Trying to Breathe

I've been sooooo busy with painting that it's been hard to catch my breath. I've painted all day everyday this week so far. And I'm still not close to being caught up. In answer to questions, I mainly paint children's art, so I don't have any other artwork that I could show, other than children's. This was my first time venturing away from the kid's artwork. I'm happy with it though, so maybe more in the future??

Last night included a trip to Nunu's. I hadn't cooked (see above), so we headed out to look for some dinner and ended up there. With a buggy full of meat. There were chicken kabobs, beef kabobs, jalapenos stuffed with crab and crawfish stuffing, jalapenos stuffed with chicken sausage and wrapped in bacon, stuffed chickens, chicken sausage, and my personal fave chicken stuffed with cream cheese and spinach and wrapped in bacon. Yes, we did get some more of those. And we ended up finding some rotissere (sp?) chicken and boudin for supper. Boudin is really hard to explain. But it's delish. And this wonderful little store is about 5 minutes away now. The freezer is stocked. And we are happy. ;)

Today is the second anniversary of this. Still hard to believe that this tragedy happend just a couple of hours away. And that some of our good friends were caught in it as their new born baby was recovering from heart surgery in one of the hospitals.
I was so sad for these people as I watched on tv. In the South Louisiana heat. With no food or water. Just waiting. Not knowing if someone was coming. Elderly dying in the street. And let me tell you, things have not gotten much better for a lot of them. A huge amount of people are still living in the fema trailers. Can you imagine living in those trailers, for two years, with kids? Makes me so thankful for what we have. And that we were spared twice that year. From Katrina on one side, and Rita on the other.

Seriously...

Where do they go? The weekends that is. So happy that there's a 3 day weekend coming really soon. We thought we might go somewhere, but decided last night that we're gonna stay home. We have a dining room to paint after all.

So I wanted to share the painting that I did for our room. It's 4 canvases. And I must note that I did do some touching up after taking this pic. I actually saw on the pic spots that I wasn't happy with and couldn't see when I looked at the canvases.

Tell me what you think. I'm all about getting opinions. Eric loves it and I do too, so I guess that's what really matters. We're the ones that have to look at it all the time. LoL. It goes really good with our new bedding and the wall color and what not. After moving our bed to another wall, we had this huge empty one, so I wanted to fill it up.

So anyhoo, that's about it for the weekend. We had lots of rain, ate some boiled crabs (yum), did lots of painting, and it was HOT. We also tried out a new Mexican restaurant that just opened and weren't all that impressed. Way expensive and bad service. Well I'm off to get painting supplies. Had a few more orders this weekend and I'm ready to finish our ongoing room projects. Happy Monday! :)

What's For Dinner?

During our wonderphone call on Sunday, we discussed what we had all eaten for dinner. Although some of hadn't eaten yet. It's pretty crazy that some of us were about to go to bed and others hadn't even eaten supper because it was like, oh, 5:00 their time. In the spirit of my girlah, Jamie, I had every intention of putting up pics of last night's supper. But well, it was so good, it didn't make it to the picture stage.

We have an unbelievably good meat market here called NuNu's. Strange name I know. They just opened one about 5 minutes from our house. Anyways, it was boneless chicken thighs stuffed with cream cheese and spinach, wrapped in bacon. Um, hello? That stuff was so good. I was like, can we go get some more. Eric's like, tonight? I'm like yeah, not to cook tonight, just for the future. Pretty much anything with cream cheese is a winner for me. These NuNu's people are genius I tell you.

Went to the eye doctor yesterday morning. Basically she told me I'm blind. This I know. She also told me that I had an abrasion on my left eye???? Um, ok. It's extremely frustrating when they have you take out your contacts and you cannot see a thing and then she's sitting there talking to me for like 10 minutes and I can't see her face. So annoying. But anyhoo, I was seeing better than 20/20 with my contacts, which is good. Without them I'm probably like 20/600 (if that exsists). In my world, I think it does. Eric says there may be Laser Eye Surgery in the not-so-distant future. I say bring-it-on! :)

HOLLA!

