My Adventures in Painting Roses and Other Fluff!

I am one who can poke fun at myself and not worry. I have a pretty good sense of self-worth so I can do this. I rarely care much what other people think of me. In other words, I’m pretty confident of my abilities. No, I’m not prideful, just confident. I know what I can do and what I cannot do. And there is much I cannot do. Trust me!

Anyway, today I’m going to tell you my adventures in trying to paint, in particular—roses. Please don’t laugh; it’s not funny that I am a total flop at painting.

I saw this image on the internet and it brought back memories of my pathetic attempt at trying to learn rose painting. While this painting doesn’t show frustration, which I felt, it shows the beginning of a beautiful painting. Mine never did. Sigh.

This is about as good as I ever got. You’d think I’d be embarrassed to show it, but nope, I’m proud of how far I had come before I decided I’d never be a rose painter.

Then I thought about painting bird nests. I wasn’t much better at that. However, these two paintings hang on my front porch. They may not be sellable but I sure as heck tried and I’m proud that I did.

Okay, here’s the story on this one.

I bought two folding wooden chairs for our patio out back and painted these roses on the back. One of the chairs broke and I wasn’t about to let my “art” go to waste as these roses were rather pretty. So I took the back piece off the chair to salvage the roses and they now hang in my laundry room.

This rose turned out pretty well so I made some decals out of them. My granddaughter wanted some to put on her place cards for her wedding dinner several years ago and we did. She loves me much you understand, so I think she was just being kind to me, but they were used and for that alone, I’m eternally grateful to her. Caroline is the other thing for which I’m grateful to her. ;-) And if you look at the URL at the top of your screen if you’re reading my blog, you’ll see I made it my avatar also. Pretty unique, huh?

Now, here you can see I’m truly NOT an artist by this little caricature I drew of me. It’s my place-holder. What is a place-holder you ask? Well, I work with templates. When I make one for a person to use, I color code them for text and photos. In other words, when they see red they put their text in there. When they see blue, they put the photos in that space where the html is. Makes it much easier for them when using the template. So my place holder is this little caricature of me. If that pops up, they know they need to change it to the photo they want instead of my photo. This is what I see all the time when I’m creating a blog post. If I see that little caricature, I know I need to change it to another photo. But this is in here to show you my creative endeavor. Stop laughing!

This is another shade of pink I really like. More of an orchid color, but beautiful.

Another sweet thatched cottage in the UK somewhere. I believe they are allowed in certain places in the U.S. as I’ve seen them, but I doubt many places would allow them. In Ireland, one of the B&Bs we stayed in didn’t allow me to use my blow dryer. You should have seen me. I got under the electric blanket and just started running my fingers vigorously through my hair until it dried. Turned out pretty dang good though!

Another stunning lamp for you. This is one I would like to copy on one of my lampshades, but I’m not sure I’ll do it any time soon.

Some really pretty lampshades here.

Love the feather trim around this one. Elegant. I would definitely buy this lamp.

Yes, these are the colors of my “Dream” house. While it’s not winter yet, I thought you’d like to see this gorgeous home now. Ooooooh, huge sigh.

Sweet little cart. I really like how they use it for decoration around their home.

Just eye candy to make you drool.

You can go and make some chocolate and pink macaroons now. ;-)

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Kitchen Cabinets Knobs

The kitchen cabinets are needing more pizzazz. Why, you ask, would I be so concerned about them when I would eat every meal out if I could because I hate cooking anymore? Because I'm a woman, that's why. At a certain age, we would prefer to eat out, being lazy in our older years. I know there are women who just love to cook for their families for the big holidays. I ain't one of them! I'm sure there's a self-help group somewhere for them. I'll look into it if requested!

So, I decided to use some decals I made a couple of years ago of my own pathetic little rose. I think I used the wrong sealer and they sort of crackled. I did the top cabinets—all 9 of them—trying to convince myself they would be just fine once they set and dried. NO luck! Never fear; I am never without decals in this house, purchased or made by me.

So I took them off and replaced them with some I had in my stash of decals. I like these much better.

Here are a few different angles so you can see them better. It's difficult photographing them up this close with the flash, but I get much better photos with my flash than without when inside this house.

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Random Thoughts:

We have 2 kids—a daughter and a son. They were born 11 1/2 months apart. Hubby had her potty trained and broken from the bottle while I was in the hospital having Keith. Yes, you can believe that; she was potty trained at 11 1/2 months.

While giving birth to Keith I almost died, but I didn't realize he didn't know this until this year when I mentioned it while we were all together for the blessing of Caroline, our newest addition to the family. It was just a casual mentioning of being in the hospital for 11 days and not seeing him for 9 days because of how sick I was. He was shocked. I never thought much of it and just never mentioned it to him I suppose. I had uremic poisoning.

But this isn't about the birth of him; it's about how I don't usually talk about one kid to the other. It's just how it's been in this family. Hubby and I keep our counsel to ourselves about our kids. But to think I'd never let our son know how sick I was when having him was a bit surprising even to me. I just don't pit one against the other. They're both mine and loved equally.
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Recently I read where the government is mandating work places be given rooms for mothers to breast feed their babies. I think having a private "mother's lounge" would be fine, but does that mean the child is in the building and readily available? Let me tell you about my niece.

M works for a think tank in Washington, D.C. They are providing a room where mothers can pump into a tube that goes down to the nursery through the walls (not hand carrying!) and is available for the child. No contact with the child, just some person puts it into a bottle for him and he eats. What is this world coming to when mothers won't stay home to be with their infants and give them the personal attention they deserve? I was just astounded at this revelation. Institutionalized babies. Horrible. Human beings are a precious resource!
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Pennies are made at the rate of 1,000 a second. The U.S. mint took more than 2 years to produce its first million coins, but today can make that many in 45 minutes.
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The greed of today.
We talk all about the greedy evil bankers but they wouldn't have been paid all those millions if we hadn't been willing to buy the fantasy they were selling. So don't blame them; blame the people who were so greedy they thought they could buy anything they wanted. All of this got worse when we were willing to believe all that popular culture was feeding our desire for more and more stuff. It's one thing to see sports and movie stars in their mansions in a rarified world and we thought if they have it I should be able to have it. We bought that we felt we were entitled to. We thought we could buy what we wanted. This caused our values to change. Things don't matter; people do. And that's just one of the reasons we're in this situation today.
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I hear people regularly say they have issues with something. It's not an issue; it's a problem or opinion. Calling it an issue tries to give it a "lofty" feeling. Call a spade a spade here and get over it.
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To see the condition of the human heart, you must look first to where scientists will not admit to looking at all. It's that simple. ;-)
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