Busy, Busy, Busy

And this is what I've been busy doing.

And this.

And this.

All are finished, inventoried, priced and boxed for tomorrow delivery to the store along with the others in my last blog post.

Now all I have to do is wait and see if people will buy them.

Oh, and I have to keep painting just in case they do.

New Camera And Reawakened Interest In Painting

There is a store locally that is selling strictly hand crafted items by local artists. I've been asked to sell my wares there. It works much like a show, we pay $35 a month plus 10% of sales and the store owner does all the work. I really don't have much to sell yet so I've started working on painting things to sell.

Now that I have a camera I can take pictures of my work and share them on the blog. Which makes my artwork more fun.

On the last post I shared a piece that I had done some time ago and after looking at it, I decided it needed something so, I got out the paints and this is what I came up with.

I definitely like it better. I added 2 roses and did a transparent green effect around the entire arrangement which made the white edges of the flowers pop out and become more visible against the background color.

Yesterday I did this one.

 I'm looking forward to creating many more and with my new camera, now I can share them.

Random Thoughts From The Retired Me

Some day I may figure out how it is I get close to 2000 pageviews a month on a blog that isn't updated regularly. Since I haven't a clue I'll just consider myself special or something.

It took awhile but I have organised my home and life to the point where I am the happiest I've ever been. My problem now is I don't wish to go out of my home into the maelstrom that I am safe from behind my closed door. It's bad enough I have access to it online I really don't need to experience it on a face to face basis.

Maybe I feel this way because I'm closer to my expiration date and my peace has become more important to me? I don't know, I just know that I can make a faster getaway from the information superhighway than I can while driving in my car. No speed limit online. Well, unless ones provider decides to limit it, but I can still find that little red x faster than some people can blink. Most of the time I use it before I get into trouble, lately it's become more important to me to speak my mind than to stay silent.

Online I can "slip out the back Jack," In person I'm apt to get my nose punched. I suppose I could pretend that I wear glasses all the time instead of just for reading, but these days people don't care if they put out your eyes. They want their right not to be butthurt unless they can do something about it, like knock your teeth down your throat. I wonder if it's all that online arguing that builds that kind of frustration? I wonder who I should contact to suggest a study about that? We waste money on everything else, why not to answer my questions?

Anyways, back to the organisation. I have closets and drawers in which I can find everything. The cans and stored foods in my pantry are now not past their expiration date.  I've rearranged the kitchen so that things I use regularly are easier to acquire. I've even changed the location of my chatchkies.

I have a small collection of hand painted Fenton Art Glass Cats that were buried on a corner shelf in the dining room. I've moved them to the top of my computer hutch where I get to admire them in the moments when I need to sit back and stare upward while requesting guidance. Some of them need to be elevated more for clearer visibility but I haven't decided what to use for that yet.

My husband's book work and tools (sigh) still take up space in my livingroom, but with everything else organised to my liking I don't seem to mind so much. I assume that is due to less stress and being more relaxed. I do have one more area that needs organising. Actually it's not so much organising as replacing that's needed. My paints have all gone past their usefulness.

I will need to find some way to dispose of them, clean the bottles and recycle those. Then I get to go shopping for more paints. They're all water based acrylics so it's not such a bad thing as it would be if they were oils, but there's close to 100 bottles partly filled with separated or dried out paint. Disposing of them will take days of fighting to get the contents out of the bottles. If I were less eco friendly, I'd bundle the lot of them up and just throw them in the dump, but I won't do that. It's not the right thing to do. Easier, but not right.

I'm going to go and replace them in September so I'll something to do to occupy my time now that I have my house organised. It cleans easily this way and doesn't take as much time. Which leaves me too much time to spend online unless I find something else to do.

I'm going to actually buy a camera this month. That will get me out of the house to take pictures that I can share on the blog, and it will give me something to look at when I try to duplicate the scene with paints. Fall is gorgeous here and this is farm country. Just the kind of bucolic scenery that begs to be celebrated with paint. I might get lucky and capture a deer or two in the process.

In the meantime I found the latigo I needed to hang my latest painting on my front door. I scanned it in instead of taking a picture so part of it is cut off at the bottom. I had finished it quite awhile ago but couldn't find the leather to hang it with until I got busy and organised my life. One of my neighbors wants me to paint something like it for her door. Fortunately the paints I need for her decor are still good enough to use.