Happy birthday to my Kerstin

Today is my daughter Kerstin's birthday.A couple days ago 12.5 of us, friends and family, got together in a lovely Italian restaurant downtown to celebrate.I thought about bringing my camera, but thought it might be too big a nuisance and settled for only my iPhone.We had the best time and I was glad to leave the camera at home. These photos are enough for a memory of a wonderful night.Happy birthday my darling girl.

Family Day in the country

What a gloriously sunny day today was, and perfect to spend the day out in the country with some of my family on this Family Day.Chloe and I met Kerstin, Adam, and our friends Warren and Taven in the charming little town of Fort Langley.There's a wonderful antique emporium there and we loved having a mooch around.I so could have bought at least 17 beautiful treasures!Fort Langley is very popular and was incredibly busy and packed on this bank holiday Monday and we were looking at at least an hour wait for any restaurant, so we drove out of the town to the neighbouring town, where we stopped for a late lunch.Some of us missed lunch altogether. :DEarlier this morning, I promised Chloe some practice photo time and so after lunch, Kerstie and gang headed back into town, and C and I drove further into the country.We stopped all over to take photos. Chloe is developing such a wonderful eye. I'm so proud of her.Would you like to see the scene Clover was photographing?Look:Isn't it a beautiful little scene?There were so many beautiful places to photograph.And so many new friends to meet.And we were so happy to see spring springing all over the place. :DWe stayed out in the country till late afternoon, and then drove home.

Nadine's Drawing Challenge: At sixes and sevens

I love that expression, at sixes and sevens, but like it a whole lot less when I'm there.And I've been there loads of times.In fact, judging by the collection of canvases in my "burn pile" and the plethora of half finished "thought-it-was-a-good-ideas" at the thrift store, loads of us have been there.Look at these three little canvases I found recently. They cost a whopping $1.50 together and, although someone was at sixes and sevens when they gave up on them, there's nothing wrong with them that a little sandpaper won't fix.So armed with new bravery, and a full busy week, I resurrected one of my "disasters" of a painting, and decided to paint my way out of it.I know this sky was originally painted with oils, and it's not like I'm starting with a fresh canvas, so I had to keep going with the oils.This is one small problem in my world because there is no way, with the week I've had, that I could possibly finish this canvas, but, whatever! It'll get finished eventually.I decided that yellow magnolias would be lovely on this moody sky, so I opened the computer to a bunch of Google images of yellow magnolias......and got to work.In about four hours over two days of painting, we have the beginnings of a resurrected canvas, AND, it's even looking like it might be a nice painting!There it is drying in the living room. I think I'm going to like this one. :DOvercome your art disasters with some help from our friends over at Nadine's this week.Thank you for hosting Woolfie girl. :D

Our little girls are here!

How lucky are we?Kerstie and Adam brought our little girls for a weekend visit.Chloe and I did a quick visit to the local thrift stores and bought a ton of art and craft supplies for some ridiculously small amount of money...And we sat down with Binky, Bunny and Ziggy to have some fun.And we traced and coloured......wrote secret messages...And made a wonderful and huge mess on the dining room table.Then we got some toys from the toy chest and three fun purses, and we packed the purses full of all the toys we needed.Purple is a favourite colour right now.And then the farm animals had to be corralled......and hair had to be brushed......then all the news had to be shared.And, after all the books were read......we had a little rest.The crafts can stay on the table for next time......and Chloe and I have the most magnificent and magical dream catchers over our beds keeping us safe tonight.

A day to always remember

I know, I know, here I go again with the tumbleweeds.Honestly, if you know how much I have to say every day, you might actually be happy for a little quiet from me...lol.But I have to tell you about my day yesterday.Yesterday was the most amazing day for me. I drove X town for a very special session at my wellness centre.I got to show nine amazing women how to make a wellness journal and help them make one for themselves from old books.I have to say that, and I know I don't talk about it, (or even like to think about it), very much, but 2014 and the diagnosis and radiation treatment left me unimaginably changed. But it is what it is, and there is no use burying our head in the sand. It was and continues to be a personal struggle to come to terms with it, to try to sort it out, to accept it, to stop thoughts of my life possibly not being as long as I had hoped...etc, etc.And as much as I try to distance myself from it as a way of coping, I do believe that now, a year on, I'm at a good place where I find I can share my experience and the therapy I devised to get thru it.The funny thing is that when Robert suggested that I make that wellness journal to take with me to treatment, at first I thought that that was the last thing I wanted to do. I know myself, and I knew that I would dispose of practically everything which would be a reminder of treatment as soon as I could, and I figured that if I made it I would never want to see that journal again. Robert said that was just fine. He said that if I locked it in a drawer and never looked at it again it would be just fine. If I chose to burn it it would be just fine. And so, having that mindset and having that permission, I made the wellness journal. And then showed it to my oncologist, therapist and wellness doctor.Which brings me to this wonderful group of ladies that I had the absolute privilege to spend the afternoon with.Each of us has a similar and yet vastly different story. Each of us are dealing/have dealt with a diagnosis and the fallout which inevitably comes from such a chaotic and devastating happening in our lives.So we spent the afternoon together. Just the ten of us, tea, old books, and tons of art supplies.Around that long table, we picked up books and pencils and felt pens and tracing paper. We laughed, we cried, we shared our stories, we drew and traced and stamped and tore up bits of paper.We circled words and wove them together into lines and poems, and started our journals which we all hope will be a calming distraction in the wilds of our lives.And, as I reflect on yesterday, I feel so lucky to have had that experience.What a gift art is.What a gift life is.

