Well it's new years eve. Even though it's only 9:00 where I am it sure feels like midnight. I'm away visiting family and everyday is an exhausting wonderful time. But it seems like today, of all days, people have decided to look back upon the past year. Seeing all this, I figured it's time I do that for myself as well. So here are some things I've learned this past year

- Making art is not about pleasing others.
     ~I love to create art quite possibly more than anything else. But what I'm realizing is that you don't have to try and please the consumer, even if you want to sell your work. If you make good work, and pour your soul into it. People will find you. This year I sold my first art bag and my first painting. Knowing that people like what I make is incredibly exciting and is getting my creative juices flowing again!

- Being a mother is HARD.
       ~While I seem to learn this every year, it is still a good lesson. No mom is perfect, as much as we try to be. It is hard work to take care of another human, especially one with endless bouts of energy, puppy dog eyes, and concrete opinions on layering shirts and broccoli. Everyday that I make it through I'm grateful for.

- Being a mother is FANTASTIC.
       ~ For all the crap we moms have to deal with, being a mom is the best job in the world. Having a little person that you made give you a kiss, just cause they love you, is worth all the screams and turmoil and lost nights of sleep. I'm sure I'll never catch up on sleep, but I have love abounding.

- You will never be able to please anyone. So don't. Only please yourself.
      ~No matter how we try to do everything write for everyone, someone's going to be pissed. Without fail someone will be pissed that you washed the counters with a fancy cleaner instead of windex, or that your recordings are taking up space. No matter what you. The only person you need to worry about pleasing is yourself. Say you hate your job. Well, what would you rather be doing? Is there a way to make it profitable enough that you can survive {and your family}? THEN DO IT! And work at it! Do you hate the way you look? Fix it! I'm not saying go get massive reconstructive surgery! Just go get a haircut, get some new clothes. Dress in the way that makes you feel like the best version of yourself and apologize to no one.

- Teaching is not shoving information into someone's head.
     ~This past year I had one of the greatest teachers of my life. My drawing 2 professor. He was an ex military man who is now an incredible artist. Instead of throwing technique at us, he gave us general guidelines for projects, and then set us free. I learned so much more in doing what I wanted with some direction, then in classes upon classes of strict instruction. While you can't always do this, for my future career choice as an art teacher {and hopefully teacher over blog eventually}, lends itself MAJORLY to this.

  Overall, 2014 was a great year. I grew a lot in my art, and grew a lot with my little man. I'm learning to love him fully and not to worry about as many things as I usually do. I also learned that I do not need to rely on a man {hoping to continue this lesson in the future}. Thanks for spending part of this year with me! I can't wait to share with you guys what the new year brings!

  Well dead week is almost over and once it's done I promise I'll dedicate alot more time to my poor little blog here. In the meantime check out this article written by a comic artist I'm positively NUTS about.
  The article talks about anxiety and our brains. Personally I struggle with anxiety all the time. And it's incredibly stupid stuff that I get all anxious over too which makes it even more annoying. But I know that it always makes me feel better when I know that I'm not the only one going through these issues.
  Best I can tell, anxiety is one of the marks of a creative mind. The creative mind is constantly going with all sorts of new possibilities and thougbhts, which can lead to LOTS of anxiety.
  When I'm anxious what seems to help is when I attack my art and just go feelings first. I've made stamps, paintings, drawings, whatever. After I finish I always feel emotionally exhausted, but alot better.
  Do you guys deal with anxiety? If so, how do you combat it?

  In my life I've never had the closest of friends. I had a couple of best friends when I was younger, a close friend here or there. In middle school I was in a small class of about 17 kids in which all of the females hated me because I was friends with most of the guys. Then high school I kinda floated around different friend groups. The summer after my senior year I became really close with a girl who is now my best friend {let's call her T [mystery is cool]}.
  I first met T through our boyfriends. The guy I started dating my sophomore year of high school was best friends with her boyfriend. We were both sophomores and they were both seniors. Since that time both those boys have gone but we were always sort of friends. Well the summer after our senior year we became SUPER close. I had a baby during my senior year of high school and so wasn't really out of the house much that summer. Well for some reason I invited T over one day and we became close friends VERY quickly. Now it's strange for me to think that we ever weren't friends!
  We're both very much homebodies and most of our "wild nights" consist of sitting in my house watching movies and eating pizza or some other sort of delicious crap. She is also a book nerd like me which helps when we go to watch hunger games and rip the movies apart to each other. Yes, we talk during movies, horrific I know. But we just work.
  Sure there's times I wanna strangle her, and I'm sure she has those same thoughts about me at times, but I wouldn't trade her for anything.
  Last night I went to a concert for her choir. It was long and tedious {especially that first song, good lord I have no clue if it was right or wrong but I don't care to know!}. But I felt good that I was there for her. Her family isn't an artsy one and instead of going to her concert went to a scrimige for her sister. I'm proud that I was there for her, that she had someone out there rooting her on and making faces at her.
  I think that's what all friendship is about. Not thinking totally of yourself, but bieng there for the other person. And I'm glad I got to be there for her {even if I was yawning through the whole thing XD}

An abstract value grid project. The smaller image within the image was the original picture that I  cut up for the bigger image.

