Little L seems to fall asleep in her high chair very easily. When K was her age I can’t remember her doing this more than once but L has done it now about four or five times. Twice she has actually fallen asleep with her head back and mouth open! Didn’t get photos of those as the first time we thought something was wrong and rushed over, second time was at her Grandparents house and they did the same thing, rushed over.

This was March 10 this year:

Then April 22:

and then this morning:

Just too cute! She transferred to her bed ok but didn’t last long. Each time she does this its well before her bed time, usually about 2-3 hours so theres no way of knowing that she will do it. One minute she’s awake and then she’s dozing. Sweet bubby.

Last weekend we packed up the car and drove off to Buntine to visit our friends Sarah and Duncan. Buntine is about three hours drive from where we live for a non kids family and about five hours for one with kids. More toilet stops, more rest stops, more sight seeing stops and more food stops with kids (oh and about three times the luggage). I was meant to be teaching a polymer clay class last Saturday morning at our local community hall but due to low numbers the class got canceled. This actually worked out well for us as it meant we could leave a day earlier for our visit.

The drive up took us about five hours as I said and wasn’t too bad. Both girls seemed ok and didn’t complain. K was extra excited to go to the farm and thought we’d arrived every time we stopped.

Even though it was a hassle packing up so much and driving that far for a two day visit I think it was worth it. It was nice to see Sarah and Duncan and I’m pretty sure they appreciated visitors. It was good for the girls, especially K to see a bit of our huge state and visit a real farm. It was good for the family to get out of the house for a tiny bit. I have a love-hate relationship with traveling with kids. I love to see their excitement but I hate the disruption and how much stuff I have to take at this point. We were going to the farm so that Michael could preach at the Dalwallinu Baptist church as well as share about SIM so half our luggage was also SIM display stuff. Our car could not have been more loaded up I think.

I got some gorgeous shots of the lovely Aussie country side so here they are. Enjoy and I hope it makes you want to come and visit, maybe we could promise a trip to visit Sarah and Duncan so you can enjoy this scenery in person;

Sarah and Maya

Kangaroos jumping across the road

Duncan with L

Duncan and Sarah (and Maya)

The drive back was a little more stressful in that K was very tired and didn’t snooze in the car until 20 mins before we arrived home. I was tired too but I still think it was a good trip. I don’t think we could do it too often though because it did take a few days to recover afterwards! Thanks for having us Sarah and Duncan, we appreciated your hospitality.

Last Friday my wonderful in laws took the girls again for the whole day. I needed to pack and get ready for a trip to the country but I did manage to squeeze in a couple of hours of painting. Continuing on with my butterfly inspiration, this time I zoned right in on the wing and painted just that. I’m not sure if this is finished yet but this is it for now.

The inspiration

I masked off most of it so I could focus on this part of the wing

Drew on a rough guide

And then started to paint:

Finished (for now)

Next time I might zone in even closer. I only have tiny canvases to use this week so they will have to do. My wonderful in laws are taking the girls again this week (last time on a weekday for a long time) so I might do a few more. I’m tossing up between that and sewing something…decisions decisions!

My all time favourite singer is Keith Green and I love to paint to his music (more coming later on that). This is not news to those who know me well. Keith was an amazing person who died in 1982 at the young age of 28 (or 27, can’t remember). He had only been a Christian for around 8 years I think at the time and in that time he wrote and sang a lot of amazing songs. He was very 1970s and he looked the part too.

His music spoke to the average person and was not ‘designed’ to make money or be popular. Many of his words are hard hitting but at the same time his love and compassion for his fellow human being draws you to him as he sings. One of his songs that always makes me stop and think is this one. I know that a lot of people who read my blog will find this a bit ‘too religious’ but feel free to listen and hear his passion. The lyrics are below. This was recorded about two months before he died tragically in a plane crash with two of his young children:

Soften Your Heart

So many times I’ve tried to tell you,
But I don’t think you’ve been listening.
There’s nothing I wanna try and sell you,
Cause his love is free.

