I still put on lip gloss to go to the market

Let me tell you about yesterday's trip to the market.

It started off normal, a little more crowded than usual, judging from the parking lot at least, but then I went inside... every old person in Denver was in there, and every new mom, and about 500 extra people that aren't usually there. There were no carts, they were mopping the floors, restocking everything, it was like it was the middle of the night, but it was 4:30 in the afternoon.

There was a lady in the seafood department just screaming...I don't know why.

They were completely sold out of broccoli?

There was puke next to the chicken.

The checker wouldn't talk to me, I think he was upset about some blueberries on the floor. He gave me my $3 item for $1 because he couldn't get it to scan....I tried to tell him, but he wasn't talking to me, there were blueberries on the floor.

I tried to help bag up my groceries to escape the madness faster, but I guess I'm not allowed.
Apparently a fun pack of tapioca pudding needed to escape too, it ended up in one of my bags, who buys tapioca? yuck.

tastes like horror

So my job is pretty boring, I have to sit at a desk all day, in a VERY quiet room, if you walked in here you would probably be totally creeped out by it, especially if the hummer was humming her usual ear piercing horrible hum, which is the only noise besides the occasional terrifying mumblings of the smelly bleeder...

Luckily I can listen to music, or books on tape, and thus the silence (and the terror) is blocked out a little. The music gets me through the day, so do my desk snacks. In particular my stash of pumpkin seeds, I buy them when I go marketing on Thursdays and then I carefully ration them so they'll last till I market again. I know it's silly, but the saltiness brings me joy,

Let me quote from scripture (or shcripshure if you're Ethan):

"Salt is good" - Mark 9:50

Yes salt is good, especially at my desk, my desk in the horrible silent room.

So imagine my dismay when I came in Monday morning and over the weekend someone had eaten the whole bag. I don't know why you would sit at someone else's desk, go through their drawers and eat their food. It has to be the same person who used to readjust my chair every night, so thank you Mr. Useless Security Guard who uses my desk and eats my salt.

So tonight I will leave the 8 month old bag of generic brand pumpkin seeds that taste like evil, in place of where my other ones were. Help yourself salt thief.

Valentine's day weekend

Zach and I decided to take a trip down to Colorado Springs for Valentine's day this year. We wanted to go to Glenwood Springs, but they seemed all booked up already. But the Springs was super fun too :) We drove down on Friday and had dinner at a brewery that was supposed to be good, and was conveniently right across the street from our hotel. While we were there the couple at the table next to us got engaged, they were super loud about it and we got front row seats.

On Saturday morning we had the best breakfast ever at the hotel's fancy restaurant, for only $6, pretty good deal.

View from our window, almost the top floor

Then we went to Garden of the Gods, apparently it was mountain goat day, so Smokey Bear was there.

me and a big rock

Zach likes to deliberately disobey signs

Stay on the path Zach

Then we went to the Cheyenne Zoo, and spent forever there :) We learned lots of things, like giraffes have really gross tongues, moose like buckets on their heads, wolfs are just ugly dogs, hippos are the grossest eaters ever, and if a zebra, horse, and giraffe had a baby it would look like this:

Hello Okapi

fake giraffe


real giraffe!!

cutest ever


grossest ever

Sweethearts how I miss you

I'm writing this in case you have been searching for Necco Sweathearts this past Valentine's day, could you only find ones with blue and neon colors? Me too. Because Necco decided that the classic candy that's been around since forever should instead have the following flavors:

dishsoap, baby powder, lipstick, and evil.

I found a pretty great blog about it here : http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/sweethearts_2010/

"it's like if Coke decided to only make Cherry Coke" - Zach

Curly Girl Method, Simplified!

I'd heard a lot about the "Curly Girl Method" but until now I have been reluctant to try it.  Several things about it were a little too weird for me, like not shampooing your hair (I like shampoo!), not combing after your shower, and not using regular towels. 
Well last week I was so frustrated with my hair (mostly this horrible haircut) and Colorado's extremely dry climate, that I decided to give the Curly Girl Method a try.  And so far it's not nearly as gross as I thought it would be, my hair today feels cleaner (and healthier) than it has in a long long time. 
The method really consists of 6 things:
1. Use a sulfate free shampoo.   It won't lather like a normal shampoo, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  The Deva Care Lo Poo is really nice, and it smells like orange sherbert.

