Photo of the Week

While I was working with paint for one of the challenges I did for the cybercrop last week, I thought it would be fun to let my kids paint too. Here is B getting in on the action. They are finger paints but he insisted on using a brush. Whatever gets the job done!

Lost Thursday

Right now I'm really missing my Lost. Two more weeks till it comes back on. In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to sharpen my portrait drawing skills by drawing a Lost character every week. Per R's request, my first character in the series is John Locke, played by Emmy Award winning actor Terry O'Quinn.


Drawing rendered in B pencil and charcoal pencil on sketchpaper.

Locke is the "Man of Faith" of Lost, believing that it's his destiny to be on the island - an entity unto itself - and that the island has a plan for all the inhabitants. Locke puts so much faith into the island that it's contagious (to me at least!). He's had to overcome so much adversity in his history that I love to see him prevail on the island.

So we now know that he's not one of the Oceanic Six. (I'm not surprised there) What does happen to John Locke? I'm hoping to find out sooner than later.

A Couple More . . .

Here are a few recent layouts that I did at MBI's cybercrop last weekend.



This last layout won one of the challenges there with the prize being an 8x8 Daisy D's paper pack. Yay!

Recent Layouts

These are literally the first layouts I've scrapped since January.





This last one I did for a challenge to create a monochromatic layout at
Memory Book Inspirations. Strangely enough, I have the most difficult time with monochromatic challenges. One would think it would be easy to pick out shades of the same color to work with, but I guess I just like to work with several colors. I am pretty happy with the way it turned out though. Anyway, this layout won the challenge and it's featured on MBI's home page as well as their April newsletter.

Speaking of MBI, they are having a weekend crop starting this Friday. It's sure to be a lot of fun filled with challenges and games. I hope to get at least one layout done! :)

Pinewood Derby

Our Cub Scout Pinewood Derby was held Sunday night. J built his own car to race against his friends. His vision for the car was a wedge of cheese. He and his friends have some kind of fascination with cheese -- not sure what that's about. Anyway, with R's help, he cut it and sanded it, then painted it and added some mouse stickers.




J was so excited to bring home a first place trophy! His car beat out all the cars in his den - 11 in all. J's car also raced against all the winners in the pack and his car came in 2nd place overall out of 35 cars. It's always fun to see what kind of creations the kids come up with. One shaped his car into the form of a pencil, there was a spiderman car, a firetruck. The boys get so creative and they always have fun at the Pinewood Derby no matter what place their car finishes. It's always our favorite Cub Scout event.

Who doesn't love a good contest?

I found a great new scrapping community the other day called Scrapbook Deals 4 u. I'm loving getting to know everyone there, and not only is there a great store with some amazing monthly kits, but they are also having a fun contest and the winner gets to be on the DT with 4 finalists as GDT.

Here are the deets.

Care to join me?

Brought to you by the letter B

We drove down to visit with my parents over Easter weekend. For weeks, B kept asking me when we would be going to Grandma's house. I put a sticker on the date on the calendar so he could easily see how many days until we would be there, but apparently it wasn't soon enough. Some days he would insist that we go right now, complete with dressing to coat and boots. In the meantime I suggested that he call Grandma and Pappy on the phone. He spent the last few days before our trip chatting up my mom on the phone.



We left on Saturday for our visit. On the way, we stopped at the local Walmart to get a few snacks for the trip. At the checkout, the familiar blue and white handicap sign was posted at the side of the conveyor belt. B asked me what this meant. I told him that it meant that anyone in a wheelchair could use this lane because it was wider and they would be able to fit easier. B, in typical 3 year old fashion, looked at me and said, "No, it means sitting on the potty."

This kid cracks me up.

The State

Love these guys . . .

Kitten in Charcoal

I had been working on this drawing of our kitten Macy for about a week and just finished it up tonight. It is done in charcoal pencil on sketch paper. I'm pretty happy with the result and it will soon find it's way, matted and framed, hung on my wall.

