happiness is ....

happiness is ... that's a seventies thing i think ... didn't we all have tshirts that said "happiness is ___" ... my recollection is of the peanuts' linus ... sitting there with his blanket .... happiness is a thumb and a blanket .... that might have been on a pillowcase ... mom, do you remember that? (we'll see if she's reading) .... or lucy ... happiness is a warm puppy ... and she's hugging on snoopy ... who doesn't look too into it ... right?

i think palmer sondreal was a journalist .... and i think he's trying to tell us to stop worrying about happiness and just be happy ... if you have to think about it and wonder about it and worry about it, you probably won't be that happy .... he's clearly not of this era, where everyone (including MOI) talks (or blogs or tweets)  about happiness and thereby they are probably thinking about whether they are or how to be more so ....

elton john ....

.... this would be a nice one for somebody to buy as a valentine gift ..... does the one you love listen to elton john? are you planning on giving someone a valentine? do you hate valentine's day? do you like it?

personally, i very,very, very much like valentine's ... i like to decorate for it most years ... i like giving my kids valentine's .... i like helping them make valentine's for classmates .... though two of them have outgrown that now .... i like giving something to mr.e.beck.artist ... i like that mr.e.beck.artist does something sweet for me on valentine's .... i also REALLY like those conversation hearts ... really ... more than chocolate even ....

... love that ralph ...

ralph waldo is such and old fashioned name ... i really love it .... i read a lot of him in high school ... and a little in college .... he was considered a religious wacko in his day ... ok ... that might be overstating it ... but what he thought was certainly no mainstream ... he thought all things were tied to god so that all things (and people) were of god and should be appreciated .... it seems easy for me to agree with now ... but some are still not of one mind with him about the divinity in creation, the miracle of a snowfall, the magic of a budding flower ....

it is nine o'clock, and i am such procrastinator (being silly, honest and kind, mr.emerson), that i decided to do a blog post right now instead of planning my sunday school lesson ... which starts in an hour ... oops! ... i have read the material and kinda know what i'm doing ... i just have to find and mark the bible passages and gather some supplies .... and now little.e.beck.artist is asking me to play wii with her before church ... hmmmmm .... what to do what do do .....

direction

this quote to me is kind of like the whole "it's the journey not the destination" thing .... you don't get happy once you get there ... you are happy on the trip .... all the little moments of happy are what make the big happy ....

gretchin rubin, the happiness project author, she's always analyzing the ways and means of happiness ... this quote makes me think of her .... have you read her book? i have ... and a pal of mine recommended it to me last week or so ... so she and i got to talk about how much we love the notion of happiness being analyzed ... dissecting what makes you happy versus what makes other folks happy ....

for instance?
-pickles ... great joy for my dad .... the anti joy for me ....
-college football ... great joy for mr.e.beck.artist ... does nothing for me ....
-chocolate... great joy for my sisterinlaw roberta ... great joy for best pal dana ... good for me ... not on my great joy list though ....
-mario kart game on wii ... great joy for boy.beck.artist, girl.beck.artist and little e.beck.artist ... and ... well ... great joy for me too .... i'm going o have to make some time for that this weekend!

yup ... i love video games .... and not chocolate ... isn't that weird? but it's nice to be able to recognize your own happiness ....

what's making you happy these days?

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

i am writing this post on friday ... one of the nicest days of the week .... i was lucky enough to have an exceptional day full of friends .... lots of them ... lots of fun ... tons of laughs ....friend for a morning chore, friends at pottery class, friends out to lunch for a birthday party, friends at a basketball game, friends at dinner ....  when mr.e.beck.artist and i got home from dinner out with pals (we had driven in separate cars) he said, that was really nice, huh?  ... yup, about as nice as it gets .... is there anything better than two families having dinner together and everyone is happy .... happy for nothing ... happy for everything .... laughing .... i did not waste today, e.e.cummings ....

how was your day .... now it's saturday as i post this ... or some other day as you read this .... have you been laughing yet?

happiness and laughter to you ....


(editorial p.s..... late night FAIL.....i tried to post this tomorrow and it posted RIGHT NOW TODAY ... so i have two posts today and ... well... perhaps none tomorrow ... or maybe we can double down .... hmmmm)

dirty paintbrushes and mistakes .....

yesterday was a fabulous day for an artist ...
by the time i got home after a morning of obligations, it was after nine and i went right to my studio .... where i then painted for five hours .... i haven't had that many uninterupted hours in a long time ....

the picture above is of maps i painted .... those are the colors of the poppies on one of the paintings i completed .. i did a yellow map ... then added orange so got a yellowy orange map ... then added red and got an orangey red map ... and then did just red .... all because i don't really wash my brush .. i tried to just use up the paint... the next map, had i done one would have had to be pink or purple ....or back around to an orangey red .... 

after my five hours of painting, a decorator came to see my paintings (all the ones i had to show, and four new ones) ... and she took four of them off show a client .... so the giant poppies got finished and then immediately left .... she also took a brand new nest ... and a bingo flower and a monopoly flower that i didn't do yesterday .... 

