artistic endeavors: words and brew.

i painted today.
i can't tell you how [insert nice happy word] i am to say that.
it's been too long.
since sometime in march.

i'm still low on canvases, but the thought of painting with blue drove me to pick up the two backup canvases. archives, if you will. the last two primed canvases i have, unless i want to take one off the wall and paint over that. which would never happen.

random.

the way this turned out in the end, i prettymuch liked it a lot. just wait. ;)

books?
heck. yes.
i love book are.
i'm thinking of printing out a poem or something for that blank page. 

. . . acrylic paint. i watered down the brown for the side swirls; it took on a watercolory effect. love!

that's as far as i got.....going to have a dance with the printer and finish it up this lovely tuesday afternoon.

lovely, yes? there's blue up there! the sun is out for real! anna and i are planning on going for one of those after-dinner walks tonight. it's been way too long. :)
[evening walk: fail. why? because it's down to around 40. it was 60 today. and we decided to be wimps tonight; oh well.]

....and.....this is a mystery canvas for now. blue is used. and a certain requested quote is going to be painted on it very very soon here.
i'll be writing more later. :)

~~~

9:15 p.m.
dangit, anna now has infected me--i'm nearly obsessed.
aura joon. the most beautiful baby pictures ever. most beautiful mommy ever. (basically my opposite; do you see that gorgeous brown skin and dark hair? exotic.)
now to the rest of the small painting i did today:

around 5 this got brewed. it goes perfectly with paint. but beware of dipping paintbrushes into the coffee cup... ahem.... i did that very thing a several canvases ago--last year--and did it tonight with a bit of white acrylic gloss paint on my slender brush. writing words to an e.e. cummings quote. :) i looked everywhere on the bottle for the beautiful words non-toxic, but couldn't find them. oh well. i didn't exactly swirl the brush around. a simple dip in and out probably didn't give the glass much paint anyhow. hahahah.

*happy sigh*

a dress at kohls that might be within my possession sometime. after it's been on the sales rack and if there's one around my size left when that happens..... 

yes, yum. cranberries and almonds. sugar and protein. awesome.

see? i kinda kinda like it a lot a lot a lot.
:) though, second little thought, i might take a larger brush and do some smooth strokes again over the coffee in the cup.

there's something about this shot that is different. the truck adds a bit of an air i don't normally have in my photos. heh heh:)

i'm not going to talk about how much i like my painting.
i'll just stop:)

ben, being a funny daredevil and walking our ramp's hand rail.
shoot, he built it so well his 180ish lbs don't break it. hah.

what a sky.

the slices of the two dresses. tomorrow we might hit joann's fabric store--excited, yes i am! wide ribbon and elastic, here i come... i do have plans. and i hope it turns out good. don't worry; i shall post a whole tutorial when i'm finished. ;) complete with photos. haha. unpredictable, right?! i thought so.
♥

Find more Kim Walker-Smith songs at Myspace Music

domesticness, creativity, and greek yogurt.

i've got a few ambitions.

like upcycling a few dresses.

they're the really long sort, and yesterday wearing that green {knee-length} one, i thought of how i like that better than a super long dress. heck, if i'm cold enough to need a long dress, might as well be wearing jeans.

so....

i have 3 really snazzy dresses {can anyone say kohl's sale rack?} to play with.

i'm going to see about making them knee-length, and using the bottom cut-off to make a skirt that is topped by a wide type of elastic band. hmmm. it sounds okay in concept. can't wait to try it.

i'm going to go slow on this, since i'm not exactly a hot domestic goddess or anything.

shoot.

far from it.

i'll write more later.

i just might go try those dresses on and start marking them for the scissors...

~~~

after i wrote the above, i closed my laptop, put it away, and went in search for something to eat.
apricot-mango greek yogurt from trader joe's. i could live off that stuff forever.
mom caught a stellar picture of me, lounging with my greek yogurt at the table, pondering the epicness of my second requested guest post and how i need to un-analyze it all and not write a manifesto and just be myself. oh boy:)
ah, life. everyone but gram, danny, mom and i are gone. makes for a quiet house.
.....photobucket's site isn't working worth crap for uploading pictures--of jpeg or gif type. grr.
so, here's the deal.
you can --if you want, that is-- save one of these two pictures... and copy my normal blog url up there, if you're not clicked on a certain post first of all. then, in your dashboard design tab, add a gadget: a picture. there'll be a little box asking for a url if you wanted to add it for something. paste the url there, and upload the picture you saved as shrink to fit. voila!

there ya go:) hope that all made sense; if not and you have a question, email me. it's in my blogger profile.

