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This is what I did yesterday while my house was being cleaned.
Yep, you read that right. I do not go to work outside my home, or inside it either.
For whatever reason, when someone other than me cleans up in here, I appreciate it immensely. It’s magical.

So, to the sound of my vacuum cleaner, I sat down at my desk and started ripping and pasting. I love red.  And all the colours that go with it, which is ALL the colours.   Seriously, I challenge you to think of a colour that can make red look bad.

In other news, there is no other news.  I am lazy and spoiled and well fed.  Like a pampered cat.  I think in a previous life I may have actually been a cat, and decided to come back to live this one still acting like one.  Except for adding coffee.  And being slightly less hairy.

W just asked me who I’m going to vote for next week and I said I couldn’t tell him because it’s private.  And he said you don’t have a clue yet,  do you?  He knows me too well.  But I have been reading up on the candidates so that I can make an informed decision.  Based on something other than who is wearing the most red in her campaign photo.  There are three women running here!  Isn’t that great?

I have many more red things to incorporate into collages so enough non news for now.

Have a beautiful April Tuesday!  Don’t work too hard.

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SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2015 WEEK #16

What are your favorite spices?

When I was growing up the number of spices in our house was kept to a minimum.  And what was there was mostly put into pies.  I suppose by some standards our food was pretty bland but there’s something to be said for enjoying natural flavours.  When I started cooking on my own and following recipes, the phrase “season to taste” drove me mad.  What does that even MEAN??  A friend told me it usually indicates that you should add salt and pepper, so I was able to deal with that and stay reasonably sane.

I still don’t like things that are excessively spicy, and except for cinnamon and chili pepper I tend to depend on the people who make the spices to mix them up for me.  I buy those little bottles that say pork, chicken, steak, poultry or vegetable seasoning and hope for the best.

I put cinnamon, ginger, and turmeric in my smoothies every day because they’re all supposed to be good for me.  There’s so much other stuff in there, I can’t even taste them.

What object do you always have with you when traveling and why?

I’m trying to remember what I did before I started taking my I-Pad with me everywhere.  Used someone else’s computer, or called home on someone else’s land line.  Or sent a postcard.  My watch is something I never wear at home, but like to have with me when I’m away.  Never mind the time, it tells me what day it is.  And I never leave home for any length of time without carting along double the amount of prescription medication I’ll need, because you never know if the plane might crash on a desert island and I don’t want to be the first one to die because I didn’t have enough Synthroid with me.

What is one thing you love about being an adult?

I love everything about being an adult, except maybe for having to pay all the bills.  And figure out what spices to add to things.  Everything else is easy once you get those two things sorted out.

What item, that you don’t have already, would you most like to own?

I would most like to own a mansion full of servants.  Or a helicopter.  Since both of these are unlikely to materialize in my life, I’d settle for a big art studio in the Caribbean.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Well, here’s something I’m grateful for today!  There has been snow falling all around us, but somehow it missed depositing itself in our little town.  We’ve even seen some sunshine on an otherwise grey and overcast day.

I’m looking forward to casting my vote in the provincial election on the 5th of May.  Even though nothing is likely to change very much.  The PC’s have been in power since 1971.  That’s longer than my children have been alive.

As always, I’m grateful for my little art studio which is not in the Caribbean, and I’m happy to have lots of time to spend in it.  I’m grateful that I snuck this world sharing post in just under the wire before the next one is suddenly upon us.  One of the perks of being an adult is sauntering along to the beat of your own drum.

Art du Jour 52

The verdict is still out on this one but its growing on me.  I think with the right frame I might like it better.  I have love/hate relationships with my art.  What a luxury it is to have the time to let them hang around unfinished while I determine their fate.

We have had a busy week doing spring things, and enjoying a visit with good friends on their way home to northern Ontario after wintering in B.C.  We were able to sit outside in the sunshine, go out for dinner, stay up too late, sleep in, shop and barbecue.  We are just a bunch of old retired people living it up.

It’s Thursday, and garbage day, and the end of another week already!  Time just keeps slipping away whether you’re paying attention or not.  And that’s probably the most brilliant thing I’ll say today.  I like to keep my expectations low.

Have a great Thursday!

 

Art du Jour 51

Bird with Balloons to brighten up the start to your weekend!

