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My baby is going to school for the first time after 6 years of homeschooling. I don't know if I'm ready for it.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
~ Albert Einstein

Why Bother?

I guess when you can't see out the windows anymore, it's time.

Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon

Baseball

We went to see our local baseball team play tonight... The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.





Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.
~ Babe Ruth

My Dad

It is so difficult to believe it has been two years. Why is it that it feels like no time has passed at all. At times I can still feel the horrible knot in my stomach that I felt when I first got the call. The shock. The disbelief. The feeling of "someone make this all go away because I can't deal with the pain". Sometimes I still think I can't deal with the pain. I did need to post a couple of photos of him today to remember who he was. We may not have had the best of relationships, but I did love him.



And here is the photo I took today. I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise so before I ran I grabbed my camera and drove to the base of the mountains to capture it before it left.

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.
~ Gloria Naylor

The Boy and His Toy

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
~ Andy Rooney

Cousins

The best part of life is when your family becomes your friends, and your friends become your family.
~ Danica Whitfield

Name This Bird Contest

Actually, there is no prize, but I am very curious. He was sitting in our palm tree (yes, the ugly one) bright and early this morning. This was the best photo I could get before it flew off. I've never seen anything this bright around here. I looked in my bird book and online, but can't find it. Anyone have any ideas?

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
~ Chinese Proverb

Palm Tree

Yes, we have a palm tree on the side of the house. I absolutely hate it. It's kind of trapped though and impossible to get rid of. So there it sits. We had it trimmed, so now it's not only ugly, but it's naked.

It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree it strives ever upwards when it is most burdened.
~ Sir Philip Sidney

Purple Rain

I know... stupid title. I couldn't resist though. It never rains in Southern California in the middle of July so it needed to be documented. It feels like the mid-west with the humidity and the clouds. Very strange.

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
~ Author Unknown

Knots

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.
~ Jean Toomer

The Finale

It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us.
~ Joanne Kathleen Rowling

Dawn

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is
to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
~ Marcus Aurelius

My Baby

I sketched this of B about 5 years ago when she was asleep on my lap. I took it out yesterday and copied it onto canvas and painted it. It's not the most beautiful painting in the world, but she's my girl.

A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart.
~ Author Unknown

Sand Dollars

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Phase Two

This is phase two. I made photocopies of the photos I took and transferred them to grocery bags that I painted white. Then I painted over them with glazes to give them more of a dreamy feel. I need some honest opinions. Would you frame them differently? Would they be something you would buy?

Above all, it is a matter of loving art, not understanding it.
~ Fernand Leger ~

Phase One

I started printing cards today (thanks Beth!). I'm hoping to get them on Etsy soon so stay tuned.

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Craft Fair

I went to a craft fair today to get some inspiration on selling my own things. Unfortunately I only took about 3 pictures of the crowd and my camera ran out of batteries and my other set was charging at home. I was very impressed with how much wonderful handmade items there are out there being sold. Check out www.etsy.com for more.

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.
~ Auguste Rodin

Toilets

I know - not the most beautiful picture. B was cleaning the bathroom today and came out saying the toilet was foaming over. I went in to find out, sure enough, it was foaming over. She added just a bit to much cleaner. It was too funny not to get a photo.

I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. Here was every sensuous curve of the ''human figure divine'' but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.
~ Edward Weston

Upward

There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.
~ Jascha Heifetz

Drops

How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Work

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
~ Mark Twain:

Seasons

I took a photo of these in winter and decided everyone needed to see that these vines actually do produce grapes.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
~ Alan Cohen

Paint

It's not as bright as the colors in Julie's house, but it's clean and new. :-)

It's like an artist with a clean slate. You just have to paint a new picture. And hopefully, a better one.
~ Brian Mollere

Chocolate Cake

The kids bought me this cake for Mother's Day and I finally got around to making it. I can't wait to taste it!

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.
~ Dave Barry

Entertainment

Reading: All About Techniques in Acrylics
Watching: Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story
Listening to: Linkin Park

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
~ Mary Worley Montagu

Shadow Art

E decided to try out a new sculpture technique - making shadows from junk. It came out pretty cool!

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wildflower

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
~ Albert Camus

My Walking Companion

I went for a walk this morning up in the hills hoping to get some good photos. I didn't expect to have company!

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.
~ Chief Seattle

Crime and Punishment (Raskolnikov)

My newest collage:

If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment - as well as the prison.
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Old

And what's a life? - a weary pilgrimage, Whose glory in one day doth fill the stage With childhood, manhood, and decrepit age.
~ Francis Quarles

Dinner

This is the best summer dinner ever - bread, gouda cheese, hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, mayo and salt. Yum.

All sorrows are less with bread.
~ Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote