18 Years

Today is my 18th wedding anniversary!

This is my favorite picture from our wedding. It's the "cake" picture.
Instead of shoving it in my face, he put frosting on my nose and then kissed me. 

It's hard to believe it's been 18 years. I got married when I was 20, and 18 years seemed a lifetime away! Well, I suppose it is, really. Had we gotten started on our family right away, I could have a senior in High School at this point! That's only slightly more terrifying than the fact that I have a 15-year-old who is currently learning how to drive, and that my youngest will be 13 in a couple months. The time really does start to slip away from you, doesn't it?

I'm married to a rocket scientist (yes, really), and when we went to see the pastor a few days before the wedding, she refused to marry us. They had given us a computer test that supposedly evaluated our personalities, how we approached problems, and how we viewed the world. It came back that we were entirely non-compatible. Well, of course it did! He's a rocket scientist and I'm an artist! COME ON! 

Like naughty children, we both had to drag our parents into the pastor's office and have them endorse our "case" in order for her to marry us. In the end, she said because it was two days before the wedding, it would be irresponsible of her business-wise to cancel at this point. However, if she had been able to meet with us months earlier as she would have preferred (we lived in Chicago, and this was Boulder, CO) she would have ended this long before. So, she said she'd perform the service, but she was lodging an official statement that she was certain our marriage wouldn't last two years and was totally against us getting married.

Nice way to start a marriage, right? To be honest, if I had it to do all over again I would go to an island and elope. What a mess. A mess with the pastor, a mess with the in-laws, a mess with the florist, a mess with extended family. Yup, a beach would have been the way to go! At least we had each other!

Regardless, we knew we were doing the right thing. We married, and I'd do it all over again. I love him more now than I did when we said "I do."

It's a cold, rainy Monday today. I plan on working on finishing the mini paintings I have going. They're selling out, for the most part, but I am also trying to up my stock for a harvest festival I have a booth at in two weeks. I'm glad they're so popular!

I decided to fill in the backgrounds and moons on the minis last night. I realized that even when I try, I never make two moons the same way. It's as if they just can't be duplicated, and each one wants to be unique:

Like moon-fingerprints, I guess! I really like that they're all different though. It'd really be a shame if they all looked the same!

I'm keen to see how my mini-haunted houses turn out, in particular today. I also sketched out a toad in a witch's hat, but he's a bit daunting for some reason. He's tiny, but detailed, so I've sort of been avoiding him. I'll get to him, though!

Color, Color Everywhere!

On Saturday, I got to take my daughter to her first road race! We did the Vibe Color Run 5k! I've been wanting to do a color run since I first saw them advertised, but living in the boonies not much comes our way. One day, however, an ad popped up for one right by us! I couldn't believe it! Even better, my daughter said she would do it with me (will wonders never cease?! My 15-year-old actually wants to go running with me?!)

This is us before the race. We're all clean!
Also, for the record: this is me with a major tan. It's all that tree-planting I've been doing. I know, it's practically unnoticeable to everyone else, but it's there!

It was about 52 degrees out, so it was a wee bit chilly. We hung out in the car for about 40 minutes, and everyone else was pretty much doing the same thing. Then, about 30 minutes before the race was to start, we headed over by the stage.

The race had 3000 runners, which is roughly the population of Vermont (OK, not really, but it's close!) We were in the second wave released, and they had color cannons at the start so I was blasted with blue so hard I couldn't see out of my sunglasses. They aren't messing around with those things!

Part of the course had been flooded with recent rain storms and was so swampy that everyone ended up in water over the tops of their shoes. I found this particularly hilarious once we hit dry ground again because you could hear a chorus of squishing when everyone was running. It sounded like we were all running with frogs strapped to our feet!

Unfortunately, at one point my glasses slipped and knocked my favorite nose stud out. It's somewhere on the trail in the forest, and I never found it again. I'm sure some squirrel will pick it up and be the envy of all his friends. (Squirrel-bling!)

We were pelted with color at several stations, but I noticed a shortage of pink. There should have been more pink. It seemed like the organizers favored yellow the most. Not that I'm a huge fan of pink, but the balance is what I'm after. (It's color, I can't help it!)

By the end, we were covered!

My girl and I at the finish line!

For comparison to the first photo, this is us in the car headed home:

We were smart, and had covered our car seats with trash bags. I was less smart when I got home and had to wait my turn for the shower. I finally sat down in my black computer chair. This left a neon green butt-print on it that I then had to clean off.

The funniest part of the day came once we had taken our showers and gotten all cleaned up. I asked my daughter if she had blown her nose yet. She was, as would be expected, completely taken aback by my question.

"No! Why would I?"

"Oh, no reason..."

...off she went to find a Kleenex. A moment later I heard her blow and exclaim "OMG!!! It's BLUE! AAAAAGH!"

Totally worth the effort, right there. Definitely a race worth doing again.

In other news, I've completed lots of mini paintings, and have even more in process now! As it stands, all the completed ones are sold, but I have many more in the works! Here are some of the completed minis:

And here are the paintings on my table right now:

I actually had to make myself stop sketching out ideas. I have SO many, but I need to paint these out. On the other hand, I worry I'll forget what they were if I don't sketch them down on a canvas right away. It's a bit ridiculous at this point, I suppose! If I just didn't need to eat or sleep or have all my other obligations, I'd be able to knock these guys out faster! *wink*

Autumn in the Air

This week, my family is supposed to be on a more normal schedule. I spent Monday morning feeling happy that I finally had my house back to myself, and I pulled out the itty-bitty stretched canvases to play with!