Which probably doesn’t need any help, because SATURDAY!  Yay!

This was another background I became enamoured of…..with….whatever, and didn’t want to cover up.  But after an expensive trip to Michael’s I got all fired up and finished it.

Before I went through the check out I looked through my cart and removed six items I can probably survive without for the time being, in the interests of not spending a fortune all at once.  And no, I didn’t run around putting them back exactly where they belong.  That’s my secret confession for today.

The secret to the balloons being transparent is tissue paper!  Isn’t that brilliant?  I now have a lifetime supply of it in many colours.

Okay, that’s enough secrets revealed for one day.  Have a great weekend!

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My world is full of photographic opportunities, or junk, whichever you prefer.

 

Share Your World 2015

Regarding your fridge, is it organized or a mess inside?

Well NOW it’s organized.  Because I saw this question a couple of days ago and it was either lie about the state of my fridge or clean up the mess.  I could still be stretching the truth for all you know, but there are no before and after pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  It looks good.  Things are where they’re supposed to be.  Leftover containers are presently at a minimum.  No produce is shrivelling up and nothing is growing in there.  If the world ends tomorrow a lot of coffee creamer is going to go to waste.

Have you ever been a participant in a parade? What did you do?

This picture is from the Arran Tara Fall Fair Facebook page.  Back in the day when I attended this fair there was no such thing as Facebook.  But there was a sort of parade, in which all the local one room schools had their students march.  Each school carried a banner (ours said S.S. #1 ) (way ahead of our time for hash tags and didn’t even know it).  We were usually lined up from tallest to smallest in pairs, and wore flimsy costumes made from crepe paper and cardboard.  Our teacher was our drill sergeant and probably went home and cried after every pre-parade practice.  I’m pretty sure there were prizes for best marching, or maybe even for just showing up and looking funny, but if we won any ribbons I have forgotten.

Participation in the parade was simply something endured and gotten through so we could get to the midway and the rides and the cotton candy.  I have been in no parades since my public school days.

 

How do you stand out from the crowd?

I no longer dress up in crepe paper and cardboard, so standing out in a crowd has become more of a challenge for me.  I’m trying to think of a reason why I would want to do that, and nothing comes to mind.  I’m much more of a sidelines/blend in kind of person.  Or even better, up two floors and looking out the window, feeling all smug and safe.

How many bones, if any, have you broken?

None!  Although the second toe on my left foot, (after being repeatedly stubbed because I am too stubborn to wear shoes nine-tenths of the time) twists a little to one side and won’t straighten out.  Somebody told me this is what happens when a toe breaks and isn’t taped to the next one to keep it straight while it heals.  Really.  Who has time to tape their toes together.

That reminds me, talking about feet, my left heel is dry and calloused and cracked.  I imagine having a broken bone might cause the same amount of pain.  So I have been treating it two and three times a day with lotions and foot creams and a couple of nights I even slathered it with Vaseline and wore socks to bed.  That almost killed me.  But it’s getting better.  Wearing shoes would no doubt help.  But why get carried away.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I don’t know where this week disappeared to.  I’ve got some art work on the go, I made apple crisp to use up some of the apples in my (no longer) messy fridge.  We have gone out for dinner twice.  W sold our old motor home which we no longer use.  That’s the ‘royal we’, since I think I was in it maybe twice in my life.  I would rather clean the fridge and every other appliance I own if it means getting out of going camping.

The sun is shining, the snow mountain in the backyard is almost gone, and soon the lawn maintenance people will be here for spring clean up.  Nothing much is green yet, but that’s normal for our April.  W is getting organized to travel east and stay at the island for the summer.  THEN I’ll take a picture of my amazingly uncluttered fridge when he’s no longer doing the shopping and filling it up with gluten and carbs.

And that’s my boring little world for another week.  I’m off to look after my feet.  I am grateful there is nothing more serious to report.

Art du Jour 50

This is how I spent my Friday – completing the big five-oh.  Fifty completed projects in roughly six months.

It started with this background which I was so happy with that it took days and days to decide what to do with it.

I wanted to do something whimsical and transparent.  Angel, fairy, apparition, weird doll, human butterfly…..

Sometimes the basic idea takes off on its own and I feel like I’m merely along for the ride.

