Back To The Drawing Board

     I make a lot of paper dolls. I always have, starting when my oldest was still a toddler. It a good way to pass the time, get a little drawing practice in, and get her creative juices flowing. Well, I have done a number of them lately, mostly ancient Egyptian-themed or medieval or 18th century French. They don't have multiple outfits or anything. They are just dolls made out of paper that my girls color and then play with, sleep with, take them outside, and pretty much keep until they rip or wear out. Yesterday I had drawn the ballerina from "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" of Fantasia 2000 fame. Today my daughters asked me to make them a paper doll of "the Goddess of Spring." So I turned on the Silly Symphonies, played the cartoon of the same title and...found out that this was NOT what they were talking about. They were talking about the sprite (she has no name) from the "Firebird Suite" segment of Fantasia 2000. This was a tough one. She has no real...

     Somebody fell asleep in the car on the way to dance class and only woke up long enough to tell me she wanted to sit facing forward on my lap. Since I had an hour to kill with a sleeping person on my lap in the waiting room, I decided to draw what I saw around me. Good practice, you know?      I drew the kids' table in the center of the room that is covered with brown paper. The kids are allowed to draw all over the brown paper and so it's pretty well decorated. Then I started drawing in the background because I was still waiting on my oldest daughter to finish dancing. I wish I hadn't, since it seems a little off, but oh well. After all, I was working with my notebook slightly away from my body and around my daughter's.

I have received multiple requests over the last 6 months or so for my guacamole recipe. I decided to just put it up here for those of you who haven't yet had the chance to revel in its glory. It's so good that even if you don't like guacamole, or don't like avocados, you will like this. Keep in mind this isn't an exact science - I never measure and so I'm just guessing on the amounts. Everything should be done to your personal taste. I've also included substitutions so that even without a ton of fresh ingredients (minus the avocados, of course) you can still make a delicious batch. For the purposes of this recipe, I'm going to assume you want a modest, but still plentiful,  batch so the amounts work best with about 3 avocados. YOU WILL NEED: Avocado Lemon juice (or lime) from 1/2 lemon Fresh garlic, 2 cloves Minced onion (fresh or jarred),  3 green onions, 1 shallot,  or 2 leeks...you get the idea, about 1 TBSP of the bottled kind in the sp...

The past few months have been a flurry of sewing. Sewing, sewing again, and sewing some more. I made 2 dresses, one just because, and the other for my oldest daughter's First Communion. Hence the reason for no posts. Here's how it happened:      It all started one fateful day in February (it feels like so long ago I'm not actually sure when it really was). We rented "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" from the library. Both my daughters were immediately smitten with the character of Katrina Van Tassel from the moment she hit the screen. The dress that launched a thousand copies And of course, both girls immediately asked me for a dress just like hers. Which gave my oldest the epiphany that it would look great as a dress for her First Communion. So I immediately turned to Sense and Sensibility, a pattern company that specializes in historical patterns. I knew of other women who had taken Sense and Sensibility's 1780s Portrait Dress Pattern and u...

I've gotten repeated requests for healthy recipes, so I'm going to start listing them here as I have time (and photos). Most of these are not purely of my own invention; I usually have gotten the starter recipe from someone else's blog and tailored it to fit my own lifestyle/tastes. I will give the link to the original site, if there is one, along with my version. I know how hard it is to sift through all the info and recipes online; and how much harder it is to find recipes that actually taste good. I've had quite a few disasters in my kitchen and have wanted to cry and give up on multiple occasions. That said, here's the first recipe: GREEN SOUP I like to make a nice big batch and freeze what I don't eat right away. Then, whenever I want lunch (or a simple dinner) I pull some out and I'm good to go. I use heavy cream or half and half instead of milk to cut out the amount of sugar in the recipe; however, in allergy season, I don't mind using raw mil...

St. Patrick's Day. After the parade, my daughters decided it was too hot for anything else besides a swim in their kiddie pool. So after I backed out the car, lowered the ladder, climbed the attic, found it, cleaned it, and filled it up, my eye fell on our blueberry bush (in a pot).  We bought it last year and it grew all of 3 berries, none of which we got to before the birds did. I'd been watching this thing spring back now that winter was nearly over for a few weeks now, and it's fascinating. I've never seen so many colors on one plant. I realized that now was the perfect time to capture those colors before they changed into something else. I did a quick wash over the whole thing in a warm yellow. Then I blocked in a few basic colors - cool yellow and warm yellow on the plant, then some burnt sienna and cool blue below it where the bottom of the pot was in real life.  I don't know what made me do it, but I decided to define the area so it was more like the pot, ...

Still trying to get over the keepsake box. I've been undoubtedly restless, instead of being a rested bum. I've started a few projects, and one very ambitious First Communion dress, but more on that later. I'm really tired but can't seem to go to bed early no matter what I do and I can't seem to focus my energy on any particular thing. I know I want to paint, and I want to paint on a grand scale, I just don't know what. As I kick a few vague ideas around my head, and try to get a clearer vision, I figure it's best to get a little practice for whatever comes next. Tonight I did a watercolor painting that I've been meaning to do since the Burritt Heritage Festival last October. One of the dancers there was a Lakota Souix/Cherokee (I think that's what she said but don't quote me on it) woman who did a dance I'm pretty sure I've seen on Reading Rainbow. That said, I really like the way the late afternoon sun was hitting her and since the danc...