Having a moment...

Hi all my lovelies

 

I am sorry I have been missing in action; there is just too much on my plate at the moment and unfortunately this means I just want to flunk on the couch at the end of the day.

In no particular order:

• my husbands parents, who are in their 80s are in the early stages of dementia; they are only 2 minutes from us so my husband has spent the last year assisting with numerous health assesments, supporting the sale of their home, organising their move into a retirement village...only two more weeks and they will be settled in. Luckily his sister is near enough to also be helped this process along beautifully - but it all takes it's toll after a while;
• Our dog of 16 years is, well...on his last legs.  We have had the talk with the children and now it is just time to get the vet to come over; he has a lovely place ready in the garden.
• my grandmother in QLD, who is 93, has had a fall recently and broke her collar bone.  She has dementia which means she is in a heightened state of confusion - while she was in the hospital they found that she was terribly aenemic, which is most likely why she fell, and required two blood transfusions. The aenemia was due to massive ulceration of her esophogus (I have no idea if I am spelling any of these words correctly!)so she is getting treatment for that too;
• I have had both my boys have massive crashes on their skooters in the last month - both involving facial and limb injury.  The first was my youngest man who crashed on the way home from school; skidded along his nose and lip and battered up his elbow: I had a phone call at work from the side of the road for that one. The second crash was my eldest out the front out of our house - he timed this perfectly with our wee one jamming two of her fingers. He crashed off his home made ramp: as he later said it was a "three point landing" knee, head, shoulder. Let's not talk about the helmet he wasn't wearing, but he couldn't walk, so that included a trip the hospital. No breaks, but a severe amount of swelling, antibiotics to prevent infection in his wound (blergh!) and Mumma attention required constantly. Boys!!
• I can't find my special doovie to download my photos off my camera...hence, no photos at the moment either.

Sorry about the big blergh,... I am missing catching up on all my favourite blogs and telling you all the GOOD things that are happening here too. Because yes, there is good.

• We have a new beautiful TV cabinet for our family room;
• I recovered and painted my kids toy box for a "storage" box;
• I have made cushion covers;
• I have (as at now) undercoated another chest, ready for painting;
• I have whipped up a painting for the wall to compliment the new colour scheme - white, aqua and chocolate.  It is abstract and very simple;
• I've made blackberry jam; it was my first time and OH MY! I kept making scones, just so I could eat the jam...!  Yep, a couple of extra kgs went on there!

I have also been working: it sort of straddles the good and bad category :-D

 

So please forgive my absence - I will be back soon!

 

Big hugs

 

Cath
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Garden party!!!

Hello my sweet friends.

Do you like my dress?  I am going to the lovely Sarah's Garden Party over at Modern Country Style.

You should come along! There is a beautiful display of flowers and some lovely frocks in attendance!  Not only that but Sarah promised us a garden bath: perfect for washing our dirty feet if, like me, you plan to run through the grass with no shoes on!

This is my garden in the spring - it was a painting I did in acrylics in about 3 hours non stop.  It was a bit of a challenge, because while I was painitng in the grass, my little man who was 4 at the time was painting the sky brown!!  Lucky acrylic dries fast!

The painting was done with a palette knife and was primarily a study of the light.

Over at TWC - Paint with Me we are working on our backgrounds for our paintings.  We haven't long to go, so be sure to check back in a couple of weeks when we do our "before and after" virtual gallery showing.  Better yet, there is still time to jump right in and join this session.

Take care and enjoy the champers - it really is a gorgeous afternoon for a garden party.

Hugs

Cath

Garden party anyone?

Hi all my lovelies!

Where have I been...it seems I have been missing in action for a little bit.  But, what a way to return with a garden party!!

The lovely, gorgeous and funny Miss Sarah from Modern Country Style is hosting an English Garden party on the 9th February! 

You can read Sarah's lovely invitation here.

or, use the button below that you can also find on my side bar.

A gorgeous English Garden party is just the tonic to soothe our Australian Summer nerves right now - we may have had fluctuating heat, storms and humidity, but our hearts go out to our Queensland friends and family who have endured the recent floods and TC Yasi.

