Easter 2014

I like to make Elsie something special for every holiday.

It makes it more fun, and getting something Mommy-made makes the day a little more special.

For previous Easters I made her stuffed bunnies, but since we're drowning in stuffed animals (seriously folks, please, in the name of all things cute and squishy, please please stop buying her stuffed animals. She never plays with 90% of them, but it makes me feel like a monster every time I go to rid rid of some.)This year I make her a little bunny purse, and filled it with her favorite candies.

 It was so easy to make I whipped up a bunch for her little cousins. They're just felt and ribbon with very simple painted on faces. I would say it was the star of the Easter basket, but I think we can all agree that that honor went to the giant chocolate Easter bunny.

One of the perks of living back in the same area where I grew up is that Elsie can participate in all the fun holiday traditions that my family has done such an awesome job as maintaining over the years.

 

We've had an annual egg hunt at Concord Baptist church since before I was born, and probably before my mom was born. Shoot, I wouldn't be surprised if my grandma hunted for colored eggs stuck in the big iron church bell when she was a little girl.It makes me so happy to sweet Elsie having as much fun as I did there when I was little.

Ackerboy

Dr A and I just found out that the newest addition to the Ackerclan is going to be a boy!

I eventually told him...

Elsie found some stale candy hearts leftover from valentine's day. 

We read them and counted them and made little heart stacks. 

For some reason she put them all in her shoe for a while, 

then she decorated the sleeping cat with them. 

I picked them up off the dirty floor and left them on the counter so I could throw them away when Elsie wasn't watching. 

Dr A just walked in and ate them all before I could say a word. 

Not sure if I'm being cruel or kind by keeping the tales of their grimy adventures to myself at this point.

Elsie of the mountain

 While we work on her new bedroom there's a mattress in our living room. 

Elsie calls it "The Mountain" and it is pretty much the greatest thing that has ever happened to her. Today's naptime forecast is looking pretty great considering she's spent all morning climbing up, then jumping as high as she can. 

Mattress leaned against the couch = good times, who knew?

Chalk Art Wonderland

It was a beautiful day for a chalk art competition!

My Alice in Wonderland themed entry:

I won the "most popular" prize!

Unfortunately, I forgot my gloves and my hands ended up a raw and dirty mess. 

(When chalk breaks, skin rubs pavement- ouch.)

Elsie's first "real" hair cut!

I pride myself on being a pretty crafty lady, a mender of socks, a repairer of hems, and stitcher of leggings from old t-shirts.

Cutting my daughter's hair has never seemed like a very big deal (I cut my own for years when I was younger and had access to mirrors that allowed me to see the back of my head while I cut.)

 Dr A's mom has a professional stylist that comes to her house and cuts her hair for her, and offered to have Elsie's done professionally for the first time while she was there.

 Expecting her to be fidgity, I gave her a Leapfrog tablet to play with to distract her, and sure enough, she barely noticed anything was happening at all. 

The stylist said she'd never had such an easy time cutting a toddler's hair.

Duck Dynasty Chalk Art

I don't watch the show, so I had to do a little googling before putting up this chalk art. 

It's kind of fun getting requests sometimes instead of just doing what I feel like, because it's like a challenge. 

I'm not great at faces, either, so this was a double challenge.

Elsie The Cowgirl

Sometimes a girl just wants to get on her cow and bounce away.

Unfortunately, this girl hasn't figured out how to bounce away on her cow without ending up on her face.

This toy gets a 

10 for cuteness

7 for fun

3 for safety

11 for how funny it is when she gets mad at her cow after she's flipped bum over tea kettle (without being seriously hurt, of course).

Christmas Chalk Art

I love doing chalk art competitions in the Summer, but it is soooo luxurious to be indoors working on a vertical board that doesn't take the skin off your knuckles like pavement does.

 Merry Christmas from me and Cornerstone Church!

Elsie the Faith Healer

Elsie was crying because she fell, even though she wasn't really hurt. There wasn't really anything I could actually do and I hate coddling her when she's hamming up being hurt. So I yelled 

"Be HEALED!!!" 

in my most southern accent and palmed her forehead. She thought it was hilarious and she's been doing it all day, to her stuffed animals and the pets. 

It's so funny to hear her little "be hee aled!" but I don't think the cat appreciates her overly exuberant healing hand (being smacked in the face).

Plus the neighbors probably think it's pretty weird that she's running around the backyard trying to faith heal the dog.

Presents all year!

Elsie got so many gifts for Christmas that I think it kind of overwhelmed her, so I put a few away, and now on rainy days (which there have been no shortage of this year!) I take one out for her to open. 

Today it was her "big girl Cinderella" (because she's had a baby princess Cinderella for a while) complete with matching dress for her to wear! 

