Something About Nothing

 I had a big birthday this year: 60 years. My sister wanted it to be an especially fun birthday so she planned a fun weekend for the two of us. I flew to California and we went to San Francisco, one of our favorite cities to celebrate. We stayed in a beautiful little VRBO apartment in Mill Valley. My sister brought her cat too. We all had a wonderful time. We shopped at Dharma Trading Company , or rather I shopped, my sister watched. We ate well. And of course had to add lot of treats. We had delicious Cruffles at Sift. Especially loved the brownie Cruffle. I would definitely buy it again. Had my usual nausea riding the hills. Shopped at Flax Art Supply . Lots of beautiful books, bags and all the art supplies. My sister made the best chicken parm.. .  . . . And a homemade German's Chocolate Cake! My favorite!!! We spent a perfect day at Stinson Beach . . . . . with all the birds We had a good time naming them and giving them each their own voice. This is 60! There were a few o...

I had a fabulous idea to create a beautiful card for my friend from a Gelli Print. I kept putting it off and putting it off and then Cloth Paper Scissors posted a card tutorial by  Tammy Northrup that I fell in love with!  Follow the link above to see what I had in mind. I thought that rather than flicking paint at a blank piece of card stock, I would start out by stamping some color with my 3"x5" Gelli Plate.  This was very pretty. I wanted the bottom to be a green or yellow so I brayered a bit of yellow at the bottom so that I could splatter green over the top for the grass and flowers.  This wasn't so pretty.  I had a hard time splattering until I found the right paint brush to get my splatters just right.  Once I did the method worked perfectly but I was tired and it was taking awhile to cover the yellow with the green.  Finally I decided it was time to start over. For my next attempt I laid down a mask.  The dog mask was...

Congratulations!  "On what?," you ask?   I don't know - you tell me. Just pick a reason and celebrate. Maybe it's your birthday?  Or you're getting married, Or you just want to celebrate the summer,  any occasion will do! Whatever you are celebrating you will want to run over to my Etsy shop and have a look at ordering these new party decorations I have just added.  There are banners for birthdays, graduations, weddings or whatever you would like to celebrate as I can customize banners JUST FOR YOU! Once you are ready to make a purchase send me an email, or leave your email address in the comments section here and I will give you your own personal coupon code good for 10% OFF!   The coupon offer is good through June 15th.

I like to dabble in animal portraits and have drawn several in charcoal and pastels but never done a painting.  My sister has been bugging me for the past several years to create a portrait of her latest addition, Wesley. He is an adorable, ball obsessed, Momma lovin' boy.  I had put the task off because I didn't have a good photo of him so while they were visiting during Christmas I did my best to get a good photo of him.  He was feeling dejected because Mom was dealing with Christmas and wasn't sitting with him. I decided that this photo captured him beautifully.  I started taking painting classes in January and decided to try painting his portrait for my sister's birthday at the end of April. I started with a black and white study that was okay for a start but I knew I had a long way to go. I laid in the darks and lights in the new attempt.  His paw was awkward and needed fixing and his eyes weren't quite right. With a bit of work o...

Just in case you were wondering, this is what 49 looks like. . . My darling husband turned 49 today. Isn't he cute? He would not let me take a regular photo of him, and so he is going into my blog looking just as cute as can be with his old man face! It's his own fault. But in all honesty, I LOVE IT! This photo makes me laugh, and laughing is very good, especially when you laugh as hard as I do every time I look at this picture. Speaking of good, this not so lovely looking cake pictured below tastes FABULOUS! It is a Lemon Glaze cake and so easy to make. You might even say that it's a piece of cake, but that would be silly, so I won't go that far. Happy Birthday Old Man!

I'm not a mathmatician, but I have a certain obsession with numbers. I think it's cool when numbers line up and do things. An email I passed around recently had one of those math equations where no matter what number you chose, when you followed the directions your answer was always 9. I don't understand why it works but it does and it's cool in my book. I also love when numbers line up in dates, and so after having my first child by emergency c-section - dooming the rest of my child birth experiences to c-sections as well - I decided that I would do what I could to plan out cool birthdates for the rest of my kids. For example my twins were born on July 8, 1997 - which is 7-8-97. It makes it easy for me to remember that way, and then my oldest daughter's birth was also planned, but this one was to coinside with a my grandfathers birthday of January 19th - however what made it even more special was that she was born in 1990, and my grandfather (step grandfather ...