A peek into the last couple months of my life:
What I made:
I painted a landscape on a circular wooden canvas using acrylic paint. It features a mountain, a path, and some trees. In recent months, my acrylic landscapes don't have many elements in the foreground other than abstract grasses, but I liked adding a few extra things to this one. Acrylic painting makes me lose track of time. I love the process of putting the paint on the canvas, mixing colours to make them just right, and deciding where to put little highlights or pops of colour. (I think I could paint a landscape every day and still never get tired of it.)
The kids and I made some abstract art recently. Rosie and I chose to make mini-mixed-media pieces - we started with pencil crayons and then added some gouache afterwards. We used little square pieces of thick, watercolour paper, and masking tape to leave a nice crisp border. Malcolm used many different pencil crayons to make a colourful piece.
We also bought a big roll of paper from IKEA recently and have been having fun drawing on big pieces of it. I love that my kids love art.
As always, I made several new surface pattern designs for my Spoonflower shop, and I participated in a couple Spoonflower design challenges. I never do very well in these challenges, but I do like being given prompts for creating designs that I would not be making otherwise. The first one was a frog / toad design for Spoonflower's Leap Year Leap Frog design challenge. He's a cute (and possibly grumpy) fellow.
I also entered the "Day at the Beach" challenge on Spoonflower. First, I drew up little beach birds called Wilson's Plovers. I like their simple colouring and thought they looked like friendly birds. At first, I tried to add in some extra little background items, but ended up liking it better with a very simple linen-textured background.
After I made it and entered it, I decided it was probably too simple for the challenge. Spoonflower brings out so many incredible artists, but also just SO MANY artists. There are often over 1500 entries in a challenge, so it's not really the place for a more subtle design.
Instead, I drew a very colourful design using my favourite Procreate Brush (I made the 6B pencil even thicker, and I use it all the time!) which gives pencil crayon vibes. My design is more ocean-y than beach-y, but I think the shells and crab make it work for the challenge brief.
I created several coordinate designs from the elements of my "Day at the Beach" design to make a whole Beach Day Collection:
We had an old, beloved quilt that was falling to pieces. I cut it up to make one smaller lap quilt about a quarter of the size of the original (which needed a lot of repairs due to the many holes in it!) and I also made a teeny-tiny quilt out of it for Rosie's little mousie toy.
Ben and the kids and I made paper airplanes one night. We had fun making them and playing with them, and it was a sweet memory. I went for the classic and simple airplanes, and Ben looked up how to make more complicated ones for the kids to throw.
My sister-in-law, Jenessa, is a fantastic baker. She invited Malcolm and my niece, Emma, to learn about cake decorating (and I tagged along too!). Malcolm and I love watching baking competitions, especially the Kids Baking Championship - Malcolm always has so many ideas about what he would make, and so it was fun to see him in action!
I painted a fish with gouache. If you are an artist and don't have good gouache paints, this is your sign to treat yourself. I have Holbein's gouache and love using it. The paint is so vibrant. I never make reels for social media, but I made one for this. You can watch the reel on my Instagram, but here's a photo of the finished fishy:
What I watched:
Malcolm's class is watching a live eagle camera. The eagles, Jackie and Shadow, have 3 eggs which were about to hatch. Since last year, I have been obsessed with 2 bald eagles that I often see as I drive by the Bow River near Carburn Park here in Calgary, so I have been excited to get to see these other bald eagles up close on this livestream.
(Update: I watched this quite a bit and it seems like the eggs might not hatch this year unfortunately. The eagles are still doing a great job sitting on the eggs, just in case, through lovely weather and through immense amounts of snow. Malcolm and I found another live eagle camera that has baby eaglets in it right now and they are so fluffy!)
Ben and I are rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine again. I am also rewatching the Walking Dead. (When I draw, I like rewatching things I have already seen so I don't have to pay close attention or always be looking at the screen.) I watched some new episodes of Queer Eye, Love on the Spectrum, and I watched Shrinking.
What I did:
I got together with friends and family several times, including having a clothing swap with my sister, mom, cousins, niece, and sister-in-law; going for a walk (or two) at Carburn Park; having a bunch of work friends over; watching the Super Bowl for the first time in many years; going for a winter adventure and then good food with some SLP pals; connecting with an old friend; watching Ben practice his set for the Canadian National Barista Championship; eating often at Primary Colours (the restaurant Ben & the Monogram boys opened with Chef Matthias Fong last year); and hanging out with my two little sidekicks
I solo-parented a fair bit. Ben is always busy, but this year is even more so than usual. He was away a lot in the fall, and since January, he's been away to Houston, Lake Louise, Vancouver, Panama, Montreal, and is currently in Mexico. Between now and June, he'll be going to Chicago, Korea, and back to Panama. At the end of June, he's going to Copenhagen. I had been planning to tag along on the Korea trip, but he'll be so busy while he's there that now I am thinