Art and Stuff

I have been doing some art lately, I just haven't been posting it because it's been gifts for people.  Now that I have given some of these gifts away, I can post them here.  Here is my wedding gift to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  (It's an oil painting)

Here is a picture I drew for one of my friends.  (Prismacolor)

I think the color turned out much better in real life, but you get the idea.  I have also been working on an oil painting to donate to the Festival of Trees.  Last year, Tom and I went and saw paintings there, that's what gave us the idea, but I can't find anywhere online that mentions paintings.  They have regulations and rules for what you can donate, so now I'm not sure.  I've been emailing the people on the website about if a painting can count as a "centerpiece or collectible", but no one has replied.  I hope I do get to donate.  I love Primary Children's Hospital, and I think donating this painting could be therapeutic for me.  Even if I can't donate it, I think it will still be good for me.  But, I don't think I'll post any pictures of it yet.  It's not finished. 

I've been feeling a little under the weather lately.  I hope I don't have to take work off.  I hope I can sleep and wake up in the morning feeling perfectly healthy.  I will say, though, times of sickness make you appreciate times of health much more.  When you notice every uncomfortable swallow, you can't wait for the swallows you don't have to think about.

We <3 Cooking and Food

So, before I really go anywhere with the actual topic of this post, I have to make the following common-knowledge statement.  Any time you go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, it is mandatory that you sit in the back massage chairs.  That is all.

Alright.  Lovetta and I really enjoy going on cooking and restaurant adventures.  Our latest restaurant adventure took us just down the street to a place right next to WinCo. Foods called Asian Panda.  Their home page honestly describes them best: "Comparable to PF Chang’s but with a sushi bar, better prices, and NO WAITING."  The place is so new that when we showed up, we were the only people there.  It was a real shame, honestly.  The food was really, really tasty!  Imagine PF Chang's quality, definitely enough portion for leftovers the next day, but only $10 a plate.  No more feeling like you overpaid for food.  The sushi was $5-10 a roll and I suppose not half bad.  We're not really sushi people, but we ate one and found it intriguing.  Sushi-loving people would probably like it :D If you like Chinese you should go check it out now while they're running their Grand Opening specials.  Buy 1 get 1 50% off!  Our total bill came to $15 before tip.

For cooking adventures, we went on a shopping trip desperately searching for a dough hook for our Kitchenaid mixer.  Most mixers will come with these, but ours was a special Black Friday version that didn't get one.  This adventure took us all over town (including a trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond).  Ultimately, we ended up at Macy's where they told us that the only place you can order replacement dough hooks, wire whisks, etc. is directly through Kitchenaid.  Boo.  At least we got a soft pretzel out of the adventure.

The reason we wanted a dough hook so badly (for which we are now waiting on delivery) is because we wanted to try our hand at making some Focaccia bread.  As you saw, we went to California about 2 months ago and tried out a slew of fun restaurants with Lovetta's sister.  There was this one super-delicious Italian restaurant called Mama D's.  Holy moley that food was good, but what made it awesome was the little free bread appetizer they give you.  It was this amazing focaccia bread that they served with olive oil and some herb combination on the side.  We must have eaten like 3 or 4 servings of the bread alone it was so delicious.  Ever since that moment, we'd decided that we're going to learn how to make that bread.  Yesterday was that day.  We found a good recipe in our America's Test Kitchen cookbook.  We overbaked it just a tad (still getting used to our oven in the condo), but it was goooood.  Traditionally, we've had some spectacular failures regarding getting dough to rise, but actually were quite successful with this bread.  We'll try it again and next time take some pictures of it for y'all to see.

Happy Valentine's Day!

How Entertaining

My birthday this year was one of the best birthdays I can remember!  My mom and dad hosted which was awesome because my mom is a great cook and I didn't have to do dishes after the party.  My mom made a very artistic cake and a lot of my friends came.  Pictures don't really capture how much fun it was for me, but here are some anyway.