Monumental bag project. I decided to stick my two paper bags (one brown and one white) in millenium park as the big face water things.

Well this academic semester is drawing to a close, and that means pure hell for all college students. Exams are coming up, projects are due, the campus is a buzz of frantic activity. Personally I'm preparing for 4 exams and a BIG final project. Due to this I haven't been the best at keeping up on here and for that I'm sorry guys! I promise to be better once the semesters out early december! In the meantime, I put a new sympathy card in my etsy shop. There are 8 available, handmade and made to order. My aunts sister passed away recently and since I'm states away the best way I know to show my sympathy is to make a card.

  Being an adult sucks...it absolutely sucks.... All a person's life all they want to do is grow up...why?! Oh and I know that everyone goes through this exact stage of hating growing up, but it's just so irritating. People want you to act like an adult, yet they also want you to be a child and listen to their exact instructions. It's a terrible time of trying to identify yourself while trying to keep your elders happy. Having a 2 year old and living at home does nothing to help out with this crisis. Because you're trying to be a parent and a child at the same time which is extremely confusing. However, it must be done.

  Halloween was only 2 days ago right? Well in my mind that constitutes Christmas! I know that there's still a month {and thanksgiving} in the way of this great holiday. But in my opinion Thanksgiving is simply part of the Christmas season! In fact, I even convinced my mother to put up the Christmas tree yesterday! While this got some mixed reviews on facebook {and ensued some family drama, surprise surprise}, I love celebrating Christmas. Even if some people think it's too early. It's my absolute favorite holiday and I'm so excited to start celebrating! So get ready for lots of Christmas stuff all over the place!

  As you guys know, I am a superb procrastinator! This morning however, I realized how truly terrible I am at procrastinating. I have about 20 projects that I need to deal with currently. School, christmas presents, personal projects. I just need to suck it up and do them all! So hopefully you guys will see some new cool projects posted up here soon!

  Sorry for the radio silence on this end. This past weekend was my little man's second birthday! My grandmother (his great grandmother) came in on wednesday and we got to spend the whole lovely weekend with her. She left early this morning much to the dismay of both my son and I.
  We had a lovely birthday party with my family and two of my close girlfriends. My lil guy was absolutely in love with having everyone's attention on him and getting a drum set, a remote control car and all sorts of other goodies (although let's be honest, grandpa was not so excited about the drum set).
  School is starting to drain me, Lord knows I'm ready for fall break to get here. But I am excited with how things are going.
  In regards to what's going on in my life?
     Drinking: Dandelion Root Tea
     Watching: Gilmore Girls
     Preparing: Greeting Cards & Laundry

  For me movies have always been very exciting. I love the thrill of being pulled into a moment by great music, wonderful actors, and really cool costumes. However, some movies  have a stronger pull to me than others. Some of these include, Moulin Rouge, August Rush, The Devil Wears Prada, and as of today, Words and Pictures.

  No, I am not being paid to say good things about this film, I'm just crazy about it! Not only is it super cute, it has actual substance to it! You can learn things about art and about words while watching a silly yet deep film! Good lord I can't get over it! lol. I guess it's just fun for me to see films about people who are actually passionate. Passion is so far gone in this society. We are drones who are constantly hooked up to our machines and are constantly in the information age, streaming crap into our brains. Instead of sitting on the grass and reading a really good book, we are texting. Instead of studying our surroundings and drawing incredible things based upon our feelings, we are tweeting and fighting cowards wars over the internet.

  Terribly sorry for the rant that turned into lol. My thought process is fantastic at switching and changing and working it's own weird ways.

  A day when I don't have classes is simply a magnificent day. Instead of using the whole day to rush around and get things ready, I instead have time to do some cleaning, hang out with my mini man, and work on my art. Currently I'm working on some drawings I have due for homework tomorrow (ok, TOTALLY not procrastination, just left my big paper in the studio :/ ). 

