Kelly Armitage – LinkedIn
Kelly Armitage – LinkedIn
Kelly Armitage – LinkedIn
Filed under drawings, Kelly Armitage
Getty Images
I started my day with a glorious massage. I was still having problems from all the leaf mulching I did, even with pain gel and yoga, so it was especially appreciated today. My massage therapist, Lynn Moody, 479-629-7601, truly has a gift for finding sore spots and making them give in to her healing hands.
We’re having a Holiday Open House at Rags & Roses, the local shop where I’m sharing a booth with my friend, Carla. The Open House is this coming Sunday from 1-5. The address is 100 North Main. There will be food, door prizes, photos with Santa, a musician who plays guitar, fiddle, and mandolin, plus all the nice things people are selling in the booths. I went today to make a contribution to the door prizes. Tomorrow I’m taking an assortment of the new wooden earrings I’ve made recently. They are for sale on ArtFire, too. If you would like to look at them, here they are – ArtFire.
We just had lunch and I’m about to head up to my art room to play. I’m planning to paint another journal, more note cards, a tote, and start more earrings – all with my Unicorn Spit Stain/Glaze. I love that stuff!
It’s getting dark outside, looking like it’s about to pour. We’re supposed to get a lot of rain between now and the end of the day Friday, so it’s a great time to be inside.
Hope you are staying warm and dry, and that you have something to do that makes you smile.
Filed under playing in my art room, Thoughts on a ________
Ocean Series by Bethany Kerr
Ocean Series by Bethany Kerr
Watercolors by Bethany Kerr
Filed under Bethany Kerr, drawings, Watercolors I Love
Jeff Jett – LinkedIn
We are having a beautiful, sunny fall day here in Greenwood, Arkansas.
My husband is happy because he gets a new crown on his implant at the dentist’s today. This has been a more drawn out, serious process this time due to his being on blood thinners after his stroke, but this afternoon he finishes it. :0)
I finished painting and putting the hardware on the new earrings.
I will carefully solder the ring on each earring today and then they are ready to list on my ArtFire page. When I get the display things I ordered, I’ll also take an assortment to the new booth in the local shop in Greenwood.
I have many lame excuses for not doing my elliptical trainer and yoga every day. Yesterday I did yoga. Today I PLAN to get back into both.
I hope you are having a wonderful day!
I’m making 16 pairs of earrings in this batch. They are all made of light weight wood, 4 different shapes. The pic above shows the plain round shape.
4 different color schemes. This is the leaf shape.
Large teardrop shape.
3-D round with hole.
As usual, I grin the whole time I’m playing with the Unicorn Spit Stain/Glaze. This stuff is fun and you never know how things will come out. My favorite part of the process is when I spray the pieces with the polyurethane spray. It ‘sets’ the colors, making them permanent, but the colors simply BLOOM!
Filed under playing in my art room
I’m not a baker – or even a cook, for that matter. We manage, but it’s really not one of my favorite things. Yesterday morning I got the pineapple upside-down cake together and into the oven for my husband’s mini-birthday-celebration. When the timer went off, it needed more time. I kept checking to see if the toothpick came out clean, and it didn’t. I finally went ahead and took it out, let it cool, and dumped it (carefully) into the receiving platter. It was a complete disaster.
We went to the store and bought fresh yellow cake mix – plus a pineapple cake mix my husband chose – plus more pineapple, and came home and started again. My husband insisted we use the pineapple cake mix, even though it didn’t list pineapple (it said it had juice in the mix). The cake turned out fine, and THEN my husband decided he wanted to put pineapple and cherries on the top. So – since he was the birthday boy – we did just that.
He ate some soon after. He said it didn’t taste like pineapple upside-down cake. Imagine that! I told him that the way I usually did it was to put the sliced pineapple in the bottom of the pan over a mixture of brown sugar and melted butter, cherries in each center, and then pour the mixed cake mix on top before baking. I didn’t push it because what I ‘usually’ did had turned out a dismal failure this time.
ANYWAY – the birthday boy had a second piece of the cake last night and plans to eat more today.
