Things are looking up a little

I've been a bit busy this last couple of weeks, working on an oil painting commission for a friend. Hand on heart I can't say I really enjoyed doing it, because he wanted one the same as a painting I'd already done ...so that made it a bit boring. But when I took it round for him on Saturday he was really pleased with it, so that's the main thing, but I forgot to take a photo of it dohhhh. I've also been working on the first of a few paintings I want to do for myself. The walls of my little bungalow are sadly a bit bare looking, so I thought I'd give the glass things a miss for a bit and do some paintings. The first painting is almost finished, just a couple of touch ups here and there and it'll be ready to show you. Note to self ... do not keep fiddling with the painting too much lol !!!

A couple of other friends popped round unexpectedly yesterday afternoon, and I ended up with another commission !! This will be just a small oil painting as it's for in his camper van, he wants a sunset seascape. I always find seascapes quite difficult because of the reflections in the water, but hey ho I'll give it a go :o)

I seem to be getting a little bit domesticated and have baked two cakes this last week, don't fall off your chairs in shock lol. The first was a carrot cake, which we love, and the 2nd was a new recipe for me a lemon yogurt cake. On hindsight I should have doubled the quantities because before the icing even got time to set, 3/4's of it had disappeared down the throats of my son and daughter lol. I got the recipe from a very good blog I've recently started following called the English Kitchen, well worth a look at if you enjoy cooking, or even if you don't as in my case lol.

We recently acquired two additions to our garden, one was good the other not so good. The not so good, was a non working motorbike which my son was originally intending to do up for himself. He's now changed his mind and decided to strip it down and sell the parts on Ebay, so I currently have half a flipping motorbike in my garden. The other addition was much more welcome, a 3 seater garden swing. A neighbour of mine was moving out and she didn't want it any longer, so now it has a new home with us. We plan to respray it and give it a bit of colour, which probably won't surprise many of you knowing our love of colour in this house.

This is the link to the English Kitchen blog if any of you would like to go over and have a look at it. The English Kitchen

Change of plans

Well my plan to spend yesterday cutting glass went to the wall. Instead I spent the day in a daze of pleasant day dreams lol. Hey ho these things happen for a reason I guess..

Yet another day has passed with no activities as I needed to go shopping and make doubly sure I had every thing I need to last me till 16th Feb. My daughter is due to go away till then and without her to take me to the shops I'm pretty much housebound. So instead of my haphazard shopping day this was one of almost military precision, a list was made and everything crossed off as it landed in the shopping trolley. After housework, shopping is my next most hated thing to do. If I had a reasonable amount of money to spend it might be less of a chore. But as it is, there's only a very small budget left for food after the bills have been paid. But its all done and put away now and if I run out of anything it's just too bad lol.

Today for a change I thought I'd show off some photo's of my son and daughters crafts.

This first photo was done by my son, this is a model of a street fighter motorbike done entirely of matches, even though some parts at first glance look as though they aren't. This took him many many hours, putting all the painstakingly small detail on it. Even the spark plugs come out. It measures approx 18" long by 10" wide. This is for sale, if anyone is interested please leave me a message.



The picture frame in this next photo has also been done by my son, entirely of matchsticks. This measures 12" x 8".



Last but not least is my daughters creations as you can see she shares my love of glass and the biggest sculpture is made from small 1" long x 1/4" wide pieces of glass, which are glued and stacked, indivually. This is approx 18" high x 10" wide at the bottom.