In other news, Tom and I purchased an entertainment center with some tall bookshelves.  I love bookshelves.  They make me happy.  I'm not really sure why.  You can see on our TV one of my favorite video games of all time.  Perhaps because it's so ridiculous. Plants vs. Zombies!  If you haven't heard the song, you really should.  "I know your type: tall, dark, and dead.  You want to bite the petals of of my head, then eat the brains of the one who planted me here..."  It will give you something to sing in the shower or when your baking or in the middle of class (although I wouldn't recommend that last one, your students won't know what's going on.)

Slowly we are making our new home feel more like home.  Next, we'll hang our paintings and picture frames.

School is going well.  We are participating in a month-long read-a-thon.  I volunteered to help at our kick-off activity.  I was in charge of a crossword puzzle station.  It took a lot of time because the point of the activity was to read, so I typed up text to go with the crossword puzzles.  The idea was to read the text then do the puzzle.  It was effective most of the time.  It was interesting to see how some parents basically did the puzzle for their child, but some parents wanted their child to do the work.  I think teaching has made me more inclined to encourage the child to do as much as he/she possibly can.

I'm enjoying teaching science these days.  We're doing a unit on the 5 senses.  I think it will always be fun to guess what's inside a bag just by feeling it.  I made a PowerPoint jeopardy "guess that sound" game. That will also be fun once I finally have time to do it.  Science is not the most essential thing to do in a day, and I always plan more than I actually do.  I'm sure I'll do this one soon, however, because I'm excited for it.  That always helps.

If you know anyone in our area looking for a TV or entertainment center let me know.  We are looking to get rid of our old ones.

Sweet Glorious Vacation

So, Lovetta and I just got back from a California Christmas vacation with our friends Rob and Lisa. We spent the first part of the trip at Lovetta's sister's place in southern California. It was nice because we got to spend some time on the beach and Lovetta got to have her art all-nighter.

The downside to the beginning of the trip was that we came in right after a gigantic storm, probably the biggest the state has seen in some time. What did that mean for us? We didn't get away from the cold very well :( For the entire week and a half we were in California, we only had maybe 2 warm days. So very sad. The beach also had ridiculous amounts of seaweed and dead sea creatures sprawled everywhere from the extra high tides.

The remainder of the time after Christmas was spent in northern California for my brother's wedding.  We spent a lot of our time prepping up to the reception.  We set up this beautiful tent kind of thing in the gym at the local church.  I wish we had pictures of it (I'm sure some will show up sometime in the near future from someone).  They also had this neat photo booth and props set up for guests to take their pictures.  Here's a few that we took.

All in all it was a great trip.  However, after so much time spent driving in a car (at least 30 hours), we're glad to be home now :D

Pssst. Do you wanna know a secret?

So, Lovetta likes to show off all of her amazing artwork (and who could blame her?). But you probably want to see all of the secret artworks that she and I create in our super, secret lab. BEHOLD!

This one was our first creation. It was good, but the best is yet to come! BWAH HA HA!

This was our second creation. He was inspired from a few previous ideas we had. Maybe we'll post them up some day. Isn't it wonderful, though?

This was one of Lovetta's self portraits (with a little of my help). You can tell she is having a good day.

We made this one for a friend of ours who was having a bad day.
MAGIC UNICORN FIXES EVERYTHING!

Thank you for coming to our secret drawing laboratory. Until next time. *maniacal laughter*

Thanksgiving and Art

Thanksgiving means a lot of different things to me. This year it meant being thankful for banana cream pie!


We made that pie with real vanilla bean. Mmmmmm.

Also my mom and my sisters and I did a lot of art. Here's a little tree that I painted. (this one I did before Thanksgiving, but I think it goes well on this post.)



Here's a painting I did of Tom and me. I might add some more to it, but it's really wet right now. I'm letting it dry some. Or maybe I'm done.

My mom has some nice markers. I used them on some life drawings. Here's Tom (back when he had more hair).

And Angela.

We took turns modeling for each other. These poses were fun because we were laying and sitting on my kitchen counter so we could all see. We did some six-minute poses and some ten-minute poses. Time goes by so fast. Here's Angela again in charcoal this time.

Here's Melody.

And here's my mom.

I am getting better, but I need a lot of practice. Melody and Angela and my mom did a lot of good pictures of me. (Probably because I'm so good at posing :) ) Happy Thanksgiving! I'm glad we can listen to Christmas music without dispute now.