June brought forth my first art show in over 10 years. It's nothing spectacular, like some hotsy totsy premiere gallery, I'm showing at my local library. It's a really good venue for me and a lot of other local artists. It gets our work out and noticed and above all people can buy the work :-] Which actually happened. I sold 2 paintings so far and I'm really encouraged by that. Sometimes I can get moody about my work...gee imagine that, an artist getting melancholy about their work.
Hopefully, I can crank out some more paintings soon. I'm in the middle of one painting now and I hope to finish it this week or next. I had 2 going, but I actually scrapped on...I didn't like the direction it was going and I just lost motivation for it. I looked at it one day and absolutely hated it so I stopped working on it.
In the limited spare time that I have I'm trying to do some research and study on some different painting styles and techniques. I had a great talk with a professional artist and he helped me get a good direction for my work. I peer review and critique is such a wonderful thing! So I'm hitting the library and the internet gleaning inspiration. I can't wait to see the results.
+ April 30, 2009 +During this wet and wild month of April, Jenn and I put up a shed...actually it was mostly my father-in-law and I, with a bit of help from the brother-in-law and a buddy of mine. The building of this shed took a bit longer than anticipated. The instructions said about 4-8 hours and it had about 16 steps. LIES! It took about 30 hours across 2 weekends. The directions were ambiguous at best and vague at worst, which was the reason why it took us so long. At any rate we finally got the shed built and it's pretty solid...it's holding up nicely to the incessant rains we've been having here. I'm so happy to live in a neighborhood that allows for sheds. I never understood the concept of not allowing a shed in the backyard because it somehow detracts from the home...as opposed to the garage that full of junk, that could be in a shed, and a driveway full of cars...yeah "how unsightly".
In the midst of all this our water heater tanked...ha ha pun intended. Long story short, we needed to replace the "fairly new" water heater with a new one due to the 8 inches of sediment and calcium in the bottom of it. Luckily, we found the exact same model at Lowe's and all we had to do was take the old one out and put the new one in...no extra plumbing or work. Ah homeownership.
Now that things have settled with the house and work, I've had the time to do a little oil painting. I'm so happy! I finished one that has been in process for 6 months. Not my best work, but a good experiment nonetheless. After that was done, I started work on 2 and then added a third painting in the mix while the others were drying. In a couple of weeks I hope to meet up with a professional oil painter to go over my portfolio. I've been at a plateau in my oil painting development and it is high time that I had a peer review. Essentially, I'm going to someone tell me how much work sucks and what to do to make it better. I can't wait, it's been ages since I got an honest critique of my fine art work.
Hopefully, the rains will stop and I can get back to work on the landscaping and reclaim it as lawn instead of prairie, blasted weeds and over growth. YAY for the excitement that is my life!
+ April 05, 2009 +Lots has been going on. The last couple of weeks saw Jenn and I in the backyard, with her parents, doing a lot of landscaping. Now we didn't go crazy with the landscaping since the backyard was already pretty crazy...it didn't need any more help! The yard was pretty overgrown and it seems that a lot of the foliage was left to it's own natural devices for several years...bushes that were now trees, bushes that spread like weeds that need to be pulled out and controlled, trees that needed to be cut down, and so forth. Needless to say that one weekend required a small dumpster to get rid of all the rubbish that we were make and that was still left over from the previous owner of the house. We filled that dumpster in a day. The next weekend could have used a dumpster as well, but we and the pocket book decided against it so we did a lot of bagging and burn. We burned a lot of leaves and branches since we have a fire pit in the back...very convenient!
We also had to capture a pesky squirrel that wanted to take up residence in our attic. We caught him and transported him a few miles away to a small woodland area were we let him go to make a new home away from our attic.
I'd like to give a shout out to my in-laws for all the hard work the put into our yard and how much they have helped us get the yard where it needs to get for this time of year! Many, many thanks Pat and Donna!
This weekend we did a few minor things in the yard that most people start doing in the Spring. Jenn and I feel really good about all the work that has happened in the yard these passed couple of weekends as the work that we did brought our yard to where pretty much everyone else is at this time of year.
Anyway, we spent most of the day inside today as the April showers came in and it was rainy. So we spent the day hanging pictures on the wall. Lots of fun. I do so enjoy living life with Jenn! I also spent today and a bit of yesterday fitting some spyware/malware on Jenn's PC. Thankfully, the guys over at the Malwarebyte's forum were able to help and get things cleared up. I'm glad that here PC issues weren't as bad as mine from a couple of months ago...I still don't trust my machine...*eyes his PC suspiciously*
On a sad note, I found out yesterday that my uncle Isaiah passed away at 3pm on April 4. I'm sad, he will be missed. It was very sudden. At this time we still don't know the cause. *sigh* Sad day. Goodbye, Uncle!
+ March 12, 2009 +Anyway, this last month has been crazy busy. Mostly at work. I've been doing a lot of late nights which has prevented me from doing stuff around the house which in turn prevents me from really updating this journal.
I don't know how to condense everything, it's not like it is exciting or anything. Work stuff is pretty busy, that usually is the case in a fast paced environment. It's fun, I like what I do so that helps during those times I"m working till 1 in the morning.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....er...eh? oh, where was I. Ah yes. We have a lot of neat projects in the works, that I really can't talk about. But I'm stoked to be part of them.
House updates:
There are a lot. Heck, where to even begin. We knew we had a lot of work to do to the house, but we didn't know how much work. I love the fact that the backyard and front yard had last fall's leaves still on the ground...it's like no one bothered to pick them up. However, in the defense of this, there are a lot of trees and maybe these were going to be picked up the final time for the year when the weather prevented that....I don't buy it but I'm trying not to be cynical about certain things. I'm happy that the weather is warmer, though, so that we can pick up around the house so it doesn't look so redneck. In the interior, the master bedroom is done and we have moved all our stuff in there. Now my wife and I are no longer living out of 3 rooms. We also have new appliances. We weren't planning on have new stuff, except for the stove, but age defied us and took out the fridge. *sigh* our way of stimulating the economy I guess.
Well, enough of this ranting. Things in the house are progressing. We are working out the next stage of renovations to the home: some plumbing, new screen doors, and lots of clean up in the yard. YAY! It's really starting to feel like our house and not someone else's home.
That's it for this update. Hopefully I can update this more regularly...like every Sunday like I intended.
