This year, in an effort to encourage creating and purchasing Handmade gifts, I’ve decided to host a Handmade Christmas Gift Exchange.

Over the years, I’ve made and received many beautiful, unique gifts around Christmas. From ornaments to framed needleworks, I have always been extraordinarily touched by the thoughtfulness and time that goes into a personal, handcrafted gift. I encourage you this year to be personal with your gift giving. If it’s coming from the heart, make it with your hands – whenever possible.

If you choose to participate, I will ask you for three things. Your favorite color, your favorite textile (this includes all fiber based products including canvas, papers and fabrics), and your favorite season. This will help me partner you with someone, as well as help that person send you a gift that you will treasure.

Would you like to join in? Here are the guidelines:

• Gifts should be handmade by you, or a handmade item can be purchased on Etsy or purchased at a craft fair, as long as you’re certain the item is handmade. Maximum gift/supply cost should be $20, not including shipping.
• Leave a comment that you would like to participate no later than November 30th.
• Plan to ship gifts no later than December 14, this gives you two weeks to create or purchase a handmade item.

Note: You do NOT need to have a blog or live in the US to join in.

I will accept participants through November 30th, then match people together and send everyone their partners information by December 5th.

That’s it! Please feel free to grab my badge and put it on your blog, the more the merrier!!

I’ve completed Lola’s underpainting – it’s pretty rough but you can see now how the coloring all pulls together and her eyes just pop! Love her collar design too, it’s a really girlie pattern.

I’ll put the fan on her portrait and it’ll take a couple of days for this layer to dry. I’ll be working on some other projects for the rest of this week and pick Lola back up on Monday to finalize her portrait.

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I’ve finished Lola’s background color. It’s very similar to Kona’s portrait, though I’ve lightened it up a bit using Naples Yellow Light with a touch of Yellow Ochre to pull the light mint and gold in her eyes out into the background. The darks will balance the olive in her collar, with the deep fuchsia base in her collar the combination will be really beautiful.

You can see that I’ve printed several reference photos. Larger for accuracy in color, smaller for accuracy in detail. Her coat color is quite varied in the three photos, the most naturally lit is the puppy photo on the left (c’mon everybody say “awwwww“) so that will be my primary reference for her silver coat color.

I’ll work the eyes/underpainting tomorrow so you’ll see how the colors come together.

I’ve sketched out Lola this afternoon, she’s a beauuuutiful silver lab (reminds me of a Weimaraner). She’s only about 7 months old. A couple of her reference photos show her in this same collar just a couple of months old, and boy has she grown into it! What a beautiful breed, though – honestly I’d never even seen a silver lab until Lola – and now I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for them!

My client (you can read her blog here) found my Etsy shop and ordered her custom portrait through my shop. Funny thing – I designed her blog for her about a year ago! So cool to get to work with her again. I’m just tickled. 🙂

I’ll be working on Lola’s background tomorrow.

Do you see what I see? Snow. It’s been snowing today. I know, I know. It’s snowed up north, it’s snowed down south. It’s even snowed out east already. For us here in the Quad Cities, this is our first snow of the season. I think this officially marks the beginning of the winter season across the country.

Snow, people.

My schedule for the Christmas season is filling up rapidly, and I’ve spent the last few days working a bit on a photographer site design as well as moving my own site to another server (again).

When I launched my site restructure recently, I did it on an entirely different server with a new host. Well, it didn’t take more than 3 weeks to find out that host did NOT provide the service that I’ve come to expect from Blogs About, and I found myself missing them and appreciating them more than ever. It’s amazing, as a site and web-based business owner, how your hosting provider becomes such an integral part of your every day life. If the service is poor, it effects everything you do. If you have a lopsided hosting package, you quickly find out how limited you are and how backhanded hosting companies can be in an effort to squeeze those extra dollars from their clients. I’m so glad to be back with BA and relieved to know that my business won’t be disrupted by a simple influx of traffic.

Enough with the geek speak (but if you want to know more, just ask)!

I pulled my back out last Sunday morning, so I decided that while I was in pain and couldn’t twist at the waist or breathe deeply, that it was a perfect day for rearranging my bedroom! I hung some room darkening window treatments and Catybug helped me rotate the bed onto another wall. Later in the evening, I took some Aleve and she gave me a nice massage, and my pain subsided by Monday evening.