2.  Comb through conditioner in the shower.

3. Don't use a normal terry cloth towel to dry your hair, use a t-shirt or microfiber towel.

4. This was the tricky part to me.  If you cut out sulfates from your shampoo, then you also have to cut out silocones from your hair products, because without the sulfates they will just build up on your hair because they're not water soluable.  I thought the only ones without silicones would be expensive organic products, but the super cheap drugstore products like V05 and Suave work too (not all of them, but a lot).

5. Plopping, this is what plopping looks like:

and this is why Zach laughs at me every morning, but it works so well!

6. Diffuse, but don't dry your hair all the way (I really hate having wet hair, so I probably dry it too much but whatever)

The result? I feel like I have new hair! Which is creepy, like someone else's hair is on my head.  But it feels so much better than it did before, so I guess figuring all this out was worth it.

ugh

So I'm frustrated and a little confused. I feel like I'm a little bit of a failure, or a little bit lazy, because I only like to paint certain things....because those are the things I want to paint, those are the things that I'm drawn to. Images where I can use wide brush strokes and bright colors, where I can make changes easily, where I can make it look like what I want it to. I'm not excited when things turn out too realistic. I know that I could paint an apple and have it look like a photograph, but I don't want to, it's not really satisfying. And I've spent a long time trying to loosen up and stop doing that. But I do like my work to be representational, I'm never very happy when I create something that is completely abstract. It somehow doesn't feel valid to me. Like there are far too many options that I haven't explored so this one couldn't possibly be the best one, and there are not enough hours in the day find it.

But then I think, am I only drawn to these certain things because I know that I can paint them well? That I won't have to put in a lot of effort to make it look how I want it to? Maybe it's not that they inspire me, maybe it's that I'm lazy, I haven't had a lot of experience painting the figure and that's why I don't want to? It's hard for me to tell.

Then I think back to the paintings and artists that always inspire me, their subjects are often the same as mine. I don't think I'm lazy...I paint almost everyday it seems. And I'm not nearly as scared of failure as I used to be, but obviously not completely over the "maybe I'm supposed to be doing this" and not actually what I want to be doing.

This post probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

Here's my next problem: I really enjoy the whole etsy thing, it's great because my studio gets cleaned out. It's also great because sometimes the paintings I like the least are the ones that sell, and I don't have to look at them anymore. But here's the problem, the one's that I like the least are the ones that sell! Why?!

Ok I like some of them. But why is it that well over half my sales have been the ones that are fruit?

Here's what it feels like, I spend 40 minutes painting a pear, I list it and it sells in an hour. I spend considerably more time painting something that I feel is more successful in the end, and it just stays in my shop forever. And now I feel like I have to keep painting fruit over and over so that I can keep the rest of my shop open with the things that I like more. Maybe this shouldn't even be frustrating. It's not that I don't like to paint fruit, I do! But I just feel like I should keep painting different things because I feel like a creative failure to do the same type of thing again and again. I wish I had an answer. I also wish cradled masonite panels weren't so darn expensive. I guess I'll just keep painting.

Poor old house

Our house has been having a hard time lately, poor old house. I don't blame it, it's cold here, if I was a house I'd move somewhere warm.

For a few weeks our furnace was broken, luckily we have two, which is weird because our house is pretty small. Anyway, the living room was nice and warm, and the bedroom was frigid. I'm pretty sure the chapstick by my bed was frozen. And just our luck, when we plugged in the space heater we lost power to half the house.

A few days later my computer died :( I don't think it would be so bad except that macs are too pretty to die.

Good news is the house is all Christmasy! Zach hung lights outside, and they're perfect :) We have stockings above the fireplace, and Zach wrapped all the presents.

We went to a holiday block party last Friday. Everyone is super nice, but I'm afraid I won't remember all their names. We were the youngest by far :) but there was one couple who was pretty close to our age, and they were new to the block too. I baked an apple pie to bring (Zach did the hardest part, peeling all the apples.....and helping me figure out how to turn on the food processor). I tried a new pie crust recipe....and LOVED it. Ok I have to stop talking about the pie because now I want to eat some.

I made us a mini pie because I didn't want to wait to try the big one :)

My charlie is cute, but not as cute as this one: