When I posted my last video, I asked what you'd all like to see - so this is a very very informal video of how I paint my backgrounds. (Try to see how many times Sophie sticks her hand in.) It was fun!

This is one of the three paintings I finished yesterday, with #4 in the works...

Fun things to make around the house for your Thanksgiving celebrations:

Give Thanks Banner

This was actually my kids' idea! They wanted to make a banner that said "Give Thanks", and other than a tiny bit of help from me, this was all their work. Each letter is one half of an 8.5" x 11" piece of copy paper, and they're decorated with all the other bits of copy paper. :) It's hard to tell from this pic, but the hole puncher played an important part in our decorating - all those polka dots are from cleaning out the 3-hole punch! I stapled each letter to the long piece of yarn, and added an extra thread to anchor the G so that the bottom didn't curl over.

Thanksgiving Tree

This was an idea I'd seen online and adapted for my CCD classes. I drew leaves (four to a sheet of paper) and copied them on various autumnal colors of paper. Each child got a leaf and wrote his or her name and what they were thankful for. Then I hole-punched each leaf near where the stem would be, and tied it to branches from our yard. I took all the extra copies and gave 2 sheets of different colors to each child to bring home so that their families could make their own Thanksgiving Tree on Thursday. I absolutely love how this came out!

As promised, I'm posting my Twitter background as a thank you to everyone! Take the one on the left, or continue the color wash onto 2 monitors and download 'em both. They measure 1600 x 1200 pix. Enjoy!

Click each link to download each to your own computer. These graphics are for personal use on a home computer only and are not meant for anyone's website or business. These are the only graphics you may use from this site without written permission.

Main screen background
Right screen background

I have a longer, more introspective post coming, but I noticed this morning that my Facebook page is hovering around 300. While it completely astonishes me that almost 300 people (who can't possibly all be my mother) want to know more about my work, it's inspiring to know that, and it helps push me to create more, and share it.

So.

When I get to 300 fans, I'll post a new wallpaper to download! I'll also post one for people who use two monitors, like me. (For those who want a peek, it's my new Twitter background.)

</shameless self-promotion>

Ever wanted to hear what I sound like? Or learn how to make a custom fan page on Facebook for your artwork or your company? Kill two birds with one stone and check out my first foray into the world of video! :)

This is for our blog at PRI, but if I was going to do an instructional FTG video, what would you want to see? Watercolour techniques? Packing school lunches? Sewing? Leave me some ideas in the comments.

I've mentioned previously about my lack of painting, drawing, and general downturn in just plain old creating. You know how the cycle goes: you stop doing something, and then it gets to be more and more of a burden to start it up again because now there's not only the effort of starting something that's completely at a standstill, but the added pressure to make it "GOOD". I put it in quotes like that because it's subjective and should be completely up to me on a personal project if I deem something to have a satisfying or worthy result or not, right? But there are days I look at my work and think it's all rubbish, and then I come back later and find it wasn't so bad after all. So by my definition, if I create? It's good.

In any case, the holidays are looming coming up, and I've been giving careful thought to what I want to do, and what effort I want to go to, to make the season feel right to me. This isn't me going all Martha on the family, it's more of putting the priorities in the right place and making sure we focus on the right things without going overboard. And for me, that includes a certain amount of homemade goodness, whether it be food, crafts, or paintings.

So - I'm taking the handmade pledge again this year, and I will be trying to make as many of our presents this year as I can. I'm hoping that by doing that I'll also be able to satisfy the paint dragon that lives within me that's been growling and unhappy lately because she's hungry. Boy, is she gonna get fed.

Will I be documenting and posting my progress here? You'd better believe it!

My goal for today: email the painting recipients and start taking requests, and make a game plan and schedule for the other items (tiny stuffed animals, ornaments for our CCD classes and family, finding recipes for good vegetarian food I can serve up on Christmas so I have something to look forward to).

While we didn’t go away this summer, or do anything exciting, we did have one special project I made up for the kids.

Squirrel Scouts.
Because my kids weren’t doing any large, organized activities over the summer, I made up a fictitious organization/day camp I called “Squirrel Scouts” to keep them occupied. We had a handbook (see above), a nature journal, t-shirts, and of course, we earned badges!

Since they are pretty young (6 and 7) we concentrated on a few main things we wanted them to learn over the summer, or at least get a good handle on:

• Learning to swim 
• To be able to tie their own shoes 
• To ride their bikes without training wheels 

Along with that were many other badges to earn, some pretty easy for them and some pretty difficult. All of them took TIME and they were so proud of themselves when they earned each badge!


The badges of course were paper (I made them in Photoshop. How crazy do you think I am? Don’t answer that) and we had a place on each page to paste the badge once it was earned. I think their favorite one was the cooking badge, where they had to plan a menu, make a shopping list, and then do every bit of the cooking they were capable of with Mama to do the heavy lifting/dangerous bits. Their meals leaned heavily on macaroni, cheese, and creatures made out of bits of veggies, but we loved it all and documented their creations with a photo shoot and much fanfare.

