Friday, December 15, 2017

Shecember Days 8-12

In case anyone here is interested, here are my latest Shecember drawings:





Next year is going to be great, right?

Celebrate The Small Things - December 15



The good news this week is that we got a buyer for our townhome. I initially didn't want to let it go because it's the house we were living in when we had our first baby. It has been on the market since last summer. We really needed to get rid of it because we couldn't afford it any longer. I finally came to terms with letting it go. I prayed for someone to buy it. The next morning, our realtor called to tell me there was a legitimate offer. All the previous offers did not work out. Today, the paperwork was done and the ball is rolling. 

Since our TV died last week, we were able to find a cheap one that was the same size as our last one, but with a sharper picture. We were going to have a movie night at home last Friday, but had no TV. It was funny because we had the popcorn ready, but nothing to watch. Our smaller TV was in another room that had no couch to sit on. I ate the popcorn anyway sitting on the couch looking at a black TV screen. The popcorn was good.

I learned that Samsung has a problem with the capacitors blowing out on their TVs. You can fix it yourself by watching YouTube tutorials, but you need a soldering iron which I don't have. My husband didn't want me to mess with it, though and didn't want to go out and get a soldering iron.

Days after our TV died, our clothes dryer died. Why does it always happen at the end of the year? Looking on the bright side, we have a drying rack. Hahaha! Celebratin' the small things...

I hope you have good things to celebrate!
 
I am part of a blog hop hosted by Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Please be so kind as to visit their blogs and participating blogs listed below.
 
Have a great weekend!

Lexa Cain @ http://lexacain.blogspot.com/
L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog
1.Lexa Cain2.Fiction and Film
3.Writing Off the Edge4.Kidbits
5.TheCyborgMom6.Thoughts and Ideas from Deanie Humphrys-Dunne
7.Intentional Insights with S. Kelley Harrell8.Constantine
9.My Miracle Life10.Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams
11.Lara Lacombe12.TF Walsh
13.Life, Yoga and Other Adventures14.Suzanne Furness
15.Elizabeth Seckman16.Avalon
17.My Baffling Brain18.Planet Kimberly
19.Shah Wharton20.Victorian Scribbles
21.Tanya Miranda22.Ann - A Friend of Jesus 2013
23.Special Teaching At Pempi's Palace24.Square Pegs
25.Patricia's Place26.Anne Higa
27.My Antimatter Life28.Bouquet of Books
29.Lightravellerkate30.Curious As A Cathy
31.Glennie's Random Ramblings32.In My Own Words
33.Tamara Narayan, Author34.My Creatively Random Life
35.Yvonne Ventresca36.On Becoming a Writer
37.Decadent Kane38.Stacy Uncorked
39.Sharon Himsl--Shells, Tales & Sails40.Cloud Nine Girl
41.Our Simple Life42.Our Prime Years
43.Allison Bruning

Friday, December 8, 2017

Shecember days 6 & 7


My focus was the 50s style for these. I wanted to do a Fred Moore (from Disney) style, but it didn't turn out that way at all! I'll keep trying.

Celebrate The Small Things - December 8, 2017




This was a crazy week. I made Christmas plans with family members who didn't want to deal with each other and managed to get through it fairly unscathed. So far so good. Festivus for the rest of us. lol

We had another prowler last night caught on our security camera. That's the second in about three years. Too many. I met a lady who lives a few houses down from us who saw a couple of guys casing the neighborhood a few nights ago. We shared information which was very helpful. A police officer came to our house. He seemed to be on top of things and gave us some good information.

The city fixed our sidewalk this week. The roots were lifting the sidewalk up which I complained about a few years ago since people were tripping and falling over it. They didn't want to fix it back then. They just put tar over the crack. It has gotten higher since then. I'm surprised they came out to fix it. They are fixing these types of cracks in the whole city. Maybe someone tripped over one and sued the city for injuries.

When the workers broke up the old sidewalk, they broke all the sprinklers. Today they fixed them all and the new sprinklers appear to be even better than before! Yay! Let's hope they're actually functional as opposed to looking shiny and new. I won't know until they are completely done. The cement is still drying and the grass next to the sidewalk is in disarray. They'll probably come back next week.

I had to download a few of my husband's animated shots from his old job so he can use them to get new jobs. The studio required him to download iBackup to get his shots. I had to do it for him since he couldn't do it from his current job. No other studio has asked to do this before. I had so many problems with iBackup! I have never been so upset with a website in my life. I was screaming obscenities at the computer for about an hour. It was worse than dealing with Blue Shield health insurance over the phone being put on hold for over an hour and then getting disconnected. Just the login process is enough to make you want to start a fight club. I managed to get through it, download all his shots, and cancel iBackup, hopefully before they charge us the monthly fee. It was a horrible experience, but fantastic when I got everything to work.

The fires were raging in southern California this week. The air quality was bad, but celebrating the small things, we weren't near any of the fires. :o/ Our TV died, but luckily we had another one for me to keep up-to-date with the fires. I don't watch much TV anyway.

I actually got a few pages of my book done despite all the craziness. That's looking on the bright side. I probably could've gotten more done if all these things hadn't happened.

I hope you had good things to celebrate! Have a great weekend!