Hehe. Yay for the cheesy pics. Had another round of wonderphone last night with them. I confess, this pic was actually taken the last time we had a wonderphone call. But it still works right? I started last night's and was nervous because I had never actually spoken to D or J. It's like we've all known each other forever though. So wonderful. There was only one that couldn't make it this time. We missed you, mG! Hopefully next time there will be all 7. It makes me giddy just thinking about it. Hello? Hello? :)

So there are no pics of our bedroom like I promised last week. We did get to finish everything we wanted, but I'm in need of a few more things to make it look fuller. And I'm painting a huge 4 canvas spread for our big empty wall, so I decided to wait to post pics until I'm completely finished. Next, we paint the dining room. Ugh. I'm not a huge fan of painting walls. Letters and canvases are good, but no walls.

The kids had a lemonade stand on Saturday. I had some cute little pics, but blogger says no thank you. They each made $6.00. Everyone that came tipped them generously, so that was nice. They were very excited. Happy times.

And happy week to ya!

Blah, blah, blah...

That's how I've been feeling lately. So much going on my head's spinning. Painting like a mad woman, homework out the wazoo, a filthy house, a cranky Payton, mad headaches everyday (from the heat I'm guessing). So that's been the week in a nutshell.

I got so extremely busy with painting it's not even funny. Made some good money though. And spent it all this week on room stuff. Eric and I are decorating/painting the room this weekend. It's one of two rooms left that we haven't touched since we moved in 2 and a half years ago. Maybe some after pics on Monday? We shall see. There's some more stuff I still wanna get, but I've got the basics. The sheets should be getting here tomorrow via ebay. I couldn't see paying $150 from Pottery Barn, so I found a set online for $50. Brand new. Yay for ebay.

Scrapping is pretty much nonexistant. I really need to clean off the dining room table. I have a few layouts I did last week that I need to post, and then that'll probably be it for awhile. Unless a stray CJ happens to find it's way here. ;) Can't wait to get the ball rolling on the CJ's again. And just so you know girlahs, if there are any wonderphone calls this weekend, I'm in!

Happy Friday, folks!

Homework on the First Day...

For real? And not just homework, but 4 worksheets, spelling words and a sight word list to read. This is 1st grade, right? Ohmyword. If he comes home with this much on the first day, what's to come? I'm not sure I want to think about that.

His first day seems to have gone pretty well. He got off the bus at the correct stop. Which is better than the last day of Kindergarten. Can you believe that I got no pics today? I'm gonna have to take one tomorrow and we can just pretend. I'm lucky he made it to school on time, much less taking pics and what not. I realized today that we were on a summertime schedule and 7:00 came way early. We've been sleeping until 8:30 sometimes 9:00 all summer, so it was quite a shocker for me.

Eric and I had our date night on Friday. Sported the new wheels to the restaurant and then he felt like driving around. You know with just the radio, minus the kids in the backseat fighting? So we get about half a mile from the restaurant and a red exclamation point comes up on the panel. That's never good right? So we try to figure out what in the world could be causing it. He was very discouraged. We had the car literally 4 days at this point. So we decide to just go home. We get out of the car and hear a hissing sound, Eric bends down and proceeds to pull a two inch long screw from his tire. The man he bought the car from put these tires on last Friday. Literally one week old tires. He was disgusted. Luckily, we were able to patch it. Sort of put a damper on date night. :(

Happy Monday.

Doing the Happy Friday Dance...

So happy that Friday's here! Date night tonight! Again. Eric's idea. I think it's because he wants to play golf in the morning. LoL. And he wants us to go out sporting the new wheels.

And a special thank you goes out to my friend Brandy who's having an outside bday party on the hottest day of the year. Tomorrow. The high is gonna be 100 so it's gonna feel like 110. I'll be sweatin like nobody's bis. So thanks, girl. Just kidding. ;)

Eric sold the truck today. It's official. I'm a little sad about it. Who knew? It's the truck that we drove out to Houston in to leave for our Honeymoon. The truck that was almost brand new at the time, and 9 years later STILL has some traces of shoe polish from our groomsmen who wrote on parts they shouldn't have. It's the truck that once we got to Houston, we got lost in and were driving the wrong way on a one way street. And were laughing until we cried. Because it was like 2 in the morning on our wedding night and we were so exhausted, we were delirious. So, so long Tacoma. We'll miss ya!

