WOYWW 30 May

Hello, Happy WOYWW and happy 3rd Anniversary to all the WOYWWers out there!  Today I received the email with my postcard swap addresses so I decided to finish up my cards.  The fronts were all finished but I needed backs. So, I glued them to some fun colored paper:

I was a bit heavy handed when pouring out the modpodge and ended up with way too much.  I didn't want to waste it, or pour it back in the container, so I decided to do some collage in my art journal.  I did a bunch of small pieces here and there on different pages, and I did two complete pages:

That's about it for today - its rainy/stormy weather, which is quite a change from high 90s and sunny, so I'm a bit sluggish today.  I hope you enjoyed your peek at my desk - I certainly enjoyed sharing it with you. 

If you would like to see more desks, then hop on over to Stamping Ground for lots of links!!

CityArts - The Artists

Continuing my CityArts posts from yesterday, this post is about some of the awesome artists that were at CityArts.  Of course I cannot cover them all, so I will share with you the ones I liked most!! **All photos were borrowed from the artist's websites**


Elizabeth Zuspann Wiley - who was super nice and talked to us for about 10 min. Her website is www.lizwiley.com

Summer Fruit (Source)

I loved her abstract paintings, but she also does horse theme paintings:

Residual Image 3 (Source)

Really, she does so much more; Go visit her website to see more of her work!



Another painter that I liked was M. Carla Wright who's website is www.mcarlawright.com
Her paintings had tons of texture, which I love! Carla was nice enough to send me two pictures to share with you guys:

  Go look at her website and you can see even more paintings!!

Marc MacCallum is a metalworker from Kansas City, Missouri!  He does really cool copper metal work:

Three Dot Ring (Source)

Metallic Sunset (Source)

Marc's website is www.marcmaccallum.com - you can see more of his work there!

L. Scott Photo was the photographer that got our attention.  His website is www.lscottphoto.com.  He had some wonderful photos of places in Texas, and some really neat dragon fly photos.  Mom and I both bought some of his cards.  This first photo below is one that we purchased.

(Source)

(Source)

There are tons of photos on his website, so go check them out!

And, for those of you out there that enjoy a more crafty type of art, Village of Whimsy.

Spiral Knobe (Source)

Rose Petal House (Source)

Every item is hand built out of clay - she was even working on one when I came by her booth at the show:

Go on over to VillageofWhimsy.com to see what else she has!

I hope you guys go check out these artist's website and that you enjoy seeing more of their work!  Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

CityArts - The Art Cars (Lots of Pics)

Hi there!  I hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day weekend!  On Saturday my mom and I went to CityArts - an art festival at Fair Park (where the Cotton Bowl is!)  I took 246 photos and since I would like to share a good amount of them with you I am going to break up my CityArts posts into probably 3 different posts.  So, this one is about the Art Cars!  I have lots of art car photos for you...
A truck covered in bottle caps:

Hi sign said no he did not drink all of those drinks, and he did it just because he could.  He used caulk to adhere them to the car.

Another car was covered in bricks:

Yes, real bricks.  This was the daughter's car, you can see her here painting on her dad's bus:

And here is the dad:

He said this was his 6th art car!  And another view of the bus, cuz it was cool:

an art van:

This van was from eyecandyfab.com and on the back there was a ledge, so I sat on it:

This next car had a "public pole" on it..look at the top:

After being informed that yes, I could get on top of the car, I did:

The owner of this car told me that I was the first person to get on top of the car since the festival started the day before!!  He also told me to visit ArtcarNation.com which is a website dedicated to artcars - go check it out, there are lots of cool things to see!

Next I met Isacc Cohen who is from Israel but has been in the U.S. for over 20 years.  He has designed 3 different art cars out of wood, and he made this art car that is dedicated to the troops:

The car plays (loudly) patriotic music. Right next to this car was another patriotic car:

A van with some extras:

And the smallest art car at the show..Happy Snail:

I love its teeth and tongue!

The last art car that we saw was the Runaground - check out their website Runarground.net .  At first I wasn't sure this was even a car, but yes it is! 

The owner's brother was kind enough to take some pictures of me:

And me with my mom:

The coolest thing was that these guys were trying to raise money for a charitable organization - a home for severely disable children.  Of course we helped out with that!

Aren't art cars cool??  I guess its kind of like pink hair - lots of people think its cool for someone else to do it, but wouldn't necessarily do it themselves!  I would love to have an art car someday if I could ever work it out to have a normal car to drive too!

That's all for now, I already gave you sooo many pictures - sorry if it made the page load slowly!  Come back tomorrow for the CityArts Artists post.  Have a great day!!!

Weekly Progress Report

Hi friends!  So, I am a day late on my weekly progress report - oops!  Anyways... I did my journaling about it a bit different this week:

As you can see, I'm trying the whole idea of doing a wee bit of journaling each day about what happened that day.  Not yet sure how I feel about - I think I will do some more exploring with it.

Here is the easier to read summary:
- Ate healthy all week and lost 1.2 lbs!!
- Did yoga twice, boot camp once, Zumba once and water aerobics twice
- Run/walked 4.2 miles
- Cooked 3 new recipes
- And, of course I did a good amount of arting!!

I am pretty happy with how this week, especially considering the fact that I was sick a few days!

Yesterday I went to Hobby Lobby.  Truthfully I wanted to get some Koi Watercolors to play with, but they didn't have them.  So, here is what I ended up with...

