Show me your heart

One of Amelia's favorite things to do lately is to try and make her fingers into a heart shape.  While doing this she will say "Mama, does this look like a heart?"  When she first started doing it, it looked nothing like a heart, her fingers would make all sorts of different shapes, but not a heart shape!  As you can see by the photo below, that she is finally getting the hang of it and just in time for Valentines Day! 



Her little hand hearts are so sweet and inspired me to try and draw it out.  The last painting I did I had a horrible time drawing out the hands, so I thought this would be great practice for drawing hands. 
 
 


Not quite as cute as her pudgy little hands, but  at least you can tell they are hands!

a little bit of love

"Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life."
Leo Buscaglia

Yes, I finally did a little bit of painting!  I started this a few weeks ago and finished it up last night.  It's not a very complicated piece so it really shouldn't have taken so long, but painting hasn't been at the top of my list of things to do lately!  I finally decided that I just need to do it no matter what else needs to be done, and wow, I'm so glad I did it.  

I made a little sympathy card today too.  The card turned out kind of cheery looking, but Henry was 98 and lived a good, long, healthy life, loved to watch the birds outside his kitchen window  and always loved a good joke, so I guess as I was thinking about him, a happy little card was the result!

MY STUDIO!

I thought I'd share some pics of my new studio!   I finally got it put together over the last few days.  I love it!  The kids love it too and have very quickly started to take it over.  I'm loving my free drafting table that I got.  It has all those drawers for my art supplies!  I'm thinking down the line I'd like to paint it a fun color, but probably not until it warms up outside so I can do it there.




Aren't those floors beautiful?  The kids have made themselves a comfy little corner to read their books with all sorts of throw pillows.  I would love to sew some fun new pillow covers for them.  Fischer had the brilliant idea of jumping off of the drafting table onto the pillows while wearing capes to see if they could fly, but luckily I was able to put an end to that quickly before anyone got hurt!



The walls are a little bare.  I've decided that I would like to get artwork from my favorite artists hanging on my walls for inspiration.  Unfortunately this takes money, which we don't have a lot of right now, but I see the walls filling up slowly over time.



















I wish I had some artwork to share with you, but this studio has been a bit of a distraction and I'm not sure that I've even lifted a pencil this past week!  But now that I have this beautiful studio,  I can't wait to get going.  (I still need lights though, oh yeah, and a chair!)  Hopefully there will be artwork soon!

Room Re-do

This past Saturday I talked my husband into starting an unplanned project, tearing up the carpet in our office and turning it into my studio!   Much of our house is covered in carpet in some form or another, even the kitchen and one of the bathrooms!  This was how the house was when we bought it 3 years ago.  The carpet is OK, but not my favorite.   Under most of the carpeting is hard wood floors, except for the kitchen and bathroom.   It's a bit of a risk to pull up the carpeting when your not sure what shape the floor is in underneath.

Over the last 3 years we've done a lot of dog sitting for my mother-n-law. Her previous dog which has since past away and now her current dog have chosen our office as their favorite spot to pee, poop and puke.  I can't even tell you how many times we've had to clean this up off of our carpet.  There was even one particular incident this past fall where her dog had a GI bleed and blood was coming from both ends.  Not an easy one to clean up.  This happened the week after we had just had all of our carpets shampooed!  Needless to say, I've been campaigning hard to get the carpet in the office pulled up, and I finally won this weekend!  Yeah!!!


                                          Our office prior to the re-do. 

I've always done my artwork in the kitchen.  Even out in Idaho I worked at the island in our kitchen.  I find kitchens to be one of the most comfortable places in the house and they always have great lighting, especially our kitchen right now.  It gets total southern exposure all day long and then from the west.  I love all of that natural light.  The drawback of course is that it is the kitchen!  In between meals I'm always having to clean up and then restart projects, while the mess accumulates on the counters.  My husband has been so patient with this and has rarely uttered a complaint about it.


                                 My studio, I mean kitchen, notice the lovely teal carpet! 

