A Day in Pictures

I wanted to write this blog post last night but I was just too tired. Yesterday I decided to take advantage of my phone's camera and take pictures of things throughout my day. Sometimes it's a
nice to do thing because it makes even the smallest things have more importance.
My day started off sort of late as a result of me trying to get more sleep, per my doctor's orders. I actually haven't had as much joint pain in my hands, so he may have something there... (here's hoping!)
When I have a day off, I love taking the time to make myself a cup of tea.
There is something so comforting about it that I can't imagine a bad day ever following something so nice.

                                             Earl Grey with cream and sugar. Yum!

After doing some housework, I did some work in my garden. My orchids are in bloom right now and looking so pretty! I love when I see buds on them because most of the time I can't remember which orchids are which. It's always a nice surprise to see what color or shape they are when they bloom. :)
People think that I have a green thumb because of my orchids, but really it's just because they don't need much work. If I forget about them (which I frequently do) they don't try to punish me by being wilting drama queens.

My jasmine, on the other hand, needs constant attention as it is continually trying to strangle the other plants. No matter how often I trim it back, within a week it's back to not playing nicely with the other plants. Oh well. It's once a year bloom-fest makes it worth the work. LOVE the way it looks and smells!

Even though it's not blooming right now, I always take pictures of it when it IS blooming so that I can remind myself of why it's worth the work. Now if only I could figure out a way to bottle up it's aroma!

After trimming the plants outside, it was time to work on my bonsai trees inside. My one ficus tree is doing so nicely! I love bonsai because it's so much fun to imagine being a small little person playing in their boughs or enjoying some shade underneath them. They can be such perfect little miniatures.  It's like a forest in your house!

Yes those are Nightmare before Christmas figurines that you are seeing under my bonsai tree. :)

I really want to add some moss underneath this one, but I'm not sure how to go about cultivating it. Does anyone know how to go about doing this?

After my indoor and outdoor gardening was done, I spent some time with a dear friend of mine where we enjoyed some red wine and played with her cat, Lilly. Her cat cracks me up. I've rarely seen a cat with so much personality. If she's unhappy with you, ooooo can she give some looks!

                                                                           Salut!

                               I love her stripes and cute little pink nose!

On my way home I saw the most beautiful sunset. I just HAD to take a picture of it so that you could see (despite being in the middle of driving. HAHAHAHA) Sunsets are so inspiring. I hope to get a painting done of it one day when I have a bit of a break in-between paintings.

Anyway, that was pretty much my day in a photo album. What would your day look like if you took pictures throughout it? Even if it's just sitting at a computer most of the day, take the time to get creative and find beauty in the mundane. I'll do another one of these someday soon of a less interesting day and see how creative I can be. :)

Until my next blog post, enjoy yourself and the world around you! ♥

Bits of This N That

My surgery went well. I decided to take some photos while I was at the hospital. It just helped to turn the whole thing into an adventure rather than a scary procedure.If you ever face something that sort of has your heart racing a bit, I highly recommend doing that. It really helped me to stay calm.

 This lady has no idea that she's on a blog. She also was featured in a facebook album. Do you ever wonder how many albums you are in without your knowledge? Photos that people took while at some festival or park...

 I had to wait over an hour with the IV in and electrodes attached before my surgery. I ended up having to go to the bathroom around 3 times before my surgery and each time it took an entourage to get me to the bathroom. It was worse than my wedding day! The nurse was joking around with me and asked if I was having stage fright. I told him that I was perfectly calm, it was my BLADDER that was nervous!

My mom took this picture of me right after they gave me the anesthesia. Guess that's why I look sort of drugged.. When I woke up, the first thing I said was that now I understood what my co-workers mean when they say that they can't remember a THING from the night before. I don't think that their excuse is anesthesia though. Leave it to me to wake up with a joke. Sadly I don't remember saying that at all, nor do I remember the nurses laughter from it.

I have lovingly named my armpit Frankenpit due to the nasty purple stitched incision that I have. ( I will spare my followers a picture of that. You might be in the middle of eating something) Recovery is moving slower than I would like, but there’s not much I can do about that! I just miss doing my yoga and being as active as I used to be.My surgeon was kind enough to call both my cell phone and my work phone before the weekend arrived to let me know that my lumps were benign. That's a relief, but I can't help but feel like I am going through all of this pain for nothing now. Oh well. It was better to be safe than sorry. I'm just anxious to feel more like myself.

Anyway, I participated in an arts and crafts show this weekend and got to use my tent for the first time. I obviously had some help getting it up. There’s no way that those things can be put up one handed!

   Almost looks professional, doesn’t it?

It was a beautiful waterfront location. They were having paddleboard races and I REALLY want to learn how to do that. It looked like a lot of fun! Maybe when Frankenpit has finally healed...

I have been playing with the idea of opening at least one other etsy shop and breaking down the items in Phoenix Art Studio. Right now I have a wide range of jewelry and art in the same shop. I am thinking of opening shops that have a more narrow range of merchandise. I would probably still keep whimsical/  illustrated jewelry and art in Phoenix Art Studio, but open a shop for the rest of my jewelry and a different shop for my life based paintings/ drawings. What do you guys think? I feel that my work speaks to too many different people and I’m just wondering if I need to compartmentalize things a bit better.  Fun, zany stuff in one shop. Contemporary jewelry in one shop and traditional art in another.  I would appreciate input with regard to this because I truly feel like I have no idea what I’m doing sometimes.

