... advent ....

hanukkah is dec. 1-9 this year ... wow, that's early! .... if i celebrated hanukkah, i might be in serious trouble this year! ... advent starts tomorrow ... sunday ... we get four sundays leading up to christmas ... advent means the arrival ... or coming to .... so the advent stories are the ones leading up to baby jesus' birth in bethlehem .... in our modern age, when christmas is coming, most people go shopping ... or decorating ... or baking ... or partying ... it's a big holiday hooooha for sure .... did you go shopping on black friday for your christmas prep? i, personally, hate going shopping ... it is doable on a tuesday in april at 10 am when no one else is shopping .... the rest of the time, it is so not me ... which makes me thankful for the internet ... and in the last couple days i have begun my holiday shopping online ...

but, i make gifts for most of the people on my christmas list .... sometimes paintings and pottery, but lately, ornaments .... here is a link to my flickr set of christmasy things i have made in the last bunch of years ...

so ... i ordered glass ball ornaments by the dozens .... 6 dozen to be exact .... and i will decorate them ... some folks will get a box of nine ... but mostly i'll give them out as singles ... last year, i did snowmen .... this year, i'm not sure yet ...i spent time today sketching ideas .... i hope to come up with a single design and make lots of them ... but i haven't struck upon the right one yet ... or i have and i just didn't realize it yet ....

the good news is i don't have to shop to give all sorts of folks presents ... the bad news is, i need to be a little more decisive.... have you started thinking about your winter holiday yet?

piece o' pie ... pie peace .....

today is the day of leftovers .... regardless, everyone ate freshly waffle ironed waffles this morning ... took three batches to feed the masses .... i exercised .... i groceried (seventh time in five days) .... and then we baked two more pies .... and biscuits to go with leftovers lunch ... everyone ate pie before lunch ... because why do such things in the prescribed order when you don't have to .... now to make the turkey soup for tonight ...

piece of pie to you ....

pie peace to you ....

peace ...

happy day ... joy in the big things .. joy in the small things ...

today is thanksgiving day in the old u. s. of a ..... it is a commemoration of olden day folks who were living a hard life, feasting with friends, old and new ..... now a days, it us usually a feast with family and friends... as well as a time to be thankful for our multitude of blessings, big and small ....

one of my blessings is the space for two tables end to end to make our giant feast table ....

my good news, my blessing, is that there will be fifteen at our table for our feast ... and because we have so many to make happy, we have two kinds of turkeys (fried, roasted), two kinds of potatoes (mashed, twice baked garlic parmesan), two purveyors of gravy (dressing, stuffing), more carbs, a few veggies, and ... drum roll, please .... six pies .... really? it is all about the pie for me .. i need a piece today and a piece tomorrow and a piece on saturday ... and if you don't have enough pies today, you might not get any tomorrow ... and tomorrow is still the holiday for us ... i'll still be feeding fifteen after all ...

in fact, yesterday, i fed fifteen for dinner ..... want to know the trickiest bit about that? napkins ...that's right ... napkins can be tricky, at least in my house .... you see, i don't use paper napkins ... when i got married twenty years ago, i swore off paper napkins and paper towels ... what a waste .... i use fabric ... only ... for everything .... people ask for paper towels and i hand them cloth ... no, i need a paper towel ... no, i don't have paper towels ... i can't use that ... use it, it's a rag ....

so, the trick is not the number of napkins ... the trick is using the napkin more than once ...you know? for environmental reasons? if you only wipe your mouth twice on it, can't you use it for breakfast tomorrow? or lunch? or dinner? for my family, it's easy, we each have our favorite napkin ring ... when the napkin seems done, you throw it in the wash .... napkins are washed every two or three days (or instantly if we eat salmon or tilapia) ... and for the most part it isn't gross or difficult or complicated .... so ... yesterday, before the relatives arrived, girl.beck.artist was charged with figuring out the napkin situation ... she could have given boys orange napkins and girls green , thereby allowning to people to have a snowflake or a spring or a zebra... but she went with every one gets floral napkins and 15 different napkin rings ....a red, green, blue, yellow heart ... a spring (we have four of them but could only use one) ... a snowflake, a sterling silver fanciness, a zebra, a variety of fish ..... i am my usual metal duck .... that duck came in a set of animals .... the big question was who should be the pig? would anyone say "i'm the pig" or "that pig is so me" ? so girl.beck.artist gave the pig to the cute boy cousin who she just knew would find it funny ....

