Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, my brother Thain came to visit us! He goes to college about two hours away, and my parents were going to visit my grandma in Arizona, so we were glad to have him.
Elora was very excited, because Uncle Thain likes to play with her. She got so spoiled, she will probably be disappointed when Joseph's brother visits and he doesn't follow her every beck and call.

"Stay there Uncle Thain, mom's taking a picture of me."

Elora had a great time playing out on the playground with him while we put the finishing touches on dinner.

Joseph was the chef of the day, and was very proud of his turkey. He was sad that I didn't take a picture of just the turkey. Silly boy.

Yummy stuff!!

Unfortunately, Joshua fell asleep just before it was time to eat, so he didn't make it into the family picture:



He didn't seem to mind..both he and Elora loved the Thanksgiving food (surprisingly) and Joshua was especially fond of the pie selection! Thain brought Lemon Meringue, which I haven't had for years because Joseph doesn't like it. Yummy.



The rest of the day was filled with fun and shenanigans with Elora's favorite Uncle.


Since Thain was here, we decided to get our Christmas tree a week earlier than usual, so he could be a part of the decorating. Not that we have tons of decorations. In the five years we've been married, we hadn't yet bought a star...so we bought one the day after this picture. It was time.


Thain was very nice and offered to watch our kids that afternoon so that Joseph and I might go to a movie together! When we came home, Thain was even doing the dishes, as he knows I don't like to do them. Yay Thain! My favorite brother who visited on Thanksgiving!

We drove Thain home late that night. Elora was sad that he wasn't coming home with us again, but both she and Joshua were glad that he had come!

Like Father Like Son

Ever since Joshua was small, people have been saying he looks like his dad. But I couldn't really see it. To me, his almost-there red hair and his big brown eyes made him a dead ringer for my younger brothers.

Whenever people would note his similarity to his daddy, I was sure they must think that only because of the similar hairlines:



Even when their smiles would seem strikingly similar, I chalked it all up to coincidence and lighting.



But lately, as I've seen more pictures of them together....





Its started to jump out at me. Wow. They DO kind of have the same smile, don't they?



And even when they're serious, there is just something so similar....




about that eyebrow line. And cheeks, nose, and mouth. Hmmm.




What do you think?

Blog Awards Galore!

So the title of this post isn't exactly accurate: I haven't received blog awards galore. Only two. But hey, TWO...thats pretty good!
My friend Julie at Mes Bijoux just nominated me for this award:



Yay! Julie is a friend of mine from my hometown; we were acquainted in high school, but didn't become good friends 'till we were in our twenties. I'm so glad I know her.
This meme is attached to the award, so I suppose I'll do it so I can claim it. I know I've done tons of these, so...I hope I don't repeat too much.

7 things I've done before

1. Stood on a downtown Seattle street waiting for the bus at 11:30 at night, and not been scared.
2. Sang Alto in a performing choir. I can only sing Alto if everyone else around me is as well.
3. Got a perfect score of 36 on the reading section on my ACT test. (I've mentioned this before. I'm such a bragger.)
4. Took my first airplane trip at age 23.
5. Talked to a homeless person for almost an hour.
6. Visited The Grand Canyon, Zion Nat'l Park, Yellowstone, Mt. Rainier, and the Redwood Forest multiple times.
7. Sat on Paul Bunyan's foot.

7 things I do now

1. Write a regular blog.
2. Take care of my two children.
3. Watch Dr. Who, Smallville, Heroes, and in the winter, Lost.
4. Take photos of my kids and play with Photoshop.
5. Keep journals for myself and my kids, plus their baby books, plus too many photo albums, and three scrapbooks.
6. Talk to my sister and my mom on the phone about every other day.
7. Make the weekly bulletin and program for church every Sunday.

7 things I want to do

1. Be a more patient mother and wife.
2. Be a better friend, a more social person, more compassionate, less easily offended.
3. Have another cute baby someday to take pictures of.
4. Write and Illustrate a book (but not right now, I'm so not motivated.)
5. Become a more eloquent writer....and regain some of my vocabulary I seem to have lost since birthing children.
6. Become a better photographer.
7. Visit Great Britain for a significant amount of time, as well as visit all the ancient civilizations and art meccas: Italy, France, Greece, etc.

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex

1. Positive attitude, happy, friendly.
2. Ambitious..or at least not lazy and unmotivated.
3. Strong convictions without imposing them on others.
4. Intelligence, interested in learning in the world around them: outer space, physical sciences, history, social issues, etc.
5. Compassion for others.
6. Social, but not annoyed with me for not being social. (He can cover for me at parties.)
7. Clever.

