Busy Art Day

I’m sick (again) I started off with a head cold it’s gone into my chest.. I’m sore from coughing, and my voice is husky (the Bloke likes it that way!) but it means I can’t talk loud or yell, the children LOVE that!

Today, my eldest daughter arranged for Squishy to stay home with his “Dada” and give me a rest, so I put my “rest day” to good use..

First of all I did this double page spread for “Sunday mornings 2” we had a guest teacher called Kimberley Hope..

it’s called “God is God” The lyrics of a song by Steven Curtis Chapman. I love how it turned out.

Next I worked on my ICAD cards, http://daisyyellowart.com/vividlife/icad-2015-index

 I’ve gotten a bit behind so I’ve spent an hour or two catching up.

Day 8– Prompt was “Cherry and Grapefruit”

Day 9– “Carrot and Lemon”. I loved this one.

Day 10– “Eggplant and Ginger”- I liked this one too.

But then I did Day 11– “Lime and Mango”.. I think this is my fave for today!!

So that caught me up with that project…

Yesterday I did art too.. in between babies

This was also from “Sunday Mornings 2” and this was called “Resurrection“

I also did another one

Shonna Bucaroff was the guest teacher and I call this one “Praise Him”

And that babies were so good and let me get some art done.. and they were so quiet so Amber went to check and them and this is why….

They decided to be “Artists” like Grandma the only difference being Grandma doesn’t use the walls! (yet!)

So we had to scrub the walls and made Sweetpea help…

She thought it was very amusing to say the least!!

It certainly was a fun day!! I’ve had Star Son home Tuesday and Wednesday he went back to school today, and he has a curriculum day off tomorrow… go figure!

How is your Thursday??

Busy long weekend. Update, Book reviews, photos.

This weekend was a long weekend, which simply means that it was a public holiday today for the Queens Birthday..like most long weekends in Australia it’s just an excuse to go away and party or in our case relax!

We spent the weekend at our holiday place in St.Leonards and I’ve written lots about that so I won’t bore you again, instead I’m going to tell you how amazing I am that I got so much done this weekend. Its amazing really when I have some baby free time how much I can achieve. I had a stack of penpal letters to reply to so I took those along, seven letters to be truthful and so I got ALL of those written and posted! Yay! that in itself is a job well done, because I hand write all my letters and  they are usually 4 or more pages long.

Next on my list of “to do” was to finish a book I started back in April it was called “Adams Empire” by Even Green..

Mine was a different cover, but this is the one “god reads” has on display..

From Publishers Weekly
The protagonist of this robust and sprawling saga set in the untamed Australia of the first half of this century is a true child of the outback. Orphaned at age nine, at home under the stars, completely unschooled, Adam uses his fists and his wits to rise from poverty to prosperity. He befriends an aborigine, performs dangerous work in the opal mines, falls in love with a sensual half-caste, has a run-in with a murderous policeman, marries a cold and manipulative beauty and finally treks west to carve himself an empire. This striking first novel tells a colorful and entertaining story, vividly evoking a vigorous, multiethnic society and a beautiful, diverse, often dangerous land. Green is a journalist and the author of Alice to Nowhere.

Nine-year old Adam is orphaned when his father is buried during an Australian desert sandstorm. A childhood of roaming the outback with his father’s drilling partner instills in him a fierce determination to have a place of his own. In this fast-paced, gripping saga, the reader follows the hard-working Adam and his mates, Jimmy, the practical aboriginal, and Josef, the impetuous young German immigrant, from the opal mines to the desert. They feint with death in mine disasters, at the hands of Mailey, the revenge-seeking law officer, and in the ravages of flash floods. A more deadly threat for Adam is his beautiful, calculating, near-mad wife, but a seductive half-caste woman lends her own type of danger to all of the men.