I was snuggled into a sweater, because it was chilly. I even got to take a hot bath after lifting weights, and I lit a Pumpkin Cupcake candle (one of my absolute favorites right now! I love pumpkin/autumn scents.) It just put me into a very happy mood! I have to say, I miss drinking coffee. I don't miss the caffeine (or the panicky feeling it gives me), and I don't miss the calories... but I miss the pumpkin spice scents and flavors. That special little treat of sitting there and sipping that yummy-autumn-goodness. My pumpkin spice tea just isn't the same. It's not bad, but, just not the same.

So, candles it is! And I love them! I have a Pumpkin Caramel Latte candle too that is just divine!

I have a slew of little canvases, so I'm open to ideas. But here is what I've been working on so far:

I've got a witchy graveyard scene, a jack-o-lantern, a witch in the wind, a cat and the moon, and witchy boots! I had some extra ideas, but I figured I should actually paint some of these in first.

So, I finished the Jack-o-lantern:

I just love these teeny tiny canvases!

I decided to paint all the moons in at once:

I always use iridescent paint on the moons. Any reason to use something shiny! 

Then I finished the cat:

Then my wonderful day sort of fell in on itself. There was a house problem (our current one), a teenager drama problem (my daughter had a big disappointment), and my husband came home sick with a nasty cold.

But my Monday really was wonderful for a few hours there!

On the potential moving: no word yet. We're still waiting for more information about a few things, and have an appointment later this week to go back to the house and really get into the nitty gritty of what is wrong, and what we should offer if we decide we want the house. It's all still scary and whatnot, everything up in the air. Which means that painting is even more important to me, because I need the stress reliever!

Well, painting and running. I'm literally sitting here in my running gear waiting for it to be light enough outside to run. I would have gone at 5 AM this morning, but it was far too dark. There is a huge line of wicked storms heading this way today, and I think that's why it's abnormally dark (it's supposed to go from cold days of about 58 degrees to 90 degrees by tomorrow, then back down again. I'm bracing myself for a migraine with such a violent shift in the weather!)

It looks like I have to wait until the kids are off to school before I can head out. So, I thought I would check in! Thank you all for the advice and support on my last post. I really do appreciate it!

Itchy Feet

I really thought that I would finally be getting back into the swing of things in the studio once the kids got back into school. Unfortunately, my husband reminded me that he had a forced vacation the entire Labor Day week, and then my son came down with some sort of stomach bug.

To be fair, I suppose I should have seen the stomach bug coming. Back to school, if you have kids you know this, is filled with buying pencils and paper, and everyone getting sick for the first couple of months. Its inevitable. The children are just walking petri dishes waiting to unleash their biological warfare upon one another. I guess I just secretly hoped that since my youngest just started Junior High (7th grade), that this would be behind us.

*sigh*

The forced vacation my husband had to take (the company is forcing employees to burn their vacation time) is at a bad time because he's also coaching for the local high school and the children are obviously in school, so really we cannot go anywhere fun and he has obligations by 2 PM. That means we are here, and here means house projects. Lots and lots of house projects.

Instead of painting.

Yesterday, I dug holes for trees and shrubs. Even with gloves, I have blisters all over my hands. I am glad they're planted though!

We also went and looked at some houses that are on the market. For a while we thought that maybe we needed to totally change where we live, move states perhaps? That looks to be unfeasible at this time, so we thought that perhaps we don't need to change everything. Maybe we just need to change the here and now.

The truth is that we've outgrown our house. It isn't a small abode, but it's... crowded. Rooms just need to be a couple of feet bigger (especially the bedrooms, the poor kids. But even our bedroom doesn't have enough room.) I need more space in the kitchen. And when it comes to my studio? Forget it! The studio space is just storage for my studio, with things crammed in every corner. I've been painting in my kitchen or living room, or even on my bed. There simply is NO space here anymore.

This was a good house when we moved in with an almost 3-year-old and another on the way, me just being mom. Now, I have essentially two teenagers, and TWO businesses. Don't even get me started on the pets (three dogs, two rabbits, one giant cat, 20+ chickens, and two fish. Granted, the fish don't take up much room.) The cars don't fit in the garage, the landscaping is insane with this much open space, and everyone is on top of each other.

There aren't many houses on the market out here, so there hasn't been much cause to actually look. However, I found a couple that we were interested in and we poked through them on Tuesday. One of them might actually work. It's much bigger than our house is now (I would even say it's perhaps too big, which is a problem we're considering as we work through this.) Everyone would have their own room and I would actually have a dream studio. Maybe not the one I pictured nestled into the trees, it's very own building... but let's face it, I'd need to win the lottery to make that a reality! It would be on the top floor, a sort of finished attic with skylights and a couple windows, but it's big enough. It's perfect.

The house has privacy too, something I want more of (I'm a hermit!) It needs work, maybe more than is reasonable... we'll have to see. We're actually at the point where we're weighing the pros and cons quite seriously while we're waiting to hear back from our realtor what she's ferreted out about the property (which is currently rented to a bunch of college students, so it's one step shy of a frat house right now. It's not in horrible condition, but it's not great either.)

We basically have itchy feet. We need something to change, something major. I have felt this brewing for a long while, but I think seeing a house that could solve many of our problems (and probably create all new ones) really triggered the idea that we could actually change things.

And that, folks, is scary as all get out! I've been having nightmares, and I'm not sleeping much. I didn't realize how scary the reality of possibly uprooting everything we've built these last 14 years would actually be. When did I get so set in my ways and afraid of change?

Sheesh!