So, I still don’t know what this is exactly but I no longer care.  She graces the stage I set.  She looks happy enough.   Ergo, life is good.

In a Different Light

It’s the same picture from yesterday, but this time with indoor light from the left instead of bright daylight from the right.

It makes a big difference! Maybe I’ll keep posting this same piece in different places for the rest of the week….in moonlight, fluorescent light, candlelight…..  No, don’t worry, I’m done.

Except to add that the candle colour matches the bathtub et.al.

There is a reason why you should look at paint samples on every wall of a room as well as at different times of the day and night before finally deciding on a colour.  As if I’ve ever done that.  But it sounds like a good idea, right?  Right.

Also, don’t paint in the dark.  What would you do without me?  I meant in dim light.  Because it will look surprisingly different in the morning.

 

 

Art du Jour 49

Eons ago I bought a beautiful stretched canvas with art on it that I didn’t particularly like. It was the perfect size and shape to cover up anchored screw holes that were no longer needed to hold up a cabinet on my bathroom wall.

I love easy solutions to annoying little problems. I planned to one day paint over it with colours that better matched the weird purple fixtures that the original home owners chose, for reasons I can’t fathom.

One day we are also going to renovate this 1970’s bathroom because the fixtures are looking like hell. Well, they always did, but now they’re worn out as well.

So, the first ‘one day’ finally arrived and the canvas has been repurposed at last.

Here’s the process:
I painted over the original with gesso, added some glued on tissue paper and then sponged on colours I like better for the background.

Added butterfly and more bits of printed tissue.
Almost done.  This is the part where I don’t know when to stop.  Shapes with oil pastels, random stencils, ink stamps, splatter, and on and on until…..

Voila!  Done.  Back on the wall to cover up the holes.  Until the renovation.  Hey, it could happen!  This did.

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Share Your World – 2015 Week #14

What type of music relaxes you the most or do you prefer silence?

Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as relaxing music.  For me it is never in the background, no matter how soft and sweet.  It feels intrusive.  It gets in my head and interferes with everything else.  I hope that proves that there are actually a few things in there.  I especially don’t like music playing when I’m on hold on the phone or loudly blaring at me when I’m shopping.  Or when the next door neighbors’ son starts his car in the morning. That kid cannot possibly have much left of his ear drums. Recorded water sounds (rainfall, waterfalls, waves) and weird and random nature noises just make me nervous.  A harp makes me feel sad.  Piano music grates on my nerves because I used to play piano and I am constantly listening for mistakes.  Even the sound of somebody humming annoys the hell out of me.

Okay.  I guess the answer here is that I prefer silence.  Or white noise, like a monotonous fan, which filters out everything else.  I will probably be the happiest old deaf person you have ever seen.

Show us a two of your favorites photographs.  Explain why they are your favorite.   If you are not a photographer, think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.

Two of my favourite things are my adult children who both have families of their own now, although I still often think of them like this:

The best place to enjoy a drippy popsicle is wherever the juicy stains are least likely to be noticed.

I apologize if the sight of this furniture damaged some of your brain cells.  If colour made noise, this couch would probably give you a migraine.  It came with the government housing in the late 1970’s in Inuvik, N.W.T.  It was not my fault.  My daughter painting my son was also not my fault.

What is your favorite tradition? (family tradition, church tradition, whatever)

It doesn’t matter what we’re celebrating or where or why,  just being with family is what’s important.  As long as they don’t have their music turned up too loud.

If you could go back and talk to yourself at age 18 what advice would you give yourself?  Or if you are younger than 25 what words of wisdom would you like to tell yourself at age 50?

When I was 25 I could not imagine ever being 50. Now that I’m well past 50 I can’t for the life of me remember what I was up to at the age of 18.  Maybe I would just tell that girl to enjoy the music, because one day she’s going to kind of hate it.  I would also let her know her kids are going to one day paint each other for no apparent reason other than finding it funny.  She should laugh too. There can never be too much laughter in your life.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I love Netflix when they send me notifications that some crazy thing I watched for 15 minutes 5 years ago has new episodes.  Because how would I know that otherwise?  I love that I can take time off from writing or painting or thinking and sit down and watch six episodes in a row of whatever I want, putting off what I actually should be doing for another time when I might feel like getting it done.

