April Showers- SNOW showers!

I was hoping to get one more Journal 52 page done before I make the April wrap up of pages, but I have stewed over how/what I want to do, and have had lots of appointments, and little art time, so it didn't happen. It was a REALLY hard topic for me, but I will go into that next month.
So, I have only 4 pages in April, but here they are:

Week 13 - How Does Your Garden Grow

I have been working on another large project, that I am considering showing progress photos of instead of the completed project, because it is become quite involved. But back to this page-- I have been doing a lot with flowers and fairies, and I was just in the mode to make flower fairy gardens, so here I have created yet another jam packed page with bunches of fairies in among the many flowers. 

Can you find them all?  (there are 21 fairies on this spread) 

Week 14 - Rain or Shine

Well, this is not a very up beat page, but it felt like we were never going to see Spring here in Northwest Wyoming. We are used to Spring storms, but usually sometime in March we start to have a few warm days. Here it was heading into the latter part of April, and still no warm days. The poor flower boxes and pots still have the dried up leftovers from last fall. A few tiny specks of green coming up at the very bottom of the old dried stumps is good news, but I don't see having a beautiful pot of blooming flowers for Mother's Day like I do most years. :( 

If you look closely you will see those darn snow flakes in the sky on my pages, and I think the words speak for themselves. 

Week 15 - Party Animals

These two pages are completely digital except the piece of teal washi tape down the center of the binding, because the edges of the papers were trying to pull up. I wanted to incorporate the lively little bunch of poochies we have here at our house, for this weeks prompt, but by the time I was able to find all the photos, I realized it would be just as easy to put the whole page together in My Memories digital scrapbooking program, then it would to find a coordinating paper in my stash, and print the photos. I think I found just the right pictures of these little buggers!

Week 16 - Recycled Art

I thoroughly enjoyed putting this page together- I had an advertisement for the craft store, that was going to expire before I could use it, so I started the page with all the coupons from the advertisement. Then I stole some wrappers from the girls' Easter candy, and part of the packaging from some Goldfish crackers, the hang tag from my beautiful Hydrangea plant, some stamps and part of the envelope from Canada from a swap I participated in not long ago, a card I got with the plant from my Birthday in March, and then I added some brightly colored washi tape to fill in the empty spaces. I am not sure if I will leave it like this, or add some journaling, but I will decide that later.

Thanks for following my April journey through my art journal pages. I am working on May pages, as well as a few other projects I plan to share, when I find time. That's all for now~

Back at it again

I think I took a bit of hiatus from art over the holidays, but really I didn't- I just didn't produce anything spectacular. I made some paper ornaments, and did some sketching, I made a few handmade journals, and started on a new art Journal for the 2014 year, which I started working in a few weeks ago. I seem to find it easier to post to Facebook than I do here on my blog, so if you want to check out what I am up to on a regular basis, that would be the place to visit me.
So what has happened since my last post here on the blog?

In September, my washing machine blew a gasket- well, not really a gasket, but the pump sprung a leak, and I am WAY too cheap to pay a repairman $75 an hour, so I got on the internet, and learned how to fix it myself. Ordered the part, and $28 and a few hours later- it wouldn't have taken most people that long, but whatever- I got it fixed, and we were back in service. Well, for a few days, then we discovered that we had a major backup in our waste water pipes, and that the City's main drain had a major blockage from roots at the joint to the main drain where our waste water is supposed to exit our pipes.  It took the repair man 2 full days to grind through the build-up of roots, but then he was able to get us back in service. Luckily, he was good and cleaned up after himself, and we didn't have any damage from the back-up. Just a puddle of water on the bathroom and laundry room floors, but they have linoleum, so so worries- easily cleaned. :)

We actually had a quite rainy fall, which is a nice change from our usual desert in the mountains. We even were graced with some beautiful lightening storms, and our grass was greener than it has been in all the years we have lived in this house! (4+) My flowers even bloomed later than usual, which is awesome!

At the end of September, my mom, daughter Quincy, friend Amanda and I all went for a girls' day, and had pedicures! It is the first professional pedicure I have had. I was practiced on a few times in Beauty school, but that doesn't count- it was also Quincy's first, and my mom's first pedicure- can you believe my mom had never had a professional pedicure in all her years? She loved it, and it was so fun to see her enjoy having someone take care of her for a change. She is always making sure everyone else is taken care of, and this time it was her turn, I hope she will be able to take that time for herself more often.

