Joy List Monday

I'm traveling and didn't bring my computer. So this post is an experiment. Can't miss a Joy List!

•visiting with Matthias' family
•a new book
•a sweet little Natal Plum plant
•crows
•knowing that my paints are waiting for me at home

The book was a gift from a family friend and my father-in-law bought me the plant. There are lots of crows in Springfield and seeing them makes me happy.

That's all for now. Hope you are having a joyful start to your week.

more painting... party, party, party

I did have other posts planned for this week, but it seems that it's already Friday.  I have been painting so I'll join the party again. It hasn't been a party of a week and despite my Joy listing, Joy has been elusive. The wonderful thing is that I have been on a roll with my watercolors and that they are bringing me lots of Joy. Even those annoying pomegranates.

Yeah, I'm not sure why I keep working on them, but I do. Convinced that just a little bit more paint (and gentle lifting of paint) will take my experiment out of the "failure" category. Not that anything is ever really a failure. It's all learning.

What's exciting me more is the new painting I started this week.

I love the deep maroon of the leaves of my Thanksgiving cactus. Even out of flower it is beautiful. A good subject for a painting, I figured.

It's been fun and I'm loving how it's turning out so far.

Finally, there are my narcissus bulbs. Still working on that painting leaf by leaf and petal by petal.

So far so good.  Taking things slowly really helps I think.

(I even managed this little bit of painting, too!)

All in all, not too bad for a dismal week.

How about you?  How has your week been? 

Joy List Monday

How can it be Monday, again? It is. A rainy, warm (50s) Monday. And I'm here with my coffee and my Joy List. I'm having fun making these lists. And thinking of other joyful things that don't fit in the five bullets. I've also been using this day to check in with myself, to take stock. How am I doing? How am I feeling? I think I'm feeling optimistic.

So, here's my list for this week:

• being asked by multiple people recently if I'm an artist and answering "Yes"!
• being mistaken for 10 (or more) years younger than I actually am
• discovering Julia Child videos on the PBS website
• having lots of Plans and Ideas in the works
• an etsy sale

Apparently I'm giving off an artsy and young vibe. I try not to let myself worry that it's really just a weird and immature vibe. And even if it were, does it really matter? I like weird.

Maybe it is weird that I want to watch Julia Child videos with no real intention of making the things she's making. I guess part of it is nostalgia because I remember watching her as a kid. Just for fun. I have very distinct memories of watching various cooking shows (and some painting shows, too), not really for any instruction but rather for entertainment. Julia Child is amazing, though. An inspiration. She didn't start cooking until she was 32. Read her autobiography, My Life in France.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thanks to everyone who's been playing along with me and my Joy Lists. I hope it's helping you to focus on the joyful. There's a lot of it, isn't there?

paint party friday

I've finally gotten around to some more painting this week. First time this year. Even though it's already the 20th of January, I'm still thinking that it "just" turned 2012. I guess that means that already this year is flying by.

Only watercolors this week. And I worked on them on the dining room table, not in my studio. For some reason I like painting with watercolors in the dining room.

This time I think I just wanted to be close to these guys.

Enough greyhounds and Instagram, already! On to the painting!

I was determined to finish the painting of my trachelospermum plant. I started it way back in October and really needed to finish it.

I like how it turned out. And although I could allow myself to tinker with it some more, I'm not going to. It's time to work on something else. Like the pomegranate I started last time. I was not really thrilled with how that first one was going, so I added a couple more on my paper. I think that was what I had been planning because there was a lot of room on the page.

I've found pomegranates hard to draw and hard to paint, but I don't want to give up. The one at the top is the first one I tried. I keep giving it more coats of paint. Not sure if it's helping it or hurting it. I'll take another look when it's fully dry. I'm liking the one on the bottom left the most so far. I love the way the paint spreads when it's wet. It doesn't always dry as beautifully, but when it's wet it feels like magic.

I also gave in to a crazy desire to paint my yellow narcissus bulbs. I say crazy because between the glass vase, the rocks and all those leaves and stems and flowers, it's going to be a very detailed painting. But I liked how my sketch turned out.

And when I started adding some color, I was happy with that, too.

I even have ideas about how I'm going to do the rocks and am excited about using masking fluid for the squiggly roots.

I'm also excited about another painting that, right now, is only in my head. I'm prepping the paper (first time I've ever done that) and have been working it out in my mind (shouldn't I be using my sketchbook for that??). It's different than what I've done before so we'll see how it goes.

Don't forget to stop by the Paint Party Friday blog, and if you're doing any painting, won't you join the party?

jumping on the bandwagon

I had been holding out against Pinterest for a while now.  I didn't want another reason to spend time on my computer.  I guess that's understandable considering how much of a time suck it can be.  How hours can disappear into the black hole of the internet.  And then, the other day, I gave in.  I'm not sure what convinced me.  A desire for some inspiration?  I don't know.  But now I'm on there.  Are you?  Do you like it?  So far it's been fun.  And I haven't squandered hours of my time.

The other bandwagon I recently leapt onto was Instagram.  I bought the app ages ago but didn't start using it because I didn't want to have to create yet another account.  But then, for some reason, I decided that I would try it out.  I didn't look for friends or any of those social media things you're supposed to do with it, but I quickly became addicted to taking photos with it and playing with all the filters.  I'm sure you've probably noticed that (almost) all the photos I've been using recently have been Instagram photos (my snowflake mobile how-to was just an excuse to take more photos with it!).  I loved using Hipstamatic, but I love to be able to see right away what my photo's going to look like and choose the filter I like the most for the shot I've just taken.

