Day 8 photo

Now, I've looked at exactly one other person's blog with the hashtag. I've tried to look at others (ie find them via hashtag) but whenever I want a hashtag, it's apparently a cue for my internet to say obscenities to me and laugh it's arse off, then freeze. Apparently too much laughter is not good for electronics.

However, the one I saw was doctored, and if it wasn't, well, I WANT HER CAMERA. I'm posting raw photos here. For me, I'm challenging myself to do it right the first time so to speak LOL I mentioned in an earlier post how I've grown so used to cheating w/ scrapbooking and painting htings out of the picture, I've become lazy. So, even if it's not cheating to photoshop, I'm not going to do it. I think. May have to sunset day LOL

Today's photo was the inside of your wallet. If I'd done it before we left for the picnic in the park, there would only have been cards & receipts, but since it was after... :D

Ha!! Bet you thought there'd be candy.... :D

I put some quick makeup on in the car to questions like why are you wearing that we're just going to park, etc. Same questions I got when I said I needed to do my face routine when we were getting ready. I said, "Sunscreen, and BTW get some on the kiddo there." (3yo) and went back to what I was doing. LOL I don't where much make up on those kind of days, but I found I get out of the habit if I don't wear something. My hair and teeth are paying for it :P So back to the routine, even if it's basic eyeliner and tinted lipbalm with a touch of mascara.


ANYWAYS, I started this forever ago, made us something to eat and now I'm finishing it. I hope. :P

I did write about 700 words yesterday despite being unable to focus well. Another 300 so far today with more to come tonight! I really need to get it done. I want to get it done. It's frustrating to be unable to focus.

But, my time will come... LOL How was everyone's Easter holiday weekend? Hope it went well. We had a beautiful day at the park even if I did forget my camera. I did get a few pics on my tablet, but it's not the same as a decent camera. Not bad, but *shrug*

Tomorrow, it's back to the drawing board.

Day 7 Photo a Day April, and other stuff

Today's photo took a little more thought on my part. I mean, shadow? really? That could mean so many things. I had visions that would include me having to draw something that I'd then take a picture of, but in some ways, that would be too easy. I'm doing this challenge partly to, well, challenge myself. Increase my eye for composition, color, mood, etc. Not make it up on paper, but use the world around me. Now, off on a rabit trail, that really isn't a rabit trail. You'll see...

We were going to have a *bleep* poor Easter this year. No worries. I had my kids' life to be thankful for (and NO, that wasn't sarcasm. Since my daughter was recovering from having stents put in cuz of mayoturners, which led to discovery of blood clot in her brain that nearly killed her, being thankful I'm not having to worry about my daughter in hospital while home with younger sons is a truth to be grateful for) and they had things to be thankful for. Might have gone down as the worst Easter Evah, but still, they were all alive.

Well, a family friend who knows our situation, brought the boys premade baskets, eggs, & dye kit. So what started out as probable suck turned into fun fun fun LOL Alhough, my 11 yo, got kinda tired of it quickly, my 8yo and I had a blast to the end. Here are some pictures of that:

LOL Sorry about the cracker in mouth, snot nosed kid pic (smeared from cheek to cheek from trying to wipe it while he fights us!), but it's too cute :D He's still got a bit of the runny nose, obviously, but feeling all kinds better! My 3yo actually tried to eat the egg when I first tried to help him LOL why the heck would we put perfectly good eggs anywhere else, right? :D My kids are adorable. (I hear snickers & eye rolls, but I'm the mom, I'm allowed ;-)

So, after the 3yo is safely ensconsed with Daddyo, and 8yo is doing eggs while I take pics (ended up with 80!!!!) I saw the pattern on the ceiling from our chandelier. (Any bells ringing?) I love the pattern and the glow and while admiring it, MY BELLS STARTED RINGING. lol So, I did get a few, I have two favorites. I did one in B&W & one in Sepia (something I learned about the Camera just today after having it nearly a YEAR!) Thank you Photo A Day :P

First one:

I like this one, but it doesn't say shadow to me, so the second one:

Is the one I'm doing for my shadow photo today.

Not much writing yet, will do more tonight, I hope. Had guests all day, dinner, etc. and now have to prep Easter tomorrow, make deviled eggs, potato salad and bread for tomorrow. We are going to the park for a picnic for Easter. However, I'm hoping to sneak words in tonight anyway.

Wish me Luck! Happy Easter!

