Garage into an art studio project update...they'll be lots of these...lol
Hi everyone,Here's a brief update of the garage into an art studio project.Outside the big melt is happening.
And inside we're sweeping away the cobwebs, standing on ladders and work benches...
Listening to tunes...(notice how that side of the garage has all the stuff piled against it.)
...and painting.
Lots and lots and lots of painting. (The mundane kind, not the fun kind)
But this is where I am with this transformation.I've painted the raw wood shelves with two coats of a special Bher paint which is nice and thick, and has an undercoat in it. I chose the colour Palais White. It's a very clean white. No obvious pink or blue or green shade, and for the walls I chose Ralph Lauren's Artist's Studio...because...art studio! I've used it before on my studio walls and really love how it bounced the light around. Both are satin, although it looks a bit gloss for being wet.
And I made a one of a kind chandelier using a couple antique shelf? brackets and a bit of curtain rod.I love how it turned out.Still a bit of fiddling with it to get it just right, but it'll have to wait.
So one half of the building is finished. I kept the old barn cupboard in place and the ginger jar lamp Kerstie gave me, and Chloe thought to put the old filing cabinets on top of the cupboard. I think they look great there.
There's also a few of those lovely IKEA carts under the main work bench ready for supplies. I chose the red colour because they're beside my dad's old Craftsman tool box mom gave me and Robbie helped me recondition. I also like how they all seem to disappear under the bench into a nice, organised row.
On the drop cloth...which never gets used for anything to do with actual painting, lol...is another bunch of just washed and very odd shelving? brackets. I'm trying to think of how I want to use these in the space...or even if I want to use them.
So there we are. I'm definitely getting closer to my art studio being a reality.Only 22 days to the studio open...and counting!
Oh look! The sun came out for two seconds together! What a treat. :D
Garage into an art studio project. Yeah, like we have all the time in the world!
HiHi. I'm back.I've had to take a few weeks days off of social media. Actually, I had my finger hovering over the delete button more than once. A few personal attacks on the ol' FB, the state of the world, not enough sunshine, and a therapy journal course, first one since I started teaching the therapy journal two years ago, where a valuable brush has gone missing and two of my hand carved stamps have broken pieces (a fox's ear and a bird's foot). Life...eh? So I slightly spiralled into a proper depresso funk and hovered over the delete buttons.Happily I talked things out with Robbie. I'm so lucky that he is GuruRob to me when I need him to be, and he talked to me of possibly chemo brain for my students, and how important my volunteer work is to me and to the people I work with, and reminded me that I can hide/delete/unfollow and gently drop out of conversations on my social media feeds.So I didn't delete everything to hell! I just jumped into a new project.There's been a lot of this going on round here.
And also this:
And I did something, perhaps a little unwisely, I signed up for the North Shore Art Crawl open studio on the March 4th weekend and took out a full ad in the brochure. I KNOW!Yes to commitment to my art!!But yikes if people want to come visit my little attic studio where the possibility of hitting your head at every sideways step exists unless you know the space.That, and I don't have room to paint big canvases in the studio, so never paint them unless I can do it outside.But I do have this beautiful, heated garage...loaded up with stuff, (and a slightly dusty red sports car which can be parked outside for an open studio weekend.)
So, with Chloe's help, we did about five runs to the local Salvation Army and one run to the recycling stations and to the dump, two trips to Home Depot, one trip to IKEA and a little side trip to the Value Village out in the IKEA direction, (I mean, as long as we were out there anyway.)
One thing that was bothering me are the five lights in the would-be New Studio space. Four are just light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.Now the ceiling is too low and the clearance of the garage door too close for most fixtures...and we looked and looked and debated and measured and looked some more. We had Queen city garage door repair charlotte nc come out to fix it for us and they did a great job. The sexy little ones cost so much money and the cheap ones are too long, too big, and too everything wrong.
Then, at the quick Value Village hop, we found these rather lovely coloured glass covers at $4 each. Cheap!!! So I bought them. Might be a good solution for now and I love the quirky Bohemian feel. Only problem is there were only 3 and I need 4, but I'm sure one more will come my way and if not, they are for sale at Home Depot for about $20.
Next step: paint for the raw wood shelves. I had a good convo with the paint people and chose a rather expensive paint with undercoat in it, and I painted those shelves...
