The day after Christmas. Nothing special going on here. Rich and I shared the day and exchanged a few gifts with each other. The tree is still looking pretty and will probably stay up until the second week of January or thereabouts. We don't want to take it down yet and of course if we go to see the girls and their families, it will stay up until we get back.



We had the opportunity to speak with all four daughters and they are all doing well. And Santa was good to them too. Good Lord willin' we'll spend New Year's Day with them all and their families at Wendy's home and celebrate a family Christmas. It will be great to see the grandkids as well and the girls and their husbands.



I guess I've just been lazy this past week or so... nothing done, just sat around on my comfy chair and watched the boob tube. No art, no computing and almost NO reading. Not my style at all. Maybe I'll be able to get it in gear when we get back home.



Continuing to pray that Rich's procedure on Monday is successful. I so hate to see him having so much trouble breathing. Not to mention that he hates feeling that way too. Neither of us seems to have the energy to do much lately. Maybe it's the weather.



So, anyway, I'm off to bed and just dropped by to say "hello." Even if there's no one reading this. If, perchance you are reading this, please drop a comment and let me know that I'm not tallking to myself. Maybe I need to cook and blog through the Fannie Farmer Cook Book.

Fw: MERRY CHRISTMAS

I will be making a conscious effort to wish everyone
a Merry Christmas this year ...
My way of saying that I am celebrating
the birth Of Jesus Christ.
So I am asking my email buddies,
if you agree with me,
to please do the same.
And if you'll pass this on to
your email buddies, and so on...
maybe we can prevent one more
American tradition from being lost in the sea of
"Political Correctness".

Ok. Got Rich's stress test results: It appears that all is well and normal but the EKG says the defib is still there. The meds haven't fixed it, so he's to have a quick zap/shock on Monday. Bloodwork and chest xrays tomorrow for pre-admit.

It's basically an outpatient deal. He will go in to the hospital at 7:30 am for the 10:30 procedure. If all goes well, the defib will be fixed and he'll be able to breath normally again.

If there's still a problem, and the shock doesn't correct the defib, then there is another procedure and another specialist to see but likely that will have to wait until the new year. So in that case, we'll see the new specialist after the New Year

I hope the snow you guys have been experiencing will have cleared up enough that everyone will be able to join us for the holdday.

To travel or not? We'll know later today.

In a little while we go to the cardiologist to learn the results of Rich's stress test. He still is having problems breathing, and the meds he's taking don't seem to be helping much in that area. So, we'll learn today what, if anything, will be the next step. The doctor has mentioned shock treatment. We don't know how that works and if he'd need to be hospitalized for that or what. So, depending on what we learn this afternoon, we'll be able to decide if we can travel to NY to spend the New Year holiday with the family as we usually do.

The girls do their own family thing on Christmas but always get together (all four girls and their families) on New Year's Day and have the Welsh Family Christmas party. They take turns at whose home and we always try to join them for a few days. It's a nice tradition and I hope we'll be able to go this year too. Well, hopefully, we'll know this afternoon.

So, saying a little prayer that all goes as planned. We do look forward to our visit with our family.

The day after

Thanksgiving... We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving, just Rich and I. We did a 12 lb. turkey, mashed potatoes, greenbean cassarole, cranberry sauce, cheese and garlic bisquits and pumpkin pie with cool whip. Everything came out exsctly as it should and we enjoyed our meal and it was much more than we normally eat, but after all, it's thanksgiving. Of course we'll be eating turkey leftover for a while along with the rest of America. We're freezing some for a later date, and making turkey soup and open face hot turkey sandwiches and maybe turkey hash (probably not hash) and croquettes. I do love turkey sandwiches with big slices of white meat, dressing and cranberry sauce. Great sandwich. yum yum.

Went to Sam's Club today to purchase Pepsi and came away with $86 spent. Seldom get out of Sam's without spending well over $100, Guess we got lucky. Did pick up some bargain cat food for the neighbor's cats. He's in hospital and Rich is taking care of his two cats. They are lonesome with their Daddy away. Guess Rick is Uncle Rich. They come running when he comes out of the house and they even come over and come into our garage. We won't let them in our house tho. Our cats do NOT go outsidde and they don't have fleas and we don't care to expose them.

I love to read. I have given away over 200 books to my neighbor for his garage sale and have since then accumulated another hundred or so. Then, last March Rich gifted me with a Kindle from Amazon. I love it. So far, since march I have added 95 books to the kindle and have read all of them except two so far. It is so handy to carry in my purse or read in bed. Almost any book I might want to read is available from Amazon and many of them cost NOTHING.

I bought a DVD on EBay the other day which is supposed to have a bunch of Nora Roberts' books for the Kindle. I probably have many of them, but certainly not all. I do have over a hundred of her books tho and almost as many of Debbie McComber and almost the complete works of Anne McCaffrey. These books I won't part with, but I'm willing to let the rest of them go. I recently found a website where you can trade books on the internet for just the cost of postage. Have to find some time to check this out.

Surprise!

Surprise! I'm here again and it's only the next day.

Well, painting class was cancelled tonight. Guess 'cause it's holiday week. Teacher got to the classroom and there was a sign on the door: "No classes this week," sooooo I'm home instead of at class. I did some catch-up work on the project this afternoon, but I'm still not sure if I've gotten up to the point where the class stopped last week. Guess I'll send an email to the teacher and find out how far I need to go.

I've caught up on all my swaps and projects, so I'm going to spend a little time tonight checking the A4A forums and see what swaps I can join now that I have some time again.