You’ll never die, you’ll never die, you’ll live forever,
You’ll never die!

I have been having a great ol’ time making polymer clay canes lately. For the last few nights I’ve been busy using up scrap clay and making these. I’ll probably turn them into beads at some stage but for now its nice to have a collection going. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

My wonderful parents in law took the girls for a whole day last week and this gave me time to get out my paintbrushes once again. Haven’t done that in years! I drew on my photos from our trip to the museum the other week and painted a butterfly. Not sure what sort of butterfly this is but they were all so amazing. I reckon God just got a bit carried away when he made butterflies. He started with the ordinary ones and then I’m sure he wanted to see how interesting he could make them! There is such an array of colours and styles when it comes to the butterfly wing and I want to do a series of these. This shows you the process that I took to paint the butterfly….just think, God just had to blink and the butterfly was created! Amazing!

I tried to capture this as a moving butterfly, not the dead, stiff one that was behind the glass at the museum.

Top right was my choice

shocking hair I know!




Finished

Last week I did a little more stamp carving. This one is larger than the other two, around 12cm ’square’. I’m not sure whether I like this one or not, it looks a bit like the wheel from a pirate ship to me. I can see it being used in a number of ways though. As with the other carvings, this started in my moleskine as a sketch:

Saturday morning Michael had a meeting so I loaded up the pram and took the girls to the park. Was a nice crisp winter’s day, not wet and not too cold. I took my camera along with the idea of collecting a few research shots for a series of paintings I’d like to do one day and ended up taking a few ‘Andy Goldsworthy-esque’ photos. If you are not familiar with his work then take a few moments to do a google search or click on his name there. He basically goes into a natural area (for the most part), collects up natural objects that are found in that space (leaves, rocks, sticks, snow) and creates beautiful artwork which he then leaves behind after taking a lot of photos. I really love his work, he has an amazing way of making something out of what is already there.

So, anyway, my little trip to the park brought forth this little tribute using…..honkey nuts! Here it is:

For those unfamiliar with honkey nuts, they are usually brown when we find them on the ground as they drop off the Eucalyptus tree but these ones must have been pulled off by birds as they are obviously still ‘ripe’. I just couldn’t resist the bright colours of these in amongst all that brown. This shot has not been adjusted, this is the naturally bright colour as I found it:

We walk past these mini paintings created by God each day and rarely do we stop and look at how interesting or amazing they are. Inspirational!

Of course K couldn’t help but come over and see what I was doing:

and in true Andy Goldsworthy style I left them right where I found them:

Well, sort of, I left them in the park but on the wall for someone else to take time to notice.

The other night we had a big hail fall right when we were putting K to bed. We never get snow here in Perth so to see our lawn covered in hail like this was strange. This is the scene we saw when we went out side during the hailstorm:

K was amazed, she picked it up and popped the ice in her mouth right away. I am amazed myself at how God created something like hail so that ice falls from the sky, how creative!

After being inspired by Jacquie and Lotta I sat down yesterday (as posted below) and wrote out an action plan for my shop(s). I thought I would try to keep track on here and write out a list of action points. There are five sections including Advertising, Improvement, Business, Physical Work and Selling. I have broken this up into 20 day lots so here are the first 20 days:

10 – 29 June
A - deliver printed pamphlets, improve pamphlets before printing out more.
I – Run an artwork poll and choose artwork to put in new shop.
B - Decide on which markets to attend, design a new banner and logo
PW - Sort out our scanner (find cable or a solution)
S - Clear stock

I have to be reasonably flexible and general with my 20 day goals because its inevitable that there will be interruptions. There will be a few constants such as pamphlet delivery and listing in my shops but the aim is basically to improve my overall appearance, quality and set up my second shop. September 17th marks the end of 100 days and we will actually be over east at that time so really I have a smidge less than 100 days. Here’s hoping I can stick to it.