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... finalizing vasectomy plans

It's a GIRL!!!

Yayyyyyyyyyy!

Last Monday was the ultrasound, and Dr. Anderson says he's 99% sure it's a girl. He never says 100% about girls in case the kid was just really good at hiding something from the ultrasound camera, but he gave us the 99% instead of his usual 98% since the view we got left very little possibilities of where a boy could be hiding things from us.

Here is a picture of Ellie: (yes, that's probably going to be her name. James is very attached to it, and I like it, too. I think the majority of her Terrorist days are behind her, although the name may come up again during her teenage years...)



This confirmation gave me the green light to start making a bunch of little girl stuff. However, making anything while pregnant adds complications. The kinds of complications that could be avoided if my brain was still processing and sending information like it should. (Although, I'm not sure it ever works entirely, the absent-mindedness lingers long past pregnancy. It's just nice to have an excuse for a few months.)

I made what should have been a simple sundress. It was still relatively simple, a one-afternoon project, but the lack of functioning brain cells created significant setbacks. See the brown ribbon around the bottom? I was planning on using it all along, but it ended up serving an extra purpose when I used it to hide the seam created after I sewed the ruffle on the bottom wrong-sides together, so the seam ended up on the right side of the dress. I decided the ribbon would hide the seam, since if I picked it all apart and tried again there was a pretty good chance I would sew it the wrong way yet again. Seriously.

Here is the finished dress on a blue hanger, since this whole pink thing is still pretty new to us:



I have also started on these stuffed blocks from the tutorial on the London Mummy blog. I am putting the letters of Ellie's name on them so James feels secure about the fact that we will be using that name. When I showed him the dress, he suggested using some white thread to embroider "Ellie" across the front. I decided against labeling our baby. I know my brain has functioning issues, but I am pretty sure I can remember her name. At the very worst, I'll call her "Tobraellie" as I stumble through all our kids' names to find the right one. Although, I think the clothes-labels might have helped at church. Think about it: someone goes to leave, picks up a baby from the Relief Society room floor thinking it is theirs, and then notices the name stitched across her dress. She then sets Ellie back down, picks up another baby, hopefully the right one this time, and heads home. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to label her after all.

O' Fun For... saving dinner!

I have lost my mind.
The baby (also know as The Terrorist) is stealing my brain away to make its own. Or maybe it was aliens, I don't know.
The point is, my brain has stopped being a reliable resource. Tonight was a fabulous example of my ongoing brain-loss...

I remembered that I had bought some potatoes last week for baked potatoes. I remembered to start getting them ready early enough that they would be nice and baked by dinnertime. As I scrubbed them, I noticed how yam-shaped they were. Then, as I was gouging out the eyes (so violent sounding!) I made an important discovery.
These potatoes were orange.
The potatoes were the last thing I picked up when I went shopping last week. I let Toby help me pick them out. I felt grossly sick at the time. I could come up with plenty of other excuses, but really- it all comes down to this missing brain thing I've got goin' on.
A few spots looked white, not orange, so I stuck them in the oven anyway and hoped that I had picked up some festive new kind of russet potato. After a while, the smell was unmistakable. They were sweet potatoes. Blast!

I searched through a million sweet potato casserole and candied yam recipes on allrecipes.com until I found this. Ahhhh! (That was the angel-miracle sound, by the way.) I had all the ingredients! (Well, garlic powder is close to a garlic clove, right?) I have been wanting to learn how to make gnocchi for a while now, so I decided this would be my dinnertime redemption! Hallelujah! Recipe-sharing websites be praised! (Uh-oh, starting to sound blasphemous. One day the lightning will get me.)

The recipe was easy enough, and once I realized why the water wasn't boiling (I may have...ahem..turned on the wrong burner or something...) the little orange gnocchies were cooked and ready for dinner. I was worried that this would turn out like the infamous spaetzla incident of '05 (lets just say there was sticky dough in every crevice of my kitchen with the exception of the pot of boiling water I wanted it to go into...), but no- these worked! They were fabulous! (If I do say so myself...) Even Toby ate his entire bowl of them. Yay! We ate them with store-bought alfredo-in-a-jar, and it was good, but next time I might try a less garlicky sauce, or just butter and parmesan maybe.

Here is my scary picture of the delicious gnocchi. They looked so nice against the blue glass pie pan, but my picture-taking skills are lacking a bit. I have yet to take a picture of food that looks appetizing. The pictures on allrecipes.com probably do it justice.



This whole incident reminded me of my favorite Bob Ross quote, "We don't make mistakes, we just have 'happy accidents'. "
True, Bob. True.



This post is dedicated to Bob Ross:
artist, philosopher, squirrel-whisperer.