Artsy Fartsy Night

I absolutely LOVE nights when we, as a family, spend lots of creative time together. The older the boys get the more they tend to do their own thing which is great but I miss that time when they were little and excited to do art with their mom. 

But last night I was able to talk my kids into helping me with one of my creative endeavors. I bought myself an anatomy book and am slowly working my way through it in order to better understand body structure to improve my figure drawing skills. I always enjoyed figure drawing but haven't done any serious figure drawing since college. 

And my kids agreed to do a little modeling for me! Hope I can make this a daily habit! The boys were pretty patient and sat still for a FIVE WHOLE MINUTES!! For them that's practically an eternity! Yahoo I think lasted a total of 60 seconds and even then I had to sketch fast, she was always moving! 

Yip even set up my camera in order to work on a stop action film with his superhero figures. He got about half done before the battery died...sorry bud! When (and if) he finishes it I'll be sure to share! 

And Yahoo had her own special artwork to share especially with me this week! Yesterday I painted a Leprechaun for an upcoming painting party. 

But when Yahoo saw it she immediately said,

 "Mommy that painting isn't good!!" 

"Why?" I asked thoroughly puzzled. (I thought I'd done pretty good considering how fast I'd painted it.) 

"You can't see his face!!" 

(enter eye roll and exasperated face of five year old)

"I will show you how to make a GOOD leprechaun!" 

A GOOD Leprechaun

Yes dear. I totally see my mistakes. Thank you so very much for setting me straight!! LOL 

Gorgeous!

It's a bit chilly and windy today but this gorgeous sky more than makes up for it. 

What a surprise!

Well look at this...snow!! I sure wasn't expecting to see this when I woke up. 

What a change from just a few days ago when I was outside without a coat! Kansas weather is crazy. 

On the bright side...

Dirty dishes at night....

...but very blessed for the food that dirtied them up. 

A nice day...

My poor Hoosier family. My mom just texted me that northern Indiana is under a code red travel advisory.  And a blizzard warning until 10 tonight and winter storm warning until 7 in the morning. 

My poor sister in law moved from western Kansas to northern Indiana just a few month ago. I'm guessing she's not having a very good winter so far. 

I probably shouldn't share this photo with her then should I? 

Sunny and bright and almost 60 degrees. 

I shouldn't complain but honestly...I don't think I'd mind being in the middle of a blizzard right now. 

Papa Asa

With the big move coming up in just three more weeks my busy schedule is slowing down. I gave up my position as Sunday School teacher and on the Township Library Board. I was looking at my schedule last week hoping that I'd get some good long hours of painting in before the move. That hasn't quite happened yet. I did get this handsome guy done a little over a week ago though. 

This is my Grandpa Asa who died a few years ago. I was pretty close with this Grandpa even though we fought a lot! Stubborn runs in the family I guess. 

I worked on this one on and off for about 4 months before it was finally finished. I already shipped it off to my Grandma Mary, his wife. I already miss him though. I admit when I started painting this I started at his eyes and I cried for the first couple days. Papa's eyes were his most striking feature and it was really hard to paint him. 

Last year I finished a painting of my Grandma Lennis. 

I think I'm getting better. I'd like to paint a picture of each of my grandparents but I'm having trouble finding good photos of my other grandpa to work from. 

Yesterday I was hoping to paint but Yahoo was sick all day. Maybe nothing urgent will come up today and I can get some time in. I think one of the hardest things about being an artist is not allowing day to day life intrude on your creative time. 

Home sick

I guess I'm not going anywhere today. Yahoo is home sick with a fever. I'm not complaining though because we have dodged the bullet on the nasty stomach flu so far this winter but we've had a lot of bad colds. Coloring books and Netflix!

Big News!

Wow, I can hardly believe that it's been almost four months since I've blogged. I know I've been ignoring my blog here but I must say the other aspects of my life have been flourishing! 

In case you didn't know, in the last year I've started my own business The Roving Brush, a traveling painting party. It became more successful than I had ever imagined it would. In the past 16 months I'd say I averaged one party a week which along with substitute teaching and teaching Sunday School I've only gotten busier the last couple of years. 

And of course Yip and Yap are 10 1/2 years old, almost as tall as me and busy with basketball, 4H and the many adventures they get themselves into. Yahoo will be 6 in a couple of weeks and is so very proud of the fact that her bike's training wheels are off and she's working really hard at learning to ride like a big kid before......

........big news coming......


........can you guess???.............


WE ARE MOVING! (Yes, again!) 

Let's recap shall we?? 

Quick timeline;
Aug. 2003 - DR and I were married and I moved from central Indiana to Kentucky. 
March. 2004 - DR's job moved him, temporarily, to Delaware. I was two months pregnant with twins. I move in with my sister in Indianapolis because we don't know how long "temporary" will be and what issues we may have with twins. So for the next few months DR and I flew back and forth to see one another. In June, "temporary" became permanent and I am told by my doctor to no longer fly. 
August/Sept. 2004- Yip and Yap were born very healthy and a month later my mom and I drove to Delaware with the babies. DR didn't like the position he was forced into with this company and so....
January 2005 - My parents and teenage brother came to Delaware and helped move us back to northern Indiana....through a blizzard....with 5 month old twins....to a rental house that I'd only seen once.....two years before.  
October 2005 - We moved again to a house we bought two streets away because,you know, we thought we'd be there for a while. 
July 2006 - DR is asked to take a position in southern Indiana close to his family....we move again. 
October 2007 - July 2010 DR's company moved us again to central Illinois close to the Indiana state line. Yahoo was born!! 
July 2010 - March 4, 2015 We've lived in Montezuma, KS one of the best little communities in the world!! (can you tell I'm biased?)  
March 4, 2015 - will be our last day in this great town and we'll be moving to a 20 acre place in the country that I haven't seen yet!


I am super excited for our move though. We'll be living about an hour southwest of Kansas City, KS which is only a day drive to my parents in Indiana!! That's so much better than the two day drive with three kids that we've faced these last 4 years. DR has taken a job with his company that's a promotion (more on that later hopefully!) that he is really enjoying. He's been living in Kansas City in a hotel since early December and we are all tired of it! My kids miss their dad!!! The kids are pretty nervous about being at a new school but I'm sure they'll adjust pretty quickly. 

Anyway, with our move coming up we (obviously) have some big changes coming. I anticipate that the biggest challenge for me is that I will suddenly have either a) a whole lot of time on my hands to blog or b) so busy with living in the country and kick starting The Roving Brush again that I won't have time to blog! We'll see! 


As I was searching back through my blog to find that timeline above I found all those posts I did years ago that were Pics of the Day. Now why haven't I been doing those in a while? Oh, I know it's tricky to lug a camera around, load pics onto the computer and then post. But now I have a phone I can blog from and....why haven't I? I've decided to try to do those again.

With just about 3 weeks until moving day my schedule is all kinds of crazy. Some days I find myself busy from sunup to when I crash into bed and then other days, like today I find myself with some unexpected time on my hands. 
I'll do my best to keep you all updated on the big move! 

Keep us in your prayers...we need it!! 

Heather