Our house is rather large and I decided that it really is time to figure out a spot that I could make into my studio.  The options were the basement, the office or our attic.  The basement has some beautiful brick walls, but for me, I just couldn't see much inspiration coming from that space.  Our attic is really a neat space, all sorts of windows and angles to the ceiling, but so cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer, plus it just feels so far away from the rest of the house, like the kitchen, where I do spend a lot of time even if I'm not painting.  The last option was the office, which is a room that doesn't really get used much and is pretty much sort of wasted space, it's on the main level and near the kitchen.  The big drawback about this room of course was the said carpet and also its location which is on the northeast side of the house and so it doesn't have the greatest lighting.


This past week my husbands business partner gave me a free drafting table which will be perfect for my studio and am totally psyched about!  While rearranging furniture in the office to make room for the table,  I found 4 new pee stains from a recent dog sitting and decided enough is enough, this carpet is coming out!  So Saturday morning out it came!



Luckily the floor was in wonderful shape.  All around the perimeter was old carpet glue from previous carpet.  Initially we were going to just scrape that off and call it good, but my husband decided we should totally refinish the floor.  The last pic above shows the floor after it had been sanded.


                                        The kids playroom and our living room. 

Our house turned into total disarray after this decision.  I included a couple pics of how our house looked over the last 5 days.  Furniture overflowed into our living room and into the playroom.  The office is behind the French doors in the second pic.

 

Here's the office, or should I now say my studio!  I'm over the top excited with how the floor turned out.  It looks awesome.  I can't stop looking at it!  The floor is a beautiful red oak and looks wonderful.  I thought the floors looked pretty good prior to sanding, but WOW,  refinishing them really brought out the grain of the wood.  I figured since we refinished the floors, the walls could really use a fresh coat of paint.   I ended up going with a light lime green color on 2 of the walls.  Lime green and orange have been my favorite colors forever.  The color and fresh paint really brightens the room.

This evening we started moving the furniture in.  I haven't decided how I'm going to utilize the space yet, but I'll post some pics when it's finished.  The only light source in the room are  2 wall sconces, so we still have to figure that out yet too, but I'm so happy with the results!  It was so worth the mess that we've went through over the last few days.  I love, love, love it!  Sorry this post got a little long, I guess it's because I'm so excited about it all!

And a new year begins with Hope

I'm not really sure how I want to write this post, but I've been putting it off long enough.  I think the longer I put it off, the harder it is going to be.  It's difficult for me to put my feelings and thoughts into comprehensible writing in normal situations, let alone emotional ones, but here it goes.


                My sister Wendy, my Mom, me and Amelia  on my Mom's 60th birthday this past April

About 2 weeks before Christmas my mom found out she had a tumor in her abdomen. The Monday before Christmas she had surgery to remove the tumor and a hysterectomy.  It turned out that the tumor was Stage 3 ovarian cancer.   They also found it on her appendix,  bowel and some lymph nodes near one of her kidneys.  It was a long surgery and her hospital stay ended up being longer than planned and included quite a scare at one point, which then required an  overnight in the ICU.    It was a very long week for all of us, but especially for her.  So many thoughts, prayers and love were sent her way during that time and still are.   She came home the day after Christmas and has been recovering very well.   Even though it wasn't the Christmas we had planned, to have my mom still with us is by far the best gift one could ask for.  She is a tough one and I'm amazed at how well she is doing.   The human body and it's resiliency is absolutely astounding. 

My mom has always been very healthy, so this all has been very shocking, overwhelming, scary, surreal, stressful, and by all means a  roller coaster ride of emotions.  I can't even imagine how my mom must feel. 

I live 3 1/2 hours away from my parents, which right now is really feeling like it's far away, but I just have to remember that it is much better than being in Idaho where I used to live.   I feel fortunate to be a SAHM because I was able to spend 2 weeks at my parents house while all of this was going on. My sister lives just 20 minutes from them and is able to pop in whenever she can.   I wish I could do that.  I miss my mom and just want to be there for her and my dad.    It gives me comfort to be there with her and have her close, to make sure she is ok and help out with everything,  plus I know that having her grandkids there brightens her day.

It's hard for me to welcome this new year when I know what my mom has to go through.  Besides having just been through major surgery, in a few weeks she has to start chemotherapy.  So instead of  saying "Happy New Year", which doesn't feel quite right with everything going on,  I've decided that this year will be a "Hopeful New Year"!  With hope comes  the belief that a positive outcome lies ahead, and with hope comes the strength, courage and confidence that I know my mom will have to win her fight against cancer. 

(Mom, I know you read my blog.  I love you.)