(You see how my week started.)

Then, the election. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So, the last couple of days I’ve been restless and having nightmares. I’ve been trying (really hard!!!) to get my site moved over all while yawning and trying to keep my forehead off my desk.

I decided yesterday that I needed a pick-me-up, so I went and got my hair cut at the Boulder Hair Salon. I spoiled myself a little bit with a color, too. Then I came home, dressed up my eyes a little bit and had Chickeymonkey snap a few pics of my new do.

I’m finally happy with it – no more Princess Leah earmuff hair bob thing! It falls so nicely and the thickness that made me crazy has been greatly reduced.

It’s the little things, isn’t it?

This morning I felt like I had to pick my outfit based on my haircut. After talking with my BFF Paige (I love saying that) she said the same thing happened to her, so now I might need to go clothes shopping again. I couldn’t find a THING to wear that matched my hip new hairstyle! Of course I lie. I still have the sweater she bought me from Casual Corner back in 1986/87 when we bought matchy stuff in different colors to wear to school. And yes, I still wear it, too. (Paige, that’s where we got ’em. Casual Corner!!!) Like I need new clothes.

haha.

Yes, well, give me a day or two to get all this crazy girl stuff out of my head and maybe, perhaps, you’ll have me back in the blogosphere, friends. I’ve missed you. I really have. I owe several of you links and awards, I have not forgotten.

I also need to update my blogroll, which is seriously outdated. Please let me know if you’re on it and if the link is good and/or if you’re not on it so I can get you on there.

Me, I’m going to go throw a sweater on, turn up the furnace a couple of degrees, and get back to work!

The drive was not as long as I thought it would be, about 6 hours from my house to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The scenery? UN-believable. What a beautiful time of year for that road trip! Illinois was boring until we got to Peoria, then boring again until we hit the St. Louis area. Thankfully, I had my mom in the car with me so I had plenty of entertainment! ha!!

We arrived Wednesday, late afternoon, and checked in to our hotels. I had chosen a dive, based on a completely misrepresented photo online – so reservationist beware. It cost me some bucks to cancel, and I did some begging for a room at a nicer place. I even got the military discount, without having my ID card. Whew! Thank God for small favors!

Much of my family made the trip, as well. Mark’s leave was canceled so he wasn’t able to come, but my Dad and his wife, my Mom, my sister and her family — and my brother all drove down to Missouri to see Brandi graduate from basic training. We met at a diner for dinner and yacked it up for a bit before heading back to get some sleep. We were up at Zero-Dark-Thirty (6AM, military style) to get together and yack more over coffee before heading to the base to wander around before the Graduation Ceremony.

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If you combine this with this (and some days, this), you know what you get? Nope, the answer is not “a baby” or “a hilarious post that will surely make me send the link to all my friends so they can subscribe, too”. No. Of course not.

Granted, for many people this week is the PERFECT week for this look. For me? Notsomuch.

The feeling of sadness that the day has started before the dawn, and ended well after the sun has gone down is really difficult to explain. The frustration of getting last years jeans out of the closet? Oh jeez. Grab a bag of Oreo’s and a tub of ice cream and let’s cry into our napkins for a few hours. The leaves? Gorgeous. From the inside. The smell of stale furnace air? Has my sinuses in a tizzy. The lack of beautiful flowers to look at, vegetables to pick from my garden and birds outside the window?

Let’s just say I’m one of those that’s going to need to start saving early for winters in Florida.

Now, I can appreciate those who love the fall, and even those who love the winter. I’m not one for either. I moved here for my husband, I stay here for the kids. If I had my way, we’d be in sunny San Diego, still. I’d be barefoot right now – and the heaviest jacket in my closet would be a windbreaker. Yes, that’s the life for me. Ocean waves crashing up onto the shoreline. The sound of seagulls cawing at the crack of dawn.

If someone could just put together that “sunrise simulator” including these elements, that would be GREAT! Until then, I’ll just (try to) keep my mouth shut, lest I put my foot in it.

Do any of you suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)? What do you do? Bake a batch of cookies? Oh, wait. That’s a symptom, not a cure. (And I’ve already tried it.)