explorer destroyer

Google is paying $1.00 for every user who switches over from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, to the far superior Firefox browser I wonder why they're doing that. They don't own Firefox.

gocco holiday card

Here's what I ended up with. I may make extra to use as my own holiday cards, and maybe a few sets to sell on etsy? I hope that the company I made them for likes them and is okay with the very handmade look of the gocco printing.

gocco difficulty

Sheesh. Sometimes the gocco is super frustrating!

I'm supposed to be making 200 holiday cards for Scott's company. The image that they want is this one.



I'm making the image a little more simple, and I'm making the guy look happier, but it's not looking so good. And I've used three screens. Dang. I need to get this out today.

learn out loud

Free audio and video lectures and speeches and other educational things are available on LearnOutLoud.com. I just downloaded something, but haven't listened yet, so I can't say if it's really great, but it's free!

hello

A few things:

Firefox 1.5 is out, so go and download it!

I got a nice commission for a painting today. (Hi Linda, if you're reading this!)

I've been xmas shopping a lot. Scott is probably going to be getting too many gifts this year.

Did any of you ever read ElfQuest? I remember reading the heck out of that comic book series when I was around 12, and I'm thinking of getting it for Sylvan for a present. I remember the series as being exciting and addictive. Any thoughts?

Oh, and I've been thinking about holiday traditions a lot lately as well. I want to establish some new ones this year. The one that I have from my family is Christmas Eve fondue, and I still do that every year. In my family growing up, it worked like this...my dad would take us kids to see a movie in the afternoon, giving my mom some last minute time to herseslf, and then we'd come home and eat a fondue feast and then we'd each open one gift.

I do the fondue and the one gift, but not the movie, and I usually have other people over besides the nuclear family, which makes it more fun.

For a while, when I was little I remember my dad would read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" to us for several nights in a row. I want to do something like that I think, but maybe with a different book. Any suggestions?

quiet day

I took today mostly to sit and think, and also to run errands. Pretty much I took some down time. I packed a little, did some xmas shopping, took a huge bag of coins to the coinstar machine (2 bags actually), watched that episode of Foyle's war that I'd been meaning to get to, got groceries for the week.

It's cold tonight, and rainy. I'm waiting for my kids to come home.

blue blue electric blue

We spent a long while in the new house yesterday. All of my trepidation (did I tell you that I had trepidation?) has turned to excitement! It just feels good to be there, it's a great place. The landlady has given us keys and told us that we can visit whenever, and move a few boxes in, and paint the rooms that we have permission to paint. Yesterday we painted the kids' room, and it was great. Scott's parents came to help, and brought us a delicious picnic lunch of homemade tortellini soup and coffee and brownies. Scott's mom really has the picnic lunch thing down! She comes prepared.

It was nice to have them there helping, and the work went quickly.

The kids chose a really pretty medium blue color and it looks fantastic. I can't wait for them to see it!

Today it's overcast and it looks like rain, and I have lots of work to do. Ebay packages to ship, xmas cards to design, packing to do! I'd like to list the rest of my t-shirts on etsy this week. I'll let you guys know when I do that, I only have a few left.

good gravy!

I hurt myself with food and wine last night. I don't know what came over me! I think that it was the goodness of the garlic mashed potatoes and the crazy spicy turkey that Aaron made from a recipe out of Esquire magazine. It was rubbed with a blend of coffee and pepper and cloves and it made it taste really different and good, plus it made an amazing gravy. Gravy is my Thanksgiving specialty, I love to be the one to cook the gravy. And we didn't eat until so late, we had all day to sit around and drink wine.

Sylvan beat our friend Brian who is normally the champion, at their private competitive eating championship. When we left, Brian was passed out drooling in a chair, and Sylvan was looking for more pie.

Ah, the holidays!

Today we celebrate buy nothing day, which should be easy. We'll stay home packing boxes and listening to books on tape. It's grey outside and raining steadily.

Hope your holiday was lovely!

happy thanksgiving!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! The kids and I are going to a feast at their aunt and uncle's house. I am so glad to be going there. I miss the big family dinners, and I miss having the kids with me on holidays. And this year, I only have to cook a few things. The homemade cranberry sauce, and the stuffing.

I am thankful for so much, this has been an amazing year, and it will soon be even better!

more real

The move is becoming more and more real to me. Scott and I drove all around town yesterday looking at other houses, double checking to see if we have made the right decision by choosing this particular house. It was a really good thing to do, everything else that we saw looked terrible. There was only one other that we're going to check out.

We're both making little mental plans of how to use the space and how to decorate it, and we're both working hard at paring down our belongings and packing them up.

Today I'm working on holiday cards, and ebay.