it's 5:23 and i've procrastinated the dresses-and-scissors activity for too long. toodles.

~~~

8:05 p.m.
??? 
well, i cracked up at reading the short caption for the yellow house lady's 365th photo.  
aaaand i finally got around to cutting up those dresses. two out of three.
i have a vision for the two bottom slices. yes to the wide type of elastic...and a trip to joann's for some wide satin ribbon sounds good too... ideas, ideas!


dad's almost finished with all the star wars. they worked their way back through the time of the story; oldest to newest in the movies. or at least that's the info i've heard.
my favorite part about them watching those weird movies (don't hate me for calling them weird; i wasn't raised on them like most people!:) is this guy: 

and mainly, his voice. wowza.

random: saturday night we did, indeed, get to see source code. you know, that one with jake gyllenhaal. it. was. good. trippy, weird, but very good. i'd see it again if i wasn't trying to save money....heh.

i thought i should share with y'all this: ^^ because it made me laugh. it's from leigh's sweet blog. 
meanwhile, i'm racking my brain in that before-the-writing-storm-of-creative-rain with no ideas of what to guest post. argh. i hate that stage. if you have an idea of what you want to read, what you would like to hear from me, comment it please. a question, a ....whatever. :) i love to take something and try to ramble on it; all depends on how much coffee's in my blood stream.

me, danny, and the bottom slices of the two dresses, folded, waiting for the opportune future. :)
the house is still quiet, but for the 1989 movie dad's got playing. which...is why i'm not in the room. i don't feel like watching a movie.
i feel like writing....looking at pictures....and listening to kim walker-smith.

Find more Kim Walker-Smith songs at Myspace Music

this song is amazing. spontaneous iv? yes.
i need her music on a cd in my hands. not just on myspace. i want that disc full of worship in the kitchen soon. so when everyone else is in bed already, and i'm up finishing cleaning the kitchen, i can breathe it in fully.
♥

it is sometimes found very painful to be a domestic goddess.

Sunday, February 28
Well.
This is turning out to be one productive Sunday afternoon. :)

I'm making a wrap around skirt, yes, the one I mentioned when i showed you my dresser top, with the lavender-and-cream printed fabric . . . yes, that one. The book has to go back tomorrow. Ahem. I am not that sort of person. Well, maybe sometimes I am. :]

Monday, March 1

This last one is the last piece (a skirt panel) in the cutting process . . .

I have nothing else to say except that I need to learn the French seam thing or whatever, and that this is one of the weirdest Mondays ever.

More pictures of the sewing-and-finishing of this thing will follow as soon as . . . we get to it. :)

my dresser. and a picture depicting it in a certain phase. :)

This, friends, is the top of my dresser. I'm organized, but this was at a more over-flowing stage... ahem. :)

You'll see that the focus of the picture is on Rachel's purple coffee mug she got at a local pottery place and painted, and my dark-brown-and-cream-swirly coffee mug that Anna gave to me for Christmas. Both mugs, filled with a nice, dark brew and lightened with some of our whole milk Dad brings home from the farm. Basically, if you're not used to the richness, you might almost take it ...almost as half-and-half. It isn't, but since it's not had all the things done to it that even normal Vitamin D milk from the store has had done to it . . . but we're not here to discuss the politics of milk and its components.

You'll also see the fabric folded right behind my mug, which is a beautiful, soft and elegant cream-and-lavender cotton print that I have plans for. A simple wrap-around skirt from the book I got from the library called Weekend Sewing, by Heather Ross. Someday I shall get around to it, and Mom's been mentioning it once in a while that she'll help me and everything... Let's just say and hope that I'll get it done before spring time. ;)

Then, you see to the far left, the socks. They don't necessarily look like socks becaus eof their rolled-up nature, and no, peoples, I don't clutter my drawers with socks. Drawers are for clothes, and where I put my socks is right where you see them right here in this picture. ;) So. Randomly, after dinner one time, we learned how to roll socks, military-style, when Nathan was back home for Christmas, and half of us kids take the time to treat our socks to the efficient way of storing and not losing them, and half of us don't care. (ahem, like anna. i haven't checked in the boys' drawers, haha, but i'm pretty sure rach and lyd roll their socks.)

Next, the books. :) Ted Dekker's Blink is really good. Karen Kingsbury's Even Now and Ever After, a couple of the not-so-many books of hers I actually like... The Lowlands of Scotland by Liz Curtis Higgs, and The O'Malley series by Dee Henderson.

Hm. Darn it, I have to go vacuum. Let me tell you, I would rather wash a big load of dishes (remember that we have 9 people in our family) than vacuum...just the main level, but still. It's just one of my most disliked chores ever. Sigh.

Have a good afternoon. If you don't have to vacuum, enjoy the feeling for me. :)