so, our first round of napkins (dinner, breakfast, lunch) are in the wash ..... and we are on to our next round ... starting with our feast .....

happy thanksgiving ... i hope you find joy in the small things ... in fact, i hope you have a napkin ring, that someone picked it out carefully just for you, and that it makes you happy ....

lists and lists and lists ....

over there in artsyville, it is list tuesday .... i always have lists, so on tuesdays i try to use nicer handwriting that usual ... i like to keep my lists in a journal, so that i'll have them forever ... but the problem with that is that then my giant journal of list fabulosity is sitting on my kitchen counter all the time ... and when it is there, i put other things on top of it ... so, i'm trying to be about toss away lists ... but maybe i should just tape them into the journal later .... or not ... recycled they shall be ....

this is little.e.beck.artists list for thanksgiving dinner .... that apple didn't fall far from the tree .. she is the definition of a mini-me ....

that handwriting at the bottom is mine ... when i realized i had to feed all these people on days besides thursday!

here are all of today's lists ...

yesterday i actually had two grocery lists ... one for publix ... and one for costco .... it's tricky though ... costco grapes are superb .... and their wine and soda prices can't be beat .... but don't try to pick up your fresca there, they don't have it ... hence, the need for that far right note, the third grocery list ... for today ... to pick up all the things i forgot, gave up on, or realized i needed ....

so here are closeups of my two big lists of the day .... all that really matters is that i'm good to go for dinner tonight, with the first set of visitors here ......

i'm doing five, trying to fit in six, and putting off 8 til tomorrow (or maybe tonight if i get fidgety ) ... i spent about an hour playing mario karts on wii with my kids ... that wasn't on the list, but it will be on tomorrow's list!

so that's my thanksgiving pre-prep ... rah! ... hope your holiday plans are shaping up ...

the olden days ....

this is a picture of my olden days .... recently scanned, put on boy.beck.artist's computer ... and emailed to me ...

i am two .... the one in the basket ... my oldest brother is on the tandem behind mom, next oldest is in front of dad, and i'm in the handlebar basket ... it had a seatbelt ... though, clearly, no back support! ..... when my little brother was born, we all got pushed back a seat, and my oldest brother moved onto his own bike ... my parents sent bike christmas cards for years .... this was actually one of dad's campaign pics for his short political career while he ran for school board ....

so ... what have i been doing instead of painting? boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist are in eighth grade.... and i needed to make yearbook memory ads ... well ... sadly , they were born moments before the digital age started ... the first four years of their lives are all photos in boxes .... i got my first digital camera right before little.e.beck.artist was born, so her entire life is digital .... the twins have boxes and boxes of childhood photos ... i needed to find the right ones and then scan them and make my ads ....

buy you can't just reach into the box and pull out the right photo ..... you have to go through all (or most) of the boxes and relive those babyhood moments .... so that's what i've been doing ....

i used to have a scanner .... it made me cry more often than not when i tried to use it ... it was probably ten or more years ago ... then i decided a scanner was not worth it ... no more tears ....through that bad boy away and have been living a scan free life ever since ....

i went to cvs to scan my kid pics ..... one by one i scanned 50 pics (i need fewer than a dozen for my ad project, but i had trouble picking) .... it took me nearly an hour to scan them all ... i could have written a book on cvs customers ... i sat in a chair, at the front of the store, at the scanner ....and for each minute of scanning, i watched customers .... the nice ones, the whiny ones, the loud ones, the silent ones, the ones that came in for one thing, the ones that had a cartful ... i eavesdropped on lots of conversations ...