The holidays are coming up so quickly! Ack!

art news

I took down my show yesterday. I'm so glad it's over, but now I want to do it again! I got a nice mailing list together, and a possible commission, and a possible freelance illustration job for a cool magazine! I had one other group show opportunity, but I couldn't meet the deadline.

Now I need a website for my artwork. I've read that you are just supposed to use your name.com, but my name is already taken! That surprised me. It's an illustrator who lives in Brooklyn! Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on that? I really could use some!

I haven't painted in a month now, and it's starting to feel funny. I'd better restock my supplies and do a thing or two for xmas gifts.

weekend clutter reduction report

It was a busy weekend! I took several carloads of things to the goodwill, and a pickup truck worth of things to the dump. I have the kids' rooms pretty much ready to go, and I've hired some guys to come and help me today with the insane Cecil Bruner (sp?) rose hedge that is entirely out of control. My yard looks crummy and all of my tools are broken! No lawnmower, no weed whacker thing, and winter is the grass growing season here because in the summer we get no rain. My new house has no grass, so I won't be needing those things!

Scott and I are both swinging wildly between joy and panic. I feel like living together at this point is the right thing and I couldn't be happier about that, but sometimes I feel like the house is too expensive for what it is. And then I feel like I love the house and it will be great, and then I freak out...

jars of money

You know those coinstar machines, where you dump in your jar of coins and can get cash when you don't have enough money for food or bills? I try not to use them, because I hate to give over 9% of my precious jar of coins, but now they have this thing going on, I don't know if it's just for the holiday season, but they waive the 9% fee if you have the coins turned magically into an amazon.com gift certificate. I thought that might be helpful info. You could buy your xmas gifts with your spare change and that would be great!

!!!

We got the house. We are going to be moving in December! Yay! Eek! Yay!

We are just going to have to really work hard, and get rid of lots and lots of stuff.

I'm so excited about this move. We'll have such a nice home and we get to live with Scott!

one carload to the goodwill yesterday, one today!

tossy turny

I have been waking up before 6 a.m. most mornings since I went to see the house. I fall asleep thinking about it, and I wake up thinking about it. Part of it is pleasant daydreaming about how we would set it up with our things. How the kids would play happily on the street with all of the other kids. The clean, well organized and inspiring studio that I would have. Relaxing in the hot tub at the end of the day. And more than all of that, about Scott living there with us, and becoming part of our family. Cooking together, going for bike rides, talking, doing projects. Seeing him 7 nights each week instead of a measly 2 nights. It's making my head spin.

And then there's the more panic inducing part. The 1800/month rent. The huge project of moving out of this house in one month! You guys who know me know that that will be an ordeal. And this house has so much stuff that needs fixing before I go. The broken sink pipe mostly (which I guess is their responsibility, since it just snapped off for no apparent reason). And all of the unauthorized painting that I've done. Every room except for the kitchen and Sylvan's room has been painted. I've been here for about 6 years.

Can I really manage moving while still earning an income, parenting two kids, preparing for the mad holiday rush, (z's birthday,thanksgiving,disneyland trip,moving, and xmas all in quick succession)?

yesterday's clutter reduction report : 2 bags of clothes and shoes to goodwill, one bag of junk from bathroom tossed.

I think I'll need to borrow a truck this week to take some stuff to the dump.

Silk Screened Poster For Sale

This is my three colored silkscreened poster called "Through Rain". Designed by me, and handprinted by Jayson Taylor of Subculture Industries The posters measure 14" x 20.5" and are signed and numbered by me. They are great for framing. The price is only $12.00 and $3.85 for shipping!

podcasting and the holidays

I've been listening to and watching a lot of podcasts lately. My most favorite one so far is called diggnation. I especially like the video (they do both video and audio). It's super funny. It's two guys who sit on a couch with their laptops on their lap and they drink beer and talk about technology news from digg.com. It's better than it sounds...really! (wait a minute...except for the part in the current episode where they talk about rufies).

Also, I am trying to put together an animation setup for my kids as their xmas gift. My son used to make amazing little short stop action animated movies, with legos and clay and little toys. They were so cool. But then he had computer problems and then his camera died, and somehow almost all of his movies were wiped away. Dang!

My daughter started to get into it as well.

So for the holidays this year, I want to get them a table, a storage thing for their clay and figures and props, lighting, a tripod, a backdrop thing, I may be able to have them use my old digital camera. And then, I want to get a website or podcast going for them, so people can see their neat movies.

blog ideas

Ideas that I have for other blogs (some would make fun collaborative projects if anyone is interested)

Photoblog with Scott (in the works)
Thrift blog
Parenting and homeschooling blog
House Idea blog ( I've been wanting to do this for a long time...photos of people's houses, real people with low to medium incomes who have done creative things with their houses or made weird spaces work, and ideas for having a cool house on the cheap). I'd need help with this one for sure, but it would be lots of fun.
Resource blog which would be sort of a clearinghouse of resources for artists and stuff.