Taken from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4116936-adam-s-empire

So it had 780 pages and normally that doesn’t phase me but I’ve been so busy it’s taken me almost three months to read it all.. shame on me.. but to be honest I did read other things in between..I loved this book which started in 1919 and went up to I think about 1940’s so a nice long-span of time, and I like that it mentioned places we have been as a family. I enjoyed it but it was time to finish it and move on… I’m giving this one a 4 out of 5 star rating

So I wiped that off by Saturday morning and then, my cousin Lee went to a charity shop to look for bargains because it’s kind of a thing we do whenever we are down there together, and while we were there we heard about a BOOK SALE! at the St. James church. They have two a year one in January and this one in June, and this year I missed the January one because it was star son’s 13th birthday party weekend.

So we went to St.James in Drysdale and spent an hour wandering through endless rows and tables and shelves of books! I love it! I was able to replenish my supply of “Christian books” and I was very pleased about that and I ended up with about 10 books or sets of books for only $8.50! Bargain!

So while I was book shopping I found another book which was “Australian” for my “Read Australian Authors” challenge..

This  book was called “Diamonds and Dust” by Sheryl McCorry

Sheryl McCorry grew up in the outback carrying crocodiles to school for show and tell. When she was 18 her family moved to Broome, and it was the first time she’d ever used a telephone or seen a television.

A year later, only hours after being railroaded into marriage by a fast-talking Yank, Sheryl locked eyes with Bob McCorry, a drover and buffalo shooter. When her marriage ended after only a few months, they began a love affair that would last a lifetime and take them to the Kimberley’s harshest frontiers.

Sheryl became the only woman in a team of stockmen. She soon learned how to run rogue bulls and to outsmart the neighbours in the toughest game of all mustering cattle. The playing field was a million acres of unfenced, unmarked boundaries.

Sheryl went on to become the first woman in the Kimberley to run two million-acre cattle stations, but her life was not without its share of tragedy. Her story is an epic saga of life in one of the toughest and most beautiful terrains in Australia a story of hardship, drought, joy and triumph.

Taken from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11864222-diamonds-and-dust

This one was much easier to read it’s a true story and therefore fascinating to me a “City Slicker” I loved it and finised reading it this afternoon! I’m giving this a 4 out of 5 star rating.

Another thing on my “to do” list was.. “do some art”

I had downloaded the video clips at home while I had the internet connection and so I was able to just watch them from my lap top computer down there, Last week I mentioned about a friend of mine who had gifted me some art classes… you can read about it here: https://kimlhine.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/im-back/

So I wanted to do some of the art classes Carrol had gifted me.. first class I did was from the 2013 version of LifeBook the “Tam Edition” which was “Celebration and Journey”

I forgot to take progress photos! Never mind here she is finished.. the Clouds are things we are grateful for and the flowers are things we want to journey towards.

Next up in the series was “our art guardian” and here’s how she turned out..

More info about Tam’s courses here: http://willowing.ning.com/group/lb2013-tam-edition

I also had downloaded a few of Mindy’s lessons from “Sunday Mornings 2” and So I also got done a double pages spread titled “The Crucifixion” This is the second time in the past three or so weeks I’ve painted on this theme and both times it made me cry. Maybe because I understand the background of the disciples deserting him in his time of need.

I am so loving this piece!

Here is the previous “crucifixion” painting I did- I am calling it “Mary’s tears”

But you know what I am finding annoying? I am doing all these lovely pieces in my art journal! Arghhhh.. I had a Facebook friend ask me “how much for a signed copy”? and I replied “Priceless it’s in my art journal” so now I need to do it again and send it to him! I found this weekend that whatever I was touching was turning out nicely!!

More info about Sunday Mornings 2 here: https://app.ruzuku.com/courses/7987/overview

I also got caught up on my ICAD project…

This week the prompts are

and you can find out more about this challenge at: http://daisyyellowart.com/vividlife/icad-2015-index

Tam’s and Mindy’s classes are at a cost.. and the ICAD is a free challenge.

Today we got back home and took Star Son’s friend home, we took a friend down to the holiday place to keep him occupied and once we had dropped the friend home, we un packed the car and went to visit my Mother-in-law at her facility, we took Sweetpea with us which is always fun because she’s so tiny and doll-like people just cant help but love her.. the Oldies adore her and she’s happy to perform for them, today’s little game was taking off Star Son’s hat and putting it back on each of us in turn, at one point she dropped the hat and as clear as a bell she said “oh shit!” I guess that means now we will all have to watch what we say!!

