Waking up an hour early to get the kids ready for school by yourself and taking them so that I can sleep in an extra hour because I worked late the night before, then waking me up after you get back with a hot cup of coffee with the milk frothed the way you know I like it.

Looking at every painting after I am done and exlaiming, "Isn't THIS one the cutest one yet??" (and always agreeing.)

Listening to every single marketing idea I have...over and over and over again.

Putting up with two huge crazy beasts for dogs even when you are not a dog person because you know I am.

Cleaning the kitchen.

Making me amazing dinners because you know I would just eat cereal instead of cook.

Doing the laundry.

Not complaining that I am messy. (Although, there IS order to my chaos!!)

Not complaining when I stay up late to work...again.

Scanning in my sketches for me.

Cutting down wood for me.

Telling me I am beautiful even when I am covered in paint, have not showered in a day and am wearing old sweatpants.

Listening to my crazy dog stories.

Picking up canvas from one side of town and paint on the other side of town for me.

Playing legos with the kids when I need to meet a deadline.

Rubbing my shoulders and feet every single night.

Kevin, you are my rock. Without you this all means nothing. I love you.

I did it again. I over extended myself and now I am up late trying to get it all done. It is 1am and I just finished a magazine layout and am supposed to do 3 brochures. That is not going to happen though. I am working onsite tomorrow to fill in for a designer at a college again and I will try to use my lunch hour for the brochures. And I promised a painting to be delivered Friday at 6:30pm. I am working onsite all day Friday as well. I am not complaining about the abundance of work, just the lack of time for it all. Or maybe the need for sleep. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could always pull the all nighters we used to in college??? Oh to have that energy again. When I stay up past 2am I wake up feeling like I have a hangover without having had all the fun the night before. Life is mean how that works!

On another note entirely, I met an amazing women today. She is a sales rep for the yellow pages and still wanted to meet with me even after I emphatically explained I have zero budget for advertising. She is just one of those people you instantly connect with. She said she woke up at 3:30am and decided to give me a free ad. Ok.... What is the catch??? She says that she is allowed to give out a few free ads to certain customers to help get ads in the book. For whatever divine reason she decided to give it to me. So I am getting an almost $1200 ad for free. Crazy! But I will take it! And after dicussing my future plans with her she said some things that yet again confirmed what I am doing on my personal project that is going wonderfully. I love when the universe conspires along with you when you are on the right path!!



And in one final note, the teeny tiny sculptures I made for my daughter are just too cute not to share. I am thinking Christmas ornaments....And again, need more time!!

There was a wonderful post by Keri Smith yesterday on her journal about being able to play for a living. Later, she added a comment that said she did not want to mislead anyone thinking that is how it has always been. For a long time she took jobs she hated and had to find the joy in them. It is so easy too look at other's lives and think how great they have it and wonder what the heck we are doing wrong. I do it all the time. Right now I am in a phase where I am really happy and content with everything I am doing. And part of that is that I am doing 85% of what I love, but part of it is attitude. I still have to take graphic design jobs - I am doing a magazine layout today and working onsite Thurs, Fri, and Monday. I used to get upset over this, thinking, "When can I stop this??" Now I am so grateful for it. I welcome it. Not because I love that type of work now, but because it is work and I am grateful for the abundance of it lately. I think back to my first full time contract job. I was in the car over 2 hours a day (Atlanta traffic), leaving my 15 month old and 3 year old at home for the frst time and check this- doing real estate ads 8 hours a day! Woohoo! Talk about creative fullfillment!! In the past I have put high school logos on plastic cups and pompoms, did production for phonebooks, made banner ads for the internet, and the list goes on. I never can say I ever hated these things, I have always tried to be very grateful for the work. I also have always left when I knew I was mentally done with it. I have been lucky to get other work when I have quit my jobs. But maybe it is not luck. Maybe it is expecting new work to be there. I heard someone say the other day that we do not get what we deserve. We get what we expect. And sadly so many of us are conditioned to expect the worst. Here is my secret: I expect the best for my career. I expect it to bring me things I never dreamed of before. I get so excited to be on this journey in life. I have no idea where it will lead me. Will I still be painting a year from now? Who knows, but I expect a wonderful ride of twists and turns and ups and downs that I am sure will help me continue to grow as an artist and a person. Expect amazing things for your life. Just be prepared when it begins to happen!

Only took like a million different combinations of tries!


I feel just like Sophie now!

Ok, I like to think of myself as computer literate-well most of the time anyways. Ok, so here is my problem. You see from time to time I put up pics. Well, try as I might to do it through blogger (I host it myself) I can't upload them to my blog page through blogger. I do first upload them through Dreamweaver, then try to attach them through blogger, but I always get an error that says permission denied. So when I really want a pic up here, I do it all through Dreamweaver with copying and pasting source code and it is just a big pain. And I eventually lose the picture anyway when I do another upload through blogger. Anyone know what the heck I may be doing wrong??? I am in Explorer 5.5 on a Mac OS 9. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

On another note, I finished a painting, a banner for a dog daycare and made 4 sculptures for orders yesterday and before I went to bed finished up another huge chunk of my own little project! I got some feedback on some questions from the amazing Keri Smith as well. This woman is just the epitome of what a person should be in this life: sweet, inspiring, enlightened, and helpful just because she can be. She writes these amazing essays on her site called the Wish Jar Tales that I kid you not, will change your life. It was while reading these essays a good year and a half ago that I became determined to live the life I wanted to live. If you have never seen her or heard of her, I strongly suggest you go check her site out right now! She is over on my link list. Go!