The Things Kids Say

I have no kids.
Which suits me fine, although our folks may disagree...
I do enjoy, however, tales of my brother's kids.

This brother shall be referred to as Bro #2 (he is the younger of my two brothers).
He has 3 kids, Zeke, Evelyn and Finn.

Zeke and Evelyn are quite the little characters. I'm sure Finn will be also, but as of yet he is not talking much.

My folks (or Grandma and Grandpa, for the purposes of this post) are visiting this weekend. This little anecdote comes to me via my mom (Grandma). This will show you how funny these kids are.
First let me preface by saying my brother and his wife are pretty straightforward with their kids. They don't talk baby talk to them and pretty much tell them the way it is.
For instance, when Zeke was -oh - about 3 or maybe just 4 years old, he told my mom that she was a girl because she had a 'gina, and boys don't have 'gina's, they have a penis.
Ha! I can only imagine my mom about had a stroke!
And when Zeke's momma was preggers for the 2nd time he pretty much knew all about it except for one thing that confused him, which was why couldn't his mom have a dinosaur? He finally figured he could settle for a little sister.


Any-who, apparently yesterday when the grandparents were visiting, Evelyn was playing with her baby doll. She decided that the baby was hungry so she went to get the doll and "give her the boob". (This is what Bro #2 and my sister in law says when their real baby is hungry - that he wants "the boob.")
She then proceeded to lift her shirt and pretend to nurse. At some point she must have decided that wasn't working because she told Grandma she didn't have enough boob and could Grandma try? My mom, being pretty game for a grandma, obliged by then pretending to nurse the baby doll.
At this point, Zeke came along and saw what was going on and gave Grandma a funny look and said, "Grandma...can old girls nurse babies?"
I'm pretty sure my mom just about lost it before she told him that yes, sometimes they can.
Kids!

Babylon Sisters

To the sea
Turn that jungle music down
Just until we're out of town
This is no one night stand
It's a real occasion
Close your eyes and you'll be there
It's everything they say
The end of a perfect day
Distant lights from across the bay

Babylon sisters shake it
Babylon sisters shake it
So fine so young
Tell me I'm the only one

-Steely Dan

SpaceGirl

Again, in yet another attempt at something new(ish) (and something that will sell...) I've decided to try a kind of retro-futuristic-sexy girl kind of thing. This space girl is the first drawing. Half way through this one I got the idea to do some art based on Steely Dan song titles ("Babylon Sisters" being the first one I'm working on). This one, I suppose could be "Tomorrow's Girls" - except there's only one girl - but I think I have other ideas for that one. So this one is just the SpaceGirl.
We'll see how it goes from there! :)

Somebody I've never met thinks I'm...

So I'm perusing the interwebs today and reading some of my favorite blogs and found this on one of them today. I thought, sure, I'd love to see what my blog says about me (aside from the obvious, of course). Their take on this blog, and myself, is as follows:


They say I am The Performer

The entertaining and friendly type (well, I like to think I'm entertaining). They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors (no, actually I prefer to have calm earth tones around me, although I do like color in my art work, so maybe they are not too far off...) and sweet smells (only some, actually, as I get migraines easily). They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead (well, duh...'cause tomorrow I have to clean house and pay bills!)- they are always in risk of exhausting themselves (true, I never get enough sleep, but mostly 'cause I'm up late watching this show...).

They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way (yah, but mostly I want to help them buy my stuff). They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation (well, that just goes to show they don't know me at all)- qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions (like I'd even want to be a manager where I work!).

Huh. Well, it was interesting for about 2 minutes.

No new artwork today. Sorry. Still working on Dorothy.

PS. that room picture is not my house. I just wish it was!

Art

So, I signed up with Illustration Friday because I thought it would "make" me be creative and draw stuff I wouldn't normally draw. Wrong. Really wrong. Usually I ignore the emails they send me because I'm in the middle of working on something else or because, for the life of me, I can't figure out how you would do an illustration for some of their topics ( "Contained?" "Flawed?" "Opinion?" Really?) Never mind that 7000 other people have no problem with it (although, to be fair, while most of the artwork is really good, sometimes it really does have NOTHING to do with the topic...)

Anyway, this week's topic is "intricate". Well, the intricate drawing I'm working on is Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz.

What do you mean it that has nothing to do with "intricate?" Really? Huh.

Oh well, that's what I'm working on anyway. I'm also working on an intricate background in a different intricate art program (Corel Painter - most of my stuff is done in Illustrator) to use with Dorothy. Part of a series of storybook/fairytale characters I'm intricately working on.
Just because.

"Reality" Shows

I often wonder at these so-called "reality" shows, very few of which I will watch, with the exception of The Amazing Race from time to time. Hubs and I keep saying we could do that if we could lose 50 lbs and manage the time off from work...which all comes down to a big "yah, right." Oh well, we can dream.

Anyway, usually I think that the shows are heavily edited to make people look their worst. And/or the people have been told to be on their worst behavior, to scream and yell and throw things at every possible opportunity. Or cry. Or get drunk. Or whatever.