I wish she’d say Grandma like that!!

How was your weekend?

Busy Cleansing day…

Every so often you need to have a clean out… sadly I’m one of those far and few between people… I tend to hide it.. out of sight out of mind.. of course that never works really does it? You open a cupboard or a drawer and it’s all sitting there looking at you… awaiting your attention..The last twelve month or actually even longer probably close to two years have been a constant shift and upheaval in my house..

April 2013 we found out that BOTH girls were expecting babies and that BOTH sperm donors had done a runner… lessons learnt about the men we choose… but that’s a whole other story.. I never saw those babies as anything other than the blessings they are “God never gives us more than we can handle” so many clichéd  sayings got pulled out ranging from pity to support and all kinds of things in between and yet I knew deep down that God also doesn’t make mistakes. So I took on the challenge. Amber was living at home at the time so we didn’t have to do too much, we got the baby basic supplies and settled in. Jasmin was sharing a house with friends and so we got all the supplies she’d need and waited for the days to come. I went to all the DR appointments and the Ultrasounds and birthing classes.

I was with Amber when Sweet pea made her grand arrival, I got to hold her first because Amber was not in such a good shape and the Nurse handed me this tiny bundle and said “Here Grandma look after this!” and I did for the first two hours I didn’t let her out of my sight, and that was when the song “Sweetpea” popped into my head and I sang it to her. that was also the time that I spoke to God and vowed that I would never let anything happen to this small girl. Anyways I am getting side tracked, the house and the “stuff” got re-arranged and piled into what was formerly my “Art Studio” spare furniture and spare stuff, just got dumped in there.

Then when Sweetpea was 6 months old, She and Amber left home.. and for a total of two lonely , quiet, weeks the house was clean and it was quiet and suddenly really empty… then along came Jasmin with tales of woe and not enough cash and not coping with sharing with housemates who did NOT have a small baby and so The Bloke suggested that she and Squishy move in for a while to save up some money and get her own place. So more house shuffling, bedrooms got changed, the Study became a nursery and Star Son went into the bigger down stairs room, he’d been waiting to get into that room for the past few years. So there was suddenly two households worth of furniture and spare furniture that had nowhere to go.. so where did it go? into “the junk Room” AKA Formally known as the art Studio.. and all thoughts of art went out the window.

Baby Proof gates were installed to keep crawling rug rats from two flights of stairs and then one day I realized even if I wanted to do “art” there was no room in there to move.. Jasmin and Squishy stayed 6 months, money was saved, a new relationship was started and she was ready to go, but before she even had time to go, suddenly Amber and Sweetpea were back home.

She’d been living with a lying, cheating backstabbing so-called “friend” and as I have since said to Amber “If that is your friend I’d hate to see your enemy” I get a tearful phone call one night and that set alarms ringing, and I told her “come home for a few days, you need a break” so suddenly it was two daughters, two grandchildren and a kitten, all living at home, and more stuff got crammed into the junk room. Two weeks later Jasmin said “I’ve had enough I’m outta here” and they left, while Amber declared “I’m never leaving home again!”

So now almost another 6 months have gone by, we seem to do things in 6 month blocks.. and finally I am getting the junk Room emptied.. and today I went down there for an hour and I decluttered and I cleaned and I opened windows and I played my music loudly and I had a great time! Sometime you just need to do that! I can’t take all the credit, I had some special helpers.. Sweet Pea and her Hippo Hilary came to chat and draw and dance.. that’s about the only “artistic” thing that happens down there these days!

Sweetpea and Hilary, drawing while I clean

Hilary had a lovely time

Sweetpea and Hilary decided that music means dancing, so we did that too!

So Yesterday I told you about the ICAD challenge.. which is “Index Card a day” one small piece of creating, with or without a theme.. so here’s whats happened so far..

The other good thing that happened today was I asked Amber to sort somethings in Sweetpea’s room which was formally the study/library, and she was motivated so she kept cleaning, her whole room, vacuuming and all, so then we decided to vacuum the whole house..it lasted about an hour, and then Cyclone Squishy Sweetpea came through and now no one would ever notice what’s been done.