why oh why does the scanner have to warm up EVERY time? shouldn't it be warm after that many pics? mid-scan, i called my pal ashley.... ashley, why on earth do you love scanning so much ... ashley, how can you possibly find joy by the scanner .... well, come to find out, ashley scans at walmart ... and wal mart has a scanner that recognizes multiple photos .... she wasn't scanning one at a time ....

yesterday, i went to walmart.... with about 300 photos from the olden days (olden days only means pre-digital here) .... and i walked up to the glorious scanner and was stymied .... at least the cvs scanner was completely intuitive ... easy peasy lemon squeezy .... so i asked wal mart kim (my new best friend) how to do it .... i was holding a dozen kid pics in my hand ... and had 300 olden day pics in my bag .... kim said, here, i'll show you .... and in three scanner swipes in three minutes, she scanned all my kid pics and showed me how to crop and turn them .... she asked if i wanted prints or a cd .... and i said, OH, i have more first .... i showed her my bag .... yikes!! we better get going, said kim .... and she stood there with me, i worked one scanner, and she worked two at a time (she's just that good) ... and she scanned hundreds of pics with me ... every once in a while she'd go help another customer ... but she always came back .... she got me through it ...

i now have hundreds of pics on cd to make into a slide show for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party ... if only i could get my cd reader on my computer to work .... (deep breaths, one step at a time) ......

yesterday, i also took delivery on 6 dozen glass ornaments that i'm painting for christmas gifts for teachers, pals, friends, and kim at walmart ..... so i have some painting to get to ....

how 'bout you? what have you been working on? are you planning any holiday arts and crafts? do you have a scanner? i'm thinking i need one? maybe someone can give me a scanner for christmas ... hmmmm .....

managing expectations ....

thanksgiving is less than two weeks away ... and i'm nearly ready:

1. i decorated the front door

2. i ordered a deep fried turkey from church

ok then .... i suppose i should write a longer list .... but it's nice to feel accomplished .....

go!

this is a commissioned piece of art ... she ordered it for herself ... she likes to travel... but doesn't travel as much as she wants too ... it's inertia, right? same reason people stay in jobs they don't like, put off starting an exercise program, keep going to the same grocery store forever even when the produce department goes down hill, live in a room with a paint color that is just so not great ... inertia ... keep doing the same old thing without thinking about it ....

in·er·tia

   [in-ur-shuh, ih-nur-] Show IPA

–noun

1.

inertness, esp. with regard to effort, motion, action, and thelike; inactivity; sluggishness.

2.

Physics .

a.

the property of matter by which it retains its state ofrest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it isnot acted upon by an external force.

b.

an analogous property of a force: electric inertia.

3.

Medicine/Medical . lack of activity, esp. as applied to auterus during childbirth when its contractions havedecreased or stopped.

... a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged .... so .... GO! what are you waiting for .... my art client is going to travel more ...

what are YOU waiting to do that you should be doing now?

someone else's extraordinary art .....

a friend on facebook posted this website .... i think it is an extraordinary use of art ... and an amazing concept .... i looked through every single picture in the whole sight .... i thought it was just fascinating .... there's always oddness on the internet ... but not as often you find totally, totally cool ....

.... puddles this morning .... so i'm waiting ... then i'll do my best ....

the painting in yesterday's post appeared in a newsletter today ..... the newsletter is for the store re-inspiration .... fresh, new things are fun and exciting ... i've had three friends email me this morning that they saw my art in the newsletter ... hooray ...

here's another painting that i did at the beginning of this week and that is now at the re-inspiration store ....

