Have your cake and eat it too....

... or not cuz it looks so dang cute!

My beautiful, brilliant BFF from high school Carlie Brosemann is starting her own custom cake making business. The cakes are ADORABLE!! You have to check these out for yourself and consider hiring her for your own custom cake! Check em out here, or she's on my blog list under Cute Cakes by Carlie.

Here's a little shample of her cakies:


Yeah... can we say YUM??

On a lighter note...

Working on more paintings!

This one is MASSIVE. I'm about 5'7'' just for comparison.

and here we have moi sporting a very fetching paintbrush apron.

You can't see very well, but I have the pencil sketches in first.

And first layer of background.




And first layer of princesses. The client wanted just these four.



Puhlease note: these are just base layers. Belle will not actually look like she's totally shrugging her shoulders, Cinderella will not have a receding hairline, Snow White will not have a crooked head, and Aurora will not have a goiter coming out her face. Oh, and everyone WILL have hands. And faces. Someday.

work in progress. ain't it great?

Rejection Letter

Well, I got another one. This one is even worse than the last thirty or so. It's worse because they liked the story. They might have signed me on. I might have had this book published within the year. But they already had an author with a mermaid story too similar to this one.

Why is this a problem, you ask?

This one was supposed to be one of a kind. The breakout novel. The one everyone's been waiting for. The fresh, new story. The one that began a whole new trend.

I was so sure that that's what this one would be. Well, I don't know now. Maybe yes, maybe no.

But here it is. As part of a tradition that I started three rejections ago, I have burned it.

This company required a lot of detailed information (marketing proposal, sales handle, promotion ideas, chapter-by-chapter synopsis, the works). But it didn't go to waste! Because I had all this stuff written down, I was able to use it for the next company. I sent a query letter to them that same day...

along with more hopes and dreams.

So here's to treating myself to one more girl scout cookie and never giving up.

Never.

Like an episode of Dirty Jobs

Where's Mike Rowe when you need him???

I apologize for not having pictures to document. Perhaps I'll just have to be extra descriptive.

....once upon a time, I took the garbage out. It was wet, muddy, and dark outside so I put the bag full of garbage beside the side door instead of taking it the further ten steps to put it in the black garbage can. I used to do that kind of thing all the time at our old apartment. Leave the garbage beside the door, it'll be fine. It's not going to go anywhere. I'll stick it in the big, black garbage can later.
Well, I forgot about it.
But like I said: it'll be fine, right?
Wrong.

There are cats in this neighborhood. Scrounging, grasping, rummaging, clawing little beasts who like to rip big holes in garbage bags and dig out whatever tasty little morsels of rotten refried beans, banana peels, and/or other assorted decomposing dregs they can find. Oh the smorgasbord.
And in the aftermath of this great binge of scrumptious scraps, the inedibles were cast aside for the wind to carry to the nethermost parts of the backyard at its leisure. Lots of inedibles.

It wasn't until I was taking another bag out to the trash that I discovered my mistake of forgetting to put the other bag in the trash can. You can imagine this germophobe's horror at seeing the disgusting mess. And there wasn't a single latex glove in sight.

So I thought... what would Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs do? Well, he'd probably make a few jokes, strap on some shoulder-length protective gloves and dig into the mess while giving the camera some good bicep action. ahem. not that I'm paying that close attention.

I didn't make any jokes. The situation was sooo not funny. But I did strap some shoulder-length protective garbage bags over my hands while I picked up the remains of the feline food bender.
I was glad when it was over.

Lesson learned: NEVER leave a garbage bag unattended!!!! Take the measly extra steps to the garbage can, no matter how muddy or barefoot you are!!

Hats off to Mike Rowe. I'll never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever breath ever, ever be able to do his job.

a miracle....

So I've got this uberly cute pair of earrings. My baby sister happens to have the exact same pair and had this exact same misfortune occur:

a missing jewel.
.
.
.
I had worn them to go shopping.
I had tried on lots of clothes.
The jewel was gone.
It could have been
Anywhere.
.
.
.
Well guess what.
.
.
.
I found it.

by the seat of my pants.
.
.
No, really! I found it wedged in that little crack no, not that kind of crack in between the seat and backrest in the Man's car
.
.
I thought I had lost it.
Forever.
.
.
.
And here she be.

Safe and sound.
.
.
.

And reattached

Without a doubt, it has been a miracle. Unsought, unexpected.

Fabulous.

A silly boy with a horse and a stick

It's called a lance... helloooo!

More Renaissance Faire.

couldn't think of anything else to blog about.

This dude is Sir Amadeo.
He lost.
Boo.

On This Day...

I send yet ANOTHER query letter to a Publishing Company.
Thanks Mom, for the info!

And I celebrate one year of being

appendix-free.