Side trip to Oregon...

Last weekend I took a quick trip back up to Oregon to see my friend Evie who had come down from Alaska for her friend's wedding.  Evie and I have known each other for 45 years! She is all dressed up from the wedding she had participated in, looking gorgeous!

Got a chance to visit with my sister for a little bit too. The last time the three of us were together was over 20 years!

I also stopped in at a couple of great shops in Ashland: Papaya Living and Red's Threads. Papaya Living is Anahata Katkin's gorgeous shop. Everything in it reflects her amazing artistic sense. I just wanted to pull up a cot and live inside the place!

Red's Threads was my dream come true -- a shop where I could wear everything in the store! Most colors in big name shops are not really for redhead complexions. This shop was just for us! The clothes I am wearing in the first photo above came from there actually.

Pushing myself out on a limb...

The thing about being retired...  I cannot believe time passes by so fast!  Whomever said being retired gives you too much free time was obviously not retired! Of course it has only been a few months still and I have had a zillion and one items on the longest to-do list in the world, so as I get through a lot of those things that needed to be done, I will indeed have more free time.

One of my intentions is to pursue a lot more artsy stuff and today I stepped a little out on a limb, or rather PUSHED myself out on a limb and bought some larger canvases!

Michael ' s had a buy 3 for the price of 1 sale today and I bought 6 large gallery wrapped canvases, from 20x24 to 24x36 inches. I have never painted larger than 16x20 inches before... here is my opportunity! 

I will be driving up to Oregon tomorrow for a few days to visit with my friend Evie who will be down from Alaska, then when I get back next week, who knows, maybe I will open up one of these canvases and get started! 

Out and about on a a muggy Thursday...

I am driving to Oregon this weekend and needed to clear some things out of my car. One thing was a large old comforter I had been carrying around until I could get it to the City Pound. They  are the people we took our dear Maggie to for cremation and we found out they needed donations of old blankets and comforters so we decided to give them an old blue one we no longer use (too many holes from cat claws!). They are down on Front Street under a mess of freeways in a weird little area I only recently discovered.

So as I was leaving I turned to look at their little garden and saw these delightful critters:

Even though several of them were rather dried out it was a cute attempt at making the garden suit the building. Of course to make it more realistic there should have been a topiary of a dog catcher running after one of them with a big net, doncha think?

A few more backgrounds...

It seems once I start playing with my Gelli plate I just cannot stop! I pulled it out again last night and made yet more backgrounds for some postcards! The orange and blue ones are just for me and the metallics is for the upcoming black-metallics post card swap over on MMSA.

These are just the starting layers. Each one is a piece of cardboard that I cut into 4 cards. No idea yet what I will do next but I like to have all phases of the cards around in case my muse hits me on the head and tells me she wants to play!

Sharing these oranges one with Mandarin Orange Monday.

Sharing these blues one with Blue Monday.

And these 2 metallics and black are the start for the upcoming swap over on MMSA.

As I make these into post cards I will show them here... might be a while because I like to have a lot of variety at hand to choose from.

Also linked to:
Creative Every Day

Made a few more postcards...

This time not for a swap but to keep on hand for sending out Mail Art. These are similar to ones I made before but different color sets.  I have pieces of cardboard big enough to make 4 post cards so I did 2 sheets of it with gelli prints and stamping then I cut them up and doodled and stamped more. Now that I have started swapping and putting my snail mail addy out there I am starting to get mail art I want to respond to and now I have a few post cards ready to go!

Linked to:
Creative Every Day

Intentions vs Reality...

I love the idea of setting intentions to do something. We do that in yoga class a lot. It would happen more if I actually went as much as I intended to go, but that goes in the reality part later. I had a lot of intentions for once I retired...

and the reality of it so far is that a lot of them are happening at a very slow rate. I know, everyone tells me I have all the time in the world... but I don't really. I have this one moment. One moment then another moment.  I have today. Then tomorrow I will have another today. THAT is where I am falling down... I have a lot of things planned for future days but am not doing them each today.

If that doesn't make sense, don't worry... it is just lately forming in my own mind as well. This whole retirement thing is a little different that I had imagined too. That is ok, it is just not what I expected. Which is also ok... one of my intentions was to let go of some of my tight expectations..

Today I am doing a lot of food shopping. This is one of the lovely benches outside of Nugget Market, a sort of cross between Whole Foods and a regular supermarket. I want to go get some coffee and sit on this bench but it is too hot, so I will sit inside and contemplate more on intentions...

Sharing the bench with Weekly Top Shot.

Garden visitor...

As I was reaching for my geranium to re-pot into a larger container I was greeted by this cutie! A praying mantis always seem to be saying "I'm ready for my close up now!"

Visiting Alameda...

Last Saturday I took Andy to Alameda for his birthday surprise. I had a great many things planned but it ended up that the first one was so fascinating we stayed there over 4 hours and didn't do any of the other things I had on my list (and I had thought we would run out of things to do! Hah! Silly me!)...

Our day started with a filling breakfast from the Wren's Cafe, nestled along Highway 80 about 35 minutes out of Sacramento. Here is a photo from their Facebook page because I totally forgot to take a photo of it that morning!

Then we drove down 80 to 880 and into Alameda. I had not been there for probably 40 years and had never been to anything historical there so this was a treat for me too.

I had several places on my list:  USS Hornet, Alameda Naval Museum, a microbrewery, the Pinball Museum... a little history and hopefully a lot of fun!

The USS Hornet has quite a history, both in wartime and with the space program. HERE is info all about it and how to get there if you are in the area. I took a ton of photos but here are just a few to show you the vastness of it all...

HERE is my Flickr album if you would like to see more photos from the USS Hornet excursion.

After spending 4+ hours at the USS Hornet though, we were hungry and went searching for lunch at 2 pm. Found it in a delightful deli on Webster Street too! (Forgot to take photos of the food, we were so hungry!)

Then Andy decided he would rather do the Pinball Museum another time and so we took off for another old favorite, Port Costa and the Warehouse Cafe. We hadn't been there for several years so we stopped in for a brew before heading home. An eclectic biker bar dive if you've ever seen one, but lots of brews and that afternoon a very funny bartender who kept us amused.

I was glad Andy enjoyed his birthday surprise as it is sometimes quite a challenge to come up with something inventive for him, especially after he has surprised me the month before for my birthday!