Thursday, March 22, 2018

Happy Spring???

It seems that Mother Nature is hell-bent on providing us with the most memorable March on record.  So she shoved Old Man Winter back our direction in the form of Winter Storm Toby - the FOURTH Nor'easter this month:

It started on Tuesday night (yes officially the first day of SPRING) and this was our view by 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday.  While Riley was the worst in terms of catching us unaware, leaving people stranded everywhere and lots of downed trees and wires, Toby was the one with the most significant snowfall in this area.

 And yes, the backyard neighbor put his fence back up in between storms.

 The snow collects and fills up our deck like a swimming pool.  When the storm was over, you couldn't see the bottom horizontal rail at all.
After these photos were taken, snow continued to blanket the area through the wee hours of Thursday morning.  Everything was closed on Wednesday and many places are having delayed openings today.  I was grateful to once again ride out the entire storm from the safety of my own home.

When all was said and done, we got about a foot of snow this time.  When Spring actually does put in an appearance in this little corner of the world, I think we'll see folks happy dancing in the streets!  But as you can see, it will be awhile yet before we see daffodils. 

Anything blooming in your little corner of the world?

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Happy St. Patty's Day!

March has been a little nuts in my neck of the woods - not one, not two, but THREE Nor'easter storms rolled through here in the space of eleven days.  And the weather forecasters got anticipated accumulation wrong for my home town in each instance.  Winter Storm Riley on March 2nd caught us quite by surprise.  We were supposed to get a couple of inches starting AFTER the evening commute.  Instead it started around eleven a.m. and  was coming down at the rate of 2 inches per hour.  Plus very high winds. So the area surrounding my home town experienced ice, covered by slush, covered by heavy wet snow, lots of downed wires and trees, and cars and school buses full of children stuck everywhere.  I had been at the office for a meeting.  Left before 2 p.m. and it took me two hours to get home and this is how that trip ended:

Stuck at the bottom of my own driveway!  Jay left the same area 20 minutes after me and it took him three hours to get home.  I had the driveway cleared and my car moved by the time he arrived.

The storm also knocked over our back yard neighbor's fence.  We're hoping he decides to just take it down.

In total about 8" of wet heavy snow.
 The next two storms brought LESS than was forecast for our area - Winter Storm Quinn on the 7th gave us about 6" (originally forecast to be in the 10-16" band).   Luckily, we had some warning this time and all stayed home to ride it out.  Followed by Winter Storm Skylar on the 12th which only left about 2" and instead skirted to the east and north and pounded Boston.  Now that we are days away from officially being Spring, I'm hoping this nonsense will slow down!

The weather hasn't stopped me from traveling for work, or from living my word PLAY while attempting to keep up with Life Book, FIT, and One Little Word.  My most recent creative efforts:


All watercolor, except the face.  I chose excerpts from the Desiderata for the writing exercise.  Tried to use drawing gum and a calligraphy nib as a resist technique (that was the lesson).  Failed miserably, but at least I tried!  Ended up having to go over it with a white paint pen to make it legible.


I tried to make the proportions on this face a little more realistic than my first (which were not meant to be proportional but whimsical) The eyes are still huge, but I like it for the expression.

Another Life Book exercise - my Quirky Bird - designed to showcase my own unique quirks and weirdness - like how much I enjoy singing in the car, loudly, and badly, but with complete abandon because there is nobody to hear me, shush me, or squelch my joy. - and how I am naturally clumsy and have two left feet (this poor bird's awkward feet were not an accident) - and how I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve...

A 6x8" mini vision board for my FIT journey.  No explanation needed.

I joined Susannah Conway's "Your Soul Speaks" class about tuning in to your intuition.  The most recent exercise was to create a vision board of what your soul looks like right now.  This is what came out for me.

And finally, another Life Book lesson - this time an intuitive abstract painting with watercolors and acrylic.  Finished with a botanical image.  The artist teaching this lesson had beautifully drawn leaves in ink.  I practiced on scratch paper and found my freehand ink skills were akin to a toddler drawing, so went with a Posca paint pen to complete this.  I used a photo of a sunset in California as my inspiration... feel like I maybe ended up with a sunset on Mars????  So entirely different from anything I would normally do!

I'm loving the time I'm spending being creative just for me.  None of these are art works, they won't be for sale, they won't end up framed or shared anywhere but here and in the classrooms.  And yet they make me so happy.

What is making you happy these days?  How are you making time to PLAY?