Fridge Art

You are never too old to adorn your grandma’s fridge with priceless art.

Not sure what’s up with that horse in a dust storm. I didn’t ask.

Whoever Carla is, poor girl needs some serious dental work.

I love the creations done by keeping your pencil on the paper until your main picture is complete.

And Madison doesn’t look like that at all in real life. Unless there’s some secret transformation I’m missing.

This is my new fridge, by the way. Never had a door handle this long before. Lots more area to wipe for sticky finger and hand prints. First time I’ve had a bottom freezer too. So far, big thumbs up.

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Share Your World Nov.19, 2018

Are you an early to bed, early to rise person, a night owl and day sleeper/dozer, or an ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ person?

Well I don’t know, I’ve been both the first and the last one for sure. Early to bed is easy this time of year since it gets dark around 5 p.m. By eight it feels like midnight. After sleeping for eight or nine hours it’s STILL dark, but I get up and make coffee anyway and drink it by the light of my iPad, resisting the urge to stay in bed waiting for daylight while also lessening the likelihood of hibernating until February.

When we lived in Pond Inlet, NWT with close to six months of round the clock daylight, sleeping was something I would just sometimes suddenly remember I hadn’t done for a while, so I’d check my watch to see if it was a.m. or p.m. We covered our bedroom windows with tin foil to get some semblance of night. The six months of darkness were a whole other story.

W is a night owl prowler (we have night lights everywhere so he doesn’t bump into things and wake me up….I mean, kill himself) and he takes about 500 naps during the day. That could be a slightly exaggerated number. The snoring probably makes it seem to go on longer than it actually does.

What are some misconceptions about your hobby, should you have a hobby?

All my painting and drawing and crafting things are in my bedroom. That’s also where I store my yarn and finished art pieces and tools and patterns and ideas. If I don’t try to keep all this stuff confined to one room, it will grow and expand and multiply and eventually take over the entire house. It is impossible for me to create anything without making a colossal mess. Sadly, this makes me reluctant to start a new project because I dread the clean up that inevitably follows.

A penguin walks through the door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?

He is here to remind me that life is a lot less serious than I’m trying to make it out to be. He says

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

I’m surprised to hear a penguin quote Mark Twain. I’m even more astounded by his poor choice of head-gear for such a chilly day in November.

Aliens have landed…do they come in peace?

They had engine trouble and were forced to make an emergency landing to do repairs. Everyone is busy texting on smart phones and no one notices. So I guess we’ll never know.

What are you really, incredibly thankful for this week?

Amazon. I am SO excited to have finally ordered a keyboard to use with my iPad so I don’t have to use the on-screen one anymore when writing things like this. I’m tired of pecking away with one finger. I will be extra thankful if my left hand still works and I can actually remember how to type. And W will be happy there are less greasy fingerprints to look through when I show him something like the above cartoon. Which he didn’t find nearly as funny as I did.

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Share Your World – November 27, 2017

Yes, it’s really me, back in this empty echoing wasteland of neglect.  I have had good intentions for almost three months but we all know what road is paved with those useless things.  It seems every time I wake up feeling like today is the day for writing something, some terrible thing happens somewhere in the world, and sometimes close to home, and then I just don’t feel like it anymore.  Because I might have to think and talk about it and be all serious for a minute.  Gah.  Who wants that.

We had a good trip east and a great visit with family and friends and I guess I got thoroughly into relax mode and have had a hard time getting out.  There are worse places to be.  Anyway, my world!  Sharing!  Ready or not!

Would you prefer a reading nook or an art, craft, photography studio?

I have an art and craft “space” but it’s beside my off white bed spread and surrounded by newly painted pelican grey walls, so messy splattering is not allowed.  Puts a bit of a damper on wildly reckless creativity.  So a studio would be nice.

A reading nook would also be super, but really you can throw one of those together anywhere there’s a comfy chair or something big enough to recline on.  I do most of my reading in bed to ensure that my dreams are totally bizarre.  If it’s a real book I read until it drops and hits me in the face, and if it’s my kindle, until my eyes burn and refuse to stay open.  So apparently in my world, reading also leads to losing consciousness.

