Hi everybody!

It’s Monday! AAK! 😉

So far so good today. I prepared several prints for shipping this morning and got those out, walked over 2.5 miles on the treadmill (by the way I’m down 29 lbs. now and have ONE to go to meet my goal for this month!), did the banking, put paperwork together for re-mortgaging (how fun?!), and I am getting ready to paint! YES! Paint!

I will be working on a small 6×6 Orange Poppy today in india ink. I need to clean off my easel/table and set up my supplies, and with inks drying so fast, I may be able to finish it yet tonight and list it on eBay. I realize that I have been working in oils so much, and those are so much more time consuming and costly for my buyers, I am depriving some of my most wonderful clients of great original art for their homes! I’m going to be working on a very cool Horse portrait too some time this week. 🙂

My yard is covered in creeping charlie, ug! My father-in-law gave me a great recipe to get rid of it before my grass is completely choked out. Mix 10-1/2 oz. of Borax with 2 gallons of warm water, and lightly saturate the area with a watering can. So that’s on my schedule for today too! I keep putting it off though, since our backyard is so big I will probably need to refill in the house about 40 times to cover it all. Over 90% of our yard is creeping charlie now. (Maybe the girls will be nagging ME for coming in and out and in and out and in and out of the house! LOL)

All is well, a lovely start to a week that looks like it might warm up pretty nicely!

Have a great one!
xoxo
me & charlie

Today’s message brought to you by our good buddy (and my lovely and available oil pastel painting) Charlie, the Lowland Gorilla.

(Make sure you press play, and hang around to watch him move!)

xoxo

Erikie, I hope you had a wonderful birthday yesterday!

The new printer arrived yesterday and I spent a good chunk of time setting it up and preparing a few prints to ship out on Monday. My Print Auctions end tomorrow so I am waiting for those to finish to get everything printed. Now the folks who purchase these prints will be getting not just a print, but Giclee’s since the new printer has pigment based archival and waterproof inks, so this is the last time my prints will be offered at this price. I have to go up a smidge in price to not only cover the cost of the inks, but also because they are the best quality available and will last forever! 🙂

I did get to speak to Mark this morning for a little bit. Things are much more calm there now, which is great news. Hopefully I will be able to talk to him more regularly soon, there were apparently some problems with his connection which bummed me out all week since I have some very cool photos to share with him. And now I wait. sigh.

I walked over 3 miles today!! This week has been phenomenal as far as exercise goes. I’ve walked over 2 miles every day, most days 2.5 or more, and today I really pushed it increasing speed and time. So the drop for the week has been 5 pounds, and I’m now only 2 lbs. away from my goal for the month of April. 😀

The other cool news is that Erica Richards and I will be collaborating on a custom pet portrait contest/giveaway for the month of May. I will host the contest here, each of us will be GIVING AWAY a custom pet portrait (we’re still figuring out what size), hers will be an acrylic painting, mine in oils, both on chunky gallery wrap canvas. I will start preparing the contest entry pages, etc. this week and we’ll kick it off on May 1, it’ll run through May 31. Her work is fabulous, you can click the leopard to visit her website. She’s only got a couple of things available on eBay now, and she’ll set up an exclusive animal gallery for the entrants to see samples of her work. But here’s a sample of her wildlife artwork anyhoo! GREAT STUFF!

Leopard (by Erica Richards)
Click the Leopard to visit Erica’s Website!

I have to add one more thing. This is amazing, if you have a few minutes to view it please do, and you may want to have a kleenex handy. WeSupportU

That’s all the news I have at the moment. Have a great evening!
xoxo

You have to click here to hear me singing Happy Birthday for Erikie, my sweetie-pah friend, who does not act her age – and God bless her for that! 😉

Happy Happy Birthday friend!
xoxo

Hey there! I painted yesterday, layer upon layer on this daisy to make it FUSCHIA. I love fuschia. It’s my all time favorite color; my senior prom dress was even solid fuschia. 🙂

So it’s turning out pretty cool I think, I love the stem, I painted the sides lastnight and just continued that dark midnight-cobalty blue around to the sides of it (it’s a 12×12 – 1 1/2″ thick gallery wrap). The only thing left to do is add the pollen! And of course that involves waiting for the layers to dry in the center so the pollen pops when I add it. I’m going to start this one on auction for a BUCK. Yep a dollar. It’s spring, and I have mucho faith in my fellow fuschia and flower lovers. It’ll probably be finished up later today and I may be able to get it listed tonight. How bout that!

I took these fab pics the other day for Mark, and he hasn’t even been able to get online. Fooey. I changed my AOL IM so that when folks log on my puter says “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”, and I cranked up the volume lastnight and slept on the couch hoping to sleep light, which I did. (So yea Erikie, I heard ya! Stumbling back here all sleepy eyed and stuff..LOL) I am so anxious to talk to him now, ‘specially since I have stuff to show him! C’monnnnnnnn honey, log on! (you know, like rolling dice…hm, what can I roll….)

I also re-invested my earnings lastnight on that cool new printer I mentioned, it’s an Epson Stylus CX5400 and sports a scanner, copier, AND waterproof and 70-year archival inkage! Woowee! That will arrive tomorrow and I will be hooked up to generate some wickedly cool and valuable prints like the Lolo and Care have going on. 🙂

Walked 2.1 miles total yesterday (down .4 from Monday & Tuesday), but the coolest thing is that I got to walk with TWO of my buddies long distance! We coordinated Mountain Time with Central and Eastern and did a three-way-call-walk-a-mile-and-a-quarter! (only one of us is speedy gonzales and walked 2 miles. lol) So very cool to walk with friends. The weight is still melting away too, but I’m not gonna say my progress just yet! Thanks girls!!

