sometimes I wonder...

Sometimes I wonder what the point is... of blogging.

I wonder why I feel compelled to do it, and yet when I sit in front of the computer or think about what I would blog — my mind draws a blank.

Who's reading this thing anyway? My parents? Some random person who remembers people they went to high school with? People I work with?

I wonder this publicly, perhaps to no one, because after a long absence I wrote a couple blog entries and had changed the posting of comments to moderated... and then looked at the comments that were awaiting moderation and they are 100% spam.

I was on vacation this week... and it was, perhaps, despite many things, very enjoyable.
I had no plans. It rained. I went nowhere. For a day or 2 I had no car because I took it in for a repair.
I didn't blog. I didn't spend hours compulsively clicking on things on the internet. I did nothing on etsy. I didn't set the alarm clock. And in spite of that — I did stuff.

I didn't even finish anything, but I just spent hours doing stuff unencumbered by the notion of having to interact with other people or wonder about opinions and feelings and it was like the greatest vacation ever.

So I do, I wonder why I feel compelled to blog.  What is it that I really have to share? In 7 paragraphs I don't have the answer to that, just that I do still wonder.

Maybe when spring finally hits and I feel compelled to go outdoors and do something, then I will know.

little things and lizards

Sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest difference.

As you may know, I'm enjoy kitsch, particularly when it comes to my decor.  I have a bit of a thing for lizards and frogs and turtles and birds.  And I have seasonal decorations.  In the winter time I hang glitter snowflake ornaments from the ceiling of my living room, and in the spring and the summer I have a set of monarch butterflies and some hummingbird ornaments that I use.  The hummingbirds were Christmas ornaments that I found in Target like 5-6 years ago. I thought they were so cool that I bought all the ones they had that weren't broken. I have 14 of them or so.  They're resin ornaments, so I brought them home and painted them so that they looked like real ruby-throated hummingbirds, right down to using various shades of iridescent nail polish over their plumage to make them shine... 

Anyway, back around that actual beginning of spring, I took down all the snowflakes and put up my butterflies and my hummingbirds.  And then it snowed the next day.  It's been a long winter, and that's meant a lot of time in doors.  So much so that I started changing out and moving around pictures and artwork just to entertain myself and stave off boredom and malaise.

I thought I was done until I found myself standing in Hobby Lobby buying 2 more resin lizards (like these).  So, of course, I gave them a new coat of paint.  And after they sat around my work space for a week or two - on a whim I finally got around to hanging them up on Tuesday morning.  This of course also meant that I needed a new picture for over the computer...

I am definitely not a minimalist.  But I think we all already knew that...

Hopefully the weather starts acting like spring soon. As much as I may enjoy decor and pictures and knick-knacks and stuff, I'm ready to put on my good shoes and grab the camera and throw some extra batteries in my pockets and go out wandering around enjoying some budding trees and daffodils.

so I was away for a while...

February and March plodded along until they just flew by... Yes, long time no blog. It was winter. It was Michigan. What can I say? I spent a lot of time in doors working on the in doors. My office / studio / living room underwent a slight cosmetic makeover. It is the room that I spend the bulk of my time in, so it was time for it to feel like a room that I wanted to spend most of my time in.

Before

After

It's the little things that make the biggest difference. I bought bookcases and assembled them so that I could move a lot of magazines and piles of paper and boxes of craft supplies out of the room. That alone made it feel like less of a glorified storage closet...
Then I started working on my desk. I have 2 of them. One of them had just become a place to set a printer and pile things... that was kind of silly. So, I moved a lot of stuff off my desk and better organized the things that needed to stay. And now I can actually sit there and draw - which was the desired result.

Plus, I framed and then hung many of my original drawings...

And then I got the chair...

It's one of those padded accent chairs. It's perfect. It's nice and low - the way I like my desk-to-chair ratio so that what I'm working on is close to eye level.

So, it's nice to have somewhere to sit and work without trying to balance a drawing board on my lap as my foot falls asleep.
Hopefully winter treated you well, and spring will eventually begin and stick around for a little while before we veer directly into 90˚F days of summer...