Christmas Doodles

I painted these two a couple of weeks ago and totally forgot about them!

Multi-tasking Mama

 I've got a young lady on my hands who doesn't like it when I work on my art during the day. She needs constant attention.  How do full time bloggers and stay at home moms do it?

Stackable Animals

Remember the days of letter writing?  I do, and I also remember my favorite stationary.   The illustration on the stationary was of five or six animals stacked on top of each other.  I don't recall what types of animals they were.  Maybe a cat a dog, zebra or a horse..   For some reason I thought of it the other day and decided to create my own version but with a Christmas twist. 

9" x 12" Works on Paper

On Friday our little family made a quick trip up to Fort Worth for an art opening at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, which included six paintings of mine.  We have friends in Fort Worth as well so it turned out to be a fun and eventful weekend.

Amelia had a lot of fun running through the gallery after a 5 hour long car ride.   

St. Nick

St. Nicolas or Sinterklaas (patron of children and sailors) comes every year to Holland on a ship from Spain and showers kids with candy.  On the eve of the day he arrives, Dutch children will place the largest shoe they own at their fire place or right at the front door (in our case since we don't have a fire place), and the next morning it will be filled with delicious candy!  I have many fond memories as a child so even though I don't live in Holland anymore, I thought it would be fun to continue this tradition with my sweet Amelia.

One tiny shoe

I found this illustration by Philip Kruseman of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet throwing candy at children. 

Someone was very excited this morning.  Candy at 8AM? Yes, please! 

Art Crawl 2012

Better late than never..is what they say.  This was about three weeks ago.

Every year a large group of Houston artists open up their studios to the public and call it the Art Crawl.  We decided to tour the studios that were a bit off the beaten path and this is what we saw.  Move on over NYC, Houston is coming to get you!

I've been off the radar for a couple of weeks, working on four watercolor paintings for a client's bathroom.  She had a beautiful Moroccan  pillow where I drew my inspiration from.  It had some metallic silver fabric to it as well, so I decided to incorporate that in the paintings.

Sugar & Spice

What a day.  Liz and I had high hopes of decorating sugar cookies with the girls.  Of course we had day dreamed of Martha Stewart's perfect cookies you see in her magazine or on her show,  but we can honestly say that the girls mostly ate their cookies and sugary frosting instead of focusing on the decorating part.  Well, at least we had fun trying and we now have good memories of the two young ladies running around the house on a sugar high!

A colorful  table.

Yum. Yum. 

Finger painting is so much more fun than using a brush!

Dino's for the Boys

Little Houston Boat

My brother-in-law and his wife live in Newport, Rhode Island and work on a beautiful sailboat.  They will be here for Thanksgiving so I guess this little collage/ painting is a celebration of them coming home to Houston.

Sunday Market

Met some nice people, watched kids play and sold some art.  I believe it was a successful evening and no rain!

Chinese Panda Bears

One day I would like to visit China so I can see these beautiful contrasting animals in the wild. But, for now, I will continue to paint them as subject matter. :) 

Out and About

A close up of the red, yellow and orange oak leaves in my fall inspired wreath. 

The girls decided to go on a little stroll while I was taking a few photos.  It's a gorgeous day!

Close-up of the red and yellow mums I bought for our front porch! I love the holiday season when I give myself an OK to buy flowers to decorate the outside with. 

Hi Jordan!

Getting Ready..

Getting ready for the City Centre Market this Sunday.  The weather forecast says we'll have rain here in Houston.  Let's hope they are wrong and the rain waits until Monday.

Recent Paintings

I've been working on a couple of paintings to sell this coming Sunday at the City Centre Market.  I'll have a 10' x 10' space and will be bringing the watercolor paintings that I've been posting in this blog for the last couple of month.  Hopefully it will be a sunny day! 

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Healthy Snack for Kiddo

I'm all about healthy and simple snacks for Amelia (and myself) so when I found this recipe for fruit balls on a friend's food blog I decided to make it right away!  They are super yummy. 

Moped Ride

We have an 80's honda passport moped in our garage.  It's been around and seen many different roads for quite some time now.  David rode it to school before he could drive.  He picked me up across town before we could drive.  David took it to college with him and who knows what happened there!  After he graduated it stayed in his father's garage and then on a fine spring day we used it as our escape vehicle on our wedding day.  Since then it's collected dust for years while we lived in Malaysia, but this old guy is still with us like a good friend, waiting for times like Halloween night when David dressed as a nerd and took it for a spin around the block. 

Red Mums

Amelia in Costume

Here's Amelia in her Amelia Earhart costume.  She had a blast last night greeting all the kids that dropped by.   Oma made the aviator hat and white scarf with her amazing sewing skills earlier in the day, and the aviation goggles are made out of an old bra, two mason jar lids and plastic from a plastic container.  The little jacket I found used on Ebay!

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A frame

I found a pretty white frame for my little cat and his pumpkins.  Sometimes a frame makes such a difference! 

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is finally here and I'm prepared for lots and lots of trick-or-treaters.  I picked up a total of 13 pounds of candy from the store last night and I'm pretty sure it will all go in seconds.  Last year our street was packed with kids in their scary costumes and I'm pretty excited we get to do this with Amelia tonight.  : )

I made this little bag for Amelia to go trick-or-treating with.  The spider's web was painted in white acrylic ink and I cut the spider out of black paper.  Ps. Notice the pretty green grass? : ) 

Balance Act

Before I start a painting I sketch out the idea and composition on some scratch paper or in a sketch book, then I copy it onto watercolor paper with pencil and finally I paint it with watercolor.

I usually sketch in pencil but this time I used a black pen. 

The final result.