The Red Sketchbook Project: You'd Be Home By Now If...

My husband is working on a sketchbook project.

This is the description straight from their website: It's like a concert tour, but with sketchbooks. Thousands of sketchbooks will be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country.

After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.

28833 artists from 94 countries around the world are participating. The tour starts February, 2011.

I love what he is doing with his, and asked if it would be okay with him to put it on my blog. It will take multiple posts over multiple days to finish the entire book. Actually, he is still working on it, he has to postmark and return it by January 15. So, I hope you will be patient and enjoy the story...































































To be continued...

An owl or three for you...

A friend commissioned 3 owl Fusiedoozies this weekend to give as Christmas gifts. Her request came in as I was busily working, so I started them almost as soon as I read her email.

She only needs 3, but I got a little carried away and ended up with 8 of the little guys in various shapes, sizes and colors.

After she chooses the 3 she likes, I will proceed to the naming and mini-biography stage. Writing those is really my favorite part of the Fusiedoozie process.













Lavender, gray and yellow





Green and gold





Red-orange and gold





Teal and green - a skinny fellow





Blues and greens





Oranges and golds





Gold an reds





Lavender and gold

50

It is hard for me to believe that I have posted 50 entries since beginning this blog experiment. Mainly, because it is tough to believe I have had that much to say...some of you might tell me that I didn't really have that much to say. I'm sure in more than a few of these, I was stretching it!

In honor of my 50th post, I am having my very first blog give-away. The first person to comment on this post will win the pictured pendant. Keep it for yourself or re-gift it!


A Seriously Sunny Outlook

A Mist

While my family was all in town for Thanksgiving, I took a photo of all the grandkids for my mom. It struck me how quickly they have all grown.

I vividly remember the day each of them was born.

They are growing up. It seems like I blinked and they went from infants to teens. My oldest niece is 18 and a senior. My own children are teenagers!

The sobering reality is that life is flying by much faster than I anticipated!

















...yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James 4:14 ESV

Whoooooooo?

I'm not always up on the latest trends, so I was surprised when three separate people expressed interest in having an owl like Fusiedoozie pendant. Apparently, owls are hot right now...who knew?

Below are three my first owl creations - Darius, Weaver and Garson.

Thanks Jason!

This past weekend my sister's electrician, brother-in-law came out and put in a dedicated circuit (or some such electrical terminology) for my kiln. It was working okay before, but took a long time to reach a temp that would allow for fusing - about 1400 degrees. Actually, I really need it to go up to about 1550, and it just couldn't pull enough power to do that.

Now, thanks to Jason, it is heating up in about half the time and easily reaching full fusing temp! I am so grateful that he took time out of his busy Thanksgiving weekend to stop by and work on this for me!

I have fired several kiln loads in the past week. A whole bunch of new Fusiedoozies, a couple of larger pieces and some dichroic pendants!

The Falls

I went out for a very brisk walk for lunch today. It was breathtakingly lovely outside. Yesterday, we had a mix of weird weather - cold rain, warm rain, fog, thunder and lightening, tornado warnings and finally cold, cold air settling in.

So, today it is quite chilly, but the sky is that wonderful crisp blue. Falls Park is downtown here, very near my office. Thanks to the abundance of stormy rain we had yesterday, the waterfall was booming and powerful with torrents of muddy, red water rushing over the rocks. The park is always pretty, but today was an exceptional day...the suspension bridge rocking in the brisk, wind that was blowing.

Thanksgiving

What a wonderful holiday. One of my favorites...nothing to do but cook, eat and be thankful! My kind of day.

One of the things I am thankful for is my real job, but it was nice to have several days off. I made the most of that time, enjoying a visit with my family. My mom hosted a big Thanksgiving day lunch at her house. My brother and his family came up from down south, and so did my Aunt Joy.

I cooked 2 turkeys and an orange coconut cake for the feast. This is the most amazing cake. It actually has an entire orange in the filling. I'm talking the peel and everything tossed into a blender and then combined with sugar and sour cream to create a delectable filling that you spread between the layers.

It tastes so good and looks really pretty too. The toughest part is splitting the layers, but if they are done and cooled completely it isn't too tough.

Orange Coconut Cake Recipe

Cake
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup oil
1 1/2 cups milk
1 package (3.4 oz) vanilla instant pudding
1 package (3 oz) box of orange jello
1 Orange Supreme Cake mix

Filling
1 whole orange (I use a navel orange because it has no seeds) - I put it in the blender and puree it)
1 package (12 oz) frozen coconut
1 carton (8 oz) sour cream
2 cups sugar

Topping
1 carton (8 oz) cool whip mixed with 1/2 cup of the filling

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9" cake pans (tip: use a little of the dry cake mix to flour your pans)

Mix all of the cake ingredients together and beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. Pour evenly into the prepared cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes or until knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Be sure cakes are done so they won't fall apart when you split them.

Cool layers completely and then split the 2 layers into 4.

Filling
Mix all of the filling ingredients. Reserve 1/2 cup to mix with the cool whip for the topping.

Spread the remaining filling between each layer and on top.

Topping
Use the filling cool whip mixture to ice the cake on the sides and top.

Refrigerate the cake overnight.