My "Studio" Desk January 2025

 I think I may have shared a similar photo a while back, but this is the reason I do whatever art/craft I'm working on from my recliner and my lap now! Believe it or not there is another thick layer of stuff under this one. This is our dining room table, which we don't use because we like to eat in front of the TV.

I actually cleaned it completely off about 5-6 years ago and put everything in boxes to sort and organize. That was when I was actually using it for art stuff. I started sorting "like" things into stacks on the empty table until I got a creative itch and laid a large drawing board on top of the piles for a tilted and shaky place to work. Unfortunately, I have continued to pile stuff on top of the table AND the drawing board until there's a very tiny space to work, and I have to struggle to keep it from sliding off the board. You can imagine!

Also, it's a small dining room, which looks exactly like this, except for a narrow path into the room and around one side of the table. The boxes are still waiting to be emptied and sorted, and now my back/hip and fatigue won't let me do much physically.

I thought the shot and physical therapy, which I'm doing at home now, would help, and it has a little, but I still have trouble walking/standing more than a few minutes. Plus, I can't make up my mind how to organize things and where to put them.

It may sound like excuses, and maybe it is a little, but the whole house has gotten overwhelming and intimidating to the point I don't know where/how to start. It's not like hoarders on TV, but houses get in a mess fast when you're old and not able to keep them up.

I am blessed and grateful for my home though. It has served us well for over fifty years, and until I can figure something else out, I will happily create what I can from my comfy rocker/recliner, even if I can't find anything without digging through boxes!

Thanks for visiting! Take care and create something fun today! 

Day 5-10 Sketches 2025

 Sketches for days five through ten. So far, so good! I've only missed one day, when we had to go out of town for a med refill, my b12 shot, and some groceries ahead of the snow headed our way.

So far I've been sketching things I can see from my recliner, while holding my sketchbook in one hand and sketching with the other, using my favorite Zig Writer bullet marker. The last one is from an original photo on my computer while holding the computer on my lap and trying to balance my sketchbook while sketching. Not the ideal situation!

I wound up overlapping these three days instead of doing a sketch to a page. They are my favorite coffee cup, a decorative bird cage gifted to me by my sister-in-law, and a jade plant in a pale turquoise crackled ceramic pot.

I meant to overlap a third sketch with this wind chime and coffee cup, but it didn't turn out that way.

Today's sketch is from an original photo on my computer of a garden figurine also gifted to me by my sister-in-law, who is no longer with us. 

Just trying to re-establish the habit of daily sketching, even if it's just five or ten minutes. It helps!

January 10 Snow on Rabbit Hop

Some photos of the first snow in downtown Rabbit Hop this year, made from our front porch and back stoop. It's no longer safe for me to get out in the snow to make photos because of my back/hip problems. Oh, how I wish I could go make pictures out around the old home place! 

This is a garden figurine that my only sister-in-law gave me many many moons ago. It sits on an old treadle sewing machine base table on our front porch and is a constant reminder of the sis who gave her to me, but is no longer with us. If you look closely you can see the front yard snow reflected in the metal ball!

God's handiwork cannot be duplicated! Gorgeous but dangerous! Be careful out there if you are in these wintery conditions! Stay in and read or create something!

Day 3 and 4 Sketches

 Sketches from the 3rd and 4th. Haven't done any today...yet! 

Day 3: All are in my Canson sketchbook with a Zig Writer marker except the top lamb, which is with a Stablio pencil. The lamb is a large ceramic figurene that I bought many many years ago from a lovely woman, who had a shop where she sold her ceramic creations. I still love it. I tried sketching it from across the room four times.

 Day 4: The angel is a small ceramic piece that some dear friends gave me when my dad died in 2004. Still love her too! The lamb and the angel both sit on our fireplace mantle, which is in shadow most of the time. Just a doodle across the bottom of the page.

Also day 4: I paused the TV to attempt sketching a cowboy in an old black and white movie. I rarely try to sketch men, but he looked interesting.

That's it for now! We've had company and it's storming now, so I may not get a sketch done today, but oh, well. Maybe tomorrow!

Have a great week and let's practice gratitude! Stay creative in whatever you're doing!

PS: I did get a sketch done, but it's too late to scan and post it, so I'll include it in the next post!

First Doodle Art of 2025

 Nothing much, but these are my first two creative endeavors for the new year. I'm trying to get back into the groove of daily sketching/painting/creating something, anything to stay in practice, because, trust me, it will get away from you if you don't practice it. It will come back to you with even more practice. That's the good news!

First day of 2025, a neurological sketch in my 7x10" WN sketchbook using my Zig Writer bullet marker, which I may add color to later.

Day two, a quirky doodle sketch with a Zig Writer bullet marker, Kuretake watercolors, a pink Posca paint pen, and blue and yellow colored pencils in my 7x10" Canson sketchbook. This cute bear image emerged from a bunch of random lines on the page! Fun stuff!

That's it so far!

Still undecided as to whether I'm going to continue blogging and sharing or not, or even staying on social media. We'll see...

Hope you are all off to a good start in the new year, and may we all keep up our creative pursuits, whatever they may be! 

