the tiling while he finishes the plumbing. Geeze, it only 7  12" X 12" flooring tile pieces, they already have the adhesive on them and all I have to do is cut 4 tiles to fit.  Who knew 7 floor tiles would be so frustrating? To be fair, the cabinet bottom was not square and it was my first time laying this type of tile.  Once they were down, that was it.  There should have been only 5 cuts, but nooooo, I had to cut them at least twice that many times....and my guy is looking at me like, 'how long is this going to take?'  No, he didn't say it and was actually quite supportive but I felt like an idiot. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the tile and I know that every time I look at it I'm going to wince. 

Finally, the faucets are going in and they look beautiful and everything is going smoothly...too smoothly. Of course, it was the tubing that leads from the water to the fridge that started to leak. Turn the nut, leak. Turn again, leak slower but still leaking and so on.  My guy says "I can't turn it much more" and I hear the frustration in his voice. I rush over to research on the net. Thank goodness for the net. The writer says, 'use a plastic compression valve with plastic tubing'....a ha! That's it. 

So now it's all going together and it looks beautiful.  The pipes look great, the faucets look great, the disposal looks good, and even the new sink rings took great.... It couldn't be that simple could it? No, of course it couldn't. We started the dishwasher and all was going well until it started to drain and now there was more water everywhere and it was coming out the overflow vent. What the hell?   Now what??  Back to the net I go. What I learn this time is that the knock out plug had to be knocked out if you're going to drain a dishwasher through the garbage disposal and it hadn't been thus causing the overflow. More mop up to be done and then disconnect the dishwasher drain, knock out the plug and reconnect. Then try again with our fingers crossed. Whew, this time it all works.  Well, we hope..... 

 

Aren't they beautiful? I think so. I'd show you under sink but well I think My Guy and I are the only ones who'd find that interesting.  Thanks for reading.

Girl on Black

This is another of my journal pages done in my black paper journal. Have I mentioned how much I love the feel of the paper in this journal? Yes? Well it bears repeating, the paper is so smooth to the touch. I did this because someone at ATCs For All started a ATC swap for hand painting or drawing on black paper. I got inspired to draw in the journal.

This is my newest one and was done because my eyes are still maintain a focus (pun intended) in my life:

Later. I have another eye appointment and must run.

Passionate Woman

Well the eye surgery went well but I'm still in the healing process. My distance vision is great and I love it.  However, the one thing I hadn't planned on or maybe I should say that I didn't fully understand, was how much I'd miss my close up vision.  Previously, while I usually wore glasses to read I could still read close up without my glasses.  I no longer can and I miss it. While I am going to enjoy my new found distance vision and the fact that I no longer have to wear glasses all day long, I'm not sure, yet, that I would do it again. I'll have to get back to you on that later. As I mentioned before, I didn't hate my glasses as much as My Guy did. 

And speaking of My Guy, he's loving the surgery.  He didn't lose as much of his close up vision as I did.  So he can still read the computer screen without readers and see great at a distance.  I'm jealous and I've told him so. :)

The reason for the art above is that I'm not feeling very sexy at the moment so I channeled it into the above journal page.  The surgery requires that you do not wear makeup for a week after surgery and while I usually don't wear much anyway I hate not being able to. (Plus I need a haircut.)  My Guy has been very sweet in telling me how attractive I am without glasses but I just don't feel it.  I do think he is very sweet though and one of the many reasons why I love him.  Friday, Friday I get it back and just in time for a wine club mini event Friday night.  Whew. 

All I Can Think of is My Eyes

 

Here is my latest journal entry, created tonight to take my mind off the Lasik surgery I'm having tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately, it only helped a little bit. I'm not sure what possessed me to have the surgery because I am scared sh#tless to do it. However, there is no turning back now.  Actually, this was My Guys idea, he wanted me to have it for our 21st anniversary (March 28th.)  I said I would only if he had the surgery as well. Frankly, I'm used to wearing glasses, I don't love them but I don't hate them either. Heck, I've had some sort of site correction apparatus, either glasses, hard contacts or soft contacts, for over 30 years. My Guy's only been wearing glasses for less than 8 years and he absolutely hates them. It seemed only right that we did it together. 

