Rain or shine

"Will you love me rain or shine, will you be my Valentine?"

says one of my kitschy 50's Valentines.  After working six or seven days a week throughout most of the spring we actually proactively booked coverage at home and at the shop and took off a long weekend at the beach.  The weather was gorgeous. 

And the weather was NOT gorgeous.  But we were tickled, the day that it was "supposed to" rain we sat on the beach for 4 hours watching the clouds go in, out and around us, reading and people watching.  Until I said "Time to go, this time I smell rain".  We can't move out too quickly as Bob's prosthetic "water leg" is truly a peg leg with foot. Impossible to be nimble but serviceable enough to get us to the water's edge and IN so we don't complain! We got ourselves packed in and BOOM, what you see below.  So we were feeling pretty smug on the way home.  Bob actually took a shower in the outdoor shower in the rain.  Pretty brisk as it was getting chilly!

We spent the whole weekend junking for treasure for the shop, eating tasty treats, drinking wine watching the sunsets on the bay.  Fun, fun fun until I was nagging him about camera angles for this shot below. Oh also when I didn't lock the cereal and the ants came marching in to take it back to their ant lair (ugh). Other than that, rain and shine a perfect weekend, Valentine.  xo

And thanks to everyone who held down the fort and home and at the shop so we could run away. It will make us MUCH more pleasant to be around this week!

Modify and make it your own.

 When my sister, my husband and I first bought our "near the beach" house in Delaware over a decade ago we learned what in real estate land what was quirky and charming to some was downright dangerous to others.  See these rustic fence post guard rails on our salt box Cape Cod upper balcony? They only had TWO horizontal rails!   My ingenious hubby and some friends created a grid of 1x6's, stained them to match perfectly and you can see how nicely they match. (Although they do still look a fence built to keep livestock from straying!)

 The balcony shows off our ever increasing collection of seaside art.  Although in the beginning I called it the "bad ocean art collection" I had to modify my title as we kept finding pieces and a lot of them are downright wonderful.  So I decided to let "bad" be in the eye of the beholder..

We've modified HOW we use the house too.  When we all had corporate jobs it was a place to come and escape from our stressful crazy careers.  Then we had kids and it turned into a place to make memories by doing the exact same thing EVERY time we came.  My kids are teenagers now and bewtween their busy schedules and Bob & I both working in at Stifel & Capra trips to the show have turned into business trips: treasure hunting for merchandise for the shop, long conversations about "what's next?" that can only happen when a two hour drive takes 5 and you don't have your car charger, and delusion that the shore could be a place of respite again.

To that end my family came down for just 2 days and swore to take a real Sabbath from work.  The reality was there was some email checking and facebook posting but the big event was not living by the clock for 48 hours.   Two days of sleeping until we woke up, eating when we were hungry and moving with the sun.  Of course, Bob just said "Oh my Lord, look at the time; we gotta go!!!" So, back to our reality!  Suburban, filled and busy, trying to make a living while making a life, reality. It's all good.  Or will be if I can make a dent in my to-do list!

Trying a new technique.

 I am trying a new technique for building my mixed media collages.  I tend to get glue happy and regret some layers I have laid down so this time I am doing of the pieces separately before I combine them in the final work.  My poor son gets the shirt shrift as I tend to make "girly" pieces so I asked him to model for a large work that I will display in my solo show at 1st Stage in Tyson's this November.  Above is the photograph I took.  Below is the pencil sketch. I decided I like it "flipped" better.

 I asked my boy what color he thought the background should be for my next painting and he said "moody purple"  He picked dark green for my last one (see previous post) and so I followed him again for this one.

Then I decided on the large scale object materials.  In this case fabrics, sheet music and leather.

 then I hand embroidered the face & finger delineations.  The most amusing part so far?  The t shirt on the figure is from a REAL rhino shirt that my son inherited from my good friend and fellow artist Beth Loftis' son YEARS ago and has grown out of!

I am psyched to continue working on this but ran away to "pick" for the shop inventory for Stifel & Capra on the Eastern shore!  Got LOTS of good loot today!  Can't wait for you to see it.

Respite & Review

 I have to admit I was a little envious hearing about friend's vacations where there are zip lining through the rain forests and scaling large mountain peaks.  On the other hand I have a fine appreciation for things that are the same, year in and out.  Like my husband building sandcastles!
Or Bob saying "There's my boat!" every time we see an especially cool one.

This one was on the bay at Lewes Beach , Delaware. So Vintage looking!  I am not educated enough to know whether it is old or not but it looks like something out of a Cary Grant movie doesn't it?

Except for some recreational picking I took a complete break from work.  It worked I feel so refreshed and really ready to jump back into the day to day.  OK, so I did make a thousand mental lists of "cool things I can work on when I return".

 

This week has been great so far.  Got back to working out again and have actually been in my studio 2 days in a row! Results on that VERY soon.

 

The clouds on the way home reminded my kiddies that it is almost back to school time.

(Who are they kidding? They can't really wait to see their friends, or and learn something.)

Moon over Lewes

Last full day at the beach on Saturday. Was there so long the moon came out!  Had a super relaxing time.  Entertained some out of town friends and relatives, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine, went for a couple of power walks and more than a few languid dips in the bay.  Tried REALLY hard to ignoe technology (helped along by  really bad connections.)

Did lots of shopping. Even got a lot of it tagged and inventoried when I walked in the store today I could get it put out on the floor.

The craziest purchase of the week?  A set of congas and bongos!  I honestly bought them because they were a good deal and they are simply beautiful.  Everyone that knows I have two kids has said "are you crazy?!?" We will see...  Turns out one of our house guests actually plays them.  The congas.  Better than Ricky Ricado.  Paul swears that he carried a set just like the ones I purchased in the high school marching band.  Are you KIDDING me?  Amazing.
Am excited to be back to work.  Or would have been if I had a job where my work got done when I was gone!  My awesome artists and colleagues all covered for me on the sales floor but all of the paperwork was sitting in a neat little pile when I came in this morning. (Darn!)  With that said , I am glad to be back!

Dueling Sand Castles!

Bob's new "water"leg is serving him in fine stead as we headed down to the Delaware shore with visiting Stifel relatives. The weather is sunny, rainy, stormy, beautiful, hazy, hot & humid. Sounds like DC in August, eh?


I drove down by myself and did a little judicious treasure hunting for the shop. If I am feeling ambitious I might actually get them all tagged before I get home and I can just drive straight to the store and drop off the new batch of vintage goodies. Wait & See!