Ssssh, Jay is sleeping. Don’t you love how she set up her bear-bears beside her on her hugs pillow (I won that from a vending machine at Denny’s!), and then wrapped herself up in her bear-bear blankie for her nappie? And see her pink nikkernaiws? She twirls her haircut as she falls asleep. Well, she twirls it all the time, but I think it’s precious that she does it as she falls asleep, and even while she’s sleeping if you watch close. (p.s. nikkernaiws = fingernails, and haircut = ponytail)

Caitlin’s nappie and bedtime habit includes pulling the tickles off of her fleece fuzzy blankie that she stole from me as a toddler. She either makes a wish and blows them into the air, or tickles her nose with them as she falls asleep. I remember one time she had a sinus infection, she was blowing blue tickles out of her nose. LOL (p.s. tickles = the fuzzy stuff on fleece blankies)

I hope you are all having a good day! I’ve prepared my next painting and will start it in a little while. One of my wonderful clients/friends has sent me at least a dozen beautiful photos of her kitties (she has 25 –last I knew!!), one of them is curled up napping on a cookbook. It is precious, and that’s what I’m working on next. 🙂

I just found another frog article that I hadn’t seen, have a look here!

🙂

Packing and shipping today, getting ready to head to the post office! It’s gorgeous even though it’s chilly out, the sun is so bright, the sky is a beautiful blue, my trees are budding, and the cardinals and ROBIN’S are singing!!! YAY for SPRING!

I worked on the site a bit lastnight, and am getting ready to dive in again today. Each gallery thumb is clickable to a larger image that requires its own graphic, and I need to create all of those graphics. I did change the link colors, darkened them a bit, hopefully you still know they’re links, yea?

In other news, I am still plugging away on the diet, lost another pound for a total now of 16 since Jan. 29th or so, and took a couple of weeks off there for my visit with Mark and recoup time.

There was a deer in my backyard yesterday! My yard is fenced in, suburbia you know, and I live along one of the main roads in my area. We do have some wooded areas and we have seen deer around, but I would never have expected one to jump my fence and hang out in my yard. LOL It was so exciting! I grabbed my camera and ran outside, but she was gone. A few moments later, she and her friend went galavanting down the easement behind our house and I was able to get a (blurred) picture of them.

Better get to work! Have a blessed Sunday!
xoxoxxo

You have GOT to see Alex and his detail shots. Click here to see him on auction!

Here’s a little bitty image, but clicky on the link above to go see the good stuff. I am SO pleased with this piece!!

Mackie is finished! Here she is!

Hi all!

Thought I’d post the final scan of my Bernese Pup painting, it’s more accurate. Hopefully I’ll be able to update my site soon to include my newer pieces.

In the next few weeks I would like to get a few things accomplished:
1. Get a new dishwasher!
2. Complete a couple of commissions.
3. Finish the Macaw painting
4. Paint that Squirrel!
5. Start working in the yard.

Yes, spring has nearly sprung, and I have so much yardwork to do without Mark around (I have allergies, and he usually does all that stuff). I have to till the backyard and lay the patio blocks we pulled up for the Studio construction, reseed or lay sod – my grass basically consists of creeping charlie. 🙁 I also have leaves everywhere (still) and need to plant new lovelies in the front planter we created last spring. I think I may repaint that too, to match our theme of the year.

Here’s the Bernie scan:

I hope you’re all having a great weekend!

Here’s the Monochromatic Blue Egret piece, I’ve signed it, it’s done, but I won’t list it on ebay until tomorrow when it dries. (and I will be listing with my new fancy schmancy site-matching template, too!) I hope it feels as peaceful to you as it does to me. I really enjoyed working this. Here was my palette: Cerulean Blue, Cobalt, French Ultramarine (oo-lala, Lolo), White, Dioxazine Violet (just a smidge to deepen the French Ultramarine) and Alizarin Crimson to deepen even further on the beak and foot reflection (and my sig).

Here are a few photos I had developed this morning from our trip.

::sniffles::

A street sign on Ft. Polk in my maiden name (misspelled)
A nice pic of Mark in uniform. What a man.
A huggy emotional pic of the two of us. (Puffy from bawling the night before & that morning)
Our tattoos together
A nice profile pic of Mark, tattoo freshly finished
Outline work in progress pic of my tat
A closeup of my tat work in progress (filling in the heart)

Ok those are all I have to share at the moment, I just wanted to get a few of those scanned in right away.

I’m back. Mark departed early AM for Kuwait, with stops along the way. He already called from the first stop.

The trip was wonderful, I arrived to find him waiting at the airport – we went to find our hotel and WEE that was fun! Have you ever driven a “roundabout”? Crazy I tell ya. Can’t you just make a left? No, you have to go down 2 miles and then follow this big circle and come back. LOL Once we figured out how a roundabout worked, we were good. 😉 Got checked in, and went to dinner at a Cajun restaurant next to the hotel. I tried so many new things, I’m proud of myself! That evening we started with stuffed mushrooms (yum) which were stuffed with a chopped crawfish breading. I had Stuffed Snapper (also stuffed with crawfish and topped with a creamy seafood sauce). Mark had Blackened snapper, and we both had seafood etoufee. (and wine, and beer!)

He wanted to get his fill of fast food before we left as well. So there was Taco Bell, McDonald’s and Applebee’s on that last evening for steaks, Long Island Iced Tea and Raspberry Kiwi Margaritas. 😉

Things are closed on Monday’s down there, so we didn’t get to go to the art museums in Alexandria as we’d hoped. I did get some neat pics that I’ll scan later on. We ended up spending Monday driving to Marksville and stopping at the Paragon Casino & Hotel Resort. BOOOOO we didn’t win anything! We lost. 🙁 It was fun though, we paired up side by side on some nickel video poker machines and lasted a good hour before we depleted the rest of our casino fun money. When we got back we had enough time (I think it was Monday?!) to hop over to the local zoo, where I got some more very cool reference pics to paint from.

Tuesday we did it! We got our TATTOOS! That’s just the pic of mine. Mark’s is on his left shoulder, and I did get more pics on my regular camera that I have to have developed. I took progress pics of JD doing mine, I hope they turn out well! Our Tattoo artist was amazing, and funny that we ended up selecting him, because he’s originally from Iowa.

I had picked up the book “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Tracy Chevalier and read it on the way down. Well the natives were restless, so I also did this in gel pens in my little notebook I brought along. I’ve been wanting to paint that piece for a lonnng time, and now that I’ve worked that little sketch I think I’m feeling brave enough!

On the way back, I had stowed some of my zoo pics in my purse to work from, and we had also stopped at Hobby Lobby and I picked up a smaller purse sized sketchpad and more india ink brush pens. On the flight from Alexandria to Memphis, I doodled this macaw and then from Memphis to Minneapolis I doodled this squirrel. I met a really nice man in the seat across the aisle who watched as I doodled and it was neat to see his interest in art!

Ok I’m done for now, more later!!

Missed you all!
xoxoxxoo