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!