Please check out the blogs below. They are part of a blog hop hosted by Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Please be so kind as to visit their blogs at: 

Lexa Cain @ http://lexacain.blogspot.com/
L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog

1.Lexa Cain2.Fiction and Film
3.Writing Off the Edge4.Kidbits
5.TheCyborgMom6.Thoughts and Ideas from Deanie Humphrys-Dunne
7.Intentional Insights with S. Kelley Harrell8.Constantine
9.My Miracle Life10.Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams
11.Lara Lacombe12.TF Walsh
13.Life, Yoga and Other Adventures14.Suzanne Furness
15.Elizabeth Seckman16.Avalon
17.My Baffling Brain18.Planet Kimberly
19.Shah Wharton20.Victorian Scribbles
21.Tanya Miranda22.Ann - A Friend of Jesus 2013
23.Special Teaching At Pempi's Palace24.Square Pegs
25.Patricia's Place26.Anne Higa
27.My Antimatter Life28.Bouquet of Books
29.Lightravellerkate30.Curious As A Cathy
31.Glennie's Random Ramblings32.In My Own Words
33.Tamara Narayan, Author34.My Creatively Random Life
35.Yvonne Ventresca36.On Becoming a Writer
37.Decadent Kane38.Stacy Uncorked
39.Sharon Himsl--Shells, Tales & Sails40.Cloud Nine Girl
41.Our Simple Life42.Our Prime Years
43.Allison Bruning

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

My Shecember Posts - Days 2-5

Julia Thorley (http://juliathorley.blogspot.com/) asked if I was going to post my Shecember drawings here. I post them on my art blog (www.smallkeedtime.blogspot.com) but she got me thinking that I should post them here. Thanks, Julia! Julia has an interesting blog, by the way. She's a good writer and she's funny.

Since I posted my drawing for day 1 of Shecember in my last post, I won't post it here again, but days 2-5 are below. Drawing women is my forte, but trying to find something I REALLY want to draw takes hours sometimes. In my head, I have these creative images I want to get on the page with energetic lines and brilliant color, but when I draw them, they are nothing like what I saw in my head. It's very hard to take risks and throw that image on the page. This has been my problem for years.

I added crayon colors to this later, but I like this plain version better. Day 2:
This one reminds me of art school, haha. Day 3:

This one is Morticia Addams. Day 4:


This last one was done with Crayola crayons and white pencil. Day 5:










Friday, December 1, 2017

Celebrate The Small Things - December 1, 2010



 

I'm celebrating two weeks worth since I missed last week. Last week was Thanksgiving for us here in the U.S.  I made it through without pigging out too much. It helped that I couldn't eat most of the food because it wasn't gluten free. I avoided meat as much as I could too, so I basically just ate side dishes. 

We went to buy our oldest son his first phone over the weekend since his birthday is coming up and he has been on the Principal's Honor Roll for years. They had a good deal at the store with two free phones, so we ended up getting phones for all of us. Our youngest son got on the Principal's Honor Roll for the first time recently as well, so it was justified. Early Christmas presents for us all! Birthday and Christmas combined for the big kid since the phone is still expensive with the taxes and plan...

We went to the CTN Animation Expo and got to spend time with some old friends. They had free costume drawing sessions outside all day. I bring my sketchbook with me everywhere, so I made some drawings and was able to fill up my sketchbook. Yay! I hate that sketchbook and was happy to be done with it. It had metal clasps which were cumbersome and damaged the books in my bag. It's a nice looking sketchbook, but good riddance to it! Haha! (Figuratively kicking it to the curb).

I started a new sketchbook which has Ravenclaw (Harry Potter) on the cover. I chose it because I liked the color better than the Gryffindor one.

Today starts the first day of Shecember which is an informal art challenge to draw a woman every day in December. I picked up a flat, capenter's style pencil that I've never used and a few of my kids' old crayons and came up with the drawing below. I thought working with crayons would be horrible, but the colors came out pretty nice. 

My friend, Brittany, texted me yesterday reminding me that Shecember was coming up. I hadn't realized that December was already upon us until around midnight. I quickly scribbled this out before I went to bed a little past midnight. It might have taken me about 15 min. I should time myself next time.


I hope you are celebrating wonderful things this week. Have a great weekend!

Please check out the blogs below. They are part of a blog hop hosted by Lexa Cain and co-hosted by L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Please be so kind as to visit their blogs at: 

Lexa Cain @ http://lexacain.blogspot.com/
L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog

1.Lexa Cain2.Fiction and Film
3.Writing Off the Edge4.Kidbits
5.TheCyborgMom6.Thoughts and Ideas from Deanie Humphrys-Dunne
7.Intentional Insights with S. Kelley Harrell8.Constantine
9.My Miracle Life10.Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams
11.Lara Lacombe12.TF Walsh
13.Life, Yoga and Other Adventures14.Suzanne Furness
15.Elizabeth Seckman16.Avalon
17.My Baffling Brain18.Planet Kimberly
19.Shah Wharton20.Victorian Scribbles
21.Tanya Miranda22.Ann - A Friend of Jesus 2013
23.Special Teaching At Pempi's Palace24.Square Pegs
25.Patricia's Place26.Anne Higa
27.My Antimatter Life28.Bouquet of Books
29.Lightravellerkate30.Curious As A Cathy
31.Glennie's Random Ramblings32.In My Own Words
33.Tamara Narayan, Author34.My Creatively Random Life
35.Yvonne Ventresca36.On Becoming a Writer
37.Decadent Kane38.Stacy Uncorked
39.Sharon Himsl--Shells, Tales & Sails40.Cloud Nine Girl
41.Our Simple Life42.Our Prime Years
43.Allison Bruning