...while C was set to work on our IKEA buys.For some reason she finds IKEA stuff fun to put together and for me it ranks right up there with...say...the dentist. Millennials...eh? As you can see, Morgan was the usual help.
So, one coat of paint on the shelves and the legs of the work bench, and I called in my electrician Trevor to take down the chandelier, (which everyone but me hits their head on...OK, OK, I may have done it once or twice myself), and build me a new light fixture, the design of which I had as a vision in my chandelier bumped head, but no idea if it could be done.
I said, "Trevor, could you please cut off the business end of these light bulb chords and wire three of them into the socket and leave a good 5 ft of chord hanging?"
So after a little explaining and a quick run to Rona for the necessary ceiling plate, I have the beginning of my vision. Thank you Trevor.Can't wait to show you the next step.Hope this all works out!
Hello from Sunday night
Hi everyone,How was your weekend? I hope it was lovely and you got to celebrate something special.
I love celebrations. Even just a Sunday morning lie in can be a celebration...which incidentally didn't happen round here with our three who were up at the crack of sparrows.
But Kerstie had to drive them back home, a journey of 300 miles, so breakfast, a cookie, a quick diaper change and hugs all round and off they went.
Chloe went off too for a day with Bryson, and so I went up into my studio, lit a favourite candle, and settled down to some art.
Now I've missed two of our art challenges because of illness and clouds, and I miss them and I always feel very sorry for myself for not being able to join in.So while I was sitting up in my studio, with my studio companion Morgan by my side, the last two challenges were running thru my mind: Ariane's Daily and Tammie's Sticks. 
Daily, the daily roads we take, the daily routines I thought, and sticks. The only thing I kept thinking of were pick-up sticks. You know? The game children play. Pick-up sticks.Pick-up sticks of roads. The daily commute, the game of it all.And I was thinking of the miles between Robbie and me right now, and between me and my children and grandchildren, between my art challenge friends, and, not to be all maudlin, but it makes me feel very lonely and sorry for myself up here in my studio.It seemed like such a lot of work to put this image together, but once I got into my thoughts it came naturally. Every piece of paper, every brush stroke found its place.
And suddenly a kingfisher came to life...quite possibly to re-route the daily, to fly thru the tangle of sticks and make a straight path to where we want; to the perfect place.
So here we have daily pick-up sticks. We may be a week or two late, but we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and make some art. And tomorrow's another day. :D
I'm not missing, and so looking forward to our next art challenge at Stefanie's. Check in with our Rose Ariane for the schedule and come join in if you can. You're always very welcome to.
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Welcome fire rooster.
Hello and Happy Chinese New Year everyone.I'm so over the Year of the Monkey.How about you? Was the monkey good to you?OMG! Trying to out monkey the monkey last year was so difficult for me. I'm so ready for the rooster.
We've had a wonderful day today, made even better by my middle child, Kerstin, bringing my three granddaughters Ever, Isla and Zoe for a weekend visit.Our day started with a trip to visit our friend Dalyce at her lovely shop Booklovers.We got so many beautiful books! I think we bought about 15 children's and 10 adult books, and at Booklovers it just so affordable. For me, second-hand books are always the way to go. Reuse and recycle and save the world.
My granddaughters love books to the max.
And they love art! We sat round the dining room table making beautiful art.
They have such fantastic imaginations.Hope they, like my daughters, always keep that sense of creativity. I think they will.
We also took some time to play on the local school yard.
We have a lot of local schools and parks here so it's lots of fun exploring.
Then home for lunch. The other day, we stopped at the local thrift store and found these lovely salt and pepper shakers to add to our Chinese New Year table, plus the girls made these beautiful flowers for the vase from their toys.
Our lunch was a big salad Nicoise (our version), smoked salmon and baguette.
We love simple lunches.
Evening came too soon again, as it almost always does these mid-winter days, and we got ready for our New Year festival. With us is our friend Ruka, who helped us fold all sorts of beautiful origami...
...while we made supper.
We made potato pancakes with green onion, dumplings and pot stickers, and we made a vegetarian lettuce wrap of all sorts of veggies including mushrooms and black beans. Oh it was delicious.
And then we had sparklers on a couple slices of matcha and azuki bean paste cake.
We ended the evening with red envelopes and chocolate coins.A fun time.Do you like to celebrate when you can? We do. :DKung Hei Fat Choi everyone. I hope the rooster is good to you. :D
Morning, noon and night round here
Hooray, sun!