  I myself have NEVER been a morning person. I would much rather sleep in and stay up late than get up with the sun. But since my mini man has come into the world, I've been forced to get up earlier and earlier. There's no question, this kiddo is definitely a morning person (at least until he hits puberty).
 
  I do have to say, mornings can be super fantastic. I find that I am more inspired to create in the morning than in the evening. Which is awful cause I never want to get up early enough to create.
  The morning light and coolness i s always very refreshing of rme and I just can't even describe how lovely it is...

  It's a bird! It's a plane! No it's....PROCRASTINATION GIRL! Able to avoid projects until mere days before their due date! Forgets papers until hours before their due! Is her super power useful?? Only time will tell!

  So as you might guess I am a PRO at procrastination. I can literally procrastinate at ANYTHING. For instance, today I realized that I had a paper due at midnight...seriously...panicking....Thank God I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and wrote that dang paper in an hour while sitting on my sons floor while he played around me and on me.
 
  Procrastination has always been something that I've struggled with. Even in my personal life, I'll struggle to make plans or get out of the house just cause it's hard for me (although I also think that there's a healthy bit of social anxiety in there for good measure). Whatever I do I have to FORCE myself to do it. Even my art, which depresses me beyond compare. I hate that I have to force myself to do something that feels so natural at some points. But I know if I don't keep doing it I will just stop and never do it again, which would be absolute agony.

  For now I just take things a little bit at a time and try to plan what I can. I try not to stress if I forget something and prioritize things in the best ways I can. I get stressed a lot, but I think I'm getting better...I hope I am anyway.

  Well I'd better head to bed here soon. It's supposed to freeze over tonight (YAY!)! Although, it's supposed to get back up to 80 this week (bleh). For now I am all cozy in my bed in a fantastically funky sweater and ready to head off to sleep. Night guys.

  I think one of my major problems with blogging throughout my life exposed to internet, is that I try to be like others. I LOVE reading other people's blogs and have a few I check nearly every day. I love the way they express themselves and the things they post. But instead of just using these things for inspiration, I feel like I need to be EXACTLY like them. This causes stress and panic and "how will I ever measure up" syndrome. 

  So for a while there I was doing scheduled blog posts that were perfectly on time and organized and planned out and it was all going great...until I forgot to plan a week...then it all fell apart. In this falling apart however, I've realized that I like writing spontaneously for you guys. Giving you a checkup on my art and life and what's going on...
  Well, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to keep things spontaneous. Every once in a while there'll be a nice planned out tutorial or something like it...but my mind does not work in a strictly organized way, it is extremely sporadic and wonderful and that's how my blog should be.
  Since I'm gunna do this you guys won't be hearing from me on a strict schedule. If I get a minute here or there I'll give you an update on what I'm working on or how my life is going, but it's not going to be as it was for those glorious two weeks. Sorry loves, I can't work like that!

  So I was doing so excellent on getting ahead of myself and keeping up with posts, then this last week I had two papers an exam and a project due for my studio..that killed me. So fair warning with the coming weeks guys, I'm going to post as much as I can but I make no promises for the quality or quantity of posts!

  Hey guys. So I can't remember if I mentioned before or not but we have a huge project in my drawing two class. We had to pick a piece of text (originally he said a newspaper article, but when some of us had issues with that he expanded it to any piece of text or quote), and draw what we read.
 
  Well I have been having a heck of a hard time with it! Now, when you guys read this I'll be going to my class and having my fingers crossed that he likes my preliminary drawings. The first quote I went with was a scripture that goes something like, I am weathered yet elegant. The only problem with this idea was that I had so many ideas that I was having issues transporting onto paper and I was getting so stressed out that Thursday night ( 6 days until it's due) I scrapped the whole thing and decided to go with my second quote.

  This second quote is from Anne of Green Gables. Marilla (Anne's caretaker) is trying to teach her how to say her prayers. When she explains the Lord's Prayer and everything to her, Anne says how if she really wanted to pray she'd go out into the deep woods or in the middle of a big field and look up into the big blue sky and just feel a prayer. This quote in my head looks like a little girl looking up into the blue sky at the end of a path through the woods. Well, I've been working on that and I wanted to see what you guys think.

The sidewalk down from our house.

A local church.

A neighbors little garden. Every time I walk past I just love the details within it.

Our town plants beautiful flowers every spring, in the summer they are so fantastic and colorful!

  So, my flowered cards. If you've been on my etsy shop you've seen the ten flowered cards I have on there. Now, lately I've started a new batch of them. Along with the lovely flowers, there is also a word. For this batch it's hello.