I’ve been tagged!

... and the magnolias are in bloom!



A big thank you to Melanie at Redhead Art for tagging me! I now feel like a genuine member of the community of blogging artists!
So here are the rules (or “guidelines,” if you will, for those of you who shiver in your boots when you hear the word “rules”).

• List seven random facts/habits about yourself
• Choose another seven bloggers to tag and list their names in your blog
• Leave your seven tagged bloggers comments to notify them of their tagging and to direct them to your blog for tag instructions.

So here goes:

1. Almost every morning for breakfast I have orange juice, Malt-O-Meal, and coffee. But today I had a home-made breakfast burrito (eggs, cheese, onions, green peppers, tomatoes in a flour tortilla).

2. I've never been afraid of aging, I've always loved every age I've been while I was being it. I can especially remember loving being 17, 32, my forties have been awesome for the most part, and I'm even looking forward to turning 50 this summer!

3. I'm definitely a morning person. As soon as my eyes open in the morning, I'm ready for anything! But please don't ask me to do anything involving heavy thinking or intense creativity after 6 pm.

4. I love adopting things and furniture that other people are tired of having in their houses. About 78% of my home office set-up (i.e. my computer desk and keyboard table, my scanner table, and my writing desk) are found objects that we fixed up. The cute little chest of drawers that our tv sits on was a curbside find, and also, just last week I brought home (well actually, our across the street neighbor, a middle-schooler named Derek, carried it most of the way for me, since I had Trixie on the leash!) a really cool, big coffee table, which, after I paint it, will go great in a garden room in the country house we're fixing up. And not too long ago a neighbor down the street was cleaning out the trunk of his car and gave me a blanket from Mexico that he didn't want any more ... I aired it out and washed it, and it's absolutely beautiful! Now it's draped over the back of our sofa, and so far none of the cats has spit up on it. Bonus!

5. April is my favorite month.


6. Right now the objects on the computer desk right in front of me, in that catch-all area between keyboard and monitor, are:
• my work notebook.
• a coca cola cap left from when my husband was entering the codes on the coke rewards website last night.
• a tape measure.
• my empty coffee cup (I'll have to get a refill as soon as I finish this).
• some cherry blossom hand lotion.
• scripture art of Isaiah 30:15.
• reading glasses (another found object from when I was cleaning out the big house).
• four almost empty tubes of paint I brought in to refer to as I ordered art supplies yesterday.
• a huge paper clip.
• a bright pink flair pen.
• 2 “gratitude rocks” given to me a couple of days ago by my 7-year-old neighbor, Hannah. For those of you who don't know what a gratitude rock is, here’s Hannah’s definition: “every time you look at the rock, or feel it in your pocket, you have to think of something you’re thankful for, and say a little prayer to thank God for it.” Hannah’s very cool.

7. I love road trips. I’ve driven from here to California and back more times than I can count, and most of those trips were by myself. Just God and me. And my camera. It’s really fun. (Those solitary trips were before I was married at age 46, which is another fact about myself I'm sneaking in here, since this is No. 7 and there are no more after this). Now I love road trips with my husband. And I love driving through the desert. You can see sooooooooo far!


This is in west Texas, on a little road from El Paso to Midland/Odessa.

And now I'm supposed to come up with seven people to tag, but I don't even think I know that many bloggers yet, so I'll tag some of the ones I regularly check in with (besides Melanie, who already tagged me!):

• The extremely talented, hardworking, hilarious, wise-beyond-her-years and often informative Maggie at Greywaren Art, my main inspiration for starting an artist blog of my own. See her How to Juggle & Other Parlor Tricks post on March 6.

• The prolific (and thereby inspirational) and fun Kelley MacDonald, who recently got back from a painting trip to Holland, so these days you might find her here.

• An encouraging artist whose comments have spurred me on, and whose daily paintings I love to look at over and over: Kerri King.

• Another artist who has been very encouraging to me in her comments, a busy woman whose paintings I look forward to whenever she has time to post: Leslie Pease.