feeling a little witchy

this lovely lounging lady is how i picture all you stay at home moms that sent all your kids off to school today.
this is not me.
i am feeling a bit witchy tonight.
i do actually like halloween.
i even dress up and go trick or treating.
but my current witchy disposition has nothing to do with the holiday.
it was a day that will replay itself in my mind over and over and possibly convince me to change careers.
so i have your attention. . .
bedlam and mayhem
our little cat 4 months old comes down stairs at the end of my afternoon preschool class. one little boy is absolutely petrified of animals. (this i did not know this being our first day) he sees the cat and actually goes rigid and stops breathing for a minute. it was horrible. just two hours before his mother was showing me how to administer his epipin just in case he is exposed to any nuts.
the resulting mayhem was me trying to catch the cat, get rid of the cat, console the little boy, and round up the rest of the little boys who were having a fistfight over the plastic spatula that came with the plastic BBQ. (battery powered sounds every time you push the button. curses!!)
needless to say deep yoga breathing isn't cutting it tonight.

art journal in the mail today

today my art journal returned in the mail from candice all wrapped up!
what a beautiful gift!
a little hand made book and tiny pencil were tucked under that cool twill.
check out the cool tag!


the fabulous page that candice did in my art journal!!
the photo is printed on a transparancy and adhered with pale blue velvet ribbon. her drawings behind the photo look amazing with the white pen markings.
it is my favorite page in the whole book!
thank you candice xo











i got my erraticus zine from melissa today and i love it!
such gorgeous art throughout. the first time i have seen the art of kristen peterson- -amazing!
very fun retro collage art pieces by katey nicosi!

i think it is wild that today all my mail was in this same color scheme. .
so fun to look inside the erraticus zine by melissa and see some photos from the color spectrum project.
my bluebird tag and directions are there!

the house upon the sea

second book page for candice in the art journal exchange.
the photo was printed on vintage scrapbook paper, then collaged and painted.
a little bit of the dark sand in sewn into a square and stapled on the page.
i like how the white sharpie poster paint pen looks on the acrylic paint.

Redwood Forest

this is one of the pages i sent off to candice this week in our art journal exchange. i started the background when i was in a real art funk. i hated it and wanted to rip everything off and chuck it. (the nice thing about an altered book is you can tear out two pages and noone would care, or notice)
Art Lesson # 47 Don't Rip It Up Right Away, Let It Sit A Bit
so i closed the book and went on vacation.
when i came back i loved the background and only added my journaling and a few more bits of green.
the pirate illustration was already in the 1898 novel, it is so similar to the illustrations in the Edge Chronicles it is weird.

still dreaming of the sea

i am still dreaming of the sea.

i could walk for hours along the surf as the fog rolled in.
a place of power and solitude.
a place of wonder.

we spent hours running with the waves and gathering small stones and bits of shell.
when we were salty and cold we would finally walk back along our footprints in the dark sand to our car and drive the winding highway home.
home for a late dinner by the fire and little children in sleeping bags telling spooky stories with a flashlight.

dream on. . .

a house called awful end

i totally enjoyed myself today reading this VERY dry british childrens book.
excerpt from the second page:
They were in Eddie's parents' bedroom, which was very dark and dingy and had no furniture in it except for a large double bed, and even larger wardrobe, and thirty-two different types of chair designed to make you sit up straight even if your wrists were handcuffed to your ankles.
"Why are you sucking an ice cube shaped like a famous general?" Eddie asked his parents, who were propped up against piles of pillows in their impressively ugly double bed.
"Dr. Muffin says that it helps with the swelling," said his mother. In fact, because she had a famous-general-shaped ice cube in her mouth, what she actually said was "Dotter Muffin schez va it hewlpz wiva schwellin," but Eddie managed to translate.

goodbye robert

my husbands brother passed away very suddenly two weeks ago.
he died early in the morning on his birthday. he was 51 years old. everyone in the family is trying to deal with their feelings of grief and loss. this is a picture of the painting robert's sister did of him as a teenager with his favorite dog, dashy.


monday morning came after the funeral services and it felt like part of me wanted to move on,
slip back into the comfortable routine and pretend things would go on as before.
the other part of me wanted to try to stop everything around me. then i could scream out loud
'there is a big emptyness in our lives now, cant you feel it?'

little house by the sea

we were winding along highway 101 in northern california when we stopped at this house to watch the elk grazing in the meadow, but it was the house nestled deep in the tall trees that captured my imagination. i would love to live by the sea and watch the fog and mist roll in. in the mornings i would curl up with a hot cup of tea in front of the windows and look out to see the day unfurl her wings.

bluegirl goes green

this is my two girls sitting at the base of a waterfall in fern canyon, redwood forest. i will keep coming back to this photo whenever i want to feel the cool leafy green. perfect since we have had 100 degree temps and i hate it