I love it when the sun shines on these dreary mid-winter days.My bedroom faces east so I get the first rays of the sun.
I'm also really happy that my sun-loving houseplants get as much sun as they can.
Yesterday I had traded Chloe a drive and company across town to her hair appointment for a couple hours organising the studio, and since we were going X town and since it was such a lovely day, I grabbed a camera.
I drove over town and parked on the meters for a little while. Vancouver parking seems to be at such a premium. Always!Happily I always adopt the attitude of, "whoever is in my spot was welcome to it while I didn't need it, and now I need it so they have to move." And I always seem to come at the right time to get some rock-star parking.
So I dropped C off at Salon 14 and into the expert hands of her lovely stylist Veronica. (I must say that in the year C spent in Japan, her colour and hair grew out so beautifully from Veronica's last balayage and cut that we were all impressed)...
And I went for a little walk to grab some groceries and have a good look around.
One must stop for me is my favourite gallery Bau-Xi. I dream of being one of their artists. (sigh)Then groceries and then back for C and a bit of a hanging out chatting while Veronica finished C's hair.
You know how quickly the sun sets these days. Holy smokes.We walked out at about 5pm into the night.
Then drove back home, past the gyms and Starbucks...
...across our bridge and home.
Where we found a young raccoon on the back porch looking very hopeful and cute.
Back in the land of the living!
Hello everybody, I'm back in the land of the living!I've been ill with some horrible bronchitis for the past four weeks, but I'm on the mend now.In the meantime, look who's back! Clover came home from her year adventure in Japan.
We've got our Chloe back and I was feeling better and so we took a day, (a rare non rainy day), and drove out into the country.
We ended up at the lovely and quaint little town of Fort Langley and our favourite vintage and antique emporium and had a good mooch around.
Then we had some lunch and walked around the town and visited our favourite boutique called the White House. It's a 1920s Craftsman cottage made into a tea shop and boutique.This is one of the upstairs bedrooms.
This is in the little kitchen.
And this is the bathroom. Chloe has always said she could easily just move into this house and not change a thing.
Then, since the day was so lovely, we drove out further into the country.
We stopped in a little park beside the mighty Fraser River.
We found lots of beautiful farms with old barns.
We made some new friends! This beautiful pot-bellied pig snuck out under the fence from fence company Orlando to come say hello to us. Loved the little guy.
We spent the whole day out in the country and then we drove home.
I hope everyone's been happy and healthy this January. There's been a rash of nasty bugs around Vancouver but I think they've run their course now and spring is coming.
Playing I'm the boss with the cats
My cats!!!They feel like they're the boss around here.This is Milo. He likes to sleep in my bed with me all night and always sleeps cuddled up in the fur blanket. But I like to make my bed in the morning, so we play this budge the cat on the fur blanket game.
It works like this: Budge Mo over to one side, make bed on one side,
budge Mo over to the other side, Mo gets mad and jumps off. Finish making the bed.After a few minutes Mo jumps back on.
No cats were harmed during the making of the bed, no matter what THAT LOOK means.
I decided to add some furniture to one of my spare bedrooms and so went to raid mom's basement for a lovely little teak table and an old chair.Morgan decided to OWN them. Morgan likes to own everything.
I said "Zola, down you go!" She ignored me.
Again the face!
Do any of you have cats? Do they listen? Ha!
Happy New Year everyone
How are you feeling about closing down this last year?I'm thinking that I'm very happy to be putting 2016 behind me. I'm so done with the shenanigans of this monkey year. But I'm also grateful for the lessons and opportunities it has brought me.I was thinking of writing this post and thought that maybe it should be some kind of deep and meaningful post. You know, that kind of almost obligatory post about New Year's resolutions and plans of action for life and then thought better of that. To be honest, some days I can't even find two minutes to put together let alone come up with enough time to formulate a life action plan.I don't know about you, but these days New Year's resolutions seemed to have morphed from the sensible (if rather mundane) things like quit drinking, lose ten pounds, take up knitting, to the scrutiny of all personal defects, followed by a detailed action plan for reinvention!Last year, largely due to over optimism, (and maybe a little over wine-ism), I picked the word "action" as my theme for 2016, and this evening I feel like I may have over-reached on the whole resolution thing or perhaps ACTION, the way I saw it, was too big a word, I don't know, but I'm struck by the whole concept of not achieving the action I feel like I should have. On the other hand, I have had some gains in the action department, with daily yoga, better health, more personal knowledge, closer relationships, etc...still the action in my business wasn't as actionable as I have meant it to be.Now I'm reexamining the whole concept, (and personal defects), but rather than running head first into the total reinvention plan, I think I will go back to my one faithful and sensible resolution: to stop running out of time and start running into it instead. And, if a word is needed to describe 2017, let it be a more sensible word. I still like the word ameliorate. To mostly ameliorate everything in my life. Yes, that's a good one. I've used it before and I'm still not done with it.How about you all. Have you formed an action plan? Chosen a word? Or have you thrown the whole thing out the window and let life just come as it may? Actually, I think I might prefer to do just that.Whatever you do dear friends, I send you love for the New Year. More than love, I hope that health, happiness and prosperity are yours in 2017.Happy New Year. :D
Our Christmas Day
Santa came after all!!
