"Recalculate!"

We are like GPS units. We plan our journeys to follow a designated route. Sometimes there are obstacles in our path. Sometimes we make a wrong turn and get a little lost. We don’t give up and stay lost. We just recalculate and get back on the right route again.

Christmas Row Houses 2011

I was creatively occupied by making these vintage-themed row houses before and after the holidays. I spent a relaxing two weeks in Florida with my son, Adam, and his fiance, Robyn. The day after Christmas they went on a 5-day cruise to Cozumel and the Cayman Islands while I doggy-sat their two beastie-babies. They entrusted me with their Garmin GPS unit and their cars and I had a great time shopping for after-Christmas sales at the local craft and hobby stores while they were cruising. I came home with a stash of new holiday stamps, embellishments and ideas to add to my row houses.

Row House Challenge Theme:

HOME TWEET HOME

This is artwork I created for a swap/challenge on

Paper Digital Art & ImagesbyKim



"Time Flies"



"Song Birds"

"Red Bird"

"Nesting"

"Martha's Pets"

"Little Brown Bird"

"It's Good To Be King"

"Caged"



"I'm Blue"



"Feathered Friends"

A visit to Pastimes Antiques gleaned these vintage photos. Feel free to use them in your artwork creations.

Sayyyyyyyyy TREAT!!

Getting these three to sit still for anything is a real challenge . . . !

 BUT . . . their unique and individual personalities along with their unconditional love

make up for ALL challenges that come our way!

MORE GOLD . . .

Dee-oh-gee and Bartok

And DEE-OH-GEE makes THREE Golden Retrievers at my house!! Five-month-old Dee-oh-gee and Bartok are brothers and two-year-old Miss Bella is their half-sister . . . they all have the same father and their mothers are sisters . . . yeah, I know . . . it's complicated! They've all been affectionately nicknamed . . . Bella is 'Malibu Bella' because she's the darkest of the three with a 'golden tan' (and she's also a teenager in doggy years). Bartok is 'toy boy' because he's usually got a squeak toy in his mouth no matter where he goes and he knows how to squeak it well! Dee-oh-gee is 'the bandit' because if there's a stray article of clothing laying on the floor, he claims it (until we claim it back).

Bella

I created this "art quilt" about a year ago. It presently hangs over my file cabinet at work. It's the second one I've made--I donated the first one in my son Jason's memory to the Finger Lakes Donor Family Network a few years back for a fund-raising raffle. I'm not a collector of all things 'wolf' but I do love the woodsy color theme in this piece.

There's a new baby at my house and his name is BARTOK. Born October 17, 2010, adopted by me January 16, 2011. He and Miss Bella are getting along wonderfully. They have the same handsome father and their mothers are sisters.

I haven't spent much time lately working on card creations but I'm ALWAYS working on something. The two bracelets below are an "industrial chic" design style. I made them for two of my co-workers for Christmas.

The photo below is of my living floor after I refinished it last month. This particular dream began about two years ago when I decided to pull up the commercial-grade gray carpeting in my living room and bedroom and discovered the original 100-year-old oak floor underneath. I can't even begin to estimate how many hours I invested in painting the walls and ceiling, removing the carpeting and padding, pulling hundreds of staples holding the padding in place, stripping the dark brown shellac around the edges of the rooms where it had been painted around the edges of room-size carpeting, sanding, staining, applying polyeurothene . . . I still have the bedroom and a small room off the bedroom that I use for a closet to do. I look forward to enjoying my newly refinished floors!