So I don't really watch reality shows. (Um. Except "Rock of Love" sometimes, guilty pleasure kind of thing, because I just can't believe that a bunch of women can/would act that way on TV! Must be all the silicone leaking into their brains. But I gotta tell ya, even if I was a siliconed hoochey mama, I wouldn't go anywhere near Brett Michaels after seeing him with these skanks! )

A-N-Y-W-A-Y...back to my original track here.
I found out a dear old friend of mine from high school was on Wife Swap this past Friday. I had to work so I recorded it and watched it last night with the Hubs.
I thought it was more odd than anything. One woman was portrayed as being a total flake, the other as a total control freak. But if you watch carefully you will see that Flake has a heart the size of Texas and made some really good points to the kids and dad of the other family and was really trying to make them see that they needed to spend more time on the kids and not just money.
And Control Freak has a really good sense of humor she may not show very often - I mean, this martial arts mom dressed up in, basically, drag to go sing to a bunch of old people and was laughing about it. Plus she seemed genuinely concerned about them being so far in debt.

I feel bad that both families were portrayed so negatively. It's gotta hurt. They are obviously from very different worlds, but there was really nothing inherently wrong with either of them. I wouldn't choose to live like either one of them, but that's just not my "reality". Anyway, I hope they both managed to take away something constructive. I hope Jackie learns to keep her house clean and I hope that Myra learns to relax a little with her kids. I suspect, however, that for it do any real good, they would have to spend no less than 6 months in each others houses. But it sounds like maybe Phil now has a job (good) and Charles finally got to spend a little quality time with his kids for a change (even better).
And the Pirate party was really cool.


This picture has nothin' to do with nothin' but I like it. Dad took it at the beach by their house in December when the tide was high. Of course, I had to go and mess with it... :)

sevenmeme

So I'm perusing Words of Wisdom from a Smart Mouthed Broad today and she has this meme thing going. Sounded like fun, so I thought hey, what the heck, I'll give it a try! The idea is to list 7 random things about myself. You may or may not find them interesting. Or funny. Or just plain sad....

1: I am (not so) secretly doing this from work today.

2: If I had lots of money, and a bigger bedroom...and higher ceilings... I would buy this bed. Which probably says a lot about me, actually.

3: I once played Tuptim in a community theater production of "The King and I". Now, that may not sound strange until you realize that Tuptim was Burmese. I am not Burmese. I am a very German-looking white girl. But at the time I was the only one in the company that could hit the high notes.

4: I am allergic to garlic. No, I am not a vampire.

5: I am a huge Stargate fan.

6: In another life I want to live in Arizona and paint pictures of the ocean until I'm old-old and then move to Carmel and paint pictures of the desert.

7: I am only 5 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. We can discuss that at a later date.

And now, a random picture. My niece, Evelyn (thanks, Dad!). She is a cutie.

Violence or kitties?

So, yesterday I had the day off and was home drawing on my laptop. Looking at my favorite blogs. Eating Fritos. Y'know...same ol', same ol'.

I was channel surfing and could not find a darn thing that sounded good. Until I saw that on one of the Encore channels (on Comast) they were showing 1/2 of the Grindhouse movie that came out last year: Death Car. Or something like that.
I was curious. I had read a lot about it of course, because it was hyped to death in the entertainment media. So I thought, what the hey - I don't mind a gratuitously violent movie once in a while. Or so I thought.

Holy dead bodies, Batman.

It was, hands down, the most graphically violent movie I have ever seen in my life. You know how people say something has been burned into their brain? Well, I think this actually burned part of my brain. ** shudder **

Anyway. To try and get some warm fuzzies back, I scanned a bunch of craft papers into the laptop and spent some time playing with textures. Then I used them to alter the pop art pets I made a couple days ago.

So, even though I had to go to work today, I'm a little happier because they turned out really good, I think.

So just remember, Grindhouse = beyond extremely violent. Don't say I didn't warn you!

More pop art pets

Trying something new

So today is my day off from work (yea!) and I'm just hanging out at home. The Hubs has come home early today, too, and when I asked what he wanted to do with the day he said he was going to do taxes.
Joy.
I am going to work on art, big surprise. I am in the process of trying to redo my Etsy shop because I'm just not getting the sales I want. I am going to try several different things.
One is I'm going to not aim my art at children's stuff, which I kind of initially did with my alphabet series. I still like the fantasy/fairy tale stuff and will probably continue some of that. One other new thing I'm trying is a series of pop art animals like Frenchy up there.
I think I will work up a few critters I like and then offer to do commission work of people's pets.

I am also going to start doing some framed work, trying various small pieces, 6x6 and 8x8, that you can mix and match to create a grouping. I see some other shops are doing pretty well with that type of thing.
We (me and Hubs) are going to work on getting the olive hue designs website up and running also. He's much better with that sort of thing than I am, thank goodness!
And I'll try to start posting here more. It's hard when I work a 10 hour day, and when I'm trying to draw as much as I can. But I'm getting there!

Spirit Walker

This guy has been kicking around in my head for years. Don't know that he's exactly the way I pictured, but he's close.