Sarah's post also includes the most romantic pillow that she made her husband for Valentines day!

Yep, I am inspired to whip out my dusty sewing machine once more!

Now, over in my alternate universe of the blogging world; Tigs White Canvas - Paint with Me, we are chuffing along quite nicely with our mixed media painting of an Iris.  I have just introduced the use of white acrylic to our water colour painting and I talk about the movement and textures that can be created using these two together.

Next I will talk about the background and how to make it exactly that - the background: we can't have our Iris become a wall flower and be overpowered by the dominance of a competing background, can we!

So pop over if you haven't been following so far - there is always time to jump right in!

Big hugs

Cath

Bathroom reveal...

Hi lovelies

This blog heading should read more like "sneaky peek" bathroom reveal!!

After months and months our bathroom is finally complete, except for the "prettyfying" that includes new pretty, coordinated, fluffy, towels.

Rather than the course, stiff, mismatched collection the kids have been using up until now.

Due to this "naked" presentation, I just don't feel right showing you the whole kit and caboodle...and because it is a very small bathroom, I am limited for space to do anything too flash anyway.

Alrighty, enough (guilty) justification for my lack of appropriate decorating for the grand reveal....truth is, I just couldn't wait to share!!

...drum roll please...

...try to not run screaming...

Please welcome to your screens,

BEFORE !!!!

Yes, what do you say?

• lovely timber stained window framing beige yellow window - check
• nice beige tiles - check
• gold tapware - oops, already removed;
• apricot beige bath, sink and vanity - thrown with much enthusiasm into the trailer ready for the tip.  (I'm sure you are sad you missed those babies!

  

...but wait, there's more!!

• lovely beige plastic trim shower screen
• gold detail tile running around the walls
• dirty-erck (yes, I am now officially making that a colour) floor tiles

ah, and the pièce de résistance...

check out that light fitting!

Yes, that's them,...

that row of bulbs mounted to a bit of wood on the wall!

The reason this all took so long:

• The lovely was going to tackle this job himself, until he realised there was not a standard fitting in site.
• The bath we bought was longer (the previous bath was for the vertically challenged).
• The tiles did not want to come off neatly: we ended up cutting the tiles out, wall and all.
• There was no waterproofing.
• It wasn't as easy as it all first appeared.

 So by the time;

•  we got a chap to come in and do the work, which didn't include fitting everything;

...the lovely DID do that...

• I attacked the window with multiple coats of priming undercoat, undercoat, gloss top coat;
• we changed the door from an 80's flat panel to a panelled door, including painting;
• we changed the light fitting (naturally!)
• the lovely painted the walls this past week while I removed all children from the house for some coast time!

we are complete (minus nice towels etc etc)

...drum roll please...

...cue the applause...

(or polite clapping if you prefer)

I give you AFTER:

We had white everything installed:

• tiles on the wall
• tiles on the floor
• and the vanity with the seamless sink top - so wonderful and easy for the kids to keep clean.

We (well, the lovely) painted the walls in Dulux Hogsbristle half strength;

We fitted a switch tap in the sink to make it easier for the kids to clean their hands after the loo - also easy to turn off again!

All fixtures are in silver;

We chose brushed nickle hooks for the kids towels - less hassle of trying to teach them to fold them to hang them, plus they will each have their own hook - and one for the guest.

We included a brushed nickle three-bulb rail light - much nicer that bare bulbs on wood!

The vanity has four deep drawers - one each for the kids to store their things and one for guests.

Can you see that little sneaky peek? There, on the floor of the shower?

Those are my much coveted pebble tiles that are supposedly marble, squished flat. Surprisingly they are indeed comfortable under foot. My selling point to the lovely for these, other than I liked them, was they are rocks - and our wee one likes rocks...so if we stick them on the floor of the shower, perhaps she will be happy to shower in there, rather than with us!!

So there we have it; one last time!

Before:

After:

I hope you have enjoyed this little venture into my main bathroom - past and present. I am so glad it is over, but learnt a heap of things in the process.

