Argggg!

Guess where I've been? Hanging out with pirates! Or at least that's what the boys think we've been doing! Really, Jason and I just got back from a cruise that stopped in Key West, where there is pirate paraphanelia everywhere! Made for some fun souvenirs for the kids, and also made for a nice, relaxing week, which we both really needed.

Anyway, back to real life... artmaking, playing with the kids, and thrift-shopping...not a bad life, when I look at it that way! Below is my first piece in Riley's new book. I decided to try the verticle format, like I've been doing for Noah's book.

This is a piece about what a well-mannered little boy he is. He is so good about saying "Thank you", and especially about saying "Sorry!".

I'm in love with the color palette of this piece. It wasn't planned out; it just became as I was working, and I just love it! I want to live in these colors, if that makes sense! I already have a couple of them in our great room, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to incorporate the other colors somehow to achieve the same palette!

And in other Riley news, I was just thrilled the other day when he initiated this project:

A little three-dimensional train track made from stickers. It was completely led by him, with me only assisting in attaching the items. I know it doesn't look like much, but it's so much more advanced than any other art project he's done, so I'm just excited at the prospect of more of these style projects in our future! (Notice the pirate tattoo on his arm-souvenir!)

And finally, my thrifted finds since my last post. I plan to put a vintage-style decal on the highchair, and maybe rough it up a little. Don't ask me what I plan to do with it, since I have two boys who I'm sure have no interest in a pink doll's highchair, but I couldn't pass it up-too cute!

That's all for now. It was nice to hear from all of you who commiserate with me about the sentiments in the piece from my last post. Parenthood is mentally such a hard job, isn't it? Thank goodness there are so many good parts to balance out the hard ones...

I've Been Busy!

Lots of stuff to show, but not a lot of time to write, so I'm going to make my descriptions brief! I hope the photos do enough to speak for themselves!

Artwork

A piece I did while feeling parentally challenged:

Detail of text:

Cover of Riley's fourth book:

Lined up with his others:



A piece in Noah's book:

Detail:



Thrift/Antique finds-I've been lucky lately!

plaques-$0.59, figurine-$0.95:

$1.25 each:

large deer-$10.00 each, small deer-$5.oo each:

$4.00 each:

whole bunch-$1.95:

large one-$2.99, small one-$1.99:

$12.00:

left one-$1.50, right one-$3.00:

$1.00 each:

$0.95 each:

and quite possibly my best thrifted find yet..... $4.95 for the whole lot!:

Lots of Misc. Stuff

September, are you here already? We have a spring in our step in Florida, because we are heading into our "good weather" season (barring hurricanes, anyway...) I remember when I lived in Seattle, I'd start feeling depressed this time of year, because we were in for several months of gray skies. But here, it's just the opposite! I'm looking forward to several months of spending time out on our lanai, reading a book while the kids play, enjoying the beautiful weather...

Another thing that has happened for us in September is that Riley started preschool! I'm really excited about this because I think he'll have so much fun, but I also can't deny the wonderfulness of only having one child to care for during those four hours, twice a week! Anyway, here is the spread I did in his book about his first day. He was so cute with his little backpack!

Then another spread from last week as well. It's about Riley's obsession with counting. He counts to twenty constantly! This has got to be one of my favorite pieces of late. Everything about it just fell into place effortlessly, and I love the results. Don't you love it when that happens?

So here's another project I foolishly took on last week. A couple years ago, I made a small photo holder out of vinyl. It held probably six photos in a vertical format. It was so nice and easy to make. So I somehow got the idea to expand upon that and make a huge, multi-photo, did I mention HUGE? version of that idea. Boy, was that a dumb idea! In the planning stages, I just never took into account that I was going to have to be feeding this huge mess of vinyl through my little sewing machine! Ugh! Needless to say, it was difficult.

But I stuck with it and finished it, and above is the result. I have to say, for as hard as it was to make, it's amazing it turned out as well as it did. The biggest problem with it is that most of the vinyl is wrinkled. It wouldn't be so bad, but I have it hanging in a hall where you can't view it except for at an angle, so all the wrinkles catch the light, as you can see in the photo. But, nevertheless, it is handy. I can fit so many photos in it, and change them out really quickly. It's a perfect solution for photos that aren't "worth" framing, but special enough to display...

Okay, so on to some vintage finds for the week. As I mentioned, I only have one child to take care of while Riley's in school, and Noah is MUCH easier to shop with than Riley, so he got to accompany me to lots of fun places! An antique mall and a couple different thrift shops, lucky him!

I found these pipe cleaner guys (standing in front of Erika's painting) at the antique mall, and I just love them!

And this piece from the same place as well. This is actually one unit that expands or contracts to become short and squatty or long and narrow.

All of these guys except for the little girl came from Goodwill (she was at the antique mall). I love the bunny headvase-he fits in so well with my other headvases, but also with my various "cute animal" planters, and he still has his sticker and 1963 date on the bottom!

Lastly, I was tagged by Erika to tell "Six Strange Things" about myself. I know I've done this before, but I'm sure I can come up with a few more quirks! Here goes:

1. I have a thrift store obsession. It's probably fairly obvious, but perhaps not for the reason you think. While you may think I go for the collectibles, I really go for the toys. I am strangely obsessed with getting good toys for CHEAP. I would be embarassed to show you how many toys my kids have (it's enough to outfit a small daycare, for sure!), but I swear, I didn't pay more than $2 for the majority of them! I go to thrift stores at least three times a week (I would go more often,but we just don't have very good ones around here!). My husband thinks I'm crazy, but he can't really complain, seeing as it's such a cheap hobby! And the collectibles that I find are really a bonus!