7 Favorite Foods (not in order.)

1. Homemade Pizza with pineapple, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, hamburger, and cheese (Joseph's or my mom's recipes.)
2. Chicken Croquets with cream cheese, mushrooms, and spinach (a'la Joseph)
3. Blizzards from Dairy Queen...any kind with fruit, like Strawberry Cheesecake.
4. Teriyaki Chicken with rice from Nasai, (a chain in Seattle) eaten with chopsticks only.
5. Teriyaki Chicken sandwich from Red Robin (with pineapple), with Strawberry Lemonade.
6. Turkey Avocado BLT on a giant crescent roll.
7. Any pie on Thanksgiving: Pumpkin Chiffon, Apple, Chocolate, Lemon Merengue, Cherry, Banana Cream, etc.
I am so hungry right now.

7 things I Say Most Often:

1. Elora, leave Joshua alone! When he cries, it means, "Let go!"
2. Joshua, get out of the toilet!
3. Elora, don't let Joshua in the bathroom while you go potty!
4. Hi, Kiera.
5. No, you can't have cookies (candy, chocolate, treats) for dinner!
6. Elora please sit down and eat your dinner. NOW!
7. Joseph, wake up, you're missing your show. Yes you were sleeping. Yes, you were.

I am supposed to tag some people, but I really don't know who...I've tagged or others have...all the people that spring to mind. Hmm. I know this is lame, but anyone who would like to do this tag, please feel free...I'd love to read about you!

Update in Soundbytes

My brother Thain is coming to our house for Thanksgiving. Dain might possibly come too, but you never know.

I'm excited, except for the gas money to go pick up and take home, two hours away.

I don't think our oven can hold a turkey, its only half sized. How can you make a whole Thanksgiving meal in a half size oven?



I've been working on our Annual Newsletter. I always feel like a dork, because I have nothing to say..just like two sentences....about me, but there are tons of things Joseph has been doing this year.

I worry that his family thinks I don't do anything all day. (They're all boys. At least I don't have the pressure of having a mother-in-law.)

Speaking of which, Joseph's brother is visiting us the week before Christmas. I worry about entertaining him while Joseph is at work...at least he doesn't have school that week!

This brother has some different lifestyles and values than us, but he's really nice. I'm worried he'll be bored in our conservative, smaller town. I probably shouldn't worry. He's the only one out of J's five siblings that ever visits us. Though he's never been to this state before.

I'm working on two drawings as Christmas gifts. I'm trying to motivate myself to finish them.

I want to visit my sister in Texas for Christmas. We don't have enough money. But we still want to go. But we're entertaining my brother(s), then Joseph's brother (Whom we'll be picking up at the airport two hours away), and that will drain our money further.




We would definitely drive...I looked at airline tickets, just to see, and I almost died. Ridiculous.

I'm mostly excited about driving through states I've never been in. Make that nervous. Aren't all the 17 car pileups in the Midwest in winter?



I'm tempted to just go anyway, and hope it works out itself. But then we might not be able to pay our bills for December. Darn it.

Not to mention buying Christmas presents.




I'm not worried about the kids: between us, my parents, and Joseph's brother that is WAY too generous with his nieces and nephews, they will be perfectly happy for Christmas. But Joseph is a big kid, and wants good presents too.

It drives me nuts.

At least he doesn't want electronics...oh wait, I'm sure he'd like them, but he's smart enough to know its not practical.



Why can't he be happy with getting wrapped candy bars as some of his presents? My parents always did that. But then, they never spent more than $100 on each of us. Ever.

I think I should implement that policy too.

(yay for candy bar presents!)

I should remind Joseph to buy presents before December 21st this year. Boys.

Sketchbook

I have no intentions of turning this into an all art blog, all the time, but this is what I've got right now, people.

I've never been very good at keeping a sketchbook. Unlike journals, which I am fairly consistent with, I can never keep up with filling a book with drawings. I've always wanted to do one of those drawing journals, you know, chronicling some journey I go on, or sketching the people I passed at the outdoor market. If I went to an outdoor market.

I've tried several times, buying fresh sketchbooks every year or so, with grand plans on chronicling my life. Or at least doing some fantastic figure studies, so my sketchbook will be as exciting to peruse as that of Leonardo DaVinci.

Yeah, not so much. I tend to do my best sketches on scraps of paper when I'm supposed to be doing something else. However, I do have a small 5x7ish sketchbook that I actually managed to partially fill over a few years.

I dug it out the other day, so that I could do this sketch:


It is one of the reference pics I was sent for the portrait series I just finished. I thought it was way too cute not to draw...plus it includes the Grandpa that commissioned all the pictures!
Anyway, while I had the sketchbook out, I got to looking through it, and found that it really did chronicle a small bit of my life- approximately 1999-2002 . Lets see what I found.

I had drawn a few portraits of my teachers before I moved out of my hometown (Coincidentally, the man holding the baby was also a teacher of mine) :



I also had a few sketches of my siblings, which I planned on using for studies for later paintings (which would include different people):

The painting created from this was supposed to be in the style of Georges de Latour's Repentant Magdalene paintings.