Hugs

Cath
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At the beach...

Hello lovely friends

I hope life is treating you well, wherever you may be!

I have left the lovely boy at home (painting our bathroom) and headed to the beach with the kids.

Photo taken by my Dad one glorious afternoon.

Mum and Dad are lucky enough to live a lazy two minute stroll from this beach, and we are lucky enough that they have plenty of room for us to come and stay. So far this stay we have enjoyed late nights, lazy mornings and some lovely swims: one afternoon the kids were lucky enough that the dolphins came for a swim past too.

Life really is tough!

This coming Wednesday I will be posting at Paint With Me, from my idyllic location: plenty of time if you think you may be too late to start!

So stay tuned and chat on Wednesday.

Hugs

Cath
xxx

Get your brushes dirty...it's up and running!!

Hello my lovelies

I decided following my last post that I would create a blog, dedicated to the painting together idea I had.  I will keep this one to track my creative chaos with regards to all other things.

So here she is!!

I hope you will join in!


Hugs

Cath
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It's a New Year - are you ready to learn?

Hello my dear friends and welcome to 2011!!

I hope you have all had a safe and wonderful festive period.  We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas day with family and friends, as well as a wonderful holiday period enjoying bike riding, walking, relaxing and a trip to the coast for some absolutely stunning weather with my parents before New Years...it was the perfect end to 2010.

As always, the beginning of the year harks the time to make resolutions and to set personal goals. I have one resolution this year that will help me achieve my goals, one of which relates to an original intention for this blog: sharing "How to's" on painting.

For a variety of reasons I have always put it off and I came to realise that what I was doing was procrastinating: I had so many good reasons to NOT start. The truth is, one word held me back: FEAR.

So my New Years resolution is to put that little bad guy to bed. In order to do that I will question him, answer him, then sweep him out the door.

Please feel free to grab a cuppa while I set this little guy straight.

What do I fear...

1. whether there is any value with what I have to share;
2. someone will say that it isn't true/correct/right;
3. failure;
4. lack of interest.

 Erghhhh, isn't Fear a nasty little grey mass of fluff sitting there on my floor like a giant dust bunny!

Well, let me answer all those little taunts that Fear likes to throw at me, particularly in the wee hours of the morning:

Is there any value in what I have to share:
I have had plenty of affirmation over the years from people that what I can do is good. That where others need to work at it, I can do it easily. I have been told that art is my gift.  Whilst I wish for the things I so admire in others, like;

• singing well at all; 
• being less gormless playing sports;
• being extremely organised through a bit hard yakka (work)

I CAN do this and I LOVE helping others enjoy painting: it is something I have done whenever I have had the chance, so why not extend it further. So is there value: yes! For me and for anyone who would like to participate.

What if someone says something is wrong, etc etc etc. Then I will embrace it as a learning exercise like all other times I have been redirected with art. I don't know everything and will never claim to know everything: so it will be as much a learning experience for me as for others.

What if I fail? I will fail only by NOT trying. Failure is Fear's favourite taunt: a big wall that I often throw down before myself; that 'voice of reason' that stops me doing something new, just in case I fail. Whilst I have no measure for this failure,...I can't quantify it; I know it stops me. So, in answer to that question: I will not fail, by just taking a step forward. Then another step...and onwards until that voice can't be heard anymore.

And what if no one is interested? Well, time can only tell. But I won't know unless I try, right?!

Alrighty, that's sorted: excuse me while I take the rubbish out.

And now I am back!!

So, the first lesson will be on painting with a mixture of water colours, acrylics and pencils similar to this painting that I did for my Mum for Christmas.

I would like to get everything together and sorted here at the White Canvas before I go much further - I would like to do some "New Year" cleaning on my blog - then I should be ready to go in a week.

So stay tuned my lovelies - let me know if you have any particular questions, fears of your own or needs in preparation for taking on this exciting challenge. I love questions, so please ask away!!

Big hugs to you all - I am really excited about our year ahead together.

Cath
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