HAPPY NEW YEAR

With thoughts of good health, good things, and great art. May this new year bring forth many wonderful days.

Baby it's cold outside!

COLD bbbrrrrrr. this was the warmest it got today. Add thirty mile an hour gusts of wind and it felt like the north pole out there.


and there was fresh wet heavy snow

poor birds trying to lay low under the branches with feathers fluffed for warmth.

I like winter much better when it is confined to a snow globe...

Christmas madness

Normally about now I would show the Christmas card for this year...

and the finished gifts...

um. yeah.

Not this year.

Never even designed the cards

though I did play around with the idea of two turtle doves. doves with turtle shells or turtles with dove wings...

You can see where my mind is at.

It is snowing out right now. Snow on top of ice from the earlier ice storm.


I am happy that Susan of Art in stitches http://artbysusanlenz.blogspot.com/ and Cyber Fyber is going to have one of my post cards in her show. She made one to trade for each person who sent her one. Now they will all be a part of an incredible undertaking that is Cyber Fyber.

this is my card. It is number 147 on the postcard site if you care to leave a comment on it..

I picked up the sketch pad and am thinking that I will mat and frame this drawing. Seems a waste to leave it in the pad stuffed under the car seat...

I will leave it at that for now. Here is a photo of a work that is stagnant. Unfinished. Awaiting my energy to return. That and some free time!

Christmas gets underway

Christmas preparations are all underway here. The tree has been put together and decorated. While I really really love a real tree it has been much easier to deal with an artificial one. No needles all over the floor just waiting for bare feet to find.. The expense is less. Much less. We bought this one about six years ago just before Christmas on massive sale. It looks less then real granted, but I don't notice that so much once it is all festooned with bright lights and ornaments. The best part is how easy it is to set up and then take down later. This year it has one of my un-quilted quilt tops standing in as a tree skirt. When the lights are out in the room and the tree lights on I do start to believe that it is the season. I adore Christmas. And someday, when I retire, I will get to fully enjoy all of it without being so worn out from work. Meanwhile, I will sit and enjoy the lights when I can.

Christmas stocking update. My daughter managed to sew the small bits together and form the shape of the stocking front. She is making this for her husband because he never had a Christmas stocking let alone one that was made just for him. He was, well lets just say he was seriously underwhelmed... She is discouraged by that and has given it to me to finish. I tried to get her to just go with it any way but I know she has lost the desire to do so. Thus I will do the stitching on it and give it to her. Maybe if he stops to think about how much effort she put into making this for him, from the thought to the work of it, he will appreciate it. Maybe.

Happy Birthday day

Today is my birthday. Celebrating another year! Now there are so many of them. Good! after all the alternative is such a bummer...
I share a birthday with Ozzy Osbourne. Imagine that.
also Darryl Hannah. Feel better about that one! So I looked up to see what else happed on December 3rd. Lots of stuff it would seem. A lot of it not so nice but it is the not nice stuff that hits the news after all.
On this date in:
1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
1964
Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in.
1965
The album ''Rubber Soul'' by the Beatles was released. This is a good one!
1967
Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard, performed the first human heart transplant. Louis Washkansky lived 18 days with the new heart. another good one
1967
The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York City to Chicago.
1979
Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum before a concert by The Who. I remember when this happened..terrible.
1989
East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party's Central Committee resigned.
1991
Radicals in Lebanon released American hostage Alann Steen, who'd been held captive nearly five years.
1994
Elizabeth Glaser, who became an AIDS activist after she and her two children were infected with HIV via a blood transfusion, died at age 47. so sad
1997
South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a record $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy.
1999
Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet; the spacecraft was presumed destroyed.
2002
Thousands of personnel files released under a court order showed that the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex with girls aspiring to be nuns.