*sigh*

So I was procrastinating being productive by "catching up" on my blog reading and just as I thought to myself "maybe I would be more productive if my work space wasn't such a mess" I came upon these images. Jerks. Now I have to clean and organize my stuff. Thankfully tomorrow is my day off.

(photos via Apartment Therapy)

Critters

Here are some new Critters that I finished up recently. There is a third one I am designing right now.

Indian Dinner Club

Every thursday night is dinner club. A large group of people from multiple social groups come together to celebrate their love for food. I've only attended one other time for White Trash night. There was fried banana peanut butter sandwiches, pigs in a blanket, tater tots with ranch dressing, cheese cake filling straight from the tub, and a never ending supply of iceburg salad.

Evie proposed a dinner club at our place and I proposed Indian food due to our lack of owning a table. There was a gorgeous array of mushy indian dishes, a vegetable curry, slaw, naan, basmati rice, and of course my favorite, sweet indian balls (also know as gulab jamun). Guests floated in and out of the house until every morsel of indian goodness was lapped up. The rest of the night was spent picking out our next tattoo's in the "tattoo book" (more on that later) and planning for the apocalypse.

Projects

Above are some teaser pictures of some projects that I'm currently working on. So basically I have been really busy but haven't posted much in a while so I feel better now that I've posted something. And now everyone knows that I'm working on things that will hopefully turn into more interesting posts unlike the one you are reading now ;) I'm off to work now. I hope everyone has a lovely day.

Dresses and Beets

We celebrated Tasha's birthday yesterday with pizza and wine. Only the best of course. It was absolutely lovely, four girls in dresses and sweaters nibbling (o.k. gorging) on pizza and beet dyed cupcakes. Tasha is allergic to red40 so Sara made the beet dyed red velvet cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting. They were so scrumptious that I just had to help myself to a third. We talked about babies (weird) and pets. The gifts were opened, the song was sung, another corgi was wished for, and at the end of the night we parted and I smiled the whole way home.

Hocking Hills

It's very easy for me to fall into workaholic mode and forget that we moved here to get away from that and to spend more time with our friends and family. So when I told Mark that I was going to turn down an offer to hang out with two awesome friends and their awesome dogs in Hocking Hills because I had things to do ...well he wasn't having it. Sometimes I just need reminded to have fun. It was comical watching the dogs get so excited and frolicking around (aka pull their owners around). The nice long walk and the fresh middle of no where air added some much needed spunk back into my bones.

Afterwards we cleaned up and filled our bellies at Dirty Franks with veggie dogs and alcoholic slushies.

In progress

Day by day our house is beginning to form into a home. It's something that I've learned takes time. There are many things that still need bought, built, and rearranged. I've found though it is best to get to a know a space before I try to mold it to fit my lifestyle. My goal for our last apartment was to have a haven, something that felt peaceful among all the chaos. My goal for this place is to have a space thats conducive to entertaining and productivity. Pictures and shelves have made the space feel homier. Next I'll be making curtains and mark will be building a huge dining room table that will double as a work space. Mary has taken to spending most of her time on the stairs while Oscar prefers laying in the sun in the dining room. I'll post new pictures as the space develops.

Hello Honda

I bought a car. I paid for it in cash. It's not fancy but it's mine. It feels so good to completely own something and to not have to worry about owing money.

I am using the current state of our economy to force myself into good financial habits. Sure it would be nice to have a fancy car, or Starbucks every day, or those awesome Frye boots at Urban right now. But those things just aren't necessities, even though I sometimes convince myself that they are. It's so easy to fall into the habit of saying "but I deserve it". I just can't justify living beyond my means at the cost of losing control of my finances. I tried that two years ago and slowly the balance on those little plastic rectangles crawled closer and closer to their limit. And it made me so angry. Luckily angry enough to vow to never use them again and to slowly but surely begin to pay them off.

So I went without a car for a couple years, but it was worth it because now I fully own one. It taught me that I can live without when I need to and that it feels better to do that than to be choking in debt.

(a couple links of stories that have inspired me to be frugal/ debt free)

changing room

getting by in tough times

...and go

Sometimes I'll think and think about something, planning out how I'm going to do it. I'll lay in bed at night letting it mull over and over in my head, dreading that I will never be able to do it as good as I want. I'll make lists, lots and lots of lists. And then finally (usually days, sometimes years later) I will just do it. It's not always perfect right away but it's almost always easier than I imagined in my head. That is the thing about creating, it only get better with practice. And it's not just making art. Sometimes it's something as "simple" as reorganizing a closet, or creating a better recycling system.

On Friday I dived into the art making process and I completely surprised myself with how much I ended up accomplishing. It was so much easier doing it in real life than it was in my head. It was a great start to what will hopefully be a very productive three months.

Full Time Hobby

I really believe that success takes a lot of hard work. It's hard to not get caught up in the idea that everything should happen immediately. I have a tendency to rush through things and becoming impatient for the outcome. Because that is just how our culture is. We have learned to expect everything to happen minutes after we wish it.

I want to make a series of art and it's just not going to happen with the snap of a finger. It's going to take work. So I've committed myself to scheduling in, along with my "day job", 40 hrs a week just for that. My skills aren't where they need to be to create the caliber of art that I want so I'm going to work until they are. Because when you are passionate about what you want in life then you need to live like you are. No more just talking about it, writing hundreds of lists and goals. At some point it has to come time to just do it. And thats where I'm at.

This is something that Mark has become very committed to as well. Since the first day we moved back (yes, literally the first day) he has been working on recording himself and other bands as well as preparing to play a show in September. I've heard him say many times that he will record something until it is as close to perfect as it can be. "No more 'It's good enough'" he says. And I think that is just the attitude we are both going to adopt to make all these dreams of ours a reality.