Time for me to scoot, I hope you guys have a fabulously fuschia daisy day!
xoxo

Got your sunglasses on? It’s going to be a beautiful day!!

Ok so I took this pic a couple of weeks ago. But it’s still cool, eh? This is what I get to watch out of my dining room window if/when I get up before dawn. Knocks your eyes right out of their sockets. Yummy sunshine!

It rained all day yesterday here, and the grass – trees – plants – everybody is happy about it! I missed green. Winter is so depressing to me! But yesterday, even with the rain, it was an outstanding day.

I didn’t paint. I messed around all day with friends online.

Part of my sluffing off around the house included taking some new photos for my hubby. I think that’s what put me in a fabulous mood! I knew that I’m losing weight, and that’s cool and all, but you know sometimes you don’t see it for yourself until you start comparing pics. Well that’s what I was doing, looking at pics I took a month ago compared to now, and woah! How motivating! I’m still down 25.5 lbs., wavering back & forth a pound or two, but still working away at it, and the results are totally visible to me now. The last two days have been great treadmill days too, I’ve gone 2.5 miles both Monday and Tuesday.

What an exciting life I lead, huh?

The results are in on the new printer. I’ve decided to go ahead and get the Epson all-in-one, which sports some super cool waterproof and 70-year archival inks! I’ll probably pick it up within the next week. Right now I’m refinancing the mortgage which is on a 5-year balloon coming due in June, so that’s a “right now gotta do it” thing. Then next week we’ll be car shopping. Well not so much shopping as trying to talk them down to my price, and getting the color and features I want without ending up with a lemon. (Wish me luck, I attract lemons with every large purchase! LOL)

So there you go. (stop your yawning!) 😉

HAPPY WEDNESDAY!

xoxo

It’s Caitlin’s turn to say good morning! This cute little short outfit brought to you by none other than the Easter bunny.

I had mentioned starting work on Mark’s second portrait. Well here are a couple of shots of what’s going on with it. First, we have the full painting, which is an accurate color representation, even tho you can’t see him. The piece is 24×36 on 1-1/2″ deep gallery wrapped canvas, and the sides are gradated to match. Then there’s the close up of his face where you can see his profile outlined. And this is the photo I’m working from here. You like? He’s a handsome fella. I will work on this one soon. Gotta finish up that Daisy, which I plan on working on today. 🙂

Back later with more! Have a great day!

xoxo
-me!

Hey! It’s a mini-me! Just wanted to say good morning, will update more later today! 😀

I’m back! Today was productive. YAY! I’m back on the treadmill, walked 1.5 mi. so far today, and I’ll get back on in a little while.

Did some grocery shopping and stopped to pick up dinner for the kidlets, now we’re home and I’m just going to hang out for a bit and wonder what on earth I’m going to do with our finances for the next couple of weeks while I wait for the mortgage company to do their thing, and then I’ve got to shop for a new car too so we can have something more reliable to tool around in this summer.

The coolest part of course is that I got to chat with Mark again this morning for a bit, it is so nice to “see” him online! I think this is really going to help make the time pass in a much more positive way. Since he is so motivating for me, I’ll be making sure I keep my blog updated every day and “stuff” (more art!) so when he stops by (hi honey!) he can see I’m not sitting around moping like I’m known to do when he’s not around. 😉

I downloaded the COOLEST CD from Walmart.com this morning! The group is Maroon 5. If you like upbeat tunes, you have got to check out their music. Jay and I bopped around the house for a while today listening to it. I usually hear just one song (that’s the one that’s got us boppin’) and go looking for the CD to see if I like anything else they’ve got – and by george the whole CD is awesome! It’s great music for summer drives with the windows down, walking, whatever. GREAT great great stuff!!

I also got a call from Aunt T. lastnight, she browsed the site for a while with my cousin and saw all of my new stuff. I love hearing from people who browse through everything! She reminded me that I’m not done with my own site yet, my figurative/portrait gallery still doesn’t have the enlargement windows. I gotta get that done!

Yay! Mark’s new laptop arrived safely along with a couple of other boxes of goodies. I had been waiting to hear from him on the phone, but when I jumped on the computer this morning there he was!

YAHOO! We chatted for over an hour. He’s got the great patriotic nude from Erika hanging up in his trailer now along with some prints that Trev sent along with Mark’s belated Christmas present. A nice, colorful and artful place to call “home” for the next year! The cool CD’s arrived, he’s experiencing some technical difficulties with them but hopefully it’s just a little too much sand in his CD player. One of the guys wants me to make up a few more CD labels with Alex on it. Such a pretty birdie!

In other news, I had to go to the doc Friday. Just when I thought I was getting better, I wasn’t. So now I *think* I really am. LOL We shall see! We did spend the day outdoors yesterday, Mark’s dad came over and took care of the lawn God bless him. They helped me burn down the leaves in our burn pile too – which was huuuuge! So now the yard is purdyful.

Thankfully I’m feeling more motivated now that the line of communication with my hubby is much more open than it was. What a relief!!!

He will be stopping by so if you want to say anything to or for him, he will be reading & replying to you some time tomorrow!

Love you!!
xoxo