it is a very appropriate sentiment for me today ... i was supposed to have an 8.30 tennis match with my favorite tennis partner ... but we are at the moment waiting for the puddles to dry in the hopes we can get the match in .... we know the women that we are playing and are expecting to get not just beaten, but smashed .... or i am ... maybe m has a more optimistic outlook than i do .... it's our first match of the season ... and i think there is a MOST excellent chance that we are going to go 0 and 5 ... unless we got better while i wasn't looking ....but ..... it's ok ... we'll just do our best .... and hopefully get better through the thrashings .... that's our plan anyway ..... and at least we get to play tennis ...

so, just do your best ... what is it you are working on these days where your attitude is more important than your performance?

uh oh... editor's edit ... which really means an e.beck.update .... i need my next painting to be about optimism ..... my cute partner and i won our tennis match ... so i did do my best ... but optimism wasn't front and center ... i pessimistically though we had no way to win ... i was way wrong ... i'm usually SO optimistic .... not sure what happened ... but at least we won ....

hi darla! this one's for you ...

one of my regular blog readers, darla, has been reading my blog since i began it 300 or so paintings ago ...650 blog posts ago ... four years ago .... on my last post she said "NEXT" in the comments... a bit impatient with me to get on with posting some more paintings ... so ... darla ... i missed yesterday because i was crazy busy .. the best part of the crazy busy was that i went to this shop ... re-inspiration ...... and they've accepted 25 of my paintings on consignment ... that's good right? go to the website ... it is a very, very groovy store ... i could spend a ton of money there on some of that groovy goodness ...

here is one of the paintings that i finished on monday .... and left at re-inspiration on tuesday .... i've never used those words before ... dream it.do it ... i'm good at the dreaming it ... less good at the doing it ... how 'bout you? are you a dreamer or a doer? or a good balance of both?

how's that, darla? i did not post all the paintings i've finished ... so i can post another for you tomorrow ... or the next day ... or the next ...

happy day to you ....go dream and do ....

... bingo! flowers! ....

i painted today ... a lot ... after the dentist (for boy.beck.artist, not me) and between five thousand phone calls (i hate being a phone call person) i spent quite a lot of time in my studio painting ... i spent long enough in there that i turned the tv on to keep me company ... i couldn't find the remote (probably a good thing) so i just stayed on hgtv ... i'm usually drawn to mtv and vh1 when no one is home ... so it's good i couldn't change the channel and gawk ...

i worked on eight canvases .... one a commission, the rest for fun ... oh for speculation ... is that what it is ... to just paint to paint ... am i speculating that someone might buy them? ...

a lot of the time when i do simpler pieces with words, i reuse the words ... for instance, it will be ok... i've sold bunches of canvases with those words ... apparently that's something that people need to hear .... so, i reuse the ones that sell well ... i still get the joy of the painting and the cutting and gluing and such .... but there's not a ton of rethinking on the words ... well .. unless i'm doing a quote, then i look for one i love ....

but, here are new words ....

new to me ... i was just going to say grow ... or keep growing ( i still like that, we're all supposed to keep growing, right?) ... but then i though of bloom instead of grow ... and then , well, there ya go ... i got a whole bossy thing going : grow! bloom! flourish! keep learning and loving and being and changing and flourish! ... know what i mean?

so there you go .... a painting ... and a blog post on a painting ... and , presumably, i'll have time to finish another tomorrow .... and the next day ... or the next day .... still growing, you see .....

ok

i've been working on some six by six canvases .... this one is a commissioned piece .... it will be ok ... i included some tissue paper, a bag, some ribbon, and a little happy card because i know it is going to be a gift ...

i recently got a big order of canvases from jerry's artarama ... lots of six by sixes and twelve by twelves .... not sure if i'm bulking up on small canvases to sell ... or to give as christmas gifts ... christmas isn't even on my radar yet ... halloween is hardly on my radar, except for the fact that there are two small pumpkins within arms reach of my computer .... i am having the twins' sunday school class here on sunday for a pumpkin carving party .... i need to break out the decorations before them, i suppose! i keep meaning to do it but get side tracked .....

are you ready for halloween? got any decorations out?