Tell how you are feeling today in the form of a weather report. (For example, partly cloudy, sunny with a chance for showers, etc.)

Foggy with a chance of more fog, but watch for intermittent extremely sunny breaks.  They’ve been known to happen.  If there’s rain it will be gentle, warm and soothing. And it won’t freeze.  Freezing rain is also not allowed.  It should be banned everywhere actually.  Along with all other annoying dangerous shit.  Feel free to mention names if you want.  And add a bit of thunder.

If you could witness or physically attend any event past, present or future, what would it be?

The wedding (or alternatively the spectacular break up, although I’m certainly not predicting or anticipating that) of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  Don’t want to physically be there for any of it,  but not being a witness to it all seems impossible.  Unless we’re all suddenly struck deaf and blind.  Might as well wish for something that’s likely to happen.  And if you ever complain about issues with your in-laws, just think of Meghan Markle and what she has to contend with and you’ll feel a lot better about your own comparatively boring situation.

What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

Obviously I am very inspired by Savage Chickens. on a daily basis because I subscribed to get emails.  I highly recommend it.

Art du Beacoup Jours

Oh yeah, I forgot, I’m a self-declared artist, taking a long break from it all and then coming up with some very bad French.  The title is supposed to translate to “art of many days” because I’m pretty sure this creation could pass for art and it certainly was many days in the making.  But none of it can in any way be blamed on the French.  Just so that’s clear.

This is melted crayon on an old denuded clock face.  On an opposite wall the delightful mirror below, which survived the garage sale because I could not bring myself to part with it,  has been photographed to include the reflection of the above round shaped thing awaiting inspiration.  It hung there all white and boring for a very long time.  Weeks I guess, but eventually I got tired of looking at it and the reflection of it too.

Now I’m going to show you a photo of a big bucket/waste basket full of markers and crayons.  Only demented grandmas have such things, never mind the ones who pause to take pictures of them.

The plastic bag on top is one of those large freezer zip lock ones, (so a LOT of crayons in there) and when my granddaughters were here looking for something to do I suggested peeling the paper off some of them.  One of the girls wisely wandered off to watch tv, but the other one was wildly enthusiastic about the idea and stripped the paper off every last one of them. You never know with kids, so don’t be afraid to suggest totally bizarre and tedious activités to them which you don’t want to do yourself.

Then we messed around melting wax with an iron and a blow dryer.  This is my favourite result on paper.

If you heat and mix the colours too much they just get muddy but we saved this one with a lot of white on top.

Okay! One more snapshot in the series “ways I have been messing about for months”.

Another crayon creation on canvas, and below it three little, quite possibly completely useless, books I made.

You start off with a cereal box,  use the thin side for the spine of the book and cut out whatever book shape you want.  Then you cover them inside and out with glued on paper, complete with decor.  I had a couple of jewelry pieces left over from a failed jewelry making stage of my life and the playing cards are from a miniature deck which was a prize from one of our Christmas cracker snapper things.  I’m sure that’s not an accurate name.  Too bad I don’t know what they’re called in French.  The pages are arranged in bunches and sewn in using a needle and thread, after punching aligned holes with a push-pin in the paper and the spines .  It was pretty labour intensive especially once the novelty wore off and I was questioning my sanity for thinking three of the damned things was a good idea.  Probably won’t try that again.  So these should one day be ridiculously valuable because they are rare.  Remember that when you see them in a garage sale.

Enough sharing for one day.  Thanks for looking.  Now get back to whatever important thing you were up to on this beautiful sunny April Sunday.

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Food. Drink. Sleep. Books. They are all drugs. (Fay Weldon)

It has been over six months since my last art du jour post. I’ve missed that drug.  See, I would add Netflix and Making Stuff to that list.  I admit my addiction to all of the above.