2. I also have a "cute skirt" obsession. I own more skirts than I can count, but again, see my above quirk. I get most of them at thrift shops! If you've never looked at skirts at your local thrift shop, take a look- people get rid of a lot of really cute ones!

3. You may not know if after reading the above quirks, but I am also really into "minimizing". I constantly go through our stuff (toys and skirts included) and get rid of anything we don't need or use. It's a good thing our community has a biannual garage sale, because I've always got a pile to get rid of!

4. My current favorite sandwich is avocado and mayonnaise on toast-yum!

5. Can't remember if I've listed this before, but I have almost no sense of smell.

6. I'm embarassed to admit it, but I'm strangely fascinated by a lot of pre-teen sort of TV shows. Right now, one of my current faves is iCarly (a Disney show). Granted, I only watch it when I'm looking for something mindless, but I have to admit I like it!

Okay, whew! My arm's about to fall off! I hope you all have a great week!

Antique-ing, Sew-ing, & Art-ing

I know a couple posts ago I mentioned that my dollhouse was my latest obsession. Well, as is common with me, that's changed. Although I'm still very interested in the dollhouse and in trying to find furniture for it, I kind of want to just "find" the furniture while out thrifting, etc., and that hasn't happened yet, so I've moved onto something a little more tangible for now. I'm now obsessed with vintage porcelain figurines/planters.

You saw a few I found on my recent trip in my last post, and here are my newest acquisitions. I wasn't lucky enough to find these at cheap thrift shops, but I did find them pretty inexpensively at antique shops and on Ebay. However, I'm going to have to be careful, as they're pretty easy to accumulate! I'm already running out of room as it is!

I put them on this metal shelf because I've run out of room in my other good display shelf, as you can see in the below photo.

You may have seen some of this stuff when I showed photos of my studio at one time, but I've added some pieces since then. My late grandmother collected head vases, and I inherited four of them. They are all younger girls, so I've decided to begin collecting young girl vases myself as well. Here are some detail photos:

I love this little girl playing the piano. She's a recent purchase.

The little girl waving is also "new".

The cows I got for 50 cents at Goodwill!

Then, besides quick trips to antique malls when I'm fortunate enough for hubby to watch the kids, here's what else I've been doing. You saw the shoe caddy project a couple posts ago-well, I've expanded my reorganizing project in Noah's room.

I decided to make this much-needed pajama bag to hang off his crib. I usually have the kids wear pajamas two nights in a row, so I now have a bag in which to hold them until the next night (I keep both Riley's and Noah's in there). It's a project that I wish I had thought of sooner, since it is just so much nicer and neater, not to mention cuter! And, as with the shoe caddy, no pattern for this- I just made it up as I went along!

As well as sewing, I've also managed to do a couple pieces of art. First is the beginning of Noah's next book. I've kind of been putting it off, because I felt like this next book needed a change of some kind compared to all the other kids' books. I'm just getting a little bored of the same size, layout, etc. all the time. So I've decided to do this one vertically.

And so far, I like it! The first spread went really well, and definitely gives me different alternatives for layouts and placement. Maybe this will be a nice change of pace for me.

It's about a silly face Noah makes when he thinks he's being funny or clever- a little goofball! Here are some details, since the vertical spread is so tiny:

I don't know whether you can tell here or not, but I've extended the photo of him by painting the background to match the original.

And finally, here's a piece I did a couple days ago. I did it amidst Tropical Storm Fay, which thankfully didn't cause too much damage here where I live, although we definitely had our share of rain and winds. I've put rain in the background, and bowing trees from the wind. There are also umbrellas, which are a current favorite of the kids lately.

Also inside the house are images representing my two boys doing what they do probably at least three hours a day- climbing over and jumping on the couch. I swear Noah has no fear. The little boy's position in this illustration is not an exaggeration-upside-down and on his head! There's also a drawing of two puppies and pawprints. For those of you with kids, you probably know that those pawprints mean "Blue's Clues", which is a huge obsession around here right now. And lastly, the chimney has numbers written on it, because both kids LOVE counting, anything and everything!

Whew! That was a long post! Probably my longest in a while! By the way, my air conditioning did get fixed, for those of you who read my last post. Thank goodness!! I hope you're all having a good end of summer!

Sweating for Art...

As I was upstairs working on a piece in Riley's book today, I began feeling warmer and warmer. Since my studio is our only room upstairs (a bonus room over the garage), it tends to feel warmer than the rest of the house anyway, but today was particularly bad. Well, lo and behold, when I finally came down, guess what? Our air conditioner appears to be broken....in Florida....in August.... Ugh!!! It's going to be a long night until we can get someone in tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a quick fix!

However, amidst all the heat, I did manage to finish the piece in Riley's book. It's been a busy past month. We went on two separate week-long vacations, so I haven't had a lot of time to do art, and it felt good to be back in the studio, even with the heat. The piece is about his naptime/bedtime routines, in particular his whale that plays music. I swear I replace the batteries in there at least twice a week- he plays it constantly while he's in bed- as he's falling asleep, during the night if he wakes up, and then in the morning as well. It's a well-loved part of his routine. Here's the photo I used, which includes the whale and also his two naptime books:

The picture at the very top of the post is one of all the treasures I collected during my trip last week. My mother and I went out thrifting/antiquing one day, and I found several cute things, which my husband of course thinks are pointless. Good thing he went golfing several days, so I can use the money he spent on that as justification! Since the first photo is a little small, here are a couple more detailed ones:

Love, love, love the little elephant with the cart!

Well, I hope this post finds you all a little cooler than I currently am! Once we've got the air going again, and I can tolerate it upstairs, I am planning on doing a bit more art to catch up for all my time lost these past few weeks. You'll be the first to see it here!