(Passover, etc. LOL)

Day 6 of Photo a Day

Ha! Bet you thought I forgot. Well, sort of, but not really. I skipped breakfast and lunch cuz tired. Not smart with the way my sugars are, but, it's what happened. Now, what does that have to do with forgetting or not? Today's theme was lunch. Well, I didn't have lunch. So I took a picture of our empty fruit bowl. We eat our fruit fast, but mostly, the apples are in the fridge anyway LOL

So, here's today's Lunch photo. Mayhap I'll title it: The Forgotten Lunch LOL (hey at least it's not a picture of moldy food with that title!! LOL)

I finished writing that difficult murder scene. I'll have to do some major adjustments during edits, but it's out there. It was emotionally draining. So, I cleaned the kitchen (been not getting as much done as I had previous weeks. Sick kids are physically and emotionally draining as it is), washing under the counter top appliances (things kids never seem to do no matter how old they are :P) and rearranging dishes that aren't put away in the right place. And, I painted. I needed to be expressive, not careful, so I tried my hand at abstract. I have a hard time doing abstract cuz I keep trying to make it look like--something. But I was so emotional, I just let it ride. Here are the pics:

This one^^^ is Zombie Madness and the one below is Medicine Man.

Medicine Man is available here in my Etsy Shop. Now, if you don't have an Etsy account, contact me privately and I'll worki with you. Zombie Man isn't available yet, unless you live close enough for personal delivery.

I was telling a writer friend about my painting and writing. If you've been following my blog, you know I NEED to do both. If you're a writer or a painter, then imagine having something you HAVE to do X2. If I go too long without writing, or without painting, I get lost, stressed, and depressed. If I go without both, I'm completely miserable. It's a very symbiotic relationship for me. I can't not do one. I doodle, write on notepads, whatever's handy to get it out. What are some things you do when you can't write or paint for a length of time?

I wrote a few paragraph's today, went through some scenes in my mind, and did what I always do when not sitting at the computer--think about the next time I'm going to write and what needs to happen. LOL

Now, I'm going to do a painting from scratch (probably finish all but minor things) that's 24x30 and if I can still move my arms, I'm going to finish two that have had underpaintings done. Then, when those are finished, I'm going to write. A lot. and paint a little. Today was my day off. :D (I still wrote a bit!) Sometimes, you need to give yourself permission to do that.

New Art & Day 5

I posted a new item on Etsy tonight.

Different in color, tone and style than most of my work. Very Abstract.

I also took my picture for Photo a Day April.

Todays assignment: Tiny

In case you're not a crafter, those are miniature eyelets and seed beads. Very small ones LOL

As for writing, I did do over 3k last night, but not much today. I'm mentally exhausted from the sex/murder scene. It's hard to do. I painted a little, but I'm going to need to paint more to put more positive energy back into my soul.

I'm exhausted from not sleeping well or long. At least some of my twitterai have carried me through the last few nights/mornings :D

My writer friends, how do you recover from an emotionally exhausting scene?

Photo a Day in April

Well, I did it. I decided to start the photo a day challenge for April after the last minute? Why? you may ask, as I did myself. Because. April has traditionally been so sucky that I coined the hashtag #effoffApril for it. I'm not going to recap those here. If you really want to know, you can go read my blogs from around that time and you'll get a good idea.

This year, I'm going to do something fun. I love photography, but I'm out of practice, AND I've gotten lazy. I scrapbook so I can cut out anything I don't like. Half my photos or better are for painting purposes and I can change coloring, composition, erase, etc anything I don't like and if I don't want to do either one of those, there's always photoshop. See how easy it is to get lazy with your photography? I don't have the best camera out there, but I have a decent one borrowed from my MIL.

I'm going to take pics everyday of the things they say to get back into the swing of things, or rather, OUT of the swing of things since I can't seem to hold the damn camera steady. Here are the first four days, including today's entry:

!st day-a reflection of you. Now, if I had a stash of chocolate somewhere, with a can of Pepsi and some fabrics, paints, papers, etc. I'd be all about that. But alas, the chocolate is no more. Why is the chocolate always gone??

Obviously, just the tip of the iceberg. I took others, but my hand shook too much. Sad but true.

Next up, is color. So many ideas so little time. I went with my makeup:

That was Day 2's Challenge. Yesterday's challenge was mail. That was too easy since we rearranged things.

Looking at it on screen, I kind of like it :)

For today's challenge, we had to do someone we love. Or someone who makes us smile. Now I can't remember, but my family is always a good choice either way. I took two pics. One of Edward  holding Isaac, but my hands shook again :(( boo cuz I would have liked that one for my scrapbook, and one of Patrick. Here's Patrick:

I like this one. He knew I was taking his pic and subtley changed his pose into this. I like it lots :) He's been a big help while his brothers were so sick (recovering nicely, BTW)

I hope you keep checking back and help me to tell the past April's #effoffapril as I bring happier memories into this year's April. Have a good day ;)

Hello

Bet you thought I'd forgotten didn't you?? Nope. Been composing blogs in my head everyday!! This one will go out because my sluggish brain can't function well enough to write :) Wait, that sounds wrong somehow. Hmmm.