These are the coffee pictures for my daughter.  Her colours are grey and turquoise.  There is a lot of black and white in her kitchen and I know she likes purple, so fingers crossed she will be happy with these.  I am trying to be less chaotic with my creations but maybe it’s just not in me to make something calm and normal.

It’s a lazy Sunday here, perfectly gorgeous fall weather.  We went for a stroll down to the mall and back in search of rimmer spices for Caesars.  Do we have our priorities straight or what?

When we started this ‘update the look of your ’70’s house’ project I professed to not like grey.  Then I said I didn’t like turquoise and I was really done with purple.  Then I chose pelican grey for the master bedroom and both bathrooms and NOW I’m thinking turquoise and purple are really nice and maybe those should be my colour splashes in the bedroom and forget royal blue or red.

So I guess my point here is you can believe what I say today but don’t assume it will be equally true tomorrow.  I’ve made up my mind to never make up my mind.  Or some such nonsense.  Posting this now before I rethink the whole thing.

Happy autumn Sunday.

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The new and improved art studio because I was not loving the first version. I like to curl up in a comfy chair to sketch and draw, and the chair was already paint spattered. Win/win.

Share Your World – 2016 Week 37

Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?

There are likely rocks on our property, below ground, because I’ve never hit one with the lawn mower.  Our neighbour has some little rocks beside his fence that spill on to our side.  Are those mine now?  I let the grass grow around them and am leaving it for W to take care of with the whipper snipper apparatus from hell when he gets home. I hate that thing.  And how far below the surface does ones property actually extend?  I should ask the property tax people.  They probably have boring days which could do with some livening up.

What is your greatest strength or weakness?

The ability to zone out in a crisis.  I don’t know if that’s a strength or a weakness.  I think it could be either one.  Usually I will go into panic mode later when it’s all over.

What makes you feel grounded?

Well that’s a hard one because I’m pretty grounded most of the time.  I feel very ungrounded away from home and familiar things.  What does grounded even mean?  I’m relatively sensible and understand what’s important in life.  I’m not a teenager or an airplane.  If this was an exam question I would have just failed it spectacularly.

Would you rather never be able to eat warm food or never be able to eat cold food?

Since I am amazingly lazy in the kitchen, cold food suits me just fine.  Eating stuff right out of the fridge saves a lot of time and energy.  I’d miss hot soup though.

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

W is on his way home today.  He did some galavanting en route, stopping off to visit friends.  “Galavanting” is a word my mother often used to express mild disdain for a person who wasn’t exactly grounded and went off in all directions doing dumb things.  Well, I kind of made that up, I’m not sure exactly what she meant when she talked about someone off galavanting around but it didn’t sound like she found it admirable.  W’s galavanting on the other hand is fine with me.

Anyway, wow, that was a ridiculous way to introduce the fact that I watched the tv show “Galavant” on Netflix.  It’s a musical.  Galavant is a knight.  The main reason I clicked on it was because of the word Galavant. I’m grateful I did because it was quite well done and funny.  You would not believe how crazy this little blurb is driving my spell check. It does not like the Galavant word one little bit.

I’m looking forward to the arrival of my sister and her family!  I have no idea what to feed them because they have various dietary issues!  Maybe they would all like to just eat out of my fridge!!

No, I will get my act together shortly. I have a week. W can help me.  But first he better ooh and ahh about this redecorated house before he starts complaining about where the hell I put all his stuff.

Kids In the Hall

Yesterday I finished the hallway.  It’s a little weird how happy I am about that.  Only one picture allowed (new hall rules) so it’s my collage picture of some ancestors at various stages in their lives.

Because there is less light here the colour looks more orange and the white really stands out.

Ok, I expect that’s about all the time you would like to spend in my hallway admiring walls and doors. And a surprisingly clean floor.  Let’s go around the corner.

And turn left.  And then back up and turn right.  You know, so you don’t get lost.  New shelf rules too.  Two or less items per.  I just noticed one has three things.  Oh well.

The colour behind the couch is called “tea dance”.  It’s looking a little more pink here than it does in real life.  And notice how different my “melted marshmallow” looks in bright morning light.