In October we got our first big storm of the season- I had to go over to Powell to take Quincy the car so she could get to and from her CNA Clinicals, and on the way home, it was a major blizzard. We took it slow, and braved it, but it was a long trip home at the speed we were going. I noticed that we were the lead car too, and wondered if we might get passed because we were going so slow, but I think the drivers behind me were just grateful to not be the one trying to make a path for everyone else. I am grateful that the Highway crews put those cuts in the road on the right side, so if you "fall asleep at the wheel" it will wake you up. It made it quite easy to know right where I was on the road, when I couldn't see a car length in front of me.
I also did quite a bit of baking- not a big variety, but several loaves of both banana bread and zucchini bread. We filled the freezer, and have had homemade treats all winter.  :)

November brought some challenges for our family. Quincy seemed to have some trouble emotionally, and so I spent almost the whole month driving back and forth from Powell to get her to and from her classes. She just needed that break from the "real world" and have her family wrap their arms around her and know that she can always count on us to help when things get hard. She is doing great now- she did awesome in her classes first semester at college, and is very excited to get going in her new classes this semester. She loves college, and I know she will continue to succeed.

The end of November and all of December has brought us lots of snow- I love to see it fall, but really don't enjoy driving in it. We have had several big snows, where we normally get little snows. I am hoping we will not have a dry summer next year, as I just don't like worrying about wild fires. It looks to me like the mountains have quite a bit of snow pack, so maybe we will be in good shape for the summer months. We had a big stretch of frigid temps. Several days in a row of way below zero. We are not used to getting -14 degrees F for days on end. (When we lived in Glasgow, Montana, it was the norm, but not here)
We survived it, and are no worse for the wear. We just stay in and bundle up :)

So onto the new year--- January has been good so far... I am back into the swing of getting artsy more often, which is so good for my psyche. I really usually get extreme holiday blues, and have trouble getting out of the funk, but I feel refreshed this year, and have actually spent the last 2 weeks organizing- DEEP ORGANIZING, all, I mean ALL of my scrapbooking/art/craft supplies, and purging the things I know I will never use, and finding a proper place for the things I want to keep and use. It is a slow process. I have spent the last more than 20 years making a huge unorganized mess, it is not going to get fixed over night, but I am diligently working on it, and am actually starting to get past the point where is gets way worse before you start to see progress, so there is hope!  You can already start to see the progress :) YEAH!!!

I am still trying to have a good balance, several good strong hours of work, then a reward of me time for art. I am attempting to do the Journal 52 art journal prompts and also taking a Derwent Art Academy class... I thought it would be pretty quick, but there is more to learn than I had initially thought, so I am enjoying the slower pace, and am really trying to learn something from the course. Here are the sketches so far:
Class 1: 3D objects

Sorry the picture is so grainy and dark- it was taken at night with my webcam- not ideal for picking up the details of artwork.

Class 2: Perspective

I had a little trouble thinking ahead with where the perspective was going to land, and ended up squeezing it in at the top, but at least I understood the instructions. Perspective is not my strong spot.

Class 3: Basic Sketching

This sketch was supposed to be done using only dots. That is so not easy- I found myself trying to make little lines, but I think I understand the point, in that the closer together they are the darker the area, the farther apart, the lighter the area.

Class 4: Color and Tone

I started with the rooster sketch, and it turned out nothing like the instructors example, but then she said we could try the bluebird, and that was much more successful.

So now I wait for the instructor to evaluate my drawing before I get access to class 5. Hopefully I will remember to post here on the blog before July! LOL

Whew- got through that update of my life... see you soon, hopefully :)

More Snow

The difference a day makes:
I am not sure I need to say much, I think a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, but it has not stopped snowing in the last 24 hours. We have had a few inches of accumulation, and it is staying cold.
















The funny thing about this whole snowing thing- last week it was really warm... almost 80 degrees, I was out with my mom, and we were listening to the radio when a blizzard warning came on. It was the strangest thing. Then in the middle of it, they announced that it was a test warning for the county to prepare our cars, homes, schools and businesses for winter. I just thought it was interesting because I have lived in Cody for 20 years, and have only heard these warnings a couple of times. We have hard winters occasionally, but not regularly. I am thinking that this is going to be one of those years when winter comes early, fast, hard and sticks around for awhile. I guess we have been warned to be prepared.

UPDATE 10/12/08:

When it was all said and done we got 9" of snow! Now that is a lot of snow!!!

It's COLD

I think it may be WINTER!

It is definitely cold outside here in Cody, Wyoming. Yesterday it started to snow, and last night is just got COLD. It stayed cold all night and has been snowing all day. It is not snowing hard mind you, but it is still snowing. It is so hard to tell in Wyoming if it is going to be 20 degrees in October or if it is going to be 75. The weather is just so unpredictable.

I went out just before lunch and took this picture of the our back yard. The sun is trying so hard to shine, but it is just SO cloudy that it can't peek through. You can see the neighbor's tree is blowing in the wind. That wind is just plain Nippy!

I actually wore socks today!- Now that is saying something, 'cause I absolutely Hate socks.

(I still have some of the same pairs of socks that I had from when I was in High school, because they aren't worn out - and that was - oh my - almost 20 years ago.)

I guess it is time to curl up with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate and watch a great movie!