Carnival 2011

I thought I would share our family's Sunday before Lent event held every year for as long as I can remember since meeting my husband. My husband's family called it Carnival! It is celebrated on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of Lent.  We have the traditional  lasagna dinner with italian pastries on that day.

Cream Puffs

Chocolate Eclairs

I carry on this tradition now for our family but  have changed it a little by adding the "Mardi gra" effect with masks and beads for decorations, mainly for the grandchildren to enjoy and have something other than the religious values to remember.

Our granddaughter Sarah has a birthday in March and since the lenten season started later this year  we decided to include Sarahs birthday into the days feastivites adding to "Mardi gra" theme. Our oldest daughter made a "Mardi gra" cake for Sarah! 

The fondit is also homemade, I secretly think she may be the next cake boss!!  I'm so proud of her!.

Thank you for enjoying this event with us!

UFO #1

I started  this painting in the fall class of 2010. We took many photo's of an organic nature for a composition that we could agree on as a group. We prepped a double thickness 10 x 24 bainbridge board with liquitex past gel, once that dried the  shells and the marble vases were drafted in with an HB pencil, then an acrylic wash of adobe tan was laid over the entire piece. After the abobe tan dried I painted in with acrylic with the blues, grays, diazanine purple, van dyke browns, flesh tint, buff titanium, oranges and alizarin crimson lest not forget the whites and greens over the sketched in shells and vases and background.

The oil overlay was added working the curtain, table cloth, marble vases and shells from right to left with the same colors only in the oil paints. I am stuck on the shell at the left of the picture, and I am still adding glazes over the marble and large shell to create depth. I will keep working on this a little at time until I get it right! 

 I'm on a mission over the next couple of weeks to actually try to finish the half dozen or so UFO's hanging around in the basement. Last night I finally finished my dream beach scene after lets say.... three or four years!  Now that I've taken  art classes on a regular basis, I feel a little more confident mixing colors and actually can make a cloud look like a cloud. Although these clouds are kind of bumpy because the paint aged from when I plastered it on three or four years ago, and couldn't be scraped off or painted out.  I framed this and have it hung in the guest room called my Island room! It's 16 x 20 and with the frame it looks great over the bed.

                                                    I think I'll this call "Dreams of Kehei"

Now on to the next UFO now that I'm on a roll!  

What's been keeping me busy?

My winter art class is over, and I have completed four still life oils! I framed all of them wih black plein aire frames and hung them in my dining room and foyer. I think I like painting more than I love to sew. (I can hear my stash calling me to come play with them for a while too) Now that I have learned the technique to create compositions, I see more paintings coming in the near future. I would love to paint some jalopeno's for my daughters kitchen. What do you think?

Two peppers


Sweet and Sour

Red Hot Aubergine

Bittersweet

Long Cold Winter!!

It's been awhile since my last post, I have been busy between vacations, holidays, Monday night class, Thursday night grandchildren and Friday through Sunday recovering from grandchildren and just plain trying to stay warm! It has been a tough winter with over 3 to 4 feet of snow and ice and battling the air temp between -8 to 20* since the beginning of January 2011!! I have to get on a roll again. Over the January break from classes I accepted consignment to shorten 15 mens long shirt sleeve cuffs along with 4 womens wool suit jackets.  Have to admit I was good! Approached them like piecework ripping pinning, color coding threads, gave a quick shot of steam to set the seam, folded and completed within a week (to my surprise) and an extra $202!! Sorry didn't have time to take pictures I always think I should have taken pictures after the fact, why is that????

Here's a 9x12 oil of the Kalalau Mtn Ridge in Kauai. .I think I need to tweak it a little bit more and blend the clouds in lightening up the blue.  What do you think?

Summer is finally here!

It is spring and summer finally! I have been busy cleaning closet and putting away the wools and sweaters! I don't know which is worse, putting away the winter stuff or finding room for the summer stuff! The weather changed so quickly and last evening it was 94 degrees. We didn't even have the time to put up the air conditioners yet! Thank goodness it's a long weekend and we can find the time to do it all. Today it's a little cooler at 74*.

We have been working in the garden and last night I picked two quarts of strawberries.

They are yummie. I'm adding some pictures of the garden. We just planted our summer crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumers, green squash, radishes, lettuce, egglplant, green beans, parsley and basil.

My herb garden is also doing well. There is thyme, oregano, chives, tarragon, sage, chervil and fennel.

 

The spring flowers poppies. bearded iris and dutch iris are bloom and everything is looking like summer!

This weekend we will put in the seasonal plants, geraniums, pansies, sunflowers, marigolds etc. I wish everyone a safe Memorial Day and enjoy your celebrations!

Saturday is Tag Sale Day

Up and out early to bring the unwanted household and garage items half way across town for a huge family tag sale. I was practically giving the stuff away because I didn't want to carry it back. I was able to sell two 3 yard  pieces of artic fleece for $4.00 each! I still have six left. In addition to normal stuff we all collect over the years I also had a lot of craft items...sewing, yarn, christmas panel cutouts and three years of Sew News, Threads and Sew Stylish magazines.  I didn't end up unloading them, I think it was because the Tag Salers were not looking for the crafty item in the beggining of summer. However I did sell the Rachel Ray magazine collection for $3.00 and ended up with $75 for the day. What I didn't sell and didn't want to hold to anymore went to the local Good Will. Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and say goodbye to stuff that was just hanging around.

After we all cleaned up the "Family" of six (we call the "old timers") went out to dinner. We choose "Lenny and Joes" Fishtale in Madison, CT near the Hammonassett State Park. It is only 25 minutes on the interstate and they have the BEST seafood on the shoreline, you can either use take out or dine there if your lucky enough to find a table.  Of course my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I ordered a soft shell crab dinner and a side of whole bellie clams! We were lucky to find a table inside the building and waited for our order. I had #59 and while we were enjoying dinner we heard them announce #59 again! That means they served 100 orders within half hour! I was too stuffed after devouring the crab that I unable to take on  the clams. I had them wrapped for take out to enjoy the next day.  After we were finished we went outside and strolled around to get the food to go down.  Lenny's has an ice cream stand  and a carousel.  And of course we were unable to  resist the ice cream!

The Magical Charity Carousel is a joint charitable venture of the Madison and Westbrook Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tales $ll the proceeds from the carousel goes to the local community food bank and charities. Since 1998 $605,000.00 has been over 11 Seasons! Check out their T-Shirt page. You may see someone from your state who's been there!  http://ljfishtale.com/page/2683-Home

Since it was almost eight pm and the state park closes at sunset we decided to drive back and stop in Branford and walk around the green. It was a perfect ending to long day.