What I have to show for myself

Christmas decorating - that's the extent of what I have to show for myself. My studio looks like a bomb went off with all my overflow Christmas wrapping, gifts and Christmas art stash that I got out and spread all over my art table and have done nothing with. So, as a few friends have asked to see pictures, I thought I'd post some here since this is where any creative energy I've had time for has gone to lately.

I apologize right now for the quality of some of these photos - indoor photography is definitely not a strength of mine!

My Nutcracker tree

My Christmas village - it's pretty much hit it's critical mass as far as room for anything else - probably for the best!

Reindeer and vintage Christmas ornaments theme going on here...

I love this old seed spreader, it used to belong to someone very special to me who is very missed, and I love having it to remind me of him.

I'm very lucky to have the wonderful old red lantern below from him as well

I received these old Santa mugs for Christmas last year, so I just had to create a little hot cocoa tray with them.  It just makes me happy to look at it, and my husband is making good use out of it as well.

My rooster dressed up in a hat and scarf meant for a wine bottle.

The mantel in my bedroom

I hope you all are having a wonderful and sane Holiday season!

San Diego

I have nothing to offer on the art front, as I've been home very little for the last month, so I thought I'd share some pictures of my trip to San Diego. I love seeing posts full of what I call my blog friends' vicarious travel (especially my English friends!)  This was our first trip away without our dogs and for a whole week, and it was really wonderful, which doesn't bode so well for our dogs and future extended vacations!

My husband lived in San Diego for many years, and was very excited to finally show it to me.  It was wonderful being taken around by someone who knew and loved the area so well.  

This is the famous Hotel Del on Coronado Island, it was built in 1888 and is a historic landmark.  It's really like going back in time being there, It's gorgeous and luxurious with lots of wonderful restaurants and stores, but you feel like you could still run into Marilyn Monroe or a President there (lots of pics on the walls of famous stars and politicians). 

Charles Lindbergh

Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon (Some Like it Hot was filmed here)

The next few pics are of Balboa Park - I was pretty amazed by it - it's larger than Central Park in New York,  It's full of museums and gorgeous historic buildings, along with a huge open air ampitheater.  It's fun to walk around there at night as it's all lit up.  There are several live theaters there as well, one of which is a replica of the Old Globe Theater in London.

We were fascinated by these roots, the tree itself was amazingly large. Apparently a famous arborist traveled the world and brought back hundreds of trees that were planted here.

This was our view at lunch looking over the marina to the city.

This was my favorite beach, at La Jolla.  This artist was painting a beautiful landscape and it made me wish I'd brought some art supplies.

That same beach had wonderful rock formations and tide pools to explore. We were fascinated by this formation in the rock that looks just like a squished cowboy hat.

I made a video panning slowly along our beautiful beach that I was going upload here for you guys, but apparently it's too big and blogger won't upload it.  Grrrrr!  Well, it's back to reality for me, and I'm saving the video on my desktop for moments when I'm stressed so I can just stop and watch it.

As tomorrow is Halloween, I'll leave you with a few pics from my Halloween-crazy neighborhood.

I thought this one was particularly creepy

The scale of what some groups of houses did was amazing, and impossible to photograph well.  I just can't imagine where they store it all.

Loved this - they drove this wonderful old truck onto their lawn, with a couple of joy-riding skeletons in it, and a squished body underneath the front tire.  Really hard to get a good ;picture of it.

Pirate ship coffin

Finished at last!

Finally, I've finished a journal, only the 3rd I've ever completed I think.  I have at least 4 or 5 others started, I'm very fickle when it comes to journals, so this is quite an accomplishment for me. I was looking through it yesterday, realizing how much my art has changed since I started it, which was probably at least 4 years ago.  

These pages have no continuity in subject or medium, they're kind of crazily random, just whatever I felt like doing, or was in front of me and inspiring me at that moment.  And I'm not sure what I want to work on next, probably not much as I'm out of town for the next 4 weekends. Then, amazingly, the Holidays will be upon us!

I hope you're all getting some Autumn to enjoy, we're just getting teased with it here, but I feel it coming!

Journal pages

I haven't been home much lately, but I have made a little progress in my mission to complete this particular art journal.  We went to the Sausalito Art Festival on Sunday, which provided me with inspiration as it always does, so hopefully that will help me make it to the finish line.  Wonderful artists were there as always, and fun live music in a gorgeous setting.  I've posted pics before so I didn't take any this time, but I gotta say it was much hotter than it should be in Sausalito which is right on the bay near San Francisco - I felt sorry for the artists sitting in those sweltering tents all day.

The following two are my take on a couple of Stefano Bessoni characters - I love his twisted yet whimsical art (although the first one is just cute, but definitely with some trouble brewing in those eyes), and I'm getting in the mood for Halloween as I long for Autumn.

Journal Variety

A variety of journal pages, trying to finish one - 15 pages to go!  I can't explain why I suddenly feel the need to actually COMPLETE something, but then I probably don't need to as you all most likely totally understand.  And this is good practice for me to just work on quick pages, not get too invested in them, and move on.  Always good for me to be working consistently on a (mostly) daily basis.