2012 Calender

I've put together a beautiful calender for 2012 with twelve of my favorite floral watercolors.  I think this is my favorite one yet.  You can click here, my Etsy shop to purchase or you can always contact me directly here if you prefer.  I hope you like it!!!

 August 2012

Calender Details: Size 8.5" x 5.5", 12 month calender with front and back cover.  $18.00 - which includes shipping!!!

Mrs. Kasper's Roses

Don't tell Mrs. Kasper, but I didn't LOVE this painting when I did it 6 years ago.  But after a computer crash scare, I found it, hidden file within file.  And you know what, I kinda like it now.  We artists can sometimes be the harshest critic of our own work.

Rule #I (established years ago, by the way).  If I hate, don't toss it.  Put it away until my emotions settle and that awful internal critic in me is asleep.  Always get back to it.  Because you'll find with fresh eyes, it's not as bad as you thought.  It never is.  Isn't this true of so many things?

Master Gardener

"Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, growing the flowers and fruits, which he requires,

so may a man tend the garden of his mind,

weeding out all the wrong, useless and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of the right, useful, and pure thoughts. 

By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. 

He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy,

how the thought-forces and mind-elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstance, and destiny." 

 – James Allen As A Man Thinketh



Beautiful Garden

A friend called me the other night, in tears and with enough despair and hopeless in her voice that I wanted to cry with her and I did. I have watched my friend suffer from the temper and emotional instability of an extremely ill-equipped manager for the past three years. Her efforts and successes being award her with “you could do better” and there is a constant undertow of threats of being fired. This is a boss that rules with fear and is using the economic downturn to treat her employees with little to no respect. It breaks my heart. She fights the good fight, with head held high most days, but today was one of those days.

I try to help her gain perspective. We recently read and watched The Help together and we were grateful that a bad day at work didn’t mean physical harm like it did for so many African Americans living in the south only 50 years ago. I reminded her that she had more opportunity than most of the world, that she was lucky. She could see she had something to be thankful for… barely. And I felt like such a crummy friend pulling the whole world into her situation. I hate when people do that to me, and I apologized.

All I could do was be sad with her and tell her she really did work for the sickest most damaged woman living in the United States, well, at least in the mid-west. I listened and did so without trying to fix it. I wish I could have fixed it though. Then when she was finished and the tears became just sniffles I told her things I wanted her to hear. And it’s important to wait for the tears to finish, the words of pain to stop spewing and the expletives to disappear before you say anything. No one can hear during that time. It’s like trying to get someone who is puking to eat… sorry to be so growce.

I reminded my friend of who she is and always will be and it went something like this…

You are kind. You make good cookies. You make me laugh everyday. You bring value to my world and anyone who knows you. Basically you have a garden with lots of flowers! All kinds of flowers are in your garden, it is full of color and beauty and there’s no better place.

Here’s to my friend. Your garden is beautiful and no one can change that, not even a crummy boss.

Happily Ever After....

I've been a skeptic of "happily ever after" mostly because it always seemed to be associated with finding prince charming, getting married, THEN you you get "happily ever after."   In just 13 days, I get to marry my prince charming.  But I have to say "happily ever after" began before I even met John.  "Happily ever after" came with each friend I made that I could call a kindred spirit, with the ability to paint when I was exhausted from life, work and mean people, with every day I managed to hope.  I guess that now that I'm engaged and soon to be a Missus, I see "happily ever after" in a different light.  You can choose to live "happily ever after" NOW.   Then you meet the guy....