I guess I'm easily amused.  But sometimes that's a good thing, don't you think?

Joy List Monday

Good morning!  It's Monday, again.  Time for another Joy List.  Are you feeling joyful this morning?  I'm feeling a bit sleepy, but I'm armed with some coffee and my notebook and have a couple certain four-legged friends on their pillows beside me.

Here's my list for today:

• hints of sunshine peeking through the clouds
• flowers, flowers and more flowers budding and blooming on my windowsills
• coming home from work to be greeted by Matthias with soup and a snack in the oven
• a feature in a new treasury on Etsy
• a day off to be used however I choose

Not bad for a sleepy Monday morning.

I'm so excited by the opening of my yellow paperwhites (that's actually what they called them at the garden center!  To be silly I kept calling them "paperyellows").

I love the white narcissi for their pure simplicity, but the yellow is so cheerful and they smell sweeter than the white ones.

Flowers blooming inside when it's cold and snowy outside is one of my favorite things about winter.  And when they smell good, I just can't resist.  Like the sweet olive.  

It just keeps putting out flowers.  They are small and would be easily missed if it weren't for their fragrance.  They smell like sweet apricots, so strong that the fragrance wafts across the room.  The plant might grow amazingly slowly and it might look a bit twiggy and bare, but with those flowers...

I have a thing for fragrant flowers (have you noticed?) and another fragrant plant of mine is blooming right now, too.

My star jasmine plant might be a bit funny looking (I see a theme here), but I couldn't prune off the long, uneven stems when they were full of flower buds. More and more keep opening and reminding me just why I love jasmines so much.

Finally, this next plant's flower buds are not going to open into something that smells sweet, or smells at all.  But they will be bright, beautiful orange, and if I'm lucky, will form into fruit.

Pomegranates!  The outsides of the buds are thick and hard, but when they open the petals are crepe papery ruffles that look to me like fairies' skirts.  Stay tuned and I'm sure to have more photos of the opened flowers.

Flowers are such pure joy.

Don't forget to jot down (in whatever way shape or form calls to you) your list of joys for the day.  I hope your list is rich and full.

sweet saturday: a blue doggie and a green doggie

Hello, sweetness.  Hello, joy.  Despite my best intentions to focus on the joyful in this new year, during these last couple days joy has seemed elusive.  There's nothing bad.  I've just felt blah.  I'd much rather be feeling energized and inspired and joyful.  It's hard to get out of a slump and sometimes, I think, you just have to go with it (hours of crocheting while wrapped in blankets watching Downton Abbey isn't a bad way to embrace the slump).  Other times you need to refocus and readjust your perspective.  My plan for Joy List Mondays is one of the ways I'm trying to do that.  But maybe I need to make joy lists every day. Spend a couple minutes in my journal each morning focusing on little glimmers of joy.  Maybe I need to devote an entire journal to lists of joy.  We'll see.  Do any of you have great ways to combat the blah and bring in more joy?

One idea for joy that I haven't done in a long time is participate in Sweet Saturdays.  Yes, I could use some sweetness today!  How about you?  My sweet doggies (surprise, surprise) are my sweetness for today.  I've been trying to keep my blog from being all dogs all the time, but there really are few things sweeter than these two boys.  The other day they were wrapped up in their coats and when we walked through the park a little boy told the adult he was with about the two doggies that he saw: "a blue doggie and a green doggie."  Sweet, sweet, sweet.

They are so kissable and it's impossible to walk past them without stroking their soft fur.  It feels like velvet and suede.  Not just silky, but warm, too.  And they have a good smell.  Even better when they've just rubbed up against my giant rose scented geranium in the front window.

We finally settled on new names for them.  Kit, the white one with red spots, is now called Charlie.

And Kirk, the brindle, is now called Jude.

They are sensitive and gentle and calm.  They are affectionate (Jude, especially, likes to come up to you and LEAN into you) and curious and smart.  They make each and every day that much sweeter.

snowflake window mobile tutorial

We haven't had much snow here.  Right now there is none outside, but I have snowflakes inside.

There's something soothing about cutting out paper snowflakes.  And it's so much fun having them dance in the draft of our forced air heating and in air currents when someone walks by.  It's also such a simple project.  After I hung these in our front bay window I decided to make some more to hang in the little bathroom.  The second time around I photographed my process and thought I'd share it with you here.  It's easy peasy.  Here's what you need:

Paper, scissors and thread.  I used 8 1/2 by 11 printer paper and white thread.  Use whatever you have on hand.  For small snowflakes I divided my paper into quarters simply by folding the paper, running my nail over the edge and tearing.

Next I trimmed my paper into squares by folding one corner down to the edge and cutting off the excess.

The next step is to fold the two corners of the triangle evenly so that once you start cutting you'll be making a six-pointed snowflake.

Trim the excess to make a rounded edge.

Then cut to your heart's content to create your snowflake, being sure to keep a bit of the folded edge on each side.

Unfold it to reveal your snowflake!

Repeat until you have your desired number of snowflakes.

To make these into a simple mobile, cut a length of thread and tie it carefully onto one of the points of each snowflake.

Leaving the pieces of thread long and previewing the design of your mobile on a table enables you to easily modify the arrangement.

For the mobile in my bay window I tied another length of thread from one hanging plant hook to another, parallel to the ceiling.  In my bathroom window I took a tiny piece of tape and attached the second piece of thread to the top of the trim over the window.  Tacks would also work for this.  Next, I tied the snowflakes at varying heights along that second thread.  When I was finished I trimmed any excess thread.  Once the snowflakes are hung, the thread practically disappears.