I have joined a digital round robin swap, but we're still waiting for another member to join so we can get started. I do love doing digital art and collage, so I'm looking forward to doing this again. I've done these before and here's how they work: Each one starts by creating a beautiful digital background and emails it to the next member who adds a layer or so and then passes it on the the third member of the group who then completes it and send the completed project to the other two members. This way, everyone get three completed pieces worked on by all three people in the group. We do get some really beautiful artwork this way.

Here are some projects from preveious digital round robins. Two of these I started and the others were started by others and I worked on them.

See how different each one is and how lovely.






Now I'm off to AFA to see what swaps are working that might catch my interest. If I find something, perhaps I'll share some work in progress.

Of stuff and art

It's been a while and I don't guess I'll be here all that often. But here I am again.

Around here, things don't happen much. Since last I was here, Rich developed some atrial fibrillation and we've been working to get that cleared up. It's slow going, but he is starting to feel better as the med begin to take hold. He was feeling pretty bummed because he really wanted to go hunting and was afraid this was going to keep him from going.

As it happened, he was well enough to go, but when he left to go last Thursday very early, we both figured I wouldn't be seeing him for a ocuple of weeks. Imagine my surpirse when, around 9:00 am I heard the front door open, and there he was. It seems he'd driven about 200 miles (not even out of Florida) and his transmission was chattering and he got really worried because he had mountains to drive through to get to New York and he felt the truck wasn't going to make it. He didn't want to get stuck in the North Carolina mountains, so he turned around and came home. Well the mechanic said it was a good thing he did. The transmission is totally shot and needs replaced. He definitely would have gotten stuck somewhere on a mountain far from home. Soooooo, the truck is in the shop getting a new transmission.

Rich is home and will be here to celebrate Thanksgiving with me. This is not usual as Thanksgiving always comes during his annual hunting trip so we usually have our turkey when he gets home from the hunt. This year we'll actually have it on Thanksgiving Day.

Yesterday I completed three major art project on the Wet Canvas internet forum. The challenge was to create around 24 ATCs for each of two projects, one was for something related to Fall and Winter and the other was for Pieces of anything. Make one card for each participant in the project, so for this - 48 cards in all. The third project was Christmas card exchange with five other participants. I actually got them all completed yesterday and mailed them today. That's a big weight off my shoulders. I don't think I will take on such a large project again, much less, two at one time.

I think I'll stick with ATCs for All ... I love the projects we do there and they usually don't need more than three or six card per project. Much more fun and much easier. No problems.

I missed painting class last week. Bonnie is a great teacher and the project we are painting is such a great one, designed by Jamie Mills Price. I hope that I can catch up before the next class tomorrow. I didn't go to the SDP Gulf to Bay chapter meeting last week either. Sometimes it's just too much for me to get my tail in gear and do things. It's so much easier just to hang out at home than it is to get out and about. Just plain lazy in my old age I guess.

One of the project threads on AFA is Watercolor Wizards Play it Forward, where a person posts a watercolor card as an offering. The person who wants it steps up and asks for it and then posts a card of hers/his for the next person to claim, and so on. We get some really neat artwork this way. I claimed a card the other day and here is the card I posted up for grabs which has already been claimed:

Betrayal

Somethings I discovered and wanted to share.

First Time Out

Here I am... blogging! Imagine that. A brand new experience for me, tho in years past I did do some writing and even had a regular newspaper column.

At the moment, I'm enjoying watching the High Stakes Poker games and World Poker Tour on GSN. I so much love playing poker on the computer and online,. There are several poker sites online to play on... PokerStars, Doyle Brunson, Spade Club to name just a few.

I do happen to be a game show freak. I just love almost all the game shows and usually have the TV running whenever I'm in the kitchen, painting, reading or computing. My favorite old game show is Match Game with Gene Rayburn. It used to be on alot but lately I'm lucky to be able to see it once a day. Some of the newer shows are pretty good too.

I'm a decorative painter as well as a general artist. I paint mostly with Acrylic paints and watercolor. Of late my passion is ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). I'll talk more about them later.. I guess you could say I'm a multi-tasker. I can't be doing just one thing at a time. If I'm painting I'm watching TV or listening to music. If I'm computing, which I do a lot, I might also be watching TV or cooking dinner or just chatting with my DH.

It's just the two of us here with our two lady Burmese cats, Velvet and Lace. Both three year old beautiful brown furred sisters. We have four adult daughters who live in NYS with their husbands and children,. There are six grandchildren from age ten to 26. Four young men (26, 17, 15, 15) and two ladies (10 & 22). We retired to Paradise awhile ago and just love living here where it's warm mostly all the time.

We keep very busy and have lots of things to do. He likes to play pool and hunt Bambis and reload his own ammo. He is a black powder muzzleloader too and enjoys his club meets and shoots and going to gun shows. He does all the yard work - I stay inside mostly.

I like to go to painting classes, conventions, and Society of Decorative Painters meetings as well as paint with my friends at least once a week. I'm active in several online communities and trade artwork and ATCs.

ATCs are lovely miniature works of art that are traded with other artists. The subjecft matter can be anything at all. There is only one rule when it comes to ATCs and that is the size. They are 2.5" x 3.5" and are traded not sold. If you create one that you want to sell, then it's no longer an ATC it is an ACEO (Art Cards Editions and Originals).

I am/was also a rubber stamper. I have more than 1000 stamps but I don't stamp so much any more. Painting seems to have taken over my life lately tho I still do stamp now and then and make cards for special occasions. But I'm thinking about selling some of my stamps -- I need space in my studio.

I also have fun once a month playing BUNCO with my lady friends, and we also "do lunch". Being a retired lady leaves me plenty of time to play an have fun. Oh yes, last month we bought a 2010 Ford Fusion. Love it to pieces.

The Beginning!

In the beginning there was word. And the word was "BLOG". Everybody's doing it. So, here I am.