In other news...I'm taking the kids and Scott to see the house this evening. This is very exciting. It's really taking me by surprise, this moving urge. Sometimes I really love my current house, but this one is just so much better! I feel like I would be moving into a great community for my kids, and I would have a studio and possibly other wonderful things that would greatly enhance my life.

I can't stop thinking about this house.

less stuff= more better

In contemplating my possible upcoming move, I have come (yet again) to the conclusion that I have waaaaay too much crap. The kids too. We have a whole lot of stuff, and much of it is not necessary.

I think I'll use this blog as a motivational device and post about how much stuff I shed. (I'll keep up the regular posts too). Flylady does those "super fling boogie" things once or twice a year and has everyone post their daily poundage of clutter that moves out of your life. I'll try to do something similar, although I doubt I'll bother to weigh it all.

Here's a good little article about decluttering from 43folders.

If there is one thing I have learned from my frequent thrifting, it is that there is no need to hold on to something "just in case". There is always another one out there, for cheap.

short notice....great show

If you can, you should come out tonight to "Post No Bills" at A Street Gallery in Santa Rosa 5:30-8:00 p.m. I took some of my posters by there this afternoon (Jayson Taylor printed them for me, and kindly included them in this show), and the show looks great! Lots of really intriguing graphics and classic punk rock posters , and just cool stuff.

Here is the Bohemian's write up of it:

New poster show hails silk-screened street art

Much like celebrity impersonation or high school arson, flyering is probably too much of a niche subject to warrant an official Flyering 101 workshop. But anyone who tacks up flyers for more than a couple years learns a few basic things while out on the town with a Kinko's bag and an Arrow T-50 stapler. Know your street poles--metal or wood? Be sensible and avoid spots where your flyers will get torn down. Be respectful and never cover up another flyer for a show that hasn't happened yet. And never, ever fuck with the silk-screens.

Silk-screened flyers are a rare labor of love on city street poles. Most flyers are hastily photocopied, thrown-together affairs, made to be forgotten as soon as the event is over. Silk-screened flyers, however, require time, precision, noxious fumes and an artistic dedication. Some are remembered; many inevitably fall victim to rainfall and exhaust fumes.

This weekend, the silk-screens receive their due respect with "Post No Bills," a museum-worthy collection of silk-screened posters by tattoo artists Joe Leonard and Jared Powell, musicians Josh Staples and Fury, and workaholic samaritan Jayson Taylor, local artists who have been perfecting the medium for several years. This modern design gang takes color separations to new levels, most recently experimenting with copper and vinyl, but flyers are the standby, and "Post No Bills" posts plenty. (Gabe Meline)

day of the dead

My boyfriend takes beautiful photos.

You may recognize these skeletons, in the foreground, it's Mati, and in the background, is Laurel. Their makeup looks amazing. I wish that I could have been there!

Please take a look at his photos from this week's Day of the Dead festivities in San Francisco.

I'm in love with a house.....

Oh man. I've been hit hard. Love of the domestic kind.

It's really expensive though, so I would have to figure something out, but take a look at my pictures! I'd recommend looking through the set, instead of doing the slide show, because I wrote little descriptions for each one.

songs about ghosts

I'm working on a mix-cd for an exchange, and it's supposed to be on a theme. That's all she said. She gave the examples of train songs, sleighbells, or yummy food songs.

My current working idea is songs about ghosts. Other ideas have been :royalty, the five senses, sheesh I don't know.

I had to remove that link, I just read that they said please no direct linking

Good sources of free music I have come across in this endeavor:
amazon.com
ready rock moe rex has interesting stuff and it's punctuated by nice artwork and photos
3hive.com
and there's epitonic

There are many more as well. I like the mp3 blogs that write a bit about the music and link to the songs.

Anyway, thoughts, ideas and suggestions are welcome!

p.s. I just thought that I should tell you that I love Mike Doughty. His voice makes my heart kind of hurt in a pleasant way. (and amazon has a free mp3 for you)

studio

I've decided that I need a studio. Doing encaustics on the table that we are supposed to eat dinner on adds an element of chaos to our house that I just don't need! I'd like a dual purpose space I think, with room for painting, and for doing ebay (storing inventory, taking photos, and shipping). The problem is that the only space I have is my shed/garage thing that contains what the kids and I call "the black widow pit", which is not that creative a name for it, because it's literally a 5 foot deep pit in the floor that is crawling with black widow spiders. It has a heavy wooden lid over it though, so you can walk on it. Plus it has no electricity and no light.

Maybe I can make it work anyway. I'll have to get out my copy of this Japanese book about the studios of female artists in Paris and look through it again for some inspiration (although none of these look like they had to contend with a black widow pit).