Switchplates? You know: the plastic covers for the wall switches. I've decided to paint the switchplates in this house, along with the outlet wall plates. Not all at once, but one at a time when the mood strikes. So far I've painted three switchplates. There are a lot of switchplates and wall plates in our home. I'm hoping the Husband will join me in painting some.

 The dried remains of persimmons on the branches looked like ballet dancers. So, of course I had to take a photo of the branch and play with it in Photoshop.  Below is the original shot.  

Today I'm sharing a couple of pages from my art journal which I started a few months ago. I keep this journal and a box full of colored pencils and pens and a heart-shaped box of crayons near my seat in the living room. The journal gets opened at night when I'm not interested much in what's on TV or when I suddenly get a yen to draw and color something. Lately, for reasons unknown to me, elephants have been finding their way out of my imagination. I draw them on paper . I paint them on plates . I'm considering creating an elephant figure out of some of the chicken wire in the backyard. Freida is the name of the elephant up there in the photo. The Husband named her. Freida is a cutie with her curly bangs, red hoofs, and red ribbon. I wonder what kind of adventures she has been on. The singing gourds in my drawing were modeled on two dried gourds that Godmother Pat and Darling Jenn painted for us at our #21 anniversary party in September. See the lovely gourds

Today is shameless promoting of us, the Husband and me, and our art work at Happy_Macs , a Zazzle.com store. When you click on that link, you'll find our first products for sale—two 2018 calendars featuring the cartoons of the Husband, a.k.a Arrmac. For those who didn't know or had forgotten about Arrmac, he was in a cartooning frame of mind from 1998 to 2007. I pulled them out of the archives to produce two calendars of his awesome work. Said Arrmac in words similar to these: I created these cartoons years ago, but the Wife continues to promote me. Well, yeah.

I had it in my mind yesterday afternoon to pick more persimmons, rake the leaves, and clean up the canna lilies I dug out before breakfast.  It was a gorgeous autumn day, the sun's warmth keeping the  chill at bay. Before I knew it I had painted those plates up there in the photo. Maybe today, I might get to those tasks. This was my second adventure with plate painting. This time I discovered some things about me: One, the plate is my canvas, I say with dramatic relish. Two, a plate's design, such as a border of faint red and blue flowers, can be painted over, with abandon. So much for the Mama's chinaware that she only displayed. It's not like I'm doing anything different other than displaying them, with new faces, in the the yard somewhere. Three, painting the whole canvas is cool. It was with much restraint that I didn't paint a background behind Konnie, the small rambunctious elephant. Four, mixing colors is the same joyful sensation I got when

Dear Friends, today I give to you my first fictional story as a retired lady. You're welcome. Giggle.

In 1974 the Daddy and I brought back wall plaques of peacocks and fishes from our visit to the Philippines. Gifts for the Mama, the wall art were made of coconut shells. Until last year, the pieces wore their plastic wrappings and were carefully stored away. The Mama wanted to make sure they stayed pristine forever, of course. Of course, when I discovered the plaques last year, I ripped them out of their packaging and set them aside to sell in our garage sale. No one wanted to buy them. That was fortunate. A few weeks ago, on a whim, I colored in one of the peacock plaques with acrylic paints. Not the one above. That's my second effort. I'm finding zen as I color between the lines. There are two or three more plaques that I can color, if I want. And I want. A couple of dull-looking vases could also use a paint job. . . .

As I settled back to read a few more pages of a novel around 11 o'clock the other night, after spending an hour or so doodling and drawing sugar canes, peppermint canes, and walking canes, I realized that I was doing different things.  (Canes are not easy to draw, by the way.) I am actually looking for things to do, different things to try because I am. . . giggle . . .retired. There are some things I'm no longer interested in trying . . . hang gliding . . .roller skating . . . hiking the Pacific Crest trail . . .driving a big rig cross country, toot-toot . . .going to Mars Yup, no longer interested in making those dreams come true.  One of the things I have been doing is painting. I did that watercolor in the photo up there. What do you think: Does it remind you of granite mountains? Maybe somewhere in the Sierra Nevada?

Last month I was introduced to rock painting. Another creative outlet for me.  It's a good thing our back yard is full of rocks and there are a lot of places that I can border with them. I wonder though if the rocks mind being painted.

This drawing started with some free styling with glitter pens. La la la. . .    A couple weeks later I pulled out the crayons. Yesterday I took a photo of the drawing and played with it in Photoshop.  Voila! Now to find space for the drawing on the refrigerator.

Lately my hands have been itchy to draw. The other evening it began with the desire to draw a sunflower. Instead of drawing an imaginary one, I got off the couch and went and plucked a wilted sunflower from a two-week bouquet in the kitchen. I checked out the flower's structure, counted its petals, and took a good long hard look at it. I sketched a sunflower head with 32 petals (more or less, I lost count in the 20s), shaded in the petals with colored pencils, didn't like the result, and went searching for the crayons. Before I knew it the sunflower got a stem and leaves. . .and a setting!

