Clouds after wind storm

Clouds after wind storm
Originally uploaded by li'l miss muffett

We had a seriously wicked wind storm whip up the other day. The sky was full of these neato lookin' clouds. Unfortunately, we had a tree break in half, too. It is pretty diseased so we will have to take the rest of it out. :(

Productiveness

Yes, that's what happens when you clean your shit up!

After cleaning the other day I sat down and started doodling. As you can see from the pictures in my previous post, I have tattoo flash all over my walls. It's good inspiration... plus I think it looks groovy. Anyhoo, right above my drawing space is some flash that has a gypsy lookin' lady. I got out my paper and pencils and started drawing a copy and came out with this:
I think she turned out pretty. It looked a little plain without a background so I added the sky which I just finished up today. I may do a little more work on that or I might leave it sketchy. What do you think?

I made my own tortillions for the smoothing. I'm thinking about making up a tutorial for them 'cause they are so simple to make. Maybe for my next post?

Before and After

Ummm...yeah, so this is what my sewing table looked like before
and this
Here's another angle... I didn't realize how much of a disaster this whole thing was until I started digging it all out! It took me about three days! I thought at first, I can get this done in an afternoon while Conner takes his nap. No problem! Yeah right. Was I in for a big surprise. I cleaned out a lot of crap and gave Meghan several items. She's starting to get into sewing (yay!) so I gave her a whole box of fabric scraps and some thread and needles. Lets hope she keeps those off the rug. Anyhoo, I got some more storage containers at the $ store for all the little bits and pieces.
So here's the outcome:
I moved a lot of stuff around and rearranged my table. Now I have a sewing section to the right and drawing to the left. It already makes me feel more productive. I sat down and started drawing the other night and it felt so good to have room to spread out! Gee imagine that.

This is the last week of school, too! Conner is going to summer school through June so he can get a little extra speech therapy. He's doing really well with it, by the way. Making lots more sounds and starting to say some new words. He's even stringing some words together now! Meghan is super excited about being done with school. I can NOT believe she'll be a sixth grader!
Man am I old!

Mmmmmm....Food Porn

Okay, I admit it... I indulge in a little food porn once in awhile. Flickr is a good place for free food porn and Craftster, yeah Craftster is good, too. So, anyway, what I'm getting at here is I'm going to share a little food porn with you today. You know, just to forewarn you...you may go away hungry....heh.

A few weeks ago I was browsing some blogs and came across this post on Angry Chicken's and she had a link to this recipe. Now, lemon bars are my most favorite dessert in the whole wide world (okay, okay, ONE of them anyway). Yesterday, I made these amazing Lemon Shortbread bars as dessert for our Mother's Day supper:I've made them a couple of times before but these were soooo much better. I'll tell you why...The first two times I used margarine and the bottled lemon juice. The recipe calls for using real lemons (duh) and real butter. But, lemme tell ya...it makes all the difference in the world. I made these babies with real butter and real lemons this time and oh.my.goodness. Sheer lemon heaven. The crust is rich and flaky the filling is creamy and tart. It also has a strudel topping made of flour, butter, and a little sugar. Yuuumm-o! It only calls for 1/2 cup of lemon juice and has 2 CUPS of sugar. The result is very sweet and not nearly lemony enough for me so I added extra lemon juice. I like mine really tart. I probably added an extra 1/2 cup. I'm not really the measuring type. I also added a little extra flour so it wouldn't be too runny. They turned out perfect. Got raves from everyone else, too! Here's an extra naughty extreme close-up:
Seriously, I'm getting hungry just looking at this.

Okay for some more sweetness, but the kiddy kind:
Conner made this for me at preschool. The little pot says "Mom". I just love it. Meghan made a little book that has several memories and things she likes about me, stuff like that. I about started crying. It was so sweet.

I think I'm going to rearrange my sewing table today to make more room for my drawing supplies. It's becoming a pain in the butt to try and draw around my sewing stuff and vice-versa. I'll take some before and after photos so you can see how terribly disorganized I am, erm...I mean, how organized I can be! heh heh.