She loves it!

Turns out I'm not as dumb as I thought I was.

All my writing for the past several months has been in the form of papers for my classes (I'm working on my degree like I always said I would after Peter finished med school). I haven't had much time to write anything personal other than the scribbles and observations in my notebook waiting for class to begin.

Since it's teacher appreciation week I thought I'd share a quick thought about my own public school education. First of all, my middle school was strongly tracked. Being miserable and unmotivated in the sixth grade led to poor performance and resulted in me being tracked in the lowest achieving group. Suddenly in seventh grade I found myself in classes where the kids mostly spoke Spanish, while all my friends were in other classes. The teachers I had were clearly unmotivated and uninspired and had pretty darn low expectations, which I honestly didn't even halfway try to meet. By eighth grade being lonely, unhappy, and getting poor grades had become the norm for me, and my parents were starting to get concerned. They considered sending me to a private school, but it just wasn't a fiscally sound idea, and it probably wouldn't have helped anyway. I was extremely awkward and I'm pretty sure being in an environment of solely socioeconomically advantaged peers wouldn't have done much for my self esteem.

Review: Tracking is the devil, and middle school was hell.

Highschool:
Pretty much the same as middle school, except now add braces and acne. I had some awful teachers. I mean AWFUL. In the class which I had the most difficulty, the teacher absolutely did not care if we learned or not. The teacher was just there to get a paycheck. In chemistry I got so behind that I actually started dozing off because it was like listening to someone speaking gibberish for an hour, in that teaching style where they just stand at the front of the class and drone.

The only class where the teacher actually wanted to inspire appreciation for the subject was Language Arts/Lit. There, the teacher even took into account different learning styles, and gave assignments that were creative and really asked us to use our brains. To this day ten years later I still remember stuff from her classes, go fig.

Summary: How do you know I had a terrible public school education? Because by the end I was CONVINCED that I was dumb; incapable of learning. I didn't even bother applying for college. Instead I got a job, got married, moved overseas, helped Mr A become Dr A, and somewhere along the way I realized I was not dumb. I'd thumb through his textbooks from medical school and (with a lot of glossary/index help) I COULD understand what I was reading, even though it was geared to the highest level of education. I applied to a small college, and (after some intensely studied for competency/placement exams) got in without having to take a single remedial class. The thing that makes me really mad, and what I'd like to ask my old high school is this: How is it that it took me two times and a miserable season of Summer school to get through high school algebra, yet I got a high A my first time through college algebra even though I hadn't taken a math class in nearly a decade? Because my professor, Dr Karnati, was EXCELLENT, and my high school teacher was crap.
Because teachers who don't give a crap inspire their students to do the same.

All the terrible teachers I had growing up have make me appreciate the great teachers I have now, and serve as excellent models of what I shouldn't do when my Education degree is finally complete.

----Post Edit----------------------------------------------------
It wasn't around back then, but I so wish I could have done the K12 program. It would have let me do all the academic work required without having to deal with all the bull crap of public school. Also, in my experience, personal accountability inspires enthusiasm.

The Ghost of Halloweens Past

Of the many silly things I've sewn over the years, my favorite has to be my Halloween costumes.

The prettiest of which is definitely Elsie's water lily costume

I've gotten the most use out of the costumes I made for Dr A and I a few years back: A perfect Jedi costume for him, and a Padme costume (circa Ep 2) for me.  

Mine was easy- just a simple blue cloak I made out of fleece lined satin over a thrift shopped blue dress I embellished with little metal bits and tiny white beads (half of which fell off and decorated the dance floor at Mars 2112).  

His was harder and required many pieces, and I even did something I HATE doing;

 buying and following a pattern!

We got more mileage out of the costumes the next year, when I was 7 months pregnant, after all, it totally follows the story line for Padme to be pregnant and hanging out with Annikin!

This past Halloween I scored a sweet little princess Leia costume for Elsie, so we were able to use the costumes once again! Princess Leia with her parents Annikin and Padme!  

Though technically at this point Dr A should have been dressed as Darth Vader, and Padme would have just been a ghost, but it's fun to think of it as an alternate universe scenario, where Annikin never turned to the dark side, and they all lived happily ever after

 

"Name Me" Contest/ giveaway

I have a problem.

It's my name.

Not actually MY name

(I'm actually kind of fond of La Sha)

but I need a new name for my business.

Long ago 

(5 years)

In a land far away

(Cupecoy, SXM)

I opened my Etsy account and called myself

LoveAboveAll.

LoveAboveAll holds a lot of personal meaning for me

and is kind of innocuous and friendly sounding.

As far as Etsy names go I could have done a lot worse I guess,

but now I need to unify my web presence if I want to move forward in my career.