Hot Pink, White and Black Tulle, Pink Rose Embellishment, Zebra Ribbon and Zebra bow - all for my mini dress form that I purchased last week.  Tomorrow I hope to sand it down, re-paint it and maybe even get to the dressing stage!!

I also got some paint:

Shocking, I know.  I was just out of red and just wanted some hot pink.

While I was staring down a few packages of Tim Holt stamps, trying to figure out if want outweighed need, a lady told me that JoAnn's was having a great sale and all scrapbooking supplies were 50% off - even all of the Tim Holt stuff.  So, I put the stamps back and a few hours later (after dinner) I was at JoAnn's.  I got this cute embellishment:

I don't know what I will do with it but it was only 1$!  I'm actually thinking now that I should have purchased a few of them!  My only other purchase was:

I know there is lots of goodness in those magazines, but usually I am not willing to spend the $ to purchase them.  So, that is my first one ... I only made it thought one article last night before I fell asleep though - so I'll just have to read it tonight! 

I also signed up for another swap last night!  Its one I did last year and I can't believe its time to sign up again!  Anyways, it is the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap and if you click that link you will be taken to the sign up page!  I highly encourage you to do it - its so much fun to get lovely art in the mail.  Also, Kat - the leader of the swap - is trying to beat last year's number of participants (170) so let's help her!!

Lastly, I want to tell you guys that for dinner last night I made burritos.  Nothing super crazy - we had ground beef, re-fried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, green chilies, etc.....  But, we wrapped them in this:

Have any of you ever tried this?  The taste wasn't super outstanding, it was ok, but look at the nutrition label:

I scrutinized about 10 packages of tortillas before seeing this package and then I immediately decided to give these a try.  If you are doing Weight Watchers then these are only 2 points plus for the entire wrap.  They are HUGE.  You would need to use like 3 regular tortillas to equal this wrap.  Of course I ate the whole thing because in making wraps I always add way too much and then can barely wrap it up.  I did this last night and then when I tried to pick up my wrap it started to tear in some spots.  In order to keep from getting messy I just decided to eat my burrito with a fork.  The rest of the family was able to eat theirs like a regular burrito though.  So, anyways - these are a healthy option if you are doing a wrap food.  If we do another wrap food then we will probably try to find these again - on that note, I got them at Walmart.

Well friends, that is all for now!  Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend.

Slow Cooker Lasagna & A Postcard

Hello Friends!  I hope you all are having a GREAT day! Today I had a Nerve Conduction Test and EMG - I was pretty nervous about the whole need in my arm thing with the EMG but it actually wasn't too bad.  The only bad thing is that it sounded like the doctor didn't really come to any conclusion as to why my finger has lost feeling.  So, I guess its just something I have to deal with and just not know why its happening.  In any case I have an appointment with my Primary Care Manager (my regular doctor) next week to go over the results. 

So, in addition to that I finished another postcard:

And started a new art journal piece:

Its in my large sketchbook from drawing class - 11x14 inches and even after a whole semester it still feels large to me!

I got something fun last night when my mom and I went to the thrift store:

Its some sort of card planner...see the month tabs:

And it comes with some cards too:

But - you know I got it to re-purpose it and use it as an art journal! It was only $1.99 - great price for an art journal! The coolest thing is that behind each moth's tabs is a built in pocket to stash goodies!!  I am excited about getting started on it - hopefully that will happen pretty soon.

Tonight for dinner I made Slow Cooker Lasagna!  Another Weight Watchers Recipe - but you certainly cannot tell from the taste!! Here it is for you to re-create -

Slow Cooker Lasagna
1.  In a large skillet cook one pound of lean ground beef along with one chopped onion.  I also cooked a diced zucchini as well - it adds extra veggie without changing the flavor! Once your meat is brown, add a bit of garlic and cook until fragrant.
2.  Add 28oz canned crushed tomatoes and 15oz canned tomato sauce to the skillet and simmer.  Stir in 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1/2 tsp dried basil and 1/4tsp crushed red pepper flakes.
3.  In a small bowl combine 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese and 1 cup par-skim shredded mozzarella.
4.  In your slow cooker put 1/3 of the meat mixture and cover with 3 dry, no-cook, lasagna noodles broken in half.  On top of the noodles place 1/2 of the cheese mixture.  Repeat again and then place remaining meat mixture on top! And yes - that is one serving on my plate!
5.  Cook on low for 4-6 hours.
6.  Combine 1/2 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella and 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese in a bowl.  Once lasagna is done cooking remove cover and turn off heat.  Sprinkle cheese on top and re-cover until cheese melts.
7.  Divide into 6 servings and eat it up!  If your doing WW this is 8 points plus.  So, how do you divide a crock pot recipe into servings?  Well, we cooked this dish using a crock pot liner so we took out the line and set it into a 9x12 baking dish so that we could cut it up into 6 equal pieces.  If you try to divide it up into 6 equal servings, best of luck to you.

Well friends that is all for now!  Have a great night - and a wonderful Friday tomorrow!

WOYWW 23 MAY (4 Postcards!!)

Hey there - happy WOYWW!  I wasn't able to blog yesterday because I got very sick.  Thankfully its looking like it was a 24 hour bug and the worst is over.  I decided to take it easy today though just for good measure!  All I have done is gone to the grocery store and watch TV!  So, what is on my work desk:

I'm still working on postcards for the upcoming swap!  I have finished 4 so far:

I know that last one is hard to read, but it says "always remember you're one of a kind."

If you want to check out more desks, hop on over to Stamping Ground!  Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!!