I don’t know what I’m looking forward to other than putting something on a really beautiful background I painted. I promise I will post it soon.  I don’t know why I’m taking so long to decide on something.  Maybe I’m afraid of ruining it. Maybe procrastination is just my all time favourite thing ever.  I can almost hear my 18-year-old self yelling at me from my past to get the hell off my ass and get some things accomplished before there are no years or months or days left.  Sorry, my fan is on high and I can’t understand you.  Netflix sends me an email.  Maybe try that in a couple of decades.

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Mother Natures April Fools Day Humour

Share Your World – 2015 Week #13

What was your favorite subject in school?

Language Arts, or whatever name it goes by now.  Back in the dark ages when I went to school this subject was called English and broken down into reading, spelling, grammar and composition.  I loved them all.  Although my spelling wasn’t one of my highest priorities and as a result there are still words I don’t like to spell correctly the first time.  Spell check makes me doubly lazy.  Plus it also appears to have a sense of humour with its sometimes bizarre suggestions.

Both my parents were sticklers for excellent grammar so we learned to say things properly to avoid having them constantly correct us.  They both instilled a love of reading in us, by reading to us until we could read for ourselves.   Do kids still have to parse a sentence and identify all the parts of speech?  One underline for subject, double underline for verb, triple for object, adjectives and adverbs and phrases in brackets with arrows to what they modify.  Then name the conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, etc.   I love all those rules which I often delight in breaking with run-on or incomplete sentences and dangling participles and orphan which clauses.  Excellent grammar can sometimes sound very snobbish, so usually I write the way I talk and break many of the rules.  Just so you know it’s (mostly) on purpose.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take,  but by the moments that take your breath away” (George Carlin).  When have you had such a moment?

At the births of my children (after all that heavy breathing) and when seeing each one of my grandchildren for the first time.  There’s something about a newborn baby or a baby of any age that melts my heart.  I look at those perfect little faces and forget to breathe.

There was also that time in Scotland when we got off the bus at Glencoe and looking at those noble green hills gave me the weirdest sensation of deja vu.  Maybe I was a Highland warrior in a previous life, or lost loved ones in the massacre of 1692.  It’s also possible, (because of my retracted ear drum which I believed at the time was caused from the stuffiness of a head cold),  that I was simply high on decongestants.

What’s your choice: jigsaw,  crossword,  or numeric puzzles?

I’ve been seriously addicted to all three, but thankfully not all at once.  My various obsessions last until I get bored or realize I’m wasting an incredible amount of time that could be better spent, and then I move on to a new addiction and repeat the process.  My choice at the moment would be crosswords of medium difficulty.  The really hard ones make me feel stupid.  And nobody likes that.

If you found an obviously abandoned car with $50,000 in the back seat, what would you do?

If I knew for certain that I would never get caught, I would take the money home with me and hide it under my mattress.  Because you don’t want to create suspicion by suddenly depositing a lot of cash in the bank.  And then I would have to pray that the house didn’t burn down.  But who is EVER certain of not being found out?  And if we’re not called on something, we eventually blurt out the truth on our own because the burden of keeping a secret drives us nuts.

So I would call the police.  Because it’s the right thing to do.  And I’m rather boring like that.

The grateful for and looking forward to part….

Late yesterday afternoon we had a delightful rain with thunder and everything.  Then over night the rain turned to blowing snow.  It looks like January out there.  So I’m grateful to be inside where it’s warm and not out driving anywhere in this.

I’m looking forward to finishing the reading of a book.  ANY book.  Amazon keeps sending me e-mails asking me to rate the books I’ve purchased and I haven’t read them yet!  I get annoyed with the emails because I’m annoyed with myself.  And I’m also annoyed that when I start reading where I left off I have no idea what’s going on and have to backtrack a few pages to figure it out.  So lately it’s two pages back, three forward, and then I fall asleep.  I’m grateful there is nothing more serious to be annoyed about.

It’s too cold and blustery to go for a walk and search for abandoned cars full of cash, so I’ll just curl up on my couch and play word games instead.  In no time at all I will find myself gasping at my own breath-taking brilliance!  HAHA!  Mother Nature is not the only one who does funny things.