First, I need a lemon bar though....

Happy Mother's Day!

My lovely little family gave me this vast supply of colored pencils (132 to be exact):

I promptly put them in order(I'm OCD like that), sharpened them, and did a li'l sketchin'.
I hope all the mother's out there have a very happy, very lovely day. Extra special happiness to my mom, sister, Grandmas, and Mother-in-Law! I love you!!!

sneaky peek...

at some drawing I've been doing recently:


This is for NiRosha. She very graciously asked me to design a logo for her soon-to-be-opened shop. I didn't want to show the whole thing since she's not open yet. She told me I need to advertise the fact that I do this kind of stuff and by darn she's right! So, if you need a logo..... ;D
I hand draw this stuff, btw. The above is pen & ink and a little marker. I'm afraid I don't know coding and don't have photoshop but still....

It's up

I thought it was supposed to be up tomorrow but lookie!!!

I love rainy days

As you can see from my view from the computer it's a dreary day. We have another chance for rain...like 90%. I LOVE it! I don't know why but I just love rainy days! As I type this up it keeps getting darker and darker so I look for rain anytime now. As long as we don't get hail or tornadoes. My tomato plant could use a good drink:
I can't believe it already has blooms on it either. yaay! Our rose bush is in bloom too. Actually, that's quite an understatement!
Just look at all those buds!

These babies smell sooooo GOOD! I swear I was 20 feet away and could smell them. I've sorta let them go wild. I haven't trimmed them back for the last few years and they're spreading big time. We really need to do some cleaning up of the flower beds but we've been avoiding it. We have hundreds ( I means HUNDREDS!) of irises and they are so crowded that some are not blooming. Yikes. Mom, I thought you were going to get your butt over here and take some! heh.

On my crafty note, I'm thinking about breaking out the emroidery supplies again. I've been lookin' around the needlework forums on Craftster and it's making me itchy to stitch. I bought a T-shirt custom made for Conner by the super sweet, super talented Amy of Early Bird Special . I just love it and he does, too. This was the best picture I could get of him in it. He wouldn't quit wiggling and moving around. I think he's showing me a Flaming Hot Cheeto here.

Anyhoo, I'm think about making some for him myself. I'd like to try sew directly on the knit but need to get some stablizer first.

Well, that's about all I have for today. I told my sister yesterday that I'm going to try to update everyday. I didn't post yesterday so, sorry Steph, I lied. Hopefully, I can get a little blurb every two or three days. Sometimes I just have nothing to post!

I hope you have a super "hump day"!

excitingness

Yes, I know that's not a real word but it's kinda what I'm feeling! Last week I was contacted by a woman who works for Babble.com about using one of my pictures for an article running this week. May 9th to be exact. The piece is a personal essay written by Rachel Pastan, author of the book "Lady of the Snakes". Here's the photo(those are Conner's 18 month old hands):

Kinda cool, huh?

Over the weekend I got another offer to draw up a logo. This time for a crafty business. I love doing stuff like that! I'd love to make a living doing it too. I've thought about taking a couple art classes at the junior college here to just brush up my on my mad skillz. heh. I'd also really like to learn graphic design using computers. Hmmm...maybe someday. Get Conner into school full-time first maybe.

I've got a lot of catching up to do today so I better take off!

Here I am again

Dammit, if I could just make up my friggin' mind. Well, as I just posted over here, I figured out what my problem with Blogger was and I'm still not tellin'! But it's so much easier to blog and add crap to my page, etc. on Blogger. I think I'll just start where I left off thankyouverymuch. So hopefully I can fill this electronic page with enough witticism and humorous banter to keep it lively.

On with the recent news...

Meghan had her first band concert last night. It was fun and Conner even liked it. He liked the drums best, I think. Not too many squeaks and squawks so that was a bonus. Here's a couple pics:

playin' a happy tune

Meghan (in peach) yakkin'. What's new?

Conner and Daddy, being good boys