I’m not sure what this suspended slab of stone or concrete under the fireplace is called, because don’t mantles go above, not below?  Anyway, it was ugly and I always kept it completely covered in stuff.  It’s a perfect place for candles.  And other assorted junk.  And did I mention ugly?  Well now it’s covered in a grey textured paint which looks and feels like rough stone.  And I no longer feel the need to pile loads of crap on top of it.

My daughter made me take away those little elephants. She is ruthless.

And finally, my art corner.  Sadly neglected for now but not forever.

Because there has to be a mess somewhere.

I should have cut the grass today, but it was just too hot.  These days you have to get out there between thunderstorms. And despite all the rain, the heat manages to keep the grass looking half dead, especially in the front where it kind of matters.  Anyway, I had a nap instead.  Painting wears me right out and it sometimes takes days to recover from all my hard work.  Ha!  No, I don’t really believe that either.

I think we might be half way finished!  This is another picture from the kitchen because I forgot to add it last post.

In case you were worried I might have chucked out the stove.

Back at it tomorrow.  Two bedroom ceilings on the agenda.  Or more naps. Hard choices to be made.

Sharing My World 54

Weekend Artwork by Littlest Granddaughter

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 11

How many siblings do you have? What’s your birth order?

My brother was born first, followed by me three years later, followed by my sister another three years later, and six years after that, baby sister, spoiled by her siblings.  So I am a middle child, one of three girls, nobody special.  Or incredibly special, I can’t decide.

In a car would you rather drive or be a passenger?

I don’t mind being a passenger, feeling free to let my mind wander or to fall asleep or to give directions or to wonder out loud why we are taking this particularly stupid route.  Well, that’s only when W is behind the wheel.  I don’t mind driving by myself, but I do not like having passengers when I’m driving.  Probably because I’m such a bad passenger/back seat driver myself and also because I like to talk to other drivers on the road without anyone hearing the dumb things I say.  Plus I take wrong turns all the time and nobody needs to know that.

When you lose electricity in a storm, do you light the candles or turn on the flashlight? How many of each do you own?

All W’s flashlights are downstairs in the dark, but I have candles and matches everywhere.  Some family member asked me once why W has so many flashlights and I didn’t know the answer to that one because, like I said, they’re all downstairs somewhere in the dark and I wouldn’t know where to look for them.  I have a little pen sized flashlight in my makeup bag for some obscure reason, and I used to have a light thing dangling from my keys but I don’t know what happened to it.  I never used it because there’s an interior light in the car and the porch light is always on at our back door and I can’t think of a single time I needed to use my keys in the dark.

I’m not sure why I have this uncanny ability to turn the answer to a simple question into a rambling essay.  I light candles.  We own many.

List at least five of your favorite types of animal (any animal to domestic to wild to marine life)

Lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, zebras.  In a previous life I lived in Africa.  Or a zoo.  Or the circus.

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

This weekend our eldest grandson attended a special wrestling development clinic at the U of A for wrestlers who got medals at the Alberta Winter Games.  We are incredibly proud of him for doing so well in a sport he’s only just started.

Youngest grandson got to go to an Oilers hockey game, and even though his team “got destroyed” as he explained it, he had a great time.

The girls and I went to see the Zootopia movie in 3D.  Because those special glasses are to die for.  You can pop out the lenses and wear them home.  And the movie was great fun!  They were especially giggly about the sloths.

I put a border on the above artwork by Madison and I’m going to put it up somewhere more important than the fridge.  I love that she made it so colourful and happy.

Not sure what I’m looking forward to in particular this week, but in general, spring.  And summer.  And all the snow disappearing.  Just normal every day stuff.  No crazy wishes or expectations.  I’m happy to keep waking up in the morning.

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It’s the Fish Picture!  Or the Fishing Collage!  Or Angling in Hell!  I haven’t made a final decision on the title.

Normally I do ink spritzes to finish but W was so happy identifying fish species I decided not to obliterate them with colour.  There are no purple pickerel in the real world.

