Happy Birthday Olivia!

Enjoy your day!!!

She Pair Drawing...

Here is a pair of girls drawn by Cheryl. Aren't they cute? I think I'll do a She Art based on these two!

Girls in Hats....

Knowing my current obsession with mixed media girls, it's no wonder that I LOVE this idea by Junelle... Girls in Hats!

I don't know if I'll actually make any, but I started drawing hat pictures just in case (all on yellow post-its of course).

Speaking of girls in hats...

They brought a photo booth to the company Christmas Party! A couple of my running friends Shanaz (left) and Paloma (middle) talked me into this little adventure. You can see that I'm starting to get into it there at the end, hahaha!

She's making me dizzy...

Jena is such a funny girl!

A Late Birthday Gift...

For my birthday, I said that I wanted to go up in the Great Park Balloon. We tried a couple weeks ago, but the winds were blowing and the balloon was closed. But today, the winds have calmed down and it's bright and sunny! The perfect day for a balloon ride. Nowadays, everything costs money... If this was a "normal" park, we'd have to pay for admission to the park, pay for parking, and pay for the balloon ride. BUT, this is the Great Park! Everything here is free. No admission, no parking, and no tickets to ride. All we have to do is sign in, and they call us when it's our turn. Here's Chris checking out the FAQs. The balloon is tethered, we'll be going up 400 feet, and the donut shaped gondola can carry up to 30 people. There were only 6 other people in the gondola with us, so there was plenty of room to move around.

Here it comes! You can see the cable that tethers it to the ground and the shape of the gondola in this picture.

And here we go!!!

There's Jim and Chris on the other side of the gondola.

There's a good view of the Great Park area. Eventually, the Great Park will take up the entire marine base, but right now it only covers a tiny corner. There's a merry-go-round, a couple museums, an agricultural area, and a hanger that they converted into classrooms and meeting areas. They also fill it with ice for ice skating in the winter.

Here's a view of the business end of the base. It's still filled with offices and hangers. If you look past the hanger's off into the distance, that's where we live.

The old runways are still here too... If you watch American Top Gear, you might see the Great Park balloon in the background, because this is where the Top Gear race course is...

Here is a view of the soccer fields and agricultural areas.

I couldn't resist taking a panorama of Saddleback Mountain from the balloon. I put it up in the blog header temporarily. Thanks for stopping by!

Being Sketchy

The She Art instructor, Christy, doesn't use any patterns for her She Art girls. She doesn't even draw a cutting line on her patterned paper. She just grabs the scissors and starts cutting! I can't do it! I think it's the engineer in me. I have to plan... I have to sketch it all out... I have to make a pattern... I have to trace my pattern on my paper... THEN I CUT!

I do most of my sketching at work! {gasp} Well, some people surf the Internet when they have a few free minutes... me I like to sketch. I used to carry around an engineering notebook, but gave up on that when it started looking more like a sketch book, hahaha. Now I carry around a yellow sticky post-it pad. Now when I make sketches that I want to take home, I can just take the sticky note instead of having to Xerox my engineering notebook.

Here are my last two sketches. They are made on two post-its stuck together to get the height I needed. The first you might recognize as the Pride and Prejudice girl. The other girl is going to be a Christmas Carol Angel. Right now she's wearing a top hat, red scarf, and a white night gown. I'm rethinking the night gown, she might end up wearing a Victorian era dress.

Here's a post-it sketch of Jena. What do you think? Is it a good likeness? hahaha!

This "sketch" is by Chris. A few weeks ago we had a problem with the lawn mower. When Chris plugged it in, it caused a surge that flipped off a circuit breaker. He didn't know that at the time, and he was the only one home. So, he went through the entire house testing every outlet to try and find a pattern to the outage.

This is an accurate floor plan of our house and every outlet in it. That's my boy! He's an engineer in the making!

Well, that's all I had for today!
Have a good evening everyone!

Another Christmas Card

When I saw this card by Mary VP, I knew that it would make a GREAT Christmas card!

Here is mine using the Unity Ippity stamp set, Totally Happy... it's pretty much the same card. I gave it more of a clean look by leaving the bird solid. I also added glitter stickles to the white areas in the fence to make it look like snow. Then I added an elegant Christmas sentiment and I have another Christmas card ready to go!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday FWF

It's FWF Friday again, and I'm continuing my quest to finish Christmas cards! Here is my latest card:

Thanks for stopping by!

Another She Art Girl

Here is another She Art girl... I call her my Pride and Prejudice girl. Pride and Prejudice is Cheryl's all time favorite book. We also have the DVD and I just took her to see the play at the South Coast Repertory.

To make the girl's background I created a collage of all our Pride and Prejudice stuff... like the play ticket and the parking ticket from SCR.

This is a xerox copy of the title page of the book.

This is a copy of the front of the DVD box.

I looked up regency styles from the late 1800's and created a dress for my girl in that style.

She ended up too short, which kind of bugs me. I guess she could be the Bennet's little sister. hahaha! The saying is hard to see in black. It says, "She wasn't afraid to love."

Super SPECIAL Birthday!

So, what made by birthday special this year, you ask? Was it because all the stores opened up super early and had extra special sales just for me? That was special... Was it because we got a free dinner? Actually, the waitress dropped our pizza, so it was free... uhm, not the one that she dropped, they made a new one.

My friends from work took me on a special run on the Newport Back Bay Loop... Nothing like a 10 mile run at 6am on your birthday, lol...

How about that GREAT blog header that Chris made for me? That's super special... Don't you LOVE it?!!!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II are special!

Flowers from my hubby are always SPECIAL!

And, LOOK! The Register put my picture in the paper on the afternoon on my birthday!

Three birthday desserts are special... And very VERY YUMMY!

Family gathered at my mom and dad's house is super special! I'm so Thankful for my mom, dad and the rest of our family!

... and no post is complete without a card! This is made with the stamp sets picked for me by my SIL. Yep! New stamps are SPECIAL too {grin}!

Thank-you, everyone, for a super SPECIAL birthday!

She Art 2

I'm taking an online class called She Art 2. This first week, we learned how to do faces. I'm not sure I like faces on the girls. Without faces, they can be anybody... I feel that I can read myself into a girl without a face. She could be me... the quote could apply to me...

Well, I figured that I would give faces a try. After all, who knows, I might like it. Here is my girl... face and all!

I don't like the way the mouth came out. It was better before I outlined it... oh, well. I do like the eyes. It's been years since I've drawn or painted anything. I guess I didn't lose all my drawing and painting ability after all.



---- EDITED ----
Okay, I had to try... I erased her face in photoshop. I think I like it better. What do you think?