La Nina

I finally have someone to blame for the crappy and cold weather we are having and will continue to have at least for the next month. Someone posted a map on FB with the May temperature predictions and it's Below Normal through May. Drat. I guess I'm packing long jeans, long sleeved tees, warm socks, and a jacket for my watercolor week at The Clearing at the end of May. In three weeks from Saturday! But who's counting?

I went out this afternoon, fired up the snowblower, and drove it around to the shed in the backyard and exchanged it for the lawnmower. Despite the chilly temps I'm wagering that it won't snow enough anymore to need snowblowing. She says with her fingers crossed. While I was out there I saw that the lilac bush has started budding.

And under the lilac bush the little blue squills are blooming. I keep hoping that they'll spread out and make a carpet of Spring blue but so far only one clump has moved about six inches from the original planting. Ah well.

I turned to the next figure in the 15-Minute Artist book and found a sand dollar to draw. First I tried my hand at redrawing the wolf. It's better but it still doesn't look like a wolf's head. I even tried just drawing the head but that one looks like a grumpy monkey. The sand dollar is much better so that's what I'm showing you.

The daily art today said to fill the page up with potted plants. I realized that I can see leaf shapes in my head and can't transfer that inner vision to the paper so I just drew leaves as best as I could and used a lot of good colored pencils to jazz them up.

I gave in to temptation and cracked open the 10-Step Drawing-Everyday Objects book. The first figure was a wallet. I don't think I picked the right colors for the money in the wallet but it was a pretty simple thing to draw--and color.

 

After supper I whipped up a batch of WW Hot Chocolate Mix. I had all of the ingredients on hand except the non-dairy creamer which I got at the grocery yesterday. Now I can have hot chocolate whenever I have a craving. No more rationing it. And I am less than thrilled about the realization that I'm drinking hot chocolate at the end of April because I get cold. Grr.

I spent a lot of the morning amassing things to take to The Clearing. I printed out the supplies list for my class and have everything except a board big enough for the half-sheets of paper but that's on its way. No art store had one in stock so I had to order it from Michaels. I should have looked on Cheap Joe's Art Stuff website which is where I got the paper and palette but didn't think of it until just now. I'll check on there but since I had a 25% off coupon at Michaels I trust that I got it cheaper.

Today's toss was a bag of bags. I was digging around downstairs and found a package of small paper bags that I bought when I was going to corner the craft show lip balm market. That never happened and will never happen so I don't need the bag of bags. Someone will.

It barely got up to 40 degrees today but at least it was sunny so I took a walk around the block. I need to start walking every day to soak up Vitamin D and to get the stink blowed off, as my Grandma Angermeier used to say. Now that the streets and walks are ice free it's time to get out and walk.

I got a text from my renter this morning that her husband found a washout next to their other window well. I went over and checked it out and, sure enough, that one needs to be fixed too. I called the basement fixit guy and naturally that will add to the cost. Some days I think I should have carried through with my intention to put this place up for sale when Durwood died and let someone else deal with maintenance.

--Barbara