This week has been so busy, I've had (and still have) an endless to-do list! I've been finishing off a custom painting, and organising/packing for our trek. Ok so it doesn't sound like that much when I write it like in as few words as that, but trust me.. it's been hectic! I didn't miss any of my daily photos, but some of my efforts were very last minute ('quick, it's almost midnight – what can I take a photo of!"), and I'm not that impressed with the results but that's all part of it! I'm sure I'll look back on these photos and remember just how busy I was! I'm not sure when I'll be able to put together a Photo A Day post again, not for a few weeks at least. I will posting photos and updates of our adventure to my Facebook page when I can access it!
I've been trying to find the time between painting and packing (4 sleeps!) to show you my new 'uniform'! Like it? I've been wanting a new painting apron for ages, so I found this pattern, collected some fabric scraps and got my mum onto the job while she was here over Easter. My mum has some skills with a sewing machine (shame they're not hereditary), and she had me dancing around in these colourful feathers in no time! It's currently my favourite outfit – the only thing is, I can't actually bring myself to wear it while I'm painting!
Why hello there! Just bringing you a quick summary of my week in pictures again! The further on in the year we get, the more I'm glad I began (and continued) this Photo A Day Challenge. The best thing is being able to look back through the photos, and remember each day for what it was. There have been a lot of good days, but there were a few that could have been better.. they weren't all rainbows and butterflies. But even looking back on those less than perfect days, I'm glad that there was always a moment to appreciate and a small joy to be found – sometimes in the simplest of things.
The weeks are flying by lately, and now it's APRIL.. and there's just over 2 weeks until we're off to Nepal!! All year I've been looking forward to getting the list for the April Photo A Day Challenge, so I could see what I'd be taking photos of while we're trekking. When I saw the list I noticed straight away that the word for Day 21 (the day that will be spent either in airports or on a plane), is 'Fire'. I'm good with it if we have to skip that day, just sayin'.
I am about to start on one last custom painting today, and this will be the last custom order I'll be doing until after my exhibition in September! I'm pretty sure that the next couple of weeks are going to fly by in a blur of painting and packing, and we'll be in Kathmandu before we know it! I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be able to squeeze in but I do have a few exciting bits and pieces to share so stay tuned!
Last week was a very busy, but productive week (once I got over my sniffles and 'poor me' syndrome). Between us (he did all the furniture assembly!) we put together 2 new coffee tables, a bookshelf, filing drawers, a desk and a laundry cupboard. We sorted, reorganized and cleaned quite a few rooms. We listed (and sold) all of the old furniture, took 3 huge bags to the op shop, 2 loads of cardboard/boxes and rubbish to be burnt. We pulled apart the queen bed from our guest room and took the ugly green frame away to be powder coated white. We painted the timber posts and built another king single bed. We shopped for bedding, towels, mattresses and together we pulled together a mini house makeover all before my family arrived on Monday night! Nothing like the knowledge that visitors are on the way to get stuff done!
He hates shopping. And I mean really, really, really hates shopping. He owns about 5 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of shoes and until recently not enough underwear to get through a week without me needing to put on a load of washing to avoid a commando situation. His idea of shopping involves me going into a shop (on my own, while he gets in a few holes of golf), taking a photo of required clothing, shoes, belt and awaiting his approval – or in most cases, disapproval.
Frustrating, yes. And should his occasional misfortune (or lack of appropriate attire) mean that he is actually required to accompany me on a shopping trip, he makes no secret of the fact that his enjoyment is minimal. The endless complaints, and the deep exhaustive sighs as he begrudgingly drags his feet along behind me kind of gives it away though. And kind of makes me want to lock him in a dressing room.
So, you can imagine my apprehension at suggesting we needed to do a day trip to Ikea. A whole day of shopping, imagine that! One of my goals this year was to sort our house out – room by room, tidy it up and get some organisation going on. I thought what better place to start than a trip to Ikea? Given that the closet Ikea store is a 2 hour drive away, and I knew that there would be a couple of big items of furniture on the list, I decided that his presence (and the presence of his ute) was necessary. I also had this idea that a one stop shop would be almost appealing to him if I pitched it the right way.
I am not methodical, I don't stick to plans, don't like following instructions and prefer just to let things fall into place. I love browsing, wandering about just 'looking', taking my time going off here and there, and I'm always the first to suggest the scenic route on any road trip. Over the years, he has come to be very aware of my easily distracted nature and a detailed itinerary is now a pre-requisite of any trip, and a shopping trip is definitely no exception.
So last week I spent hours and hours going through the Ikea catalogue with sticky notes and browsing online to try and narrow 26,000 square meters of Ikea store onto an A4 page. I measured our house, copied the pictures, prices and measurements off the website onto pages organized by room and I'm pretty sure that on Saturday morning (clipboard tucked under my arm), I was the most organized person to ever walk through the doors of Ikea.
It was in the desk section that things started falling apart. Despite my meticulous planning, researching and measuring it turned out that the measurements given on the website for a particular corner desk combination were incorrect. Did not see that coming. So we spent 2 hours sitting across from each other at the dodgy desk, trying to come up with a combination that would fit into my studio, and in the end we decided that we didn't want to pay $600 for something that didn't quite fit and had to walk away. By walk away, I mean walk straight through into the bedding department where unfortunately our luck was no better. Did I mention that the studio desk and the bed were the 2 main items of furniture that we needed?
In total we spent 8 hours in Ikea, this fact I have been reminded of numerous times since. The thing is, our troubles didn't even stop upon our return home. Self assembly couldn't just be straight forward could it? We've only assembled 3 of about 10 items, and so far we've had the base of a drawer missing from the box (their fault), and a drawer belonging to the shelf unit below missing altogether (our fault).
Eventually we got this shelf unit assembled and into my studio (minus 1 drawer), and having managed to catch myself some sort of cold/flu, (Ikea trip could be to blame for this too) I spent the whole day yesterday sitting on the floor somewhat lethargically trying to get some organisation happening. For a while there I was actually physically trapped in the room by piles of chaos, and it got to the point where I'd pulled so much stuff apart I wasn't sure it was all going to go back together! But I got there in the end, I got to keep my magazines (a whole new story).. and now to find a desk!
Another week in pictures! So many highlights last week – that gluten free Chocolate Raspberry Gateau (not even going to pretend to be modest about that one, it was DELICIOUS!), finishing a painting, a trip to Ikea (more about that later).. and our hiking boots arriving (and fitting)!
It's taken me a long time to get this blog post together and I'm sorry if you've been popping over from Facebook checking for it! I've been promising some better quality photos here than the ones I've been posting on Facebook, but it isn't just straightforward! The actual series of paintings is quite large – each one measures 18 x 24 inches, so it's hard to see much of the detail at all from behind a computer screen!
I'm a bit unsure of exactly what to post here because all artists know better than to post high resolution images of their artwork out here where some sneaky person can copy them and make some sales of their own! This painting is a one off custom painting for a little girl's room, there won't even be any official reproductions done and I'd hate for there to be some 'unofficial' ones made! I know watermarks can easily be edited out too, but it's a good start! So if you click on the image, and then click again (and possibly a third time!) you should be able to see it a bit larger hopefully. About to go and test that theory myself!