Other than this, I am just busy trying to get back into the swing of things and get some jewelry completed to send off to Co-op Handmade 28. I’ll post some photos once things have been finished.

Have a great week!

The Good and The Bad

I apologize for not writing in awhile. I’ve been dealing with a lot of things, some bad some good.

I am going to be going in for surgery on Apr. 26th to remove a lump under my right arm. While the doctor seems pretty confident that it’s nothing to worry about, this is my first surgery and I’m naturally pretty nervous about it. I’ve also recently had my air conditioner pronounced dead and with the summer months become closer and closer in sweltering Florida, it’s a pretty dismal situation. My friend Frank, see Flowers for Frank, has recently discovered that his cancer has come back. He has been enduring all manner of tests to try to discover exactly WHERE the offending cells are. Overall, all of these things have placed me in a pretty big funk. I’ve been working hard to try to change my outlook because I realize that in comparison to many in the world, my life is still pretty amazing, but it’s hard. It’s so easy to let these things get to us isn’t it?

I have managed to keep myself feeling pretty content by reminding myself that I am blessed to have ice cold water anytime I want as well as cold water to wash my face and body with if the heat becomes too unbearable. Think of all of the poor people in third world countries who suffer so terribly without these things! It’s good to keep things in perspective sometimes.

On a good note, I have joined a new and up-and-coming co-op in Los Angeles. I recently sent in my contract and am pretty excited to be a part of this venture. To see Marci as she creates this fun and whimsical shop, check out her facebook fan page.

I am finishing up some pieces and hope to share them with you very soon. Also, for the rest of this week you can save 15% off of everything in my etsy shop by entering the coupon code SPRING upon checkout.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Falling Beautifully

I was recently able to spend some time in North Carolina. It was wonderful getting away from the stress of my daily life and spend a moment being awed and inspired instead. My family and I were heading to North Carolina to spend time with my little sister and her beautiful daughter who was celebrating her first birthday. In the end, we accidentally timed it perfectly to see fall in all of it's glory. It has been a long time since I've been able to see fall at it's peak and I was so amazingly happy to get to see it this year. I really felt like I needed to see this. It's simply awe inspiring how gorgeous nature, and life in general, can be.

Here are some pictures from my trip. Enjoy!

                                           Happy Birthday Coralie!

An Unearthed Treasure

I recently stumbled across this and just had to share. It's so very true! Lately I have been pondering this very idea. I work at a very ritzy restaurant where I see some of the wealthiest people in the world. Hardly any of these people seem genuinely happy. Quite often their health has suffered from the stress and unhealthy lifestyles that their jobs have required of them. They suffered this way so that they could make money but now that they have all of this money they end up spending so much of it on their health. What a waste! 

I have so many friends who keep looking to the future and forget to pay attention to the present. I myself have spent the past two years looking forward to a future that I have deemed to be better than my present. What if I never make it? What if right now is all that I have? Am I really going to waste what could possibly be the last few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months of my life looking to a future that I never even get to reach? I am trying very hard to make the most of the here and now. It's not easy, but I think that it makes life A LOT more enjoyable when you take the time to make an effort.

A Study of Crawling

I am currently on vacation visiting my little sister and my 8 month old niece, Coralie. She has recently started to try her hand at crawling and I feel so lucky to be here to witness it. I watch her little legs shaking as they strain to propel her forward. I see her fall, or lay down and cry in frustration. She's doing a wobbly crawl at best right now,but she continues to push herself forward and always gets to her destination no matter how long it takes her. Her perseverance is astonishing.

I think that there is something to be learned from this. We all, at one point in our lives, were just like her. We all started off having to learn how to do everything. We all pushed ourselves through the bumps, bruises and frustrations to get to our destination. We were fearless and tenacious. What happens to us as we get older? How do we all of a sudden let fear stop us from getting to our goals? Fear of rejection, of failure...

We often think only of the things that we have to teach our children but I definitely think that we should be paying more attention to the things that they can teach us.

Some Thoughts About Beginnings and Ends

My grandmother is unfortunately not doing very well. I had visited her at the nursing home and noticed a slight discoloration on one of her cheeks. The nurses later realized that this was the beginning of jaundice. Since then we've discovered that she has pancreatic cancer so hospice has been called in to care for her. Obviously this is a horribly conflicted time for myself and my family. On one hand my grandmother has been slowly slipping away with dementia so her passing away can easily be viewed as a blessing. We believe that there is a heaven after death and therefore see death as a way to reach better things. However that doesn't stop us from mourning the imminent loss of one so dear to us.

On one of my recent visits with my grandmother I decided to do some sketches of her. She tends to sleep most of the time that you are with her so it can be a tad boring without something to do. I didn't have much in the way of supplies with me. Just a pen and my sketchbook. So I decided to just do some simple studies of her poor arthritic hands. It's horribly brutal sometimes how aging can affect our bodies. When I was home looking over the sketches I realized that I had used the page directly across from a quick color study that I had done for a painting that I am working on. The painting is for a friend who wishes to have it to celebrate the upcoming birth of her grandson. The amazing contrast between these two images stunned me momentarily. It's amazing how we all begin as these beautiful glowing perfect little babies and then end up so fragile and deformed as we reach our death. Another thought that crossed my mind is what if we are really just making a complete circle in our lives? Going from being birthed into this new world as a helpless creature, living life and then ending up a helpless creature yet again before we are "birthed" into the next life.