But my personal favorite was the Nature Journal badge.

They have been keeping amazing journals for themselves, full of notes, colors, and observations from their time spent playing outside. They can open them anytime and relive that summer (and now, autumn) when they took special notice of the world around them.

ps ~ I'm seriously thinking about making all of this a PDF package for purchase for next summer for any other families who want to use it. Thoughts?

excellent news from the eye doctor: Sophie is to be patch-free for three months!
wonderful news from the dentist: none of the kids have cavities!
super news from today's parent-teacher conferences: all the kids are behaving and doing well in class!
amazing news from yesterday's post: we got a shoutout from ALLCAPS! WOO!
best news of all: Grandma and Grandpa are going to watch the kids and Paul and I are going to go on a real date!

Please share your good news with me in the comments:
Your marvelous news: ______________________________!

Halloween, 2010. Robots, robots, robots.

And the video that inspired it all....

I'm keeping this short and sweet today, as it's (yay!) Halloween, and I'm hoping to get some homemade costume goodness up for tomorrow.

I found this site this summer, and it soon became my go-to site for peaceful and hopeful reading before I went to bed. It's called Gives Me Hope, and it's packed with short stories of courage, bravery, and inspiration. The first few nights I started reading it, I couldn't stop and went all the way to the first post to start from the beginning. I didn't want to miss any. I still go to it a few times a week to help get perspective and to say a few prayers.

Something else I've begun doing in the past month or so: when I wake up in the morning, I read Bible verses for the day from my Bible app and choose a certain one that seems to really stick with me to be my verse for the day. Then I go on Facebook, read the live feed, and pray a blessing for each friend who's posted recently. I mention this because with my absolutely nutty schedule, this way of centering my morning and dedicating my day works for me right now, and if you're ultra-busy, that might work for you too. I also try to catch Paul by the coffeepot in the morning to say a quick prayer before the kids wake up, that we will be a blessing in someone's lives that day.

So here's wishing you some blessings and hope, whenever your day may start.

Rather reluctantly, I recently became a Girl Scout leader for Angela's Daisy troop. One of the leaders was moving, and if they didn't get a volunteer, they were going to disband the troop, and we couldn't have that! I had a thousand reasons to refuse: I was overscheduled, overwhelmed, and also teaching CCD, but I just couldn't let Angela down.

What surprised me is that I absolutely LOVE it!

At first, I have to say, I was very intimidated by the whole thing. But after my initial leadership training session and doing some reading, I was totally fired up. I want to teach these girls to be leaders! I want to bring them in contact with women in positions of authority to show what they could learn and do. And I want all the moms to be involved as well, because I want each girl to be able to see the amazing talents their own moms have that their daughters probably take for granted.

It helps too, that I love my co-leader and she completely knows what she's doing. After we recognized each other as kindred spirits as complete organizers and schedulers, we were like old friends. She makes it fun.

And while I think crafts are great, we are going to be spending more time on skills, as well as planning some fantastic trips. Did you know that NJPAC has a show and a sleepover for Scouts every year, and gives them all breakfast the next morning?! My girls are too young for it, but when they're old enough, I can't wait to do that trip! And don't even get me started on camping trips.

I'll leave you with the new Grace I learned at a training session, that I don't know if we'll ever get to use it with the Daisies, but we sure are enjoying it at home! It's sung to the tune of the Superman theme.

(Raise right fist)
Thank you Lord, for giving us food!
(Lower right fist)
(Raise left fist)
Thank you Lord, for giving us friends!
(Lower left fist)
For the food that we eat (raise right)
And the friends that we meet (raise left)
Thank you Lord
For every good thing!
Bum bum bum bum (pound fists on table)

As some of you know, I have a day job... it's the same job I've had for over 16 years now, and I couldn't be happier at it. Our company is really like a family to me; we look out for each other, we support each other, share in each others' ups and downs.

Oh yes, and we really like to create together.

My good news share for today is that our newly redesigned website just won a Platinum Award from MarCom! More than anything else - the bright colors, useful and interesting copy - our site is really an effort of love from our entire team, and that's why I think it works. There's personality in it, and pride in our work. It says it right on the home page: "We love what we do." And I think that shows throughout the site. We all contribute to the blog and our twitter feed as well, and that helps keep the site fresh and interesting and shows a variety of viewpoints, all focused on making projects better for our clients.

This one was a bit of a challenge for all of us, because it was our first redesign after my boss Rich passed away. I honestly think he would have loved this.

So while I haven't been painting, I have been doing a lot of designing. You can see some of it on the site's portfolio. I should mention also that one of our magazines also got a Gold MarCom Award, so I'm doubly happy about it! I would keep creating no matter what, but it's nice to hear every once in a while that your message is making its mark.

ps ~ For those of you dying to see a recent photo of me from this summer, (HA!) here's my brand new bio.

