Display time.....

On display until tomorrow at the Squash Blossom gallery on 26th and Colorado:




When I went back to class in January, Tom Owen asked, yes ASKED, me if I would show this painting at his show/student show at the Squash Blossom. I was so surprised, I wasn't expecting that! So it has been on display since last Thursday, and I have to pick it up tomorrow (I don't think it sold).

But still, I got to exhibit a painting in an actual gallery!

Wow!

Fancy Nancy

Knock! Knock! Anyone there??!!?? I've started posting on my blog again. I have lots of things to post, since I have lots of pictures to post. So, what have I been doing? Well, mostly work, painting, and more work..

Today, I'm going to post the Christmas project. I bought two Fancy Nancy dolls at Target back in October. Then I bought two 18" doll patterns at JoAnn's. I didn't need to buy fabric or trim because I had some, and I came up with the idea to use old clothes for the fabric. I did have to buy the velcro closures and thread. And since my mom used to dress dolls for Christmas for the Army base, and she dressed a lot of them over the years (refurbished them too), she sent me boxes of trims, bias tape, and ribbons. So a very Scroogish present, except for the cost of the dolls.

Then I waited until 3 days before Christmas to sit down and sew. Great planning, bad implementation.

Here are the results of two days of frantic sewing...... And remember, I had to make two of everything...

Denim pants and a top (with a hobo bag purse that I made them for Valentine's day):




A dress (made out of the leftover material from a dress I made Cordelia) and panties that you can't see:



And a nightgown:




I think they turned out cute (patting myself on the back ;>)....) and I have material for a denim jacket and knit turtleneck tops next if I can find the time to sit and sew.

We are rearranging the house, and I am taking over the family room downstairs as a studio. I have a table that the sewing machine can set on permanently, and another table for cutting, crafts, whatever. The drawing table is still upstairs, but I have moved about half of the stuff on the bookcase down. I have all those cabinents down there to store stuff in. So, watercolors, colored pencils, basket dyes, all can be put out of sight. Also the acrylics that I am going to start painting in.

More to come......

Valentine's Day

We had a cold snowy Valentine's Day. (And I know, it's been a long time between posts!! Mea Culpa!) We picked up the kids on Saturday afternoon, and Saturday evening we baked heart cookies. More heart than heart-shaped. I bought the premade sugar cookie dough again this year and promptly forgot what happened the last time. Rolled out the dough, cut out the cookies, and put them in the oven to bake. So the dough was a little thick, and I put them on the cookie sheet a little too close together. The first batch puffed up and spread out so that it looked like a large rectangle of sugar cookie.

On to the next attempt. This time I spread them out more on the sheet, and rolled the dough thinner, and actually they looked like hearts even after baking them. Made another two sheets, one of which I cooked a little too long and they were crispy cookies! Then I put them all in a container on the counter. And put a lid on them.

The next morning, when I got up, I found the container upside down on the floor. I didn't even hear it hit the floor! And most of the cookies were now cookie crumbles....

I managed to find 2 large hearts apiece for the kids, and 2-3 small hearts each, so we broke out the icing, tinted it pink and proceeded to frost them. Then we sprinkled sprinkles, and trimmed them. I must say that the white outlining on the pink cookies did turn most of them into hearts, and we wrote messages on them.



When we were done, we put them on those paper doilies (looked in several places in Wal Mart for them before finding them in the craft section!), and wrapped them in plastic wrap so the kids could take them home. Glad we still had enough after those darned cats crumbled them all!

Hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day. I did. Cordelia called to tell me how much she liked the hobo bag purse that I made for her Fancy Nancy doll. That will be another post, as I borrowed Molly's doll and clothes and took pictures to post here.