Since when did I start doing gymnastics (of all things)

My new purse is a design of Jump From Paper

Good morning! How are you?

I was up at my usual 5am this morning despite the fact that it's a Saturday morning and I have been busy trying to catch up with a myriad of things that have escaped me this week including returning to this blog!

Yesterday was the last day of the first week of school and it also happened to be the day when all of my art supplies finally arrived from Dick Blick. *seriously?* My student aide helped me to start unpacking the mountain of boxes and though I made some progress checking things in, I will be headed back into my classroom either today or tomorrow to finish it out and put things away so that I'm not starting next week with this week's work spread out all over the studio classroom.

If it's not obvious enough, I have been buried by more than just my shipment of art supply boxes. That said, I am working on making changes so that I don't have to abandon this blog.

Keepin' it real while I plan for the year

I have been up and at it since before 5am.

Well, hello there! And how are you today? Not sure what happened to me this morning but I actually woke up at 4:30 am, tried to go back to sleep for a bit and then gave up after about 15 minutes, and then submitted to waking up for the day and getting things started. And I have been up since then. I caved and took a 40 minute nap at around 3pm when I usually crash and require a "fix" of caffeine (in the form of Dr. Pepper is most preferred) in order to keep me in gear.

*sigh*

All things considered, I have actually gotten quite a bit done today. Here are some of the major bits...

It's OK. You can call me BOY-crazy if you want to.

Hello and how are you? Sorry it's been about a month since I have done anything here on the blogsite. With all of the spending time with my family and a mostly relaxing summer schedule in full swing and two graduate study courses (at the same time) and NOT painting a thing because I have been customizing American Girl dolls to make them look like boy dolls instead... I guess you could say I have been quite busy!

What's that? Oh... that last thing? The whole customizing American Girl dolls to look like boy dolls? Uhhhh... yeah. About that. Hmmm. Where do I even begin?

Well, if you didn't know, I have a five year old daughter and she happens to be a pretty serious fan of American Girl dolls. Heard of them? They've been around for upwards of 20 years so perhaps you have because you had them when you were younger OR you have kids who are into them. Or... perhaps you know about them because you don't like them for any number of reasons.

Learning to listen and then let go

Some weeks back, I started oil painting again after taking an unintentional sabbatical for quite some time. I was able to complete two 36 x 36 pieces in one weekend. I felt pretty uplifted by them both.

And then something happened with the second one I did. The longer I looked at it, the more I become convinced that it wasn't as it was supposed to be. There was an unnatural darkness about it that made me feel uneasy and prompted me to try and make adjustments to help illuminate it. Everything I did only made it worse and spread more darkness over it. My husband tried his best to convince me that I should just let it be and friends of mine gave me plenty of affirmations that is was "pretty good." I wasn't convinced though I ended it quickly by rubbing it down with turpenoid and not even thinking twice about it. I knew that finishing it and then wiping it clean was absolutely essential to the creative process for what this painting would be.

The unPlugged version of Art-at-home

Without even realizing or trying to, I realized that I have recently been spending more of my time "unplugged" than ever before. I have put down and away my phone and other electronic devices more than ever and I have spent less time trolling the web. This has allowed for more time to paint, invest myself in creative processing (of all sorts), and spending time with my husband and almost 5 yo daughter. One of the highlights of all of this happened this past weekend when I got the notion to finally put together a fairy garden for my daughter...