So many prezzies.
A whole harbour in a box.
I made pillows for each of the girls with some vintage flannel which belonged to my grandmother and I appliqued their names on them.
Morgan had the best time with the wrapping paper.
By the time breakfast rolled round it was more like brunch.
Smoked salmon eggs Benny and crunchy, roasted potatoes.
We all tucked right in.
After brunch, the girls had a little play time in the living room while we cleaned up and set up their tents in the family room.
And then some of us watched The Incredibles, while some of us napped.
and some of us had tea and snuggled.
and the afternoon ticked on...
And soon Jonathan and Chantal brought our Megababy Asher.
While we put the finishing touched on supper. Here's Kerstie wrangling with the traditional Czech carp. We made a traditional Czech supper of roast ducks, dumplings and sweetened sauerkraut and the dreaded carp! (This is after my children vetoed turkey!) LOL We all dislike carp but Czech superstition dictates that if you eat some at Christmas time and put a scale in your wallet, you'll have money for the whole of next year! So dutifully we have a tiny nibble of the carp.
Here we are the day after Christmas and I feel very lucky that I had my 2 oldest children and their beautiful families here for Christmas day. Spending the holidays with them and especially my 4 grandchildren has been very special. While I missed Chloe and Robbie very much, we all Skyped with the Clover and I talked to Robbie for hours. That's the way with families, isn't it? I know mine isn't the only one where everyone can't always be together. But I loved our Christmas day and my whole Christmas holiday. Tomorrow Kerstie and Adam have to drive back home and I'll miss them but I have so much to look forward to. A new and exciting year is almost upon us and with it Chloe will return to Canada. How I've missed my baby.I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas and a wonderful holiday. Are you looking forward to 2017? I am. It's almost here. :D
'Tis the night before Christmas
I'm sitting in front of an open fire here in my peaceful and quiet living room this night before Christmas thinking what a whirl-wind day this has been.
I got the house ready last night and waited (a little anxiously) for my children to drive the 500 km over snowy mountain passes, late into the evening, to spend Christmas with me.
Finally they arrived, way past the girl's bed time, a little worn out and shaky, but soon the girls were in bed and asleep and Kerstie and Adam and I stayed up till midnight catching up. Then I called Robbie because it was already morning in England.
Whew, morning came way too early.
But our little girls didn't seem to have any problem with a little less than normal sleep!
And after breakfast they arranged a princess Christmas party...
And then we visited Dalyce in her book store and picked out some dozen new books.
And then, for a treat, we had a lunch time picnic at Sbux.
Now it is Christmas Eve and Kerstie and Adam have gone to visit his family.I'm relishing this quiet few hours and waiting for Robbie to wake up so I can call him, wish him a Merry Christmas, and we can spend some precious time together.
I've lit a fire using a bunch of this year's lavender and some grape trimmings as kindling and some fruit wood. It smells divine. And I've put on Harry Potter; the very first movie.Soon the gang will return and soon it will be Christmas day, and in the afternoon Jonathan, Chantal and our Megababy Ash will come join us for prezzies and supper, and we will Skype Chloe and Bryson in Japan.
I'm so excited to have Christmas day with my children and grands. I'm so excited to talk to Robbie in an hour or two.But for now I'm happy to sit in front of my fire.I wish you all love and joy as we tick down these last few moments before Christmas Day.I lift a little prayer in the dark night for you all. I hope you're warm and content and at peace.Peace be yours. Peace. If only, peace on Earth.