At least he knows I love him…
Filed under Challenges, Family
Penny Yaffe Krakow – pic by Mary Madeline Botz
I finished the mulching yesterday and got things cleaned up. My poor body is really protesting, so I’ll take it easy for a couple of days before doing anything more out there. It’s amazing to me that I can get a bit tired by the end of several sessions, but don’t actual ‘feel’ it until that evening or the next morning. I plan to do my elliptical trainer and a session of yoga today, to help stretch things out.
I sang to my husband this morning – hence the cute picture of the doggie above. (I wasn’t nearly as cute, and my husband looked pained that I was singing. My husband, who is still being a curmudgeon about becoming a year older, grinned from ear to ear when he saw what I was doing this morning. The pineapple upside-down cake is in the oven as I type. Hopefully, I can make him smile several times today.
I’m waiting to hear from our friends on whether we are going bowling tonight and then for ice cream or not.
Since I was so ‘good’ working in the yard the past two days, I’m going to reward myself with time in my art room this afternoon.
Birthday – Bowling – Art Room – Pineapple Upside-Down Cake – Not bad for a Monday!
Cindy Basnett Thurman
I finished raking and making mulch for 7 brick planters yesterday. My body is saying, “You thought you were 20, didn’t you. Haahahahaahahah.” I’m hoping that we won’t get the predicted rain and that the temperature gets close to the 58 predicted so that – armed with my leaf blower, leaf mulcher, yellow plastic leaf-scooping ‘hands’, and a trash bag – I can finish the other 5 planters this afternoon.
Unsplash
Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday. I want to do something special for him, but he ‘doesn’t want to talk about it.’ He says he is ‘too old to celebrate birthdays.’ I think I’ll surprise him with a pineapple upside down cake (one of his favorites) and see if I can make him grin…
I hope that YOUR Sunday is a nice one, too!
Filed under Family, Gardening, Housekeeping - Maintenance, Thoughts on a ________
Filed under exercise, Funny Signs - Humor
This is my wonderful Worx Leaf Mulcher. (This one is MUCH cleaner than mine. Picture this with a leaf bag between the orange part and the top ring of the legs, and a cord attached to it and you have a great picture of what I’m doing in the yard this afternoon. I also have two plastic yellow leaf-gathering ‘hands’ that allow me to pick up a bunch of leaves at once to put in the top of the mulcher. Once the leaves are pushed down into the top, I pull the power button out and the mulcher grinds up the leaves. When the bag is full, I pick it up and distribute the mulch in my flower planters.
I told you recently, when I was trying to prune and weed after the freezing temperatures essentially killed all of my blooms, that I have 12 brick planters in the front yard, plus two concrete pots. Ao far, I have finished an hour out there, first using our leaf blower to amass a large pile, then processing the pile and distributing the mulch. I have filled two-and-two-thirds planters. At this rate, I’ll probably croak before I finish, but I’m giving it my best shot today. It’s a bit after 3pm now, so I have a good two hours of light left. I’ll see how much more I can accomplish, and then take it up tomorrow, hoping I don’t get rained out.
I’m certainly not a stickler for a perfect looking yard. That was one of the reasons we built our home in the sticks in Arkansas over 30 years ago. Neighborhoods are nice, but we really don’t want to have to go around with the manicure scissors making sure that no blades of grass are any taller than the others or that we don’t have any weeds or yellow spots in the yard. We have moles, voles, and other oles here, plus fire ants, plus grubs, plus all kinds of other stuff. Our ridge line is woodsy. If we weren’t pretty good about hacking things down around here, I think the woods would simple cover the house and it would look like it did before we came in a short amount of time.
I DO like the idea of ‘free mulch,’ and I DO want to protect my flowers and the good potting soil in our planters, so I’m going to mulch as many leaves as it takes to fill up my planters and then leave whatever remains.
I’ll tell you – even with my leaf blower, my Worx leaf mulcher, my plastic ‘hands,’ etc., this is a really good amount of exercise today for this old broad…
Filed under Gardening, Housekeeping - Maintenance
Esma CETIN – LinkedIn
Twisted Copper Creations
Torres Del Paine Nat’l Park by Weimin Chu via Zeliko Divac – LinkedIn
Filed under Awe-Inspiring Photography, Favorite Things, Mother Nature
Jeff Jett
I think one of the most important paths to happiness is REALIZING all you have. Today my main feeling is thankfulness.
I have a beef roast in the crock pot for tonight. I have a cup of coffee. Molly is resting comfortably at my feet as I type.
