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

Wow what a week

Last week saw us having 12 visitors, more than we usually have in a year lol. But it was good fun and it was really good to catch up with some people I hadn't seen for quite a while. It did put pay to any work getting done around the house, but what the hell, sometimes you just have to hang up the paint brushes and enjoy the company.

One visitor had a camper van, which needed some restoration to put it mildly. It used to have a kitchen but that went flying one day while going round a corner quite quickly lol. So everything was taken out of the van and scattered all over the car park behind out house. There was a pile of keep me's, a pile of rubbish and a pile of this might be useful. Once the pile of rubbish was deposited at the local tip, it was the start of rebuilding the kitchen again. This time it was all screwed together properly, and attached to the side of the van too. On a test run we went over speed humps at some speed, lurched round corners and gave everything every chance to go flying. But it all stayed exactly in place !!

My youngest son came round last Weds, and had a tribal tattoo done on the back of his neck. Then on Saturday a friend called freaky Mark (please don't ask why lol) came round and had a pentagram on the back of his neck. My sons one needs a bit of touching up, but the one on Marks neck was pretty much perfect and he was really pleased. Considering Mark had large portion of his body already tattooed my daughter was really pleased when he said it was the least painful tattoo he'd ever had !!

Once the last visitor had left, I got out a canvas I've been itching to paint for days now. I drew on the abstract design on the first night and started doing the initial painting the 2nd day. This is the largest oil painting I've ever attempted do to at 40" x 30" but it's a challenge I'm enjoying. This painting is for above the fireplace on the feature wall, which is a deep aubergine so one of the best things about painting your own picture, is that you can incorporate a touch of the matching colour to tie everything up together. Which is exactly what I've done of course lol.

My son's tribal tattoo

Freaky Marks pentagram