Thain...a lot younger.

When I started taking the Bainbridge ferry to work every day in December of 2001, I thought it would be brilliant to sketch people and things on each trip. That lasted about a week....when I realized a half hour ferry ride was the perfect place to take a nap. So most of these are from the first week, and then a few from the very end of that year before I moved to Seattle proper. We rode the commuter ferry- which means it was during the hours that it was completely full of business people going to and from work.

My Uncle rode with me most everyday. He slept a lot. This is him, and some random lady.

Uncle's face close up. He looks like Mr. Bean in this drawing.

Uncle reading important work papers. (He was the VP of Human Resources.)


My pants are the plaid ones. They weren't as cool I wish they were.


One of our friends from church, and a lady with whom my Uncle had been riding the ferry for years. Her husband was on our bench I think.

Lots of busy people going home. I like this one, and wish I had more like it.


Maybe a late night ferry- because there are young people, and its not very full.

I did one or two drawings chronicling my work place. I wish I'd done more of these too, because in the three plus years I worked there, my work station moved several times, and everything continually changed...mostly because of our being taken over by another business, and our corporate headquarters slowly shrinking.

This was my first work area at Airborne Express.




And this is from the two horrible weeks I had to work in the collections department. I had a paper cut. I think they were trying to be nice to me, because it was a higher level department than where I was working before. But I was so miserable there, I was ecstatic when I got to go back to my old duties!

I regret all the things I didn't catch in my sketchbook: late night busses through downtown, the Seattle Center where the Space Needle is, observation decks looking out on Puget Sound, my coworkers. But I'm glad to have at least these few memories recorded.

Portrait series in review

#1. This first portrait seems very cartoony to me, now that I've done more. I can see that I was out of practice when I started this! One thing I do like about this one is the brighter colors and more sketchiness. While later portraits were more realistic, I miss this looser style on them.



#2. I remember how much trouble I had getting her head right, and how many drawings I started..how frustrating. I like how her face colors are porcelain-like, and I love how her golden hair turned out.




#3 This one was the first with the white-blonde hair, and I wasn't sure how to get the color right. I fixed it a little once I got the hang of things, but its still a little too lemony to be believable. I like how the texture turned out on her collar:




#4 This is definitely one of my favorites. I love the beautiful background in the photo, and I like how realistic his face turned out. Of course, I regret that I used carbon paper for his whole face outline, so I can't take complete credit for how good it may be. I like the zipper on his jacket too. This is one where I went back and made the hair a bit darker after the post I did, and it improved it:




#5 This is one of the better girl portraits. The details on her face turned out well, especially the freckles and the shapes under her eyes. One thing I regret is how huge her head is on the paper! They might have a hard time framing this one, without buying a specialty mat or something.



#6This is the oldest of all the portraits. I love how his shirt and the background turned out...they took a lot of time, so I better like it. His face seems a bit pale, but its probably just because of the red shirt. I also used that carbon paper for the outline of this face:



#7 This may be the most polished of the portraits. I spent more time getting the details finished on this face, and all of the colors and reflections just right. I don't like the background though, and wish I'd done less with it to help balance all the work on the face:



#8 This is where we got the new scanner, if you can't tell. From here on out, the complete color range isn't visible in the scans, even though I was able to manipulate the manual settings to make them a little brighter. This portrait had lighter fresher colors than the last one, which I liked for his happy face. Too bad they don't show up:



#9A-This is the one I thought turned out so good, but then was told it looked too old. What does that mean anyway? My theory is this photo was taken too close up and her face is distorted from the camera... it looks a lot different from the other reference photo I was given. So I guess I get to keep this copy:



#9B- There was a lot I liked better about the first version of this girl, but in this one I like her brighter eyes. I don't know that I did much different, but apparently it looks more like the actual model.



#10 I like the background in this one; I was getting bored of doing the same thing. I also like how his fluffy hair turned out. I was told later that his cheeks weren't round enough, but I'd already sent it in the mail. Confidentially, I thought they looked fine. Hopefully his parents will think so too.



#11 I don't like the scan on this, but the portrait itself was okay. She also had white blonde hair, but I did much better at capturing it here. I especially like her hair under her ear on the left of the drawing. Her skin tone turned out nice and even on her arms and neck too, which took a while. I also like the color variations in her brown dress :



#12 I liked this girls face because it was different from the other kids. Her skin tone was also different, more yellow than pink. This one had bad photos for me to work from, so I was happy that the portrait turned out remarkably better than the photo.



#13 I wonder if I may have hurried too fast on this one. It looks fine, but the colors aren't as built up as in some of the earlier portraits that I worked on for a longer time. But then again, it could be the scanner. I like how his hair turned out, and the colors in his shirt.


So what do you think? Do you have a favorite, and why? I definitely sharpened my portrait skills with this project. While I am finished with this series, I do have a few other similar projects waiting in the wings.