Thursday, July 30, 2009

when life gives you lemons

Hiya!

Well Cousin Camp 2009 is in mid stream and we're all having a fantastic time! The kids are all having a ball together and the weather has finally decided to show us that it actually is summer. (I fell asleep on the lounge chair yesterday listening to an audiobook on my iPod and burnt the stink out of places that haven't seen sun in quite a while! Ouch my knees hurt! LOL)

Anyway, the title of my blog. You know when no matter how well you plan something it just doesn't work out? Well, Kari, Jodie and I very carefully planned a week long menu and who was bringing what. This is important in an area that has no electricity and depends on propane fridges and coolers with ice! The corner store is a boat ride then a car ride away! LOL

When life gives you lemons you make lemonade....well, in our case ~ when Jodie brings up a 10lb bag of rotten potatoes you let the kids play "potato baseball" on the dock! LOL

Yup, my crazy sister cut all of these stinky, rotten potatoes into smaller pieces and then proceeded to be 'pitcher' to the kids on the dock. She would lob them a potato and WHAM they'd hit it out into the bay. Some potatoes were much funnier than others....some exploded into a million mushy pieces (ok, took 3 of these before we wised up and moved the boat! LOL), and then some came screaming right at the pitcher! Jodie got hit twice by a potato and she now has the bruises to show for it! Only at cousin camp....My sister Kari and I were laughing so hard we forgot to take pictures. On the bright side ~ we have a basket of peaches that aren't looking too good.....LOL, that will be a photo op for sure!

Not a painting related blog this time, but what the heck we're having a really fun week!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Transferrable Skills?????

Hi Everyone,

Well we are now well into summer and the family visits have begun. My sister and her two kids are visiting us here in Ontario from BC. They are staying with us this week before we go to the cottage for our annual "cousin camp" with my other sister and her kids next week. Here is the 'rub'.....lol.....my studio has been taken over.....

Now imagine, not in the usual way when family comes to visit with suitcases, mattresses and piles of 'stuff' that collects when you have company and not enough bedrooms... but ~ my painting studio has become a TATTOO PARLOR!!!! My sister is a tattoo artist and she has booked lots of appointments in my studio for this week.

Ok, I'm going to admit something....I know nothing about tattoos. I grew up in a family that WENT to tattoos (you know, with pipebands and drums?) not got tattoos. Anyway, Jodie has several and they really aren't what I expected.....what did I expect? well, I'm not really sure but I guess skulls might have popped into my head. LOL I definitely fell into the 'stereotype' mentality and this is the first time I've really, really looked at them.

Having just come from Dave's Teacher Seminar where we were all designing, and learning about scrolls I was VERY aware of 'c' and 's' in the designs Jodie was coming up with and had in her portfolio. We had a really long conversation after dinner last night about the acanthus, root c's and s's and line of design. She actually looked at one of the Rosmaling designs I came up with last week and declared it to be a tattoo waiting for ink! LOL

OK, so just when you learn that Rosmaling is a transferable skill to all other painting ~ BANG!!! ~ I learn that it is also transferable to tattoos.....LOL

Now, the big question, to ink? or not to ink?

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Seminar at the Jansen's!

Hi Everyone, this will be quick....I'm eating breakie and class starts in 1/2 hour! But I took a shot of Dave making us all a spaghetti dinner last night with Arlene supervising.....but, this next one was worth a movie! LOL This is our dear Paul vacuuming before the students arrive!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Our small piece of paradise and how we decorate!

Hi There,

I thought I'd share some photos of my favourite place in the world, the cottages that belong to my family and my husband's family on the Severn River. Since Rachel and Hale came along I ha
ve been the luckiest person in the world and have spent my entire summers on the Severn River with the kids.
Someone asked me recently if my home was stuffed with paintings, LOL, well not really but there are lots of paintings at the cottage and these are just a few of my favourites.
The one at the top of the page is a painted screen at my Mother-in-law's cottage. I love painting screens, it is so much fun! Once painted you only see it from one side, it provides privacy because you see the painting but not really much inside! From inside it is just a normal screen and you can see out perfectly. You can see Rachel inside in the photo sitting in front of the woodstove.
LOL, I love this painting! It was a Christmas gift to my sister Kari and her husband a few years ago. They have decorated their cabin in an 'Elvis' theme and actually named the cabin "Graceland"....trick is they only decorate with 'tacky' Elvis stuff....So hard when all the Elvis paraphernalia is all so classy and lovely....giggle...they have a whole shelf full of 'Elvii' isn't that the plural of Elvis????


Ok, if wasn't clear earlier, it's going to become very clear very soon that we all have a bit of a weird sense of humour! My sister Jodie painted my Mom a rock garden next to the outhouse....she actually painted flowers on the rocks. LOL, well at least we don't have to water them!


Kari and Jodie love signs, and this is the 'waiting in line' spot on the path to the outhouse....when both my sisters and parents and all of our families are up at the same time there are 14 of us sharing one outhouse.....grin....might as well have fun while you wait!

This is the play structure we all built one summer for the kids. Between my parents have 3 granddaughters aged 8,9 and 12 and 3 grandsons all aged 11. What a crazy crew...my sisters and I all have one boy and one girl and all 3 of us had a baby boy the same summer. My son and my nephew are only 1 day apart and my other nephew was born 9 weeks later! Every year we have the 6 of them together for a week for 'cousin camp' it is a ball! This pirate ship was built from "the scrap crap, lumber pile"...LOL every cottage has one, it is a neatly piled stack of odds and sods that isn't good for anything but too good to throw out.

This is Blake's and my bunkie. It is a 12' x 12' cabin that 4 of us and a golden retriever sleep in. I decided that since we couldn't afford nice siding I'd faux paint some! LOL The door isn't real, it is just paint on the outside wall but it has a real handle and real hinges. LOL, my cousin actually pulled on it 3 times to open the door as I patiently explained it wasn't real! too funny!

This is the front!

This is a painting I did for my Mom and Dad one Christmas. It hangs over the entrance to our kitchen cabin.

This is a fun 'junk box' I painted with fishing lures. It holds everyone's car keys every weekend...the odd rolaid....elastics and other stuff you never knew you needed.
The kitchen is so much fun! Kari, Jodie and I painted all the cupboard doors one year for my Mom for Christmas....Each door is a little different. You often hear things like "where are the garbage bags?" and the inevitable reply, "try the loon or duck cupboard".....LOL


It is only appropriate that the raccoon peaks his head out of the garbage cupboard under the sink! LOL

Kari and Jodie painted chipmunks and strawberries on the other cupboards.

Everyone has their own coffee mug with their name and a lion painted on it!


My family's cottage is called Lion's Head Point. Jodie painted these for Mom and Dad for Christmas....do you see the theme here????? LOL

This was a fun stencil we did on the wall.

Here we have a woodpecker and 2 field mice.

A chickadee and another mouse. (silly mice, like them in a painting but not in real life! LOL)

A hummingbird.

Another woodpecker and some dragonflies.


Jodie did a mural on all 4 doors, it is awesome, a great blue heron, frogs and a saucy snapping turtle.

We have no hydro at the cottage and so we own 2 1950's (I think!) propane fridges. I painted the front of this one with a picture of our outhouse.
This one has a painting of our kitchen cabin from the river.
Well that's it for now! Hope you enjoyed a glimpse into our crazy cottage. It is a fun place where we all laugh and enjoy and don't worry about high end decorating! as is probably painfully obvious!!!! LOL