interestingly, whichever of these she buys, if she buys them, need to be redone, because they are all on my inventory for the show i'm doing next week ... and i turned in the inventory already .... it is easier to do a painting though when you know the size and subject already .... when you don't have to bounce around inside your head and see what you feel like painting .... it is less angsy to paint what you are "supposed to paint" versus trying to feel what you want to paint .... it is also not as fulfilling/joyful/creative ... but that's ok...

yesterday i started ZERO paintings ... i worked on ones that were already begun ... i finished four .... and i destroyed a fifth ... it used to have a luscious turquoise background but i wrecked it ... it took me along time to realize i had wrecked it ... and to decide to quit trying to fix it .... and then i painted the whole thing green just to get the mess covered .... so next time i paint, i'll go in with white or buff or yellow to lighten it up ... cause right now it is too dark .. but at least the too dark bit is hiding the disaster! many years from now someone will look at it and say, she really built the canvas up with paint ... it's so thick .... we won't tell them it wasn't on purpose ....... 

darn birds

a bird doesn't sing because it has an answer .. it sings because it has a song .... and i credited it to lou holtz .. because that is what it said where i found it ... but the more i looked at it, the more i wondered ... i thought it was maya angelou ... and sure enough ... i did a little research ... it is credited to each of them in most of the quotey websites ... but, maya said it in 69ish i think .. and holtz (a football coach) said it in the early 70s .... did he steal it? he was a motivational speaker ... and maybe when he said it (a lot) he attributed it ... but then people heard him say it and quoted him .. instead of maya .... oh dear ... i'm thinking that the person who buys this painting will wish it said maya angelou cause she's way more recognized and inspiring that an old coach to most people .... sigh ... back to the drawing board ... or paint ...

dum dum

 on my new favorite website, pinterest, i saw dum dum topiary ... a big ball full of dum dums .... and i LOVED it ... super cute and cool and candyliscious ...

and then .... a series of sendipity events ....

i took little.e.beck.artist and some girls to a pottery painting place ... and i chose to paint a pot in a valentine sort of  way ... for the sole purpose of putting a dum dum topiary atop it ...

that same day, little.e.beck.artist got a michael's gift card ....

the next day we went to michael's and (among other things) i bought a big round styrofoam ball ...

and, we found a 1000 dum dum bag and bought it ...

and, i couldn't wait to make it ...

so i did....

alas, i have yet to go back to the pottery spot and pick up the valentine pot that i mean to put the styro-dum-dum-ball on ... so i put it on a candlestick ...

and there you go ... dum dum joy ....

all you have, is all you need ....

this is 24 inches square .... big, bright, happy .... it says: be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have, is all you need ... sarah ban breathnach ... she wrote simple abundance ... i think she'd appreciate the simplicity and joy of the collage ....

color color color color color color

i went to lowe's... 

hi, i need some paint chips for an art project... 

is that ok? 

ok with me.... 

thanks .... um.... is there a limit to how many i can have? 

nope... 

thanks ...  

i don't usually work here, but i'm sure it's fine .... 

thanks....

oh, wait!

(that's where i thought uh oh)

yes? 

just don't leave any spaces with none in them, ok? 

ok, thanks

major score on all sorts of color joy for me.... with permission no less ... 

when my kids were little every time they went to a hardware store they got to pick a few colors ... 

we'd take them home and use them in art projects ....

guess what i used them for? 

did you guess? 

if you guessed, you can look at the next pic ....

it has a hint ... 

 yay for color 

spots and dots and circles ....

do you remember these? 

 i showed them to you last week ... they are recycled wood and plywood that i've covered in old papers and glazed in pretty colors ....

now they look like this?

i used some circle stencils on them ... i used some titan buff mixed with raw umber .... then i glazed them all with more umber to tone down the brightness of the original paint ... i was so happy with how they turned out ... i had that stutter stall moment of "oh no i like them like this, how can i possibly put anything else on them and cover up their lusciousness?" ....  i wish they were a quilt ... or an installation ... or pieces on a canvas ... but they are not ... they are individual pieces that i plan to put in a show coming up ... so i better get on with it ... i better get brave ... i better do the next step ...

what makes you happy ....

i have seen colorful keyboards on the web for years ... and i always think OH how i love it ... but then never ordered it ... i am not sure why ... i just liked it but certainly didn't need it ... didn't want to spend the ten dollars or so ... didn't want to pull out the credit card ... liked the idea of liking it from afar ... if i had seen it in the grocery store or target or lowe's, i probably would have thrown it in the cart just for the ease of it ... but no ... didn't buy it until this year ... when little.e.beck.artist told me she wanted to buy me a cling/sticker/skin for my computer .... and could she order one and me help her without knowing what she ordered me ... she ordered me this ...

do you know the story of the giving tree? so that's how my computer looks now ... i love it ... love it ... so i thought, ya know, e .... i'm going to get those rainbow stickers for my computer .. and then i'll have the cutest computer ever ... the giving tree and rainbow keys ... yes ....

so i ordered the rainbow stickers ....

and then, i gave the rainbow keyboard stickers to little.e.beck.artist for her birthday .... she had my old mac ... it is a sloooooow hand me down  that she was slow to embrace as her own computer ... but once we got those rainbow stickers on the keyboard? all hers .... she is very, very happy ... and has the coolest computer in the house ....