Busy weekend...

This weekend we had family from MA come down for a late Christmas visit. Oddly, they were early for a Russian Christmas as today is Christmas Eve, Jan. 6th. I learned this from one of my clients who is in her 90's. Apparently, her mom, who was from Russia, celebrated this and my client said she was always jealous of the other kids who got to celebrate Christmas on Dec.25th. I thought that was rather cute, actually.

It's a rainy day today and no ice! I'm thankful for that. Yesterday, we visited with the family as well as Friday. On Saturday morning, I did a bunch of paper mache and worked on designs I want to create. I did pretty well, actually. My hands feel a bit rough, but not too bad. I reused a lot of materials from Christmas packaging for most of my projects. I really think this is much better than tossing it or even recycling as it's put to a new use. I'll have to take some pics as I'm sometimes amazed at how things can transform with just a little effort.

I also started my "Valloween" (Halloween + Valentines Day) themed piece for my Ehag group on eBay. I'm excited about this!

I'd like to have a few paintings to put up on eBay soon...but as I've been busy with all other aspects of life, I've got inch out a few time slots for this. Hopefully, soon! :)
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I had some sad news of a friends very sweet dog passing away. Her name was Molly and she was a real sweet heart. I'm glad I got to met her and her parting wasn't long in suffering. It's so hard to lose a pet...but it's 1000 times better to have had them in your life, even though we are sad when they part from us.
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Right now, I'm taking down the Christmas things... I hate this part as it's tiring (well, I'm tired after having to get up at 6 am for an early client on a Sunday) and dusty. Plus, I have too many trees! I'm going to leave the white tree up as I'll decorate it in hearts for Valentines day. I may make this a tree for all year. I love the white! I'm glad I saved it (it was close to being tossed as it went thru some hard times left in an old garage and I had to scrub the life out of it...however, it's been reborn and is doing well).

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Jon took the gals to the local Children's Museum: Quaint Corner or QC as I call it. He's got some ideas and I want to find out about having a book signing there.

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In between all of this, I'm organizing my studio...still need a few more lights and another clean out, other wise, it's starting to really shape up. I'm glad of this.

There was a little problem last night. I learned you're definitely not supposed to wash a chenille blanket in the washer and then stuff it in the dryer. My mom-in-law gave it to me and I unfortunately assumed it was like most blankets. Let's just say, there was so much fluff, the dryer started to smell! Scary! I vacuumed it out and Jon cleared out the air vent. All is well, but it was so scary. I thought I broke everything. Now, I have a chenille blanket that is 1/3 the size and just looks like a shaved cat. Not a pretty site. I never seem to do well with blankets made of the delicate stuff like wool...dang.

Oh, and my foot has been giving me extra pains lately...Plantar Fasciitis. It's really annoying and I have to do stretches for this besides wearing foot support or arch support.