Yup! I made limoncello.  Not just say I'm going to make it like I have the past 13 years. It tastes pretty good, too. The Husband said, "Whoa!" on the first day of tasting. Potent. Today, the fourth day, he said, "It has mellowed." Yup. Still potent, but now the lemony taste is coming through. I chose Giada de Laurentiis' limoncello recipe because it didn't require months of waiting for the solution to do it's thing in a closet before we can drink it. Yup. Instant gratification. Of course I modified the recipe as I went along. I pared lemon peels from 15 lemons and added lemon juice to the sugar syrup. I waited six days to decant the liqueur because I didn't have any bottles and jars. The recipe says that it's good in the refrigerator for a month, but I think it can last longer. After all I used the Costco brand of vodka, which is 60 proof. Yeah, dragon fire. But, remember, it's a mellow fire. Giggle. I'm linking up with A

The VHS tapes have been staring at me in the living room for more than a month. It could even be two months. I think that was the last time the Husband and I opened a bunch of boxes from storage to determine what to use, keep, throw, donate, recycle, maybe repurpose, or maybe sell. I think these VHS tapes are ones that I thought we might be able to sell online one day. This morning I finally did something with 12 of the VHS tapes. I bound them together with duct tape to make two walls for a bottomless planter. That's it in the photo. Pretty cool, huh? The planter would've been made of all VHS tapes, but I didn't have enough tapes. Fortunately, I kept the doors of a small cabinet, which fell apart last year, for the other two walls. I figure the pretty flowers will take the focus away from the funky taping. Maybe later I'll pretty up the planter with color or simply put something beside the taped VHS-tape side. It feels good to make something! Today I'm

Today the color is orange. It's an upclose look of an orange rose. Yes, from one of the Mama's rose bushes. I cropped and enlarged a photo I took of the rose, then enhanced in Photoshop.  Nothing more to say. Until later.  

Trieste is the name of the street I live on. The Husband pronounces Trieste as Tree-est . The Mama used to say Trees-tay. I like to say Tree-es-tay . Molly the Cat simply says Mwrr. Today, I found out that I was wrong about what trieste means. I thought it meant sad. In Italian, which is the word's origin, trieste means market place. (Italians pronouce the word as tree-es-tay .) According to Wiktionary.org, trieste is from the Latin word tergeste , which comes from Venetic, a once-upon-a-time language in the long-time-ago region of Veneto. I love the idea that we live on Trieste, a market place. I shall now imagine myself selling, trading, and giving away the creations of my heart. They may be words, images, and things out of stuff. Hmmmm. When I was a young thing living in San Francisco I wanted to be a street artist when I grew up, but I had no idea what I could sell as I had no artistry of any kind. That's what I thought then. Things are different now. I have the t

Bones Approaching DOOM The Husband suggested that title for the photo. It has a nice ring, don't you think? Back to the picture. Imagine that the bones are wearing cowboy spurs. Imagine, now, that the bones are walking towards the ribbon of red. Jhing. Jhing. Jhing.  Doesn't it seem that the bones might also be wearing a poncho similar to the one Clint Eastwood's character wore in the Italian western movies once upon a time? That photo above is my edited version of the photo below that I took yesterday at the Day of the Dead procession in our county. I took a lot of photos. As always. My thought was to clean some up in Photoshop and share them at my other blog. Well, I didn't get pass this photo. I blame it on the skeleton (on the left) for holding up its arm in such a way that I thought it would be fun to contrast the bones with the feathers on the headdresses. You know how that goes. The creative brain cell kicked in and dismissed the practical sense of

This is what I've been doing with some of the Mama's various varieties of cups.  This is what I've been doing with some of the Mama's various varieties of plants that need to be put into pots or repotted. I'm having a lot of fun . It's the letter V at ABC Wednesday . Click here to check out the other participants or to link up with the weekly meme started by Denise Nesbitt and continued to day by the ABCW team headed by Roger Green.   .

Ha! I'm actually doing Teresa's meme, Friday's Hunt , on the actual day. This week the photo hunt was 1) The Letter L, 2) Week's Favorite, and 3) Lace. My interpretation of the letter L is also my favorite photo. A lovely landscape of the Southern Diablo Range in my neck of the woods. I clicked the photo (above) as the Husband drove us homeward on Highway 25. A big fat black wire streaked across the scene which I erased in Photoshop. These tree branches reminded me of lace. What do you think? Okay, now it's time for you to check out the other participants in the Eden Hills Friday's Hunt . See you later.

This is a close-up of the petals of the first California poppy that I saw this year, back in February. Dear friend Jennifer said the lines of the poppy reminded her of a Georgia O'Keefe painting, and suggested that I zoom in on the petals, crop, and play with what I saw. Most definitely! Georgia O'Keefe is one of my favorite artists. I love all of her phases, from her early years in New York to her later, and more familiar, years in New Mexico. Many years ago, I dropped everything to trek down to Los Angeles to see an exhibit of Ms. O'Keefe's works. Wowza! Here's the photo that I took of the poppy. Isn't the poppy gorgeous? Maybe one day, I'll try painting a close-up of its petals with actual brush and paints. I'm linking up with Seasons , hosted by Jeanette of St Germain's Blog, and the Creative Every Day Challenge , hosted by Leah of Creative Every Day.  I hope you'll go visit both memes.

Here's my first experiment of doing something creative that's completely different for me. I learned the technique of layering two or more photos together in Photoshop while doing the Jane Austen Action Doll posts . I took three of my photos to make this collage. The woman is a store dummy and that's a chair in the shape of the hand. Both strange objects in the first place. The final effect kind of gives me the creeps. How about you? I'm linking up with the Friday meme called What Happened in Your Surroundings or in Your Mind This Week? hosted by Pippa Koenig. Click here to join in and/or to check out other participants. Update: I'm also linking up at s~A(R)T~urday , hosted by artist Claudia Willison. Be sure to check her out, too.