Still unable to upload pictures. But alas, it's Friday, so who really cares? LoL. Happy weekending!

Whole Lotta Nothin'...

Everyday routine. Not exactly blog material. And to add to already boring posts, I'm having issues uploading pics (again).

Painting a lot lately. Trying to get some samples done to put into a friend's shop and just trying to keep up with orders at the same time. Wanting to scrap but sitting down and drawing a blank most days. I did get a few pages done this week. I've updated the ole slideroo to the side there. Made a few changes too, hopefully it's a little easier to view now.

Got on the catwalk again this week. I was like huh? I kinda just stared for a minute in disbelief. It seems like the two layouts that have been picked are some of my least favorites. Well the one picked this week, I liked, but it was a terrible scan. And I totally forgot to crop the bottom grey strip off. Anyhoo, this is it.

Scans are apparently ok with blogger, just so I stay away from the pics. LoL.

Eric got a new car yesterday. (Imagine pic of car here). He was tired of driving to work everyday in his old truck. He's got quite the drive and the truck's not exactly a smooth ride. And I think that he may have sold his truck on the same day. There's someone really interested. He's coming drive it tomorrow. I'm gonna miss it a little. We've had it for 9 years.

That's about it for new news. Happy Wednesday! :)

Shout Out...

to my fly girls. lol. Or girlahs as they are affectionately called. We had a 5 way call last night. So stinking cool. We missed the D and the J. Hopefully next time it will be a 7 way call. Ohmyword. It really wasn't as chaotic as one might think. Eric's like 5 ladies on one line? Yep. And we took turns talking and it was so very cool. Cannot wait to talk again. And really cannot wait to meet all or some in person. Love these girls.

Had Cameron's orientation this morning. His teacher is really nice. And it turns out that I graduated (& was good friends) with her sis in law in education back in 2001. So I know some of her family. We forgot (or didn't know to bring) his school supplies, so I ran home for them. That's when living literally 2 minutes from school comes in handy. It's gonna be a lot more work for him than Kindergarten. I can tell just by looking at the books in the desks. Math workbooks and social living textbooks. He's really excited though. Only students with the last name starting with A-M went this morning and apparently he's the only boy whose last name is from A-M. "I'm the only boy in this class?" he kept asking. I assured him there would be more boys on the first day. We saw several from his class last year, but none of them are in his class this year.

He had a lot of fun on his weekend away. I don't think he was ready to come home yet. I think he would have stayed all week if he could've. Payton had us all to herself all weekend. She even got to sleep in our room on the floor. She was very excited about that.

LoL. I'm just getting back, the kids came running in telling me that there was a wasp in the playroom, so I just spent the last 5 minutes chasing it around the house with a broom. Now that would have made for a good layout. LoL.

A List-Y Kinda Post

*I am finished shopping for school supplies for Cameron. Yessss!!! I had to go to three or four different stores, but I am finished. I also bought his uniform shorts last night. Had to go to Gap Kids and Children's Place to scrape up 3 pairs in his size. Apparently 6 is a popular size amongst little boys. Just need to head to Target for a few shirts.

*It was so sad to see what happend in Minnesota yesterday. Can you imagine driving over a bridge that just buckles underneath you and gives out? Crazy. And so sad. Did you see the bus full of kids that stopped just short of falling in? Wow. Just wow.

*The kiddos slept at my mother-in-law's last night, so it's extremely quiet today except for the kitty who is constantly meowing at the back door waiting for the kids to come play with him. :(

*Cameron is going on his first weekend away without us. I'm a little sad. He's going to Eric's sisters camp in North Louisiana with his best friend (cousin) as he calls him. Eric's parents are going too. He's really excited.

*My scrapbook mojo is MIA. I sat down yesterday at the scrap table with Payton and just stared at a blank page for half an hour. Not good.

*I'm hoping to get in on some of that wonderphone action with my fellow girlahs. Fun, fun. (And Alex, I totally stay up late.)

*It's already August?????? Cameron starts school Monday. How crazy is that?

*I really need to be painting since I'm here in a quiet house. Or cleaning the house.

*Have a happy Thursday!