Our Baby is Home

Indy (10 months)  and Buddy (9 1/2 years)

So after driving over 8 hours to and from the Yreka area, my husband brought home our youngest family member, our 10 month old chocolate Labrador retriever. As I told you in a recent post, Indy was at hunt school for 5 months. I have missed him a ton!

First thing about him is that he is a big 10 month old. Our 9 year old Lab is a pretty big lab at 75-80 lbs. (not a fat lab, just big), and Indy is already taller and longer than him. Second thing about him is that he is thin, really thin. He has been growing so fast that his body has not been able to put on weight, and he looks a little bit emaciated. The trainer let us know that they continually increased his food to get him to gain weight, but it just wasn't happening yet. We'll get him fattened up eventually so I 'm not worried about him.

We took Indy to the vet, and he said he looks healthy, even if he is thin. He already weighs 66 lbs. He recommended high energy food, puppy food, or adding hard boiled eggs to his food. I am going to start with adding eggs to his food to see how that effects his weight.

Indy is a lovely puppy who is calmer and more casual than Buddy, our first dog. I am so excited to see him grow and see what kind of dog he will turn out to be. So far, it seems like he will be a great hunting pal AND house dog.

Do you have a dog, or a  pet? I would love to hear about the animal family members in your life!!

Hugs!!

Thank you for stopping by!!!!!!

I Love Space!!

Years ago, a friend of mine started painting, and it occurred to me that I wanted to paint, also. But when I started painting, I wasn't happy with the things I was painting so I started looking around for something new to paint, and I found nebula. 

I wasn't really sure what they were, but from the moment I saw one, I was hooked! The colors are amazing and the variety of them are awe inspiring!

I did some research about nebula and then I liked them even more. I love that they are often the left over gas from an exploding star and then the birth place of new stars and planets. The idea of nebula being a visual example of death and rebirth is thought provoking and intriguing. 

If you have never looked into what a nebula is, go Google that shit! They are amazing and maybe they will blow our mind like they did mine!!!

HUGS!!!!!

Puppy's Coming Home!!

Indy Sept 12, 2015

I did a post a while ago about sending our puppy, Indy, to hunting school where he was learning obedience and learning to become a hunting dog. He went there on June 27, and we thought he would be gone for 3 months or so. Well, its been more than 4 and a half months, and my husband goes to pick him up on Wednesday, Nov. 18. I am so happy that he is coming home yet I am a little apprehensive about having 2 dogs in the house and in our world. 

Overall, though, I am excited to have our second puppy coming home so we can really get to know him and start taking him out into the field to duck hunt with us. I am so interesting in seeing him work on retrieving ducks and how he responds to being in the field, really hunting with us. Our older dog, Buddy, is extremely excited about hunting, so much so he is a little jumpy and often doesn't want to wait to be released to go get the bird. 

Our trainer told me Indy was what he called a casual dog. I didn't really get it until I saw the trainer working with Indy. Indy did what he was asked to do yet he did it very nonchalantly. Yet when the trainer got out a bird wing, Indy got very interested; he got very birdy, which means he was very, very excited about getting the bird smelling thing. 

So, it should be interesting to see what our new dog is all about. I will let you know!

If you have pets, love them!!

Hugs!

Exploring in Painting

Green Tin Painting 1

I decided a while ago that I wanted to try to paint a nebula on to a different kind of surface. We had recently changed our water heater, and there was a piece of metal pipe left over. So I took it and cut it and hammered it flat. I spent some time cleaning it to get it back to the pretty silver underneath the dust and dirt. I thought the color on the outside would look best for the nebula I was thinking of doing. The above picture is the first layer of the painting. 

Green Tin Painting 2

The second layer has lighter shades of green combined with the first layer of a grass green. 

Green Tin Painting 3

In this layer I added some black and a thin layer of very light almost white green.  I am always trying to get a cloudy look to my nebula paintings and it usually requires many different layers. 

Green Tin Painting 4 

Again more layers of several colors of green, some white, and black. I was struggling with this painting in deciding when I should stop panting. This often happens because I can see many endings as I paint yet I am often interested in what it might look like if I  . . . . 