Holey moley, has it been….. SIX MONTHS?! Wow. I’ve never taken that long of a break before. But it was a much-needed one. I apologize for disappearing off the face of the earth for some of you, and I’m grateful for the emails and tweets of concerned people asking what the heck happened to me.

The short answer: Life happened. A big dose of life whacking me upside the head and knocking me for a big emotional rollercoaster of a loop.

The long(er) answer: This summer, after a long illness, my dear mother-in-law died. I still really am having a hard time believing it. Her passing affected all of us deeply, and I’m realizing that while she is thankfully at rest, there is still a lot for the rest of us to deal with, day to day life things. Life goes on, and there are still lunches to be made and bills to take care of and all those mundane things that need to be done. And we miss her very, very much.

For those who have been long-time readers of the site, I’ll also just say that the way I felt in 2004 was the way I spent the majority of the summer. Things are better, and I’m learning how better to deal with things that stress me. One of the main reasons I haven’t posted is that I didn’t have anything AT ALL to show – I haven’t painted in months and months and months. For me, not painting is like not breathing. It’s something I’m slowly working back to.

So… I’m trying again, to post, and share, and to paint, and to allow myself to do awful art, and share that too. And I’m setting myself the challenge to post something nice every day this week, sort of a catch-up of things I want to share with anyone who is still around to hear it.

See you tomorrow. :)

The new layout's here! (And yes, the new layout looks an awful lot like the old layout, which was what I wanted - I don't have time for a sitewide redesign right now.) While I still have a lot of tweaking to do, the blog is functional. And though I didn't appreciate being forced to do it (I find it difficult to believe that the almighty Google can't handle FTP service to their blog clients), I'm happy about some new additions I was able to make to the site. There are many features I've wanted to add but didn't have the time/ability to do it before but they're here now.

So here's what's new:

• The address of the blog. Not something I wanted to change, but had to. So please kindly point your links to blog.frenchtoastgirl.com.

• Related posts. This is something I've wanted to do for ages! Now at the bottom of each post, you'll see four links to other posts with an accompanying thumbnail for each. So on an Illustration Friday post, you'll see four others that also feature Illustration Friday entries, or a post about making homemade ice cream cake might have links to other recipes, watercolours, or family posts. I've been writing this blog for almost 9 years, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes up after each post because it has an element of randomness I rather like about it.

• Twitter feed. Tweet! These are the kind of things you'd be used to hearing about from me - links and thoughts about design, painting, art, family, music... I generally don't post about what I ate or if I'm going to the movies. :) Feel free to subscribe if you wish.

• Tag cloud. All the labels I use for tagging posts are arranged alphabetically to the side - you can now see what I write the most about (art, as it's the largest sized font) and how many posts I've written about paintings done with coffee (11).

• Expanded archives. Instead of clicking on the month and having to scroll down to look for a particular link on the left, you now can open the month in the sidebar, read all the post titles, and choose the one you want to read. Or you can still click and read the whole month if you like.

• Friendconnect. You can "follow" the blog - it's another way to get the feed and to know when I've posted something new. I'm still not really sure how this one works, but I'm willing to try it out.

Things I know are still wonky:

• The links to the rest of the site aren't showing up in IE. I'm trying to figure out a workaround to that, in the meantime, you can get there from here: frenchtoastgirl.com.

• My old comments are not synched up yet. I have to make a request to the service I use (it's not Blogger) and get them ported over, though new commenting should work just fine, so please feel free to say hi!

I'm looking forward to an evening not spent staring at code! Who knows, I might even.... paint!

This blog is now located at http://blog.frenchtoastgirl.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://blog.frenchtoastgirl.com/feeds/posts/default.

So here's what I've been doing: blogger's decided that they will no longer support FTP publishing, which is how I've done this blog for almost the past 9 years. So.... instead of painting? I'm coding, just to try to get the blog to stay mostly the same for now, because what I don't have time for right now is a site-wide redesign. And the address of the site has to change as well - so the blog will now be at blog.frenchtoastgirl.com, and it has to happen by May 1.

Sigh.

My son loves food, my daughters love amigurumi, and we all love to eat. What started out as a doodle turned into a coloring page. I can honestly say that not all kids eat all of these foods, but I would say they eat all but 3 (different for each kid... Peter's not fond of beets, Sophie doesn't do tomatoes, Angela won't touch mushrooms). And of course, all of them work well with (or in) dip in one form or another!

There is a precedent for faces on fruit at our house.... remember this?



That pear still cracks me up.

Ditto on the talking to myself and feeling old. Good news, anyone?

This is a card my boss and friend Rich sent me a few years ago for my PRI anniversary with a bouquet of flowers. I tucked it away and forgot all about it. I've written before how he wanted to have a big celebration for my anniversary last year, but he passed away before the actual date and it was a really hard day for me without him.

A couple of weeks ago this card fell out of the back of a notebook where I'd placed it for safekeeping. Am I surprised that it "found" me just in time for my 16th anniversary this year? I see a hand at work here... and I love you, kiddo.