My husband is almost completely recovered from his stroke. (He still gets words garbled occasionally, but we smile at each other when that happens. He has to really work to use his keyboard on his computer. He still has bursts of anger, saying hurtful things, but the episodes are father apart. I’m avoiding triggers I know about, and talking to him calmly about the ones that do happen, making it clear that I don’t deserve it. Things are improving.
Our son is happy in Thailand. We are talking to him on the chat program almost daily, so it’s ALMOST like he is still here with us. If a person figures out to send HUGS through a chat program, he or she will be a gazillionaire. :0)
Our weather is good, with a nice, sunny day. I’m hopeful it will warm up enough this afternoon that I can get outside. I want to rake and shred leaves, putting the mulch in our flower planters.
I have ideas rattling around in my brain on what I would like to do next in my art room. I’m even DREAMING about them! SO many fun things to play with!
Filed under Family, Gardening, playing in my art room, Thoughts on a ________
We put up our turkey decoration on the mailbox as we left to go to Lunch Bunch and errands this morning. We love making these.
I paint both sides of the piece so that people passing our driveway going in either direction can see it. I hope they smile.
We made this yard critter turkey out of an old propane tank, a farm ‘tooth’ of some kind, rod, come metal strapping, and sheet metal. We have him standing toward the top of our 650+ foot driveway to the side, beside an old, defunct computer my husband decided was ‘decorative’ and placed it on the edge of one of our brick planters. Happily, birds like it and make nests in it each year.
Filed under holidays, Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, Lewis yard art
Beautiful World
Sri Lanka Frogmouth Birds – Belal Moheb
Beautiful World
Beautiful World
Birds and Blooms Unlimited
doves – source unknown
Graham Colthorpe – “Last Rays of the Day”
Garmash via Stefka K-Foerster
Graham Calthorpe – “Sunshine and Shadows”
Filed under paintings I love
wildlife-photography-awards-www.boredpanda.com
We are having a balmy day today – bright sunshine at 56 degrees F. – can’t ask for more.
A happy thing happened yesterday. I received an email from ArtFire that I had an order! A nice lady ordered one of my mosaic Christmas Bell ornaments. After I received an answer on which one she preferred, I packed it carefully and mailed it today.
I always go around with a silly grin on my face after I receive a sale. It’s the highest compliment there is. :0)
My big push for the day is to clean up our office. It exploded recently when I was doing a lot of new projects in my art room, then trying to get the new stuff on my websites, and then was trying to get my products together to put in my new “Blasing Bright” booth locally in the Rags & Roses shop in Greenwood. Every flat surface is piled high with ‘stuff’ now. ANYTHING more added would result in instant avalanche.
SO – I have promised myself that I won’t do another thing – other than write a few blog posts – until I transform the area from a hard hat area to what could pass for a regular office….
Wish me luck?
“Beauty Wilted by Time – Lost Hopes, Dead Roses” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Bush of Flowers” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Yellow Leaves and Dried Leaves” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Yellow Ornamental Flowers” – Paul Militaru Photography
A whole new world has opened for me since my sister-in-law and FRIEND, ML, sent me a set of Unicorn Spit. I’m having such a blast, trying it on different things. So far, I’ve used it on wood, paper, and fabric. I have some glass Christmas ornaments I’ll try it on soon.
Tote Bag
“Cherish” Wooden Plaque
“Purple Bliss” Journal
“Purple Dreams” Note Cards – Package of 5
I’ll take pics of these and put them on the proper websites today, and will probably take them in to my new booth at the local shop after the holidays.
I also want to make time to try the melting crayons technique after I watch some more YouTube demonstrations.
SO many wonderful things to try! Lucky, lucky me! :0)
Filed under fun in my art room, playing in my art room, quality of life
When I was working in the yard a couple of days ago, trying to clean out our flower planters before the coming bad weather, I found these iris! We have several deep purple ‘twice-blooming’ iris that we treasure. I don’t remember seeing any others around the yard this year, but these were blooming behind the well house. They bloom in the spring, and then again in the fall. I couldn’t bear the thought of them freezing, so I cut them and brought them in the house so we could enjoy them as long as possible.
Filed under Delightful Surprises, Gardening
creativeartworksblog 