I've had sick boys on my horizon last few days. Was on Asthma watch for two nights with the middle child. First time in over a year I've had to do that. Amazing how much easier it is to do when you're not exhausted from having dealt with it way too much already.

I'm hoping my older one doesn't get the nasty cold. It laid his grandpa out flat and that's saying something!! The two younger ones are well on their way to mending, thankfully. I did manage to write though :D

On my FB author page, I posted I did over 17k this past weekish. I was right. I sat down and crunched some numbers, Since last Sunday I did, 2-3k on Traincoach of death to finish it up & sent it off, 14.5k on Dangerous Journey for Splintered Lands, sent it off, edited (read cut) some on Search for Sorren for Splintered Lands (stand alone novel SQUEEE) and still ended up 600+ so probably about 1k there, 2k on a novella I'm working on when my mind needs a break from current work in progress (title is hidden for now...it's an extra project. We'll see how it works out ;P), and 10k on Midwife's Moon that I hope will go for the hot shifters section for Breathless Press. Someone else can crunch the final numbers for me, but I think, I done past 17k last Thursday sometime... LOL

I've posted a few lines from Midwife's Moon on my author page and they really are quite good. The challenge will be to keep the rest of the book up to par. :D The bigger challenge? It's a high heat rating (read sex) and I have sex BDSM done wrong by the main bad people and that's going to be a huge challenge! I have to start off hot and have it detoriate into a scary ball of $#!t to show her slide into madness as the last chains of societal restrictions fall away and her extreme selfishness and power hungery as well as set up she's really not the REAL bad guy of the series as is presumed. It needs to be in there because sex is  how she's controlled her pack and those around her for centuries. Sex followed by kills...

BUT the biggest challenge involved with that is I then need to follow it up with even HOTTER sex between hero and heroine and BDSM done right and I'll need to work hard so the impact is stronger and a relief from what had started out as sexy & turn psycho earlier on is out weighed by the couple. *headdesk* It was not supposed to happen this book (2nd 50k+ or bigger) but the slide needs to be shown and the character only hinted at in book 1 needs to come more to the front... without taking over.

I also need to write another installment for Traincoach of Death, but I am kinda waiting from the editor to see what he likes/dislikes about it before attempting the next one. Well, If I keep up this pace, I'll have plenty finished by the end of the month!! Oh, and guess what else I did this past week??? I PAINTED *dances* :D

How was your week?

Things, and more stuff.

Well, I'm beginning to understand I'll never have a normal life. I kinda wondered when my youngest was born with Dwon Syndrome, but had hoped when my two eldest where on their own, that I'd be able to normalize things a little bit w/ no teens in the house. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. Most of you know the highlights of this last year, which includes medical thing like brain surgery for eldest and marinara sauce on my son's face, and money things like garnishments for the year, so you know, things are not normal around here.

Is it irony that the new remodel in the kitchen would have made it nearly impossible for my son to get burned? I wouldn't have been turned that way to get the ravioli's. One of life's idosyncracies. Or is it subconcious in the way Nate & I designed the kitchen? Neither one of us ever said "making it harder for kids to get burned" as a reason to put anything anywhere. But the stove is about a foot from the sink and already, I've had my 3yo zoom through the kitchen (it's in the middle of the house) not looking, walking, or rather, running, his sock monkey, and bump into me while I was moving boiling pasta to the sink for draining. Since I did not have to cross any long span of floor, This only resulted in me putting the pot on the sink edge to keep from falling/spilling.  Already, the remodel has earned it's keep. But it makes things crazy around here.

It also made us move our living space again, and I did not like it. So after two weeks, we moved the living space around and now I have a real mess. Been cleaning it/spring cleaning it and the rest of stuff. Need to do boys' rooms as well, and get someone to come pick up our malfunctioning refrigerator and defunct dryer. It's going to be super organized because it needs to be.

Went to doctor with my 8yo on Friday to discuss behavioral things and thyroid things. Guess what? We're being referred to Children's Village because she thinks he has High Functioning Autism. So, please forgive the lack of post Fri/Sat as I'd planned on doing one but did research and cleaning instead. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with the new information, the stress to get this house reorganization done the best way. Usually, I'm like well, if I don't like it, I'll fix it later. But now, we need to do that as little as possible.

Anyone know a good housekeeper that'll work for art?? lol

I have managed to turn in Traincoach of Death (can't remember if I mentioned that) and write 5500 on the Dangerous Journey (which required more research for nautical terms. Geez, trains, boats, what's next? Planes? My poor head has learned a lot in the last two weeks!!!) and I'm going to try to get that done today or tomorrow. So I have time to edit and turn in by Friday. Wish me luck as I have another novel to write, and two more novels floating around in my head screeching to be let out, including the sequel to The Ulfric's Mate (don't you love the cover ;D).

Oh and I'm putting the garden in this week as well. Hope things stay a little calmer this week...