DOODLE GIRLS CALENDAR for 2025

 So, I wasn't going to publish a calendar this year to gift to a few family/friends, because not only has postage gone up, but so did the calendars. Plus, I've done very little painting this year, just mostly sketches and doodles. 

However, Vistaprint sent me an email flash sale where I could buy one calendar and get two free, plus free shipping, so I hurriedly  put together a calendar of my doodle girls, which I love and hope the recipients do too, and published the fifteen I needed. 

I kept one for myself, gave my two best friends one each, of course, mailed one to my last living aunt, who I'm very close to, and mailed three more to special cousin friends to both hubby and me. The other eight will be gifted to our niece, nephew, and their six children/spouses, along with other gifts, who all have their own homes now. 

We have no children, and they are kind enough to still invite us to gatherings, despite their own parents, hubby's sister and her husband, no longer being with us. I have no siblings, and my parents are also gone, so they are our family and we represent the old folks now. They are all such a blessing to us, and we are so proud of them!

Following is the calendar I came up with in a hurry for next year. I love mine, and the ones who have already received theirs said they love theirs too, so it's all good!

Front Cover

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

                                                                             October

November

                                                                              December

                                                                            Back Cover

Vistaprint did a good job again, and I'm pleased again. I hope the ones I gifted to will enjoy theirs all year, and we'll see if I do enough art this coming year to make a better one next year. I'll worry about that next December if I'm still here!

As a final act on this last day I ordered a printed version of my blog for the year. Since 2005 I have used the publisher "Blog2Print" to print my blog every year, but they closed shop this year, so I found, and am trying out "PixxiBook" for this year's blog posts. I can't say that I really liked the layout, but we'll see how I like it when I get it in about two weeks.

Thank you for your support by visiting and looking at my feeble attempts at creativity. You are an encouragement to me!

I hope you all are very blessed in the coming year, and that it's a better year for all of us.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025!

End of Year Misc Post

 I hope you all had a good Christmas! We did! We had our meal and gift exchange the Saturday before Christmas, actually, with our only niece and nephew and their families. We don't get to see them often, but it's fun when we do. Love them all very much and missed the great-niece, her hubby, and little girl, who couldn't be there that day.

The shirts were a gift from the great-niece, who hosted our gathering, and they say "The Compound, est 1959". She calls the area where they live that, because my in-laws bought the land and moved there then and finished raising hubby and his sister. Hubby's sister moved into a second house on the property when she married and continued to live there until her death. Both her children built houses on the same acreage and raised their children, part of whom have also built homes there as they got married. 

Hubby left there when he got drafted in the sixties and joined the air force for four years. Then he married me, and we bought a trailer and set it up about twenty miles away, near my parents, which we lived in for four years, then we built a house, which is where we've been for almost fifty-five years.

We are still very much a part of the compound though and spent a lot of time there until my father-in-law died in 2018 lacking one month of being ninty-four years old. We don't see the kids much, because they all work and lead very busy lives, which we understand, because that used to be us. We know we can count on each other to be there if needed though! :)

Blessed to be together one more year! Besides our niece and nephew, we have four gr-nephews, two gr-nieces, and two gr-gr-nieces, plus their spouses. They are all wonderful people!

I haven't been feeling too good lately, and am having a lot of trouble with my back, legs, and feet, among other things, so I've done very little creative wise (I did make our gr-niece a set of large potholders) the last few weeks.

The following six photos are sketches in my five and a half by five and a half inch Handbook Journal, which I keep in my purse, and I often sketch while waiting in the car for hubby to run errands. The pages are ivory colored, and I mostly use a Zig Writer bullet marker, double ended, to sketch.

I finished the Zen tangle and sketched the other three below while waiting on hubby yesterday and listening to my mp3 player.

Hubby and I both had a touch of a stomach virus over the weekend, but I did manage to use my water brush pen full of India ink to draw the two abstracts below and fill them in with Kuretake watercolors and a pink Posca paint pen. They are in my twelve by twelve inch sketchbook, and the pages are actually white, but since the book won't fit on my scanner I had to use my camera, which for some reason photographs white as gray, and I can't change it by editing. 

Anyway, it's my last art attempt for this year, and I may, or may not,  do some more to them, but for now, it is what it is.

Sorry about the light glare on the left side!

I did these trying to get back into the groove of drawing/painting some every day. I was gifted some art books and a three-dimensional heat gun with plastic string to play with for Christmas, so we'll see what that will inspire!

I'm still trying to do my physical therapy for my back/legs at home (hubby too), but we've missed three days now, so we have to get back on it today. Not sure how much it's helping. I think I may have to go get another steroid shot soon. We have a heat back massager, we bought ourselves a small stepper to use while sitting for Christmas, and we were gifted a heated foot massager. Our house was already crowded, but now we have a small gym in our living room, because we're old and things have to be where we can see them to use them.

Anyway, this is the last day of 2024, and I have one more post to share, but that's it for my creative efforts this year. Hopefully, I can do better in 2025, but I'm still blessed, and still above ground by the grace of God.

Keeping doing what you love!