I need a business name I can put on a sign above my booth at art festivals.

I need a name that is somewhat descriptive, or interesting, or creative that is versatile.

Currently my Etsy shop, my business website, and my blog (right here) all have different names.

I need one name I can use for all of them.

Coming up with a winning name is hard,

and that's why I need your help!

Let's have a contest to help me think of a new name for myself!

Leave your idea in the comments here or on my facebook page.

On Monday October 29th I'll pick a winner.

The winner will receive one of my paintings from the Daily Doily Project!

Hey winner, you can pick whichever one of these you want:

(scroll through my posts from September to see more pics of these)

Names I've toyed around with in the past:

The Life Artistic

(but when I say it out loud people always think I'm saying The Life Autistic, which creates confusion about what my website is about.)

LoveAboveAll

Doesn't say anything about me or what I do

Polychromatic Adventures

I like this, but a lot of people don't get that I'm referencing being an artist

la-sha

a misspelling of my name... doesn't do me too many favors when it comes to "brand recognition"

Cleverish

I still own the domain, but like LoveAboveAll it doesn't say much about me.

Chez La Sha

French for House of La Sha... I'm told it sounds silly.

And that's about it... I'm out of ideas. I need some from you!

By the way... feel free to take part in the contest no matter where you are- shipping's on me!

Spooky Season

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said,
 "Where there is no imagination there is no horror."

I have an excellent imagination.

(Bats TDDP $25 watercolor on doily)

The Unwelcome Widow

This year I planted proper garden for the first time.
100% organic
I spent countless hours wrestling the weeds back from my veggies
while Elsie stomped through the rows collecting shiny rocks,
and bringing me the plant markers of things I'd just set out.
(Resulting in me having to play a lot of Guess-That-Gourd!)
Unfortunately, my gardening efforts brought not only blossoms and bell peppers
but also an assortment of small animals,
none of which were very scared of my goofy "guard" dog.

Then, one day a few weeks, as I collected the outpouring of banana peppers I spotted something I hadn't seen since I moved here.
A shiny black thorax
emblazoned with a tell-tale red hour glass.
I scooped up Elsie and headed inside
where I traded my shorts and tank top for jeans, with tall socks and boots, and a long sleeve shirt, and rubber coated gloves.
Back outside I was death incarnate.
With a vengeance I pulled up the straggly remains of butternut vines I'd allowed to list in the late Summer sun. I banished everything which no longer was bearing fruit, then coated everything that was left in a fine coat of seven dust- the most powerful poison I'd allowed myself to buy when I first started the gardening endeavor. I boiled water and poured it into the ant hills I'd uncovered.
I left no leaf unchecked.
No weed unpulled.
No venomous arachnid alive.

Still, every time I play out back with Elsie I can't help but imagine her tiny hands plucking a shiny black spider from the grass.  It makes my blood run cold, and makes the indoors seem instantly more appealing.
Thankfully Winter is coming
and the weather will finish what I started.

(Black Widow TDDP #Halloween $25)

The skull and the stones

Hey dudes.

Blogging consistently is hard.

Don't believe me?

Go check out the fifty bajillion blogs that are all 

"Welcome to my blog! I'm totally going to update it every day!"

Then there's like three posts a year.

Me? 

I hold myself to very loose standards when it comes to being consistent.

Some weeks I'll be bouncing around the internet every day.

Other weeks find me barely sitting down to eat

much less to write some goofy blog post.

SO... that being said,

I'm going to interrupt myself talking about art I hate to bring you some
Halloween-y goodness.

I'll finish Art I Hate week after I'm done with the new Halloween stuff...

or whenever I run out of better stuff to talk about-

whichever comes first.

Halloween post #1

 In my back yard is a small square 

outlined in stones

placed there by people who lived here before me.

I really and truly want to think that it's just the remains of a strangely placed flower bed,

but part of me can't help but think there's something other than roots beneath the ground there.

I've outlived enough pets to know what a back yard memorial looks like.

So I keep my trowel clear of that area.

Just in case.

Art I Hate Week Day #3 & 4

I absolutely meant to write a post yesterday, 

but then I got caught up in watching the Presidential debate.

Mitt was the clear winner, but it still seems like Pepsi Vs Coke.

Pretty much six of one and half dozen of the other.

Why do we have a two party system again?

If it keeps up like this I'm going to start voting Whig

and if that doesn't work, I'll just go Tory.

Anyhow...

back to the Art I Hate.

Which, by the way I just discovered a fabulous blog about truly hateable art:

It's called http://artihate.tumblr.com/

and if you're an art snob like me

you'll love it.

But since I'm trying to only use my own examples of Art I Hate for this week

(in an attempt to not seem like a Bitter Bertha or Jealous Jenny

by belittling others' work,

when there is just oh so much to hate in my very own reportoire).