Well, my Guy had his surgery earlier today.  I was sneaky and made him go first. I wanted to see how it all turned out, so if there were any problems I could back out. Is that bad????  He was willing to be our test subject and I let him, well, because, and I fully admit it, I am a huge chicken.

I think I was more nervous for him this morning than he was. I believe he was nervous too but he has yet to admit it because he doesn't want me to freak out. I know him, he worries about me too.  We left for the surgery center at 9:15 am and got there at 10:00. He had the actual surgery about noon, so there was a lot of waiting in between.  We came home and he slept for about 5 hours and felt much better when he woke up.  Right now, he's downstairs watching the Kings game without his glasses and he's very happy about it.

I guess I shouldn't be but I am still worried. Everybody's experience is different and just because his went well doesn't mean mine will.  I will probably be a wreak tomorrow until my appointment at 3:30 pm. Greg said they help you out with the nerves and give you a couple of Valium to take the edge off. Yay for Valium. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.  See you later. :)

Some days I wanna

Here's a painting I started on a particularly stressful day of tech support.  I tell My Guy that some people should not use a computer but they do and I have to deal with them.  It's not that they are mean or stupid but that they don't follow directions very well.  This was my response to my day last Monday. And those are the tire tracks I wanted to leave on a few callers.

By the way, that really isn't tire tracks. It's called "punchinella" ... the stencil I was looking for in a previous post.  I found it at: SkyBluePink.com  Lots of really fun collage stuff at really reasonable prices.

Portrait Painting practice

Here is a painting I worked on recently.  It's a fairly large painting for me.  I believe it's about 12 X 15 or so.  It's in a sketch journal where the page was gesso'd and then covered with small bits of paper and painted over with more gesso to give it some texture.  It was interesting but I'm not sure I like painting over such a rough surface.   I do like how the paper shows through her skin though.

I told My Girl I would post this yesterday but we went to the Home and Garden show in Sacramento to get some contractor names to start our bathroom remodel. There are so many to choose from that it all gets a bit overwhelming.  Plus it's hard to think of spending so much money on a remodel when the real estate market is is losing so much ground.  I feel if we ever need to sell quickly, we won't be able to recoup our purchase price much less the cost we have into it for the new roof and a new bathroom.  If we had known 2 years ago that Sacramento would have such a horrible time with foreclosures we would have looked in a different community for a new home. We're not in Sacramento but we're close enough that their problems affect our housing prices.  two years ago the cheapest housing prices were $400,000, now you can find housing for under $250,000. That's a huge drop. It's scary.

And if that is not stressful enough, My Guy wants me to have Lasik eye surgery (he's is going to do it too). Tuesday, we both went in to have the initial eye exams and to see if we could have the surgery.  We were both given the OK for the surgery but since then, my left eye has been stressed and feels terrible.  The day of the exam, I was given eye drops to dilate my eye and drops to check for glaucoma and I think the eye drops irritated my eye... but only one of them. arrrgh.  Greg thinks it's psychosomatic because I'm scared. That's entirely possible.

I do have something to look forward to. I'm going to Albuquerque to see My Girl and my mother next weekend. Yay!  I can't wait to see them.

But now, I'm feeling out of sorts. My eye hurts, the wind is howling outside, it smells like dust inside and all I want to do is curl up on the couch and read or work on Zentangles in my moleskin.  Where is my pen?

Cousin in Beeswax

I found a picture of a distant adopted cousin and I thought she deserved to be immortalized in wax. Her name is Maria Alba Zanoon and the picture was taken in 1939.  Isn't she beautiful?

Any ideas on how to frame it? I've never seen a beeswax collage framed so I'm not sure how to do it.  It's not flat, the key is a real key so there is some unevenness to it.