Drawing challenge: Shinrin Yoku

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's drawing challenge: Shirin Yoku.I was thinking that I actually do a lot of forest bathing, and the forest I love more than anything are birch and aspen forests.I absolutely revel in the golden autumnal birches and aspens, but that's just luck of the draw because I'm usually in that part of the world in the autumn.But what about now? What about a fresh, green, spring birch forest?The thought put me in the mood for a beautiful, big oil painting....in two days...yeah, I know!So I got into the garage loft and took down a large canvas that I started painting something on a few years ago (No idea what I was thinking.)Happily it had an acrylic layer, and soon I had it sanded off and painted a new layer of acrylic as a simple tone on it, and sketched a few "trees" in charcoal.Then, with a couple pieces of birch bark as inspiration, I got out my oils.If any of you paint with oils, you probably know that it takes days and days for oil layers to dry, and there is nothing practical which can be done to speed up the drying.And while oils are my first and true art love, I'm not the most patient person in the world.But the danger is that the oils will begin blending into mud with too much wet-on-wet work...And so we must take a break for a day or two and prop up the painting on the mantle piece where we can walk by and admire it and try not to touch it to test for wetness. (sigh)Hurry up and dry!In the meantime, I can't wait to come round and see how we're all shirin yoku(ing).[inlinkz_linkup id=603181 mode=1]

Announcing a new Drawing Challenge: Shinrin Yoku

Hi everybody,Here is the theme for next weekend's drawing challenge: Shinrin YokuInspired by Chloe's imminent adventure in Japan, Shinrin Yoku, translated as Forest Bathing, is something she expects to be doing a lot of. How about we look into it ourselves.Let's start with the art and just keep going all year.Art: some fern stamps I cut the other day, "inked" with watercolour to make a shadowy print, and ink drawn ferns, coloured in with watercolours so that they shade and mix where they overlap, on a page in my small poetry journal. Found poem reads:There are the dense pine jungles, protected by the spikes of dead branches, with never a bit of green to relieve the grey - the favourite haunt of spiders, who stretch out their webs and sit there, waiting for foolish flies.Foliage growing darker and darker and more silent as the moss grew thicker and vines slung themselves more luxuriantly from tree to tree.The most beautiful.

Beachy love

For the most part it's been a lovely weekend here on the Wet West Coast. A little treat of sunshine between the rains called us out to one of our favourite beaches, Whytecliff.Some days this beach is pretty empty. Not today though. Loads of people were out walking along the beach, climbing up the Whytecliff, sitting on benches, hiking over some of the other cliffs, and scuba diving. This area is a marine protected area and a speedboat free Provincial park, so absolutely ideal for diving. I have dived here and so can tell you that the bay if full of wonderful marine life, and the rocks are favourites with mama seals and newborn pups.The air felt really fresh and almost spring-like. Everything was drenched through and through from a solid week of rain and couldn't hold any more water, so everything dripped and steamed in the sunshine. The forest was draining in little rivulets thru the sand and into the ocean, exposing all sorts of lovely pebbles, and the rocks had fresh, green algae, which made walking a bit slippery.There's always the biggest temptation to walk over the rocks and climb up the Whytecliff. It's beautiful up there and the view out to Vancouver Island and to downtown Vancouver is really worth it. But lots of people get it wrong and find themselves stranded as the tide comes in. We were looking at the people making their way over in the last few minutes before many of the "stepping stones" rocks were under water and we were wondering how the heck they were going to get back. Later, from our much drier vantage point, we saw people wading back in water knee deep carrying children on their shoulders. Oh dear. That's one way to make a lasting memory! :D

Drawing challenge: reef

Hi guys,I'm so happy Katrin called this week's drawing challenge: reef.Come with me in the blue light of the morning to see if we might catch a little of the magic of the reef.Tiptoe into the dining room.There's the magic journal.Let's open it and maybe we can catch a glimpse of the blue watery depth of a reef.Oh my gosh! Just as we suspected. While we slept, mermaids were tickling jellyfish.But now our tea is ready.And the washed brushes have dried and are waiting for another day of painting.So we must leave the mermaids in their reefy blue and get on with our soon to be golden day. Come swim over to Katrin's and see everyone's salty creations. :DArt: black ink on two pages of my journaling book, chalks

Catching up on the past two days of art

Well, I've been really enjoying this first week of my Reflections art journaling course and, since I separated my beautiful (and huge) journal into 14 pages, I'm meant to paint a page per day for this two week course.Ideally.All things being equal.Of course, all things are not always equal and so days and pages naturally overlap, but I thought you might like to see these past two days.This next assignment was to gather images and make a collaged timeline of my life.So I gathered the images, followed the instructions tried to follow the instructions, but the template Jeanne offered wasn't working for me. And that's alright, because this course is meant to help me express my way, not Jeanne's way. I love that.So soon the template turned into some lovely finger painting and blending...Then I began collaging my images.Represented are: Prague my home town, Northmoor in Oxfordshire and Vancouver BC where I live, there's my sense of wonder, of fun, and my wish for learning, my photography, images form artists I admire, poetry, the music I paint on...and it just went on and on.Deeply personal and beautiful to me. I can't stop studying it.It was supposed to be a timeline but it turned into an all-about-me-while-having-no-chronological-order-whatsoever line. It's all good.Most gratifying to have it in my journal.Then I listened to a couple of audio files and painted these two pages.The one on the left is a dry mediums study (Charcoal and graphite) and the one on the right is a wet mediums study (inks and acrylics).Same subject, two different techniques. I'm loving this course guys.And I'm really excited because I'm finishing my painting for tomorrow's DC: reef. Can't wait to see everyone's contributions :D