From Chaos Comes Happiness

I've been stuck in an artless state for a few months now. Feeling unmotivated. Uncertain. Questioning what direction to go next, without so much as an ounce of creative passion in me. There is a huge amount of pressure and expectation that I put on the artist in me. Creating art is sort of a must, if you want to make money in your art. And I wasn't creating a thing, nor did I have a desire to do so. I was hopeless. It was icky. I thought,  "Maybe that was it. It was a nice run. . . maybe you're done."  Seriously. I meditated. I walked. I looked at the birds. I listened to music. I traveled. I drank wine. I laughed. I watched people. I read blogs. I read books. I sat in my mess of a studio without a bit of inspiration, and looked at the piles and piles of supplies I had . . . not knowing where to even begin. I sketched . . . a little. But nothing moved me. Not a single thing. Then, it was my birthday. I don't usually make much out of m...

Summer. It's around the corner. It's so close, that I have already had my air conditioner on this year. It's so close, that the kids are in the single digits for remaining school days (a thought that makes my stomach turn). Oh, please don't get me wrong . . . I can't wait for homework and school activities to end for a little while, but with that comes a whole new set of challenges. The miserable . . . "I'm bored" scenario. So, I set out to solve the "I'm bored!" dilemma. And my friends, I've got it all covered. You see, I am bound and determined to remove the words "I'm bored" from my children's vocabulary this summer. If I feel it coming on, I'm ready for it . . . I will simply refer the children to the Pantry Door, for our very own summer fun list. Yep . . . we.are.set. I can't take credit for it. I found the idea on Pinterest. But I will take credit for actually pinning something, and actua...

I can't even believe how long it has been since I've sat at this computer and typed on this keyboard. Years, it seems like. Of course, it hasn't been years. But it sure has been a long time. And the days . . . oh, they have been busy. Instead of taking up a whole bunch of time giving you the blow-by-blow of the past few weeks, I thought I'd bore you with some quick little highlights. (Although, I've just come back to proof-read this part after writing out the whole post, and I do believe I end up giving you the blow-by-blow. You know, nothing is that simple for me! Sorry for that!) It's going to be a bit "all over the place", because that is just sort of how my mind is working these days. Bear with me. I'm sharing a bunch of pictures, too . . . because sometimes a photo just needs to be shared! So, this is the last few weeks of my life: It all started with a great fortune . . . what it means, I have no idea. If I knew what idea it was refer...