sometimes you just have to take a drive around town

With your start bright star light girl.

And bring your camera so your daughter can take some photos of local topography for a school project.

And end up in a seaside chapel where you both go in and say a prayer, pleased at the spontaneous reverence of the moment.

And then go home and make a little lunch.

corner view~music

And now, here's a word from our sponsor.  Gary told me to put this up!! :)
Hope everyone remembers to smile.

And it wouldn't be right to not at least mention:
Gary
Sky
Annabel
Shawn

Cuz, yeah, music is what it's about in my house, on a daily basis.  It is one of the languages we speak.

i've started up again

We remodeled a room last year.  We replaced the carpet with wood laminate floors and hung several mirrors, side by side, for dancing.  It is a large room that leads to our pool, where I have my desk, and we have the only TV in the house, some rockers, a comfy couch. I imagined this would be a place for the kids to sing and dance and act.  They do a little bit filming there.  But the room isn't really being used for its intended purpose.  The kids do their dancing and singing upstairs where the piano and drums and microphones are.  Although I do love the new floors I have felt a little bad about not using the room for its original purpose. 

But a couple of weeks ago I realized that the room was an art room.  Just a different kind.  It's MY art room.

Duh.

Over the years I have dreamed of an art room with cement floors and a sink, and convinced myself that it's the only way to truly make the type of messes I tend to make when making art. And I have been so immersed in parenting that I have forgotten how important it is to live life as the artist that I am.  I have spent only a few days in the last ten years doing something I used to love so much, painting.   I have justified that writing, photography, and blogging is enough for me.

Duh.

And so I began setting my studio up a couple of weeks ago, since we have been home.  Without cement floors, or a sink.  Sharing the space with many other family activities.  And two days ago, I made my first piece of art with various papers, oil pastels, pieces of magazine, scissors, and a glue stick.  After an hour of fun and layering and working with colors I came up with the image pictured above.   The next day I made another drawing, an anthropomorphic cut out figure with oil pastels, on a used brown paper bag.

I remember in art school when people would make mixed media images like this and the professors would call them drawings and I would think that was so cool.  Because I had always thought of drawings as lined images made with pencil or pen on paper.

But actually, drawings can be much more.

I feel like I have a little bit of art school still with me.  I feel like a college kid again, only a bit wiser.  This rebirth makes me so happy I am bursting at the seams.  I can hardly wait to make more.

corner view~silly

Many of you know that our comedic daughter is starring in a webshow.  An advice show.  But there is plenty of silly as well.  Just look and see.

Here are episodes five and six.

sometimes you just have to take a drive up a mountain

And breathe some cool fresh air laced with euchalyptus and tropical flowers.

And talk to your BFFs on the cell phone.

And take some pictures.

And then buy yourself a present.

So I did.

corner view~iconic

A symbol of strength and power.  The Eiffel Tower is massive.  To stand underneath it, you feel so small, and you are stunned at the amount of solid material it took to construct such a thing.

To ride to the top and see the city below the Eiffel Tower is a wonderful experience as well.  Because it is also a symbol of perspective.

And we could all use a little of that, in my opinion.

Me included. :)

surprise

This week we invited Teresa over for dinner.  We met Teresa in 2003 in a small park in Woodacre, California, when I was very pregnant with Shawn.  She became part of the family, babysitting for us when Shawn was a newborn, loving the kids to pieces, and helping us with a brief trip to Florida, where she lived with us while we considered moving there.  Eventually she came and lived with us in our current home, helping with childcare and the house.  We called her our tent daughter, because for a few months she slept in a tent in our back yard, until she found a more permanent place to live.  When Shawn began to talk he could not say her named so he called her Teeta.  The name stuck and we all still call her that. 

A few years ago, after our kids were older, Teresa moved away to take a job in an exotic spa.  But she recently moved back to our town.  So now we have someone in our life who has known our kids for the past eight years.

It is pretty special.

Teresa is open-hearted, fun loving, and very spontaneous.  It is one of the things I love most about her.

I, by nature, am not.  I am trying to become more that way.  But I am better off with someone like Teresa leading the way. 

So when she came for dinner this past week and mentioned that Sting was doing a small beachfront concert on a public beach down the road from us, we ate a quick meal and then hightailed it five minutes down to road where we and a few hundred other people who heard the same thing we did sat on towels in the dark waiting for something to happen.

And eventually it did.  Sting played for an hour, all old songs that we all love, and it was wonderful.  He told many stories and joked with the audience, and although the concert wasn't really for us, and the few hundred others sitting on the sand, it was okay that we were there, and no one minded that we crashed the party.

All in all, a wonderful surprise. 

I left a little early with the kids while Gary stayed til the end, as it was a school night.  When I got home I could still hear Sting singing from our porch.

Kinda nice, huh?

corner view~indispensable

acrylic painting, 1992

Creativity is indispensable.  Absolutely necessary.  That's what I see as I visit your blogs.  So many artists, expressing themselves in word and image.   

Sometimes for me creativity comes in the form of cooking, garden or house design, photography, painting furniture.  Years ago, in art school, it came in the form of ceramics, bookmaking, drawing, metal sculpture.

Sometimes creativity comes in the form of painting for the sake of the pure joy of painting.  It has been a long time since I painted.  Seven years I think.

I'll get back there.

Today I was talking to my husband about how appreciative I am that he supports me in my creative pursuits.  Perhaps it is because he himself is an artist, a songwriter.  He understands.  Perhaps it is because he likes what I make.  Perhaps it is because he appreciates the magic of paintings.  He will spend hours in an art gallery, sometimes longer than I will want to stay.

Whatever the reason I am lucky.

Because I live in a house where if I spend the day wearing ripped, paint splattered jeans, blaring music, making art, paint in my hair, losing track of time, oblivious to the rest of the cares of the world with a bit of a wild look in my eyes...

...well, my husband thinks it's the coolest thing in the world.

he's swimmin' in the rain!!

Or at least thinking about it!

It's so rare that we get rain where we live.  When I see the rain in September, I think, yippee!!

Either way, the weather is cool and it makes me want to cook and bake.

Gingersnaps anyone?

ask skylar

Two more episodes of our awesome girl's webshow have been released.  Here and here.  If your kids have any questions, be sure to have them ask Skylar! 

Have a great weekend, my friends!