hi ho a painting we will go

My world has been pretty nuts the past couple weeks, but I've still found a little time here and there to paint.  I decided to take a 100 day/100 painting challenge to increase my skill level in a short time (if that's possible - sometimes I think I have 2 left hands).

I'm really working towards an art exhibit at a local art museum in the next couple years, but first I need to settle on what is my style.  I thought I might be able to find that in 100 paintings.

Below are a few of my recent paintings, some part of the 100 painting challenge.

Tinkerbell on the left is a gift for a little girl. :)  I direct copied someone else's work.  Sometimes you just want to paint. 

Top right is a feather I found in my yard.  I believe it's an owl feather.  I LOVE painting feathers.  I'm only so-so at it so far.

Bottom right is a simple little cottage painting.  I painted it after watching a video on youtube.  It's "ok".

A cow from up the road.  I really fought with the cast shadow on his neck.

Really like this one.  My own design.  I love feathers AND the union jack.  I saw a painting that made me think - "Hey, mash the 2 together to see what happens".  I like it.  I might play with this concept a bit more just to see what I can do with it.

This is my own design too - well, pretty much.  I looked at a lot of nests from other artists.  Nests are hard son!  The little deer is from a photo I found online.  Put the 2 together and sweet lil' sweepy fawn.  aww.

This is a painting of a photographer.  He's part of a group I'm in and the photo version of this is his avatar.  Every time I saw it, I kept thinking it would look cool in paint so I asked and he approved of me painting it.

This was really one of the first times I've painting something where I felt like I created a piece of artwork.  It's not as popular of a piece as others are (because they are "cute"), but that doesn't really matter to me.  Art is subjective.

I'm going to have opportunity next week to paint a little more than usual so I'm excited about that, but in the meantime, back to editing photos.

*cracking whip sound*

High as your eye by the 4th of July

It's true you know, that saying about high as your eye by the 4th of July.  Corn is an amazing plant.  In May it's a wee little sprig of nearly nothing, and 6 weeks later you have a beautiful 8 foot (free) privacy fence all the way around your property.

This is only the second time we've had corn since we moved here.  One year we had so much rain they couldn't get the corn in, so we had beans 3 years in a row.  Not nearly as exciting as the corn is.

Here's the thing though.  This year we're experiencing a drought.  And a hot one at that.  We've been a little luckier than most because we're down here in the bottoms so it takes a little longer to dry out, but just up the road 3/4 of a mile, the corn that is about 3 feet higher than ours down here is already starting to dry out and die off.

It's not quite time for that yet and so I fear the worst - that most of this years crops (corn, beans, tobacco, wheat, etc) is not going to do well this year.  Gas, feed and tortillas are going up!

In the meantime, I hope you'll take a moment to do a little rain dance or possibly go wash your car and condem us to a little rain.  It's blistering hot out.

2 weddings in, 2 days (Friday and Saturda).  Both 108 degrees - without the heat index.  We could use a little relief.

Boo kitty, however, says "Corn is dumb.  I'm cute.  Now rub my belly."

It worked!

A Night on the town

Months ago, Groupon had a special on dinner at Pierpont's at Union Station in downtown Kansas City.  Having never been to Union Station my whole life (I've lived in MO almost 25 years now!), and also being addicted to really yummy food, I jumped on the deal.

This weekend, we made a point to make reservations for an early dinner and it was so worth it!

The decor is incredible.  I wish I'd brought a wider angle lens.  I wish I didn't feel so self conscience so I could walk around and take tons of photos.  Instead, most of these were taken from our table.

Gene had the pecan crusted trout - which was surprisingly good.  I say surprisingly because I traditinally hate most fish, but this didn't taste like fish at all.   Now I'm thinking I might try cooking some trout on my own.

I had the lobster thermidor. 

Oh.em.gee.

So good!  I think Gene was regretting his choice after he tried mine.  Sorry dear.  I did give him the last bite though.  Would it be uncouth to suck on the shells? ;)

We shared a creme brulee with fresh berries.  Again, incredible.  The bottom was speckled with lots of fresh vanilla bean caviar.

Oh look.  Feet.

Bet that took away your appetite.

Had to share my CUTE shoes that are actually comfortable and I can walk for more than 9 feet in them.  They are some adorable vera wang wedges that I got for a song.  First pair of heels I've been able to wear in several YEARS.  Maybe it's the weight loss, maybe my feet are better, maybe it's the shoes, maybe it's all that.  I wore them all night.

On our trip to the restrooms downstairs, I spotted rows of wine in the wine cellar.  Gonna say I'm a little jealous.

I need a bigger house.

After we left the restaurant, we explored around the station for a few minutes.  I wanted to see it since I hadn't before.  So beautiful - it reminds me of England train stations.

One last stop on the way out the door.  What's Gene pointing at?  Only a bullet hole from the Union Station Massacre in 1933. Prettyinteresting story that changed how the FBI works.

If you get a chance, I say make a reservation at Pierpont's.  Probably one of the top 5 places I've ever eaten.  So worth it, and the price was not unreasonable.

The porch that never was!

I thought I should take a moment and give you an update on the never ending porch project.  It's going, but it's going slow.  It's been painfully hot here and it's hard to go outside and work when it's 100 degrees at 7 p.m.  WITH Missouri humidity.  I find that even on coolish days, I have to stand in the shade if it's not imperative that I'm needed.  I've always been this way - no worries. 

If I'm hot, I look like I'm about to stroke out.  So if you see me beet faced, just say hello and move on. I'm not stroking out (yet).

This, my friend, is what $2,000 looks like.  Well, most of $2k there were a few more stacks later.  That's $800 more than when we shingled it 5 years ago.  Hmmfpt.  Next shingling job will be done by a bunch of illegals trucked in after a hail storm.  We're NOT doing it again.

It was hot, but we managed to get the last section up on the 4th.  There was a lot of cussing as we realized some of our 4x4's had twisted.  Effing treated lumber.  It's a pain to work with.

It doesn't look like a lot more, but here you can see all the support ceiling joists are up.  That was an all day project.  Gene did most of the hard stuff.  This was a "stand in the shade" kind of day. :/

Work was slow so they sent Gene home 3 hours early.  No, he's not very happy about it either.  He came home and cut the tops off of the posts on the front and put in joist hangers.  Joist hangers are the metal brackets that support the weight of the joists.  They also help the joist to not twist.  If you're building a deck, for safety reasons, you really should have joist hangers.  You don't want to have a party with 40 of your closet friends and have your deck collapse.  YIKES.   Even though it's not required for the short width of the deck (8 feet) we are still adding extra support joists down the center to help keep the lumber straight and keep it from twisting.

Boo kitty says "heyyyyyyy girlfriend".

You can see the tops of the posts are gone now.  YAY.  I hated those up there.  They looked raggedy and hodge podge like we didn't know what we're doing.

We don't know what we're doing but no need to announce it or anything.

You can see better from here that all the joists are installed in the floor.  That was a big project. We found out that since we're running our decking diagonally, we have to put our joists closer together.  This means more wood.  The place we've been buying wood was out of what we needed, this is when we realized that there was WAY BETTER wood at another lumber yard (Bearcat Lumber fyi) for about .06 more. 

*heavy sighs*

Live and learn.

Every project we do has been a learning process for us.   I'm sure it's not 100% perfect (I know it's not!) but what I do know is that whe it's done, it will look nice and will add value to our home.  If it means that it's only 89% as good as it should be, then I say a B+ is still pretty damn good and I'll take it.

Can I hear a "hell yeah" for a B+?

Cute people!!

So cute together. Trust me.

I bet they get sick of hearing that.