O' Fun For... lazy bums

No, this isn't about bums. Just the lazy. I am officially going on blog maternity leave. The O' Fun For All blog administrators are very generous with their maternity policy- I get leave until the kid is born plus maybe a month or so, depending on how long it takes before life gets relatively normal again. I am due to have this kid April 30, but I'll at least let you know when she comes on out to join us, and possibly post something here and there in the meantime, or maybe not. So, starting now, this post is....

On Maternity Leave

See you once this kid decides to leave my poor bladder/back/stomach space alone!!

O' Fun For... keeping up my BS skills

...and by that I mean bologna sandwich skills. You have to break those skills out in college art classes often as the professors want you to explain the meaning behind your paintings, and there isn't usually much to explain. See, a rookie might say, "uhhh, you told us all to paint that bowl of fruit... so I guess.. it's a bowl of fruit." A seasoned BSer would respond, "Well... (tilt head and look introspective) I guess I was trying to represent the fruit as the different personalities we all possess. I tried to capture the vulnerability of the peach through use of soft brushstrokes and flesh-toned hues, the obvious superiority complex of the pears by outlining them in black, and the inaccessibility of the pomegranate by keeping it unfinished."

You see the skills you learn? Invaluable.

So, here's what the heck that has to do with today's post. My awesome Mac died, I got a new computer, and I don't yet have Photoshop on it. I took pictures of recent projects, but need to crop them and such before I post them, so until then, please enjoy this exercise in the fine art of BS:


Here is a painting I have been working on. I haven't picked up my oil paints in years, but I think it all came back pretty quickly. Just like riding a bike.



The gesso I used must have been old- the paint is cracking pretty badly. The woman in the picture wasn't so much posing for me as being a crazy window-peeping stalker-type, but I thought I'd make lemonade out of that situation by using the time she spent staring eerily though my craft room window to get some painting done. Besides hollering "Cats! They're everywhere!" or random bouts of eye twitching, she held still for hours. Although, before I could get her eyebrows done, she heard sirens a few blocks away and took off running. Oh-well. I should really call the cops and report her tomorrow, since I suppose the whole situation was really pretty creepy. Hey, and I have a pretty good picture to identify her by now, don't I?!



I don't know where the insanity which fuels my thinking process flows from, but there seems to be an endless supply. Fun times.

O' Fun For... catching up here while slacking in the real world

Phew! It's been a while since I've posted! Sorry about that. James and I ditched out and went to Florida for a week, and then returned to a week of kids with the pukes. (Well, just one puker, and one fever-y whiner.) It's karma's way of making up for our nice peaceful week away. Psch! See if we try that again, eh?
So, here is my attempt to conjure something blog-related out of all this...

While in Daytona Beach we caught the last few days of Hot Rod Week. I felt so guilty about ditching our two boys and then spending the night checking out super-cool cars! Shhh... don't tell them that's what we did! Here is a picture of a car whose paint job I intend to copy if I am ever forced into owning a minivan.



Now don't get your panties in a knot- I have nothing against mini-van drivers. Most of my friends have mini-vans with awesome things like magic doors and DVD players and thirty-eight or so cup-holders. It's just that if I have one, it's going to have to be Pimp-My-Ride style. Besides this sweet paint job, it'll have those hubcaps that keep spinning when your car stops, blue lights from underneath, hydraulics, and a velvet dashboard cover with my initials embossed in it. Now that would be a van with unlimited crafty potential! I'll make sure to get it right about the time my kids are in Junior High. Old enough to be embarrassed by the sweet ride, and young enough that they can't drive on their own yet and therefor need me and the sweet van to take them everywhere. I plan on pumpin' some nice old school rap (and calling it that) such as "Gettin' Jiggy With It" and bustin' out the hydraulics as I pull up to the curb at their school. That would really be doing my parental duty of embarrassing my kids. Ahhh, it's fun to dream....

The actual projects this week have been mostly kid-related as I tried to entertain my sick kids with something other than 8 hours of tv a day. Here we see the snowflakes that Toby and I cut and hung above the kitchen table:



I guess it's nice that these snowflakes are still going to be seasonal four months or so from now, because that's at least how long they'll be up there. Just standing in my kitchen to take the picture I could see outdated craft projects taped to nearly every surface possible. After I tape something to my wall it seems to become invisible to me. That is the only way I can explain some of the things I still have on my wall. In this other picture I took of the snowflakes you can see the last link of our countdown-to-summer-vacation chain taped to the top of the back door, as well as pictures of monster trucks drawn last spring lining the wall next to it:



From the spot where I was standing I could also see a balloon and birthday sign taped to the wall going down the stairs. It is from James' birthday, which was over a month ago. The part of my back door not pictured is covered in at least 15 hand-turkey drawings from around a month ago, too. I forsee them staying at least until the Fourth of July. My house would look very bare without these outdated and forgotten holiday pictures taped to every wall.

Wish me luck on accomplishing something blog-worthy this next week!