Green Tin Painting 5

After the taking the last picture, I decided that it was ready for the stars. For this painting, I used both white and a very, very light green to make the stars. I never know how many stars there will be or where the stars will be when I start starring the picture. I am happy with how this experiment of painting on tin turned out and have been inspired since to paint on different mediums.

This was really fun to do :) and it challenged me because the paint acted differently on metal as apposed to the canvas I usually paint on. Yet totally worth any difficulties I encountered! 

Challenge yourself and try something new!

Hugs!!

Dressing Up

Vampire Me

I really like dressing up for Halloween, and my job allows me to dress up, as long as it is within our dress code. But I was at a conference on Friday, thus no dressing up for me. I was bummed especially because my husband had bought us new vampire teeth. 

I got home form my conference on Friday afternoon, and my cute husband suggested we dress up on Halloween and maybe go to a community party. Well, I had just got home from a 3 day trip and kind of wanted to stay home for the weekend, BUT I also wanted to dress up. 

We decided to dress up and stay home. So we carved pumpkins (ones we grew over the summer) during the day and in the after noon we both dressed up as vampires. I like the dark clothes and light skin vampire look. The clothes are from my closet, and I was stoked I could wear these heels, even if it was only for a few minutes. I got these shoes right before I broke my leg. I haven't been wearing a bunch of high heels since then and I have never worn these since I broke my leg. So Yeah!

I did my eyes in shades of back and deep pinks and a shimmery pink on top. I chose jewelry that is not silver and looks kind of old. I think the overall look was pretty good!

I waned to include this picture for two reasons. 

1) You can really see the color of my hair in this picture and I am loving this color. I do it myself and am so proud that the color is so great. I went to many hair dressers who could never seem to get the color right so a few years ago, I started experimenting with color myself. Now I do it once every 6 weeks or so. 

2) The difference between this picture and the two before it is not time of day or light outside. It is the result of turning the flash off. I totally thought I needed a flash because it was dusk, no sun out at all. But the reality was that the flash was changing the picture quite a bit. 

Okie dokie, that's all for today. :)  

I hope you indulge in things that make you happy and that are fun for you! 

Hugs!!

The Wall Painting

Mural in my Guest Room

Several years ago, I decided to paint a wall in our guest room as a huge nebula. Through a discussion with my husband in which he encouraged me to try something new, I decided this would be fun and new and challenging. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, really. 

When I started painting it, I figured it would take me a month or two. But that estimate was based on pure guess since I had never painted anything anywhere near this big. 

I started with colors first and covered almost the entire wall with various colors and tons of layers. These steps took months, like 4 months. Because I have painted many nebula before this, I knew that the layering of the colors would take some time. To really get the cloudy effect of a nebula, I used a sea sponge and layer after layer of color, often using different hues of the same color. 

The next step was the black. I learned after painting nebula for a bit that if I start with black and then try to cover it with color, the color never was very vibrant or bright. So I started beginning with color and then adding the black. It really worked for me. The colors are more bold this way and made it so I could really decide the shape of the nebula. With the mural, I had a hard time deciding how much of the edges of the wall should be black. I knew I did not want the whole wall to be color with a little bit of black, but I wanted to have a lot of explosions of color. I started at the edges with black and moved the black in until I liked the look of each section. Then I went through and added black in the center areas. The whole black process took 2 months or so.

The last step was to add the starts. It is hard to see in the picture above that there are hundreds of stars on the wall. I used white, pink, and green and used a few different small paint brushes to add a plethora of stars. That took me a month or so. I love this part of painting nebula; it seems to me that when I add the stars, the painting comes to life. :)

This painting was difficult in that it was so big I felt I could see every tiny part I didn't like, which made me continue to paint things over and over. In the end, I learned a lot about color, layers, my tools, and myself. I wanted to give up so many times and just repaint the wall white, but I did not. I just kept going back to it and with time, energy, effort, persistence, and determination, I finished it!

And I Love It!!!!

Hug!!