Back in the Land of Blogging!

Thank you to everyone who continued to stop by even though I have been woefully absent. It's been a long month! My girl was sick 2 more times, poor baby. This is what we get for the solid 3 years of perfect health, I guess.



We started work on my "studio." I use that term lightly. It's really just going to be a big closet, albeit one that will be about 12 feet wide! The dining room has just a trail going through it now. There are construction materials and art supplies (and the requisite toys) spread out over nearly the entire floor. It's been 2 weeks since we ate at the dining room table. For those of you who don't know, the dining room's west wall is where I keep most of my supplies-on two tables, a big book case and a giant toolbox on wheels. In order to build the cabinet/closet, I had to move 2/3 of it to a different location - that we don't actually have in this small house. So I moved it into the corner - where I sit - and to the opposite side of the dining room. During the Row House extraveganza, things seemed to migrate all over the room. I'll post a picture of the aftermath later.


When I wasn't nursing my girl or moving supplies around, I managed to finish my Row House swap items - and then it took me almost 10 days to mail them! (That would be the time that Rexy had the full-on flu) Many thanks to Jeri Aaron at Artful Gathering for her kindness and understanding. Not to mention her heroic hosting of this swap! There are 33 participants putting in 11 Row Houses each! That's mumblemumblecarrythe2mumble.....363 houses! Yikes! That's a heckuva lot of work.


At left are pics of all the Row Houses that I sent out. It's difficult to see the varying degrees of 3D-ness that most of them have on pictures this small. Theoretically, you should be able to click on them and see them larger. I always seem to have trouble making that function work on blogger, though. It seems to be hit or miss. I guess we'll see when I publish! Anyway, the Row Houses were lots of fun to make! I have looked around at a couple blogs and there are people who frame them in groups of 3 to 6 in shadow boxes with dark backgrounds - very cool looking. I'm not going to decide what to do with mine until I receive them. We don't have a spare inch of shelf space so I can't really display them that way...unless I use my new Dremel (! yay! My DH gave me a super Dremel set for Mother's Day!) to put a new one up! I just realized what kind of power I have now; no more waiting for DH to to pull out the power drill and do things for me - which always entails a loooooooooooooooong discussion about the merits of my idea (It's hard being married to an artist, he has his own ideas-how inconvenient!). Of course, if he absolutely hates something I would take it down.


Does the one with the house look familiar? I cannibalized it (well, a picture of it) to make my new blog banner - what do you think? I felt like something more summer-y. I changed the template, too. For the first time in 2+ years! I have always hesitated because not all the templates allow you to have a banner and also because the formatting on the sidebar gets messed up when you change templates. I didn't want to have to move everything around. Well, I bit the bullet and did it anyway. I thought I would be able to do that and also post, but I was sadly mistaken. Between school, therapy, dinner, night-night time, and some TV-watchin' with the spousal unit, it took me all day to finish the switch!




So, during my blog-absence my friend Pam tagged me with this lovely tag.



Here are the usual rules:

1. Link back to the person that tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your entry.

I'm happy to link back to Pam, not only have I known her for (gulp!) 31 years, but she is a lovely person and she is becoming increasingly successful in the altered art/mixed media world. She has been published in 3 Somerset Studio publications and in Cloth, Paper, Scissors - and has more

published pieces coming down the pike! (Including a full length "featured artist" article!) It won't be long before she's writing a book I tell you! Go check her out!

Anyway, enough bragging about my friend, here are the 6 unimportant things about me:

1. My dad raced motorcycles when I was a kid and we spent every Friday night at the track.

2. My grandfather was best friends with a millionaire - also when I was a kid - and he let us take out his 52 foot yacht whenever we wanted to.

3. My first job outside of the family business was as an "Alien Escort" for an airport security company (get your minds out of the gutter, people! Seatac airport didn't have a Transit Lounge for int'l travellers w/out visas back then.).

4. A bonafide "pool hustler" taught me how to play pool. Unfortunately, my poor eyesight precludes any actual execution of the techniques he taught me.

5. When I was in Paris in my early twenties I kept getting mistaken for a Parisien - by other Parisiens! - because I could say "Bonjour" and "Pardon?" with a perfect accent and I never wore pants or jeans like the other Americans. ( I always said "Pardon?" after "Bonjour" because they would begin talking to me in French and I had no idea what they were saying! After they repeated themselves and I was no closer to understanding them - high school French

didn't take me too far - I would have to admit to being from the U.S.)

6. I used to only wear skirts. between the ages of 23 and 35 I only owned one pair of jeans and 3 pairs of leggings. The jeans were gone by 1989 and the 3

pairs of leggings were were a trend thing in the mid 90s. I didn't think I looked good in pants and I didn't buy jeans because I was on such a limited clothes budget that I felt I could only buy clothes that I could also wear to work. Funny, my wardrobe has done a complete 180 degree turnaround since then!


So there you go. Now I have to tag someone else. It's been a long time since a game of tag has gone around, so hopefully the tagees will have some fun with it. I have tagged people that I always like to know more about:





1. JanThomasen at the Polka Dot Barn
2. Altered Kat(Tarra) of Great Musings
3. Gina Smith at Lilly's of London-ish

4. Suzan Buckner of The Thrifty Collage Artist

5. Izabella of Izabella's Blue

6. Jodie Barone of Wild Vines







It's good to be back in Blogland! I'll try to get back to posting regularly. My DH has been active on the Vintage Bicycle boards lately

and we've been competing for computer time. (another reason it has taken me 2 1/2 days to get a post up) I figure that's a good thing, like many of us I get too caught up in the computer and neglect my art.

Happy Spring everyone!


xoxo
Laurie