Baintings

Sorry, I couldn't resist throwing in a little inside joke that is so not funny unless you're me or my friends Cammie and Rogue.

"Baintings" comes from our making fun of Drew Barrymore on Ever After and the English accent she completely butchers in the film. In a few instances of her abysmal attempts at the accent, she said her p's like b's and we think it's pretty funny. Hence, the word "baintings."

I love to paint. I use acrylic and I mainly do pictures of animated characters, simply because for me, they turn out the best. Here's one of the pictures I've done that I'm rather proud of. It's a map of all the Disney Princess castles.

See if you can guess who lives where. Oh, and sorry about the time in the lower right-hand corner. Such a blemish. That's from the camera, not the painting.

I've wanted to sell this to Disney to get a poster made from it, but when I took a photograph of the painting to the "Happiest Place on Earth" during "The Year of a Million Dreams," I just got a runaround.

So I'll just have to enjoy it on my own. And with all of you, my loyal readers. All two of you. :) or three. And a half. Maybe. I dunno.

Love you guys! I'll post more paintings later. I'm working on one of Hogwarts castle right now.

How to get motiva....zzzz

HELP!
I want to write. I need to write. I have all this stuff swirling pell-mell in my brain, knocking on the corners of my cerebellum (is that where creativity comes from? hm..) screaming 'let me out! let me out!'

Can't.... do.... it.....

I need motivation. What does everyone else do to get motivated? Any secrets? Any yoga positions, special foodie substances, chants, dances, or other sweet tricks that help you get your rear in gear?

The Tee-Shirt Contest I should have won

About three years ago I went to England and absolutely fell in love with the place. A while later, a contest held by the same people who advertised, promoted, and/or owned the tour company I traveled with held a contest to design a tee-shirt for one of their next Harry Potter-themed tours to England.

The Grand Prize.... of course, a free trip.


Naturally, I couldn't pass it up.


Alas, my selfish desire to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip twice was not granted. But here's the tee-shirt design I came up with.

It's difficult to see, but on the front it says "Magical Tours" with a picture of Harry Potter over it. On the back it says "Team Rowling" in the Harry Potter font. Beneath the title says:

"the spell-book reading, wand-waving, broomstick riding, charm casting, hippogriff taming, phoenix befriending, snitch-seeking, bludger-dodging, quaffle-scoring, Dursley despising, potion brewing, portkey traveling, galleon spending, dark wizard catching, horcrux hunting, butterbeer drinking, Weasely-is-our-King singing, Hogsmeade visiting, Potter loving, crazy, happy fools."

I shoulda won.

Oh, and P.S... the wand isn't really making that light. It's a handy photoshop feature called lensflare. he he he. adds a nice touch, doesn't it?

I love cereal

There are a few things in life that really make you feel like a champ:

1. Getting an infant to fall asleep in your arms.
2. Finishing a daunting task like remodeling your house or writing a book.
3. Looking at the reciept at the grocery store and seeing your total savings equal more than twice what you paid.

Albertsons has cereal (the big boxes!) 3 for 5$. I bought six boxes. They also have yogurt 10 for 4$ if you buy 10. I bought fifty. No, just kidding, I only bought ten.
I also had coupons. Lots of coupons. From coupons.com
I paid 11.25 and saved 28-something.

ahem....

WAHOO!!!!!

Sugar Scrub, incomprehensible Mandarin Chinese, and Artemis Fowl

Today was very busy. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, laundry (which isn't done yet), Dr. appointment, getting (old) new computer set up...
I thought, I need a break!

My beautiful sister Jen gave me a gift card to a nail salon for my birthday so today I went and got a


PEDICURE!





It was mah-velous. My feet and calves got sugar-scrubbed, de-calused, oiled, and even hot-rock massaged. I had to put my book down (currently reading the 2nd book in the amazing Artemis Fowl series), so I could sit back, close my eyes, and just soak in the blissful pampering. Then my toes got treated to some serious beautification.

Cute, or what?? I don't usually get flowers (or sparkly little gemstones! which you probably can't see very well, but I have them!) when I get pedicures. It was so much fun! A much needed little bit of TLC for me!

Thanks so much for the gift card Jen!

Lake Trip and my attempts at Wakeboarding

Me and the in-laws went to Roosevelt lake this Memorial Day weekend. It was so lovely! The weather was GORGEOUS, the lake was calm, and my loving hubby and our dear brother-in-law saved us all from the wrath of the humongous wolf spider. (okay, i know those things aren't dangerous, but seriously, the thing was nasty).

Here are some pictures from the trip

My hubby

what a stud. woo!

SIL Miss B doing a cannon ball

My niece little A "driving" the boat. (It's actually being towed behind the truck. We were heading back to the cabin and most of us rode in the boat)

My husband giving me some wakeboarding pointers.

And here is one of my attempts at wakeboarding.

This is the closest I have ever gotten in my entire life. If you look carefully, you can see the look of glee on my face because I actually got up for about a milisecond.

And this.... I'm so sorry, I just HAVE to brag.... this is my incredibly talented husband showing us how it's done.

Yeah, baby!

Thanks again to the S-fam for a fun weekend!

I no longer have hair

I have pulled it all out.
because of two words:
.

.

SWIMSUIT SHOPPING

I spent two days and a ridiculous number of hours and gas mileage shoveling through piles of utterly revolting crap.

Like this:

And this:













I'd like to get a tankini, but because of the shape of my voluptuous body, if I ever bend over it's "HEY! CRACK KILLS!" plus the fact that I'm a little, er, well endowed up top, so those cute little halter-tops everyone wants nowadays (and they're on EVERY tankini known to womankind) leaves me spilling out.

So I figure, okay, how about a nice one-piece, right?

WRONG!

Apparently this is a "one-kini"

BARF!What is this world coming to???

I'm sick to death of horrible swimsuits! It's either string bikini, "crack kills," abomination number three, or this:

Um, excuse me, I'm not eighty.
I apologize if um, ahem, you have this swimsuit are are, in fact, not eighty either.








Top it all off with the fact that I'm trying to match a swimsuit to swimshorts I spent a fortune on last summer and I've got a really, really good reason to check myself into a loony bin with the self-diagnosis of mad cow disease.
.
.
.

So with a deep breath, a prayer, and sore feet, I finally went online at limericki.com and chose this little number. (Not without further online searching of course.)

In my opinion, it's very cute, I won't be spilling out the top, and they're supposed to be extra long to keep the plumber butt to a minimum.

And..... da da da DA! It matches my board shorts. Pretty much. Close enough. I'm done. Done DONE DONE!

All I have to worry about now is a weird tan line but at this point, I don't care if I have "vote Obama" sunburned into my skin. Okay, that might be going a little far. shudder.