artistic inspiration

Recently I've been spending alot of time browsing the handmade goods on Etsy.
I find it to be a wealth of inspiration. So much so that I've gotten back to some other art forms that had been shoved to the wayside by my newfound love of knitting. A few years ago I discovered woodburning- or pyrography if you want to be really geeky about it- and just loved it. There's something so haunting about the finished product that I just love. Perfect examples can be seen in my favorites list which is linked in the sidebar as Beautiful Things. There are a couple of tagua nut pendants that are done with a combination of burning and oil painting that I just adore and have inspired me to try my hand at something similar. I bought some tagua nut slices and took my cheapo wood burning tool to a couple. My results have been less than what I hoped for and I think part of the issue is that my tool is just inadequate. It's the $10 dollar variety from a craft store. I'm going to keep at it though and see where it goes. I went and got a piece of basswood to practice on and found that it's much easier to get nice results from that than the tagua.

I've discovered through Esty that something called Art Cards Editions Originals (ACEOs) are very popular. Basically any kind of art in a 2.5 x 3.5 inch trading card format are really popular collectors items right now. I've been looking for a way to make money from home and I'm going to try to plug into that market and see how it goes. I've almost finished my first piece which is a combination of knitting and embroidery. It's cute. Not exactly how I pictured it in my mind but it's been a learning experience. I'm having a lot of fun brainstorming and being inspired.

valentines day and family drama

oh the Mama drama never seems to end. I've been struggling to avoid being too emotionally invested in the choices my mother makes for her own life. It is, after all, HER life. It's just difficult to watch something chug along that appears certain to end in train wreck. She's got this new boyfriend... well fiance technically, who is - get this- 30 years old.

I will be 30 years old this year.
My husband is 31 years old.
My mother is engaged to a man younger than my husband. I find this very disturbing. Even if he weren't so young, I would still be disturbed that she's already engaged to a man that she's only been dating for about a month. She'd probably already be married if she didn't have to host a memorial this coming August for her deceased husband. She didn't think it would be proper to be remarried before that is taken care of. *snort*

I could go on and on about some other choices related to this newest development but I think I'll leave it at that for now. I'm trying to come to terms with seeing my mother in the harsh light of reality without the rose colored glasses of childhood. It has been quite unpleasant to say the least. It seems I must accept that she just isn't going to be the typical gramma for my children.. baking cookies and stuff like that. She's like a kid who refuses to grow up. *sigh*


on a happier note- Valentines Day was really nice. B baked a delicious German chocolate cake and bought some yummy chocolates for us.He bought me an obscenely expensive box of Godiva truffles that were positively divine. I've never had a more delicious hazelnut truffle. It was to die for.

Well.. we finally got ourselves a vehicle to call our own! Whew.. what a relief. Our subaru broke down way back at the beginning of the summer and we've been borrowing my father's old Ford Explorer and occasionally my mom's truck ever since. Car shopping is such a pain in the neck. It's only compounded by the fact that we needed a car that could fit three carseats in the back. Turns out subarus are a tight fit, if we would have even been able to at all. Since we need something big enough to also haul a great dane, that eliminated sedans. We were left with the choice between a mini van or an suv. After reading lots of reviews of various different options we decided to go with a Toyota 4runner. We were fortunate enough to find a really clean 1996 model with only 113,000 miles on it. It's running beautifully and we all fit so nicely in it. I'm so relieved to finally have that taken care of and since we spent well under our budget, we've even got some money left over to take care of some pressing dog care issues... Namely getting the two corgis fixed.. No puppies for us! Way to much of a headache that would be, we ultimately decided.