Wednesday Whine

I registered to vote about 8 or 9 years ago once when I renewed my driver's license. I specifically remembered registering as No Affiliation, knowing that in the Primaries only Republicans can vote for Republicans and Democrats for Democrats. My thinking was that if I was not affiliated with either party then I could vote for both parties in the Primary, because although I veer a little towards one party I consider myself somewhat in the middle so I'd like to be able to vote for whatever candidate I felt was best on both sides. I do know that in the general election that you can vote for whomever you choose no matter what party with whom you are affiliated. Looking back I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I actually have not voted at all since I registered. I have never felt that I was informed enough to make a responsible decision. Granted, it's my own fault that I hadn't educated myself enough on the candidates but I did feel that it was better to not vote at all than to vote for just whomever I felt like for no particular reason. Please do not email me telling me how pathetic I am for never voting because I already know. I know that if I had been born 100 years ago that I would not even be allowed to vote. Believe me, I feel plenty guilty thinking of all those women who fought long and hard to give America's future women, like me, the right to vote, and I have never acted on that right.
I don't know that it would have mattered all that much anyway. The guy that I would have voted for in the 2000 Presidential race won Pennsylvania's delegates anyway so my vote wouldn't have done anything for him, and, in 2004, I couldn't decide who was the lesser of two evils and besides B was only 4 days old and we had just come home from the hospital. I wasn't going anywhere! Yes, I know, they're just excuses. Well, that changes now, because I will vote in this election and in the Primary.
Which brings me to Wednesday's Whine -- As I said, I thought that I would be able to vote in the Primary for whomever I chose being Not Affiliated. I'm not sure where I got this idea. I now know that it was something I made up in my own head. R had been telling me for months that he thought I wouldn't be able to vote in the Primary and it turns out he was right. I went online to see when Pennsylvania's Primary would be and found out that according to Pennsylvania Electoral Law, people registered as Not Affiliated cannot vote in the Primary. Ok, irritating but no big deal. It was my own fault for making things up and I found that I could easily change my party affiliation on the PA government website. Let me tell you that that site is not easy to navigate and not only that, according to the site I AM NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE ANYWAY. What??? Yes, I made up that rule about Not Affliateds being able to vote in the Primary, but I did not make this up. I KNOW I was registered. I even got one of those cards in the mail. Who knows what happened there. Good thing I found out now and saved myself the embarassment of actually trying to vote when there is apparently no record of my registration. So after an hour of fooling around on this website, I ended up registering to vote. All I have to do is get it to the Voter Registration Office by March 24 so I can vote in the Primary.
What a pain. I hope your Wednesday is whine-free!

Decked Out in Denim

I altered this cute notebook for my niece's 12th birthday. I loved this idea of recycling jeans into a fun gift, perfect for a pre-teen girl, complete with a funky belt to hold it closed. I got the idea here.

Unfortunately we were unable to make it to her birthday party on Saturday due to blizzard-like conditions. Looks like the weather's cleared up now, so we'll be stopping by to give this to her today.

Another family birthday -- Today is my dad's birthday, so if you're reading this, Dad . . . Happy Birthday! :)

Nine

J turned 9 a couple weeks ago. So hard to believe! And he'll be an entire decade next year - wow. He's becoming so grown up. We were pretty busy with school and a cub scout meeting on the actual day of his birthday. We had just one present to give him - a very small, very light box. He opened it and it was a cut out picture of a bike. He tried so hard to be polite, thinking of all the things he could do with his picture, hang it on his bulliten board maybe. We soon broke it to him that we were going to take him out to get a new bike. We had to wrap it up like that because we couldn't take him out till the next day. He found one that he really liked at Walmart. Now just to wait till the snow's all gone to ride it.

J had a slumber party to celebrate his birthday with 5 of his closest friends last weekend. It went rather well - the boys are all good kids and they had lots of fun playing games, eating pizza, and watching a movie. The power went out here about an hour before the party. I had planned on making frozen pizzas, but ran out to Little Caesars for their Hot and Ready pizzas since I had no way of cooking them. Wouldn't you know the power came back on just before I pulled into my driveway on my way home from getting the pizzas. Oh well, at least it was back on. I sent all the boys to bed in J's room in their sleeping bags about 10:30. I think they all finally got to sleep about 1:30 am. I didn't want to go to bed until they were all asleep so that was about 2, and can you believe those kids were up at 7 am?! I was so tired the next morning. It was worth it though - J had a great birthday party and I heard talks of it being the best party ever. :)

Flamingo

I really enjoyed drawing this bird in charcoal pencil. I hadn't picked up any charcoal in a while and knew this would be good exercise for me. I love how it turned out.

Thought for the day

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
~Scott Adams

Illustration Friday - Blanket

This week's Illustration Friday topic is blanket and what is sweeter than a baby under a blanket?

A new year, a new post (finally!)

Has it really been almost 4 months since I last updated my blog?? I guess life has just gotten in the way lately. My apologies to the 2 people that read this blog. ;) LOL

We've been so busy around here. I was working during the holidays and of course the holidays itself is so busy. We're working hard on remodeling and organizing our house. So much work to be done! We're almost done with B's room. I'm almost done with the paint and we've ordered carpet to be installed. Then to get started on the 2nd bath/laundry room.

Lately I've felt a little burnt out on scrapbooking and playing the whole publication game. I haven't been doing much with that lately as I'm trying to get my priorities in order. I'm certainly not going to give up on scrapping completely, just slow down a little maybe? It's something I need to make fun again and not feel so much like work. On that note, I'm starting a new project called Deck of Me. It's a fun challenge I found on this blog. It is taking a deck of cards and altering one a week for 52 weeks and turning into a mini-album/journal. Currently we're on week 4 and I haven't actually started but I hope to catch up soon. At least I found a deck of cards to use! LOL

I'm also doing fun stuff for Frances Meyer with new papers they're developing and I'm still on the DT at The School of Scrap. Classes are starting back up in February and I'm excited to be the new Advanced Math teacher.

I've felt such a need lately to pick up my brushes and pencils and renew my passion in creating artwork. It's been so long since I've painted or drawn anything. Again, life. I've drawn a few pictures recently. Here's one I've titled Pondering.



I've been hanging out at a place called Wet Canvas lately. It's a wonderful artist's community with so much support, information, and resources. I'm taking some refersher courses there, just for fun. I hope to share more soon.