I painted, and drew, and sculpted constantly as a little girl,

then fell in love with photography as a teenager

and put everything else away as childish.

When I started painting again as an adult I was so in love and thrilled by all my creations that I wanted to share them, so I'd roll them up in a postal tube and take them to the places I worked and give them away to any coworker or friend who seemed slightly interested in them. I'm not sure exactly how many paintings I gave away... somewhere in the dozens.

So now I have to live with the fact that

somewhere out there

people have very crappy paintings with my name on them.

So, as much as I appreciate them for being  the foundation for the skills which I've developed and use today,

I really hate all my early works:

Art I Hate week Day #2

For today's entry of

Art I Hate

I humbly submit

for your disapproval

fauxtography.

Real photographers spend so much time, effort, and money on their craft that it kind of curdles my blood when I see someone charging unsuspecting clients hundreds of dollars for poorly edited, compositionless, over exposed, under planned "photo sessions". These days it's become so much of an epidemic that there's even a website devoted to the "art" of fauxtography:youarenotaphotographer.com 

Everyone thinks they can buy a DSLR, run the crappy shots through a gauntlet of filters, and BAM! instant business! Now all that's left is to make a facebook fanpage for your "photography business", and start harassing every engaged couple you know about when they're going to set up their pre-wedding photoshoot. 

Photography,

GOOD photography,

is expensive- most real photographers have at least 10K in their equipment.

It's time consuming,

but most of all..

it's hard.

Buying a Nikon Coolpix and trying to charge your friends for your "services" is easy.

All that being said,

I'm guilty of fauxtography- against myself.

(I would never ever ever charge anyone, but I've taken a bajillion bad pics of Elsie)

Once upon a time I loved photography, and took my FM10 everywhere I went.

(I didn't want to miss something good for the yearbook!)

Now all I have is a little point and shoot that's been dropped and just generally abused so much that I'm kind of surprised it takes pictures at all. I have no photo editing software, so if I want to edit something I use Paint and usually end up ruining it. 

Dear Elsie,
Thanks for putting up with all my fauxtography efforts!
I love you.
Also, you're cute even in the janked up pictures I take.

For $500 I'll put a blanket on my kitchen table, toss out some old silk flowers around your infant!

For an extra $100 I'll make sure to overexpose all your pics!

Join the Fauxto Phan Club, and I'll manipulate the color saturation (badly) for free!

The Tale Of The Hungry Handbag

I used to carry a backpack instead of a purse.
When I lived in the Caribbean
and drove a cherry red 125cc Savage.

When I moved to NYC I started carrying a purse again because it was impossible to walk into a store wearing a backpack without being constantly followed by a suspicious employee.

Today I walked out to my car in a dimly lit parking lot,
reached into my very pretty pink purse only to realize
my keys weren't there.

I panicked.
I checked all my pockets,
turned my purse upside down and dumped it out right there on my hood as onlookers gawked at my manic searching.
I walked back to the building and retraced my steps.
Not in the bathroom.
Not at the vending machine.
Not at the table where I'd sat.
Nowhere.

I went back out to my car and used my cell phone light to search the inside of my locked car to determine which window I should try to fish through. They weren't in the car, at least not anywhere they could be seen.

I paced around the car in circles half hoping I'd find them on the ground there, and half contemplating what I should do, but mostly wishing I was still driving the Saturn I had in highschool that I could break into with the flick of a wrist and any thin foot-long object.
Locked myself out of that car a lot.
Luckily, Saturns are easy to break into without doing any damage.
Pontiacs, not so much.

Finally I decided to call Dr A.
Only, now my cell phone was gone.
For a solid minute I freaked out.
How could I have possibly lost my cell phone in such a brief, but admittedly frenzied, amount of time?

I slid to the ground in the now empty parking lot,

and dumped my bag out for the second time in less than half an hour.
This time angrily,
on the ground,
creating a cloud of coupons and loose change.
I shook it until it was empty
and when it was empty I shook it again.
It still jingled.

My empty bag was jingling.
That's when I realized that the leopard print lining had ripped and had managed to swallow up the only two things I use on a daily basis.

I carefully fished around for my lost things,
and by carefully I mean I completely ripped the dumb lining out,
revealing not only my keys and phone, but also a twenty I'd been kicking myself for losing for two weeks.

Tomorrow I'm digging out my old backpack.
Black canvas and leather beats pink vinyl and silk. period.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember the painting I made with poke berries?
I remade it
this time using paint
(but the same basic sketch).
I really truly love it.
You know I mean it because I framed it and hung it up.
(But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try to sell it.)

"A Better Look" $125 unframed or $175 framed watercolor on paper