But there could be rainbow cats.

I got a how-to art book from Amazon and the first exercise is to draw a bunch of cats.  HAHA!  I am obviously SO ready to move on.

Hope your weekend was happy and fun!

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Coffee Wars Front Runner in Action

SHARE YOUR WORLD – 2016 WEEK 7

What are you a “natural” at doing?

If natural abilities show up in childhood with a minimum of encouragement, perhaps mine was related to music.  I never had much of a singing voice (my sister got all the talent there) but I had an ear for music and perfect pitch and could sight-read pieces and play them on the piano with ease.  In teachers college when I finally showed up to try out for the special music class they asked me what in the world I’d been waiting for.  Not much ever came of all that talent.  I haven’t touched a piano in years.  I get supremely annoyed if someone sings off-key or hits a bad note.  I like to listen to classical music and jazz once in a blue moon, and sometimes switch the sat radio to tunes from the 1940’s  They’re so bad they’re good.

Now I’m a natural at making soup.  It’s a much more useful ability.  My mom must have passed on to me part of her talent for throwing a bunch of stuff together without a measuring cup in sight and ending up with something delicious.  No recipe, difficult to duplicate, always a surprise.  Edible music to warm your soul on a cold winters day.

Would you prefer a one floor house or multiple levels?

The house you need/want/prefer is constantly changing as your life and circumstances change.  As much as I have always loved the idea of living in a six-story castle with turrets and ballrooms, I’m afraid all those stone staircases and drafty halls would kill me now, never mind the responsibility of servants and groundskeepers and film makers wanting to use it for a movie set.  A grand old three-story mansion with an attic would probably do me in as well.  I’m too old for haunted spaces and fireplaces with dead birds stuck in the chimneys and entire rooms made in to dusty old libraries.  I’ve also given up my dream of having a cathedral ceiling with windows everywhere and a cozy artists loft.  Even our three bedroom bungalow is feeling too big for the two of us these days.  I’m ready for something smaller with no stairs anywhere, not even up to the front door.  Flat as a pancake and easy to clean.  Sturdy shelves for my books and a corner for my art supplies and a kitchen almost too small to turn around in, but big enough for soup.

What was your favorite subject in school?

You might expect me to say art, but I didn’t love it because it was so structured then, with too many rules and often disappointing results.  I did love English, or Language Arts, and composition.  I hated how we were made to do book reports though, dissecting everything to death.  It was like explaining a joke until it was no longer funny.  In high school I thoroughly enjoyed Latin.  That was like having a love affair with words.

Complete this sentence: If only the rain..

…..would soak the world with joy and wash away all the pain and hurt and hate.  And maybe sweep some obnoxious mouthy morons down a sewer grate.

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

It is getting easier every day to know what I can and cannot eat to keep my diabetic readings stable.  Last night we dined out.  I had Chicken Parmesan, sweet potato fries and five ounces of Merlot.  Perfect.  Except for the blatant absence of vegetables.  But sometimes I make a meal of nothing but vegetables, so it all evens out.

We have packages of coffee, both beans and ground, that we are trying half heartedly to use up by brewing a pot of coffee in the morning.  It’s coffee brewer vs. Tassimo, and Tassimo is sneaking in a lot of wins.  It’s just so much easier than measuring out water and scoops of coffee and having the coffee sit there and get stale and then poured down the sink and spilling the filter full of wet grounds on its way to the little green compost bin.  Life is just so hard when you have nothing of consequence to do with yourself.

There is this one thing though.  W has asked me to do one of my collage pictures with a fishing theme.  He wants to hang it up at camp, although where exactly is a mystery because the walls are already covered with photo boards and other fishy things.  I said ‘what if you hate it?’ and he said ‘I’ll hang it up anyway’.

I’m grateful he has shown an interest in my work, other than to ask me what the hell I’m planning to do with all this shit.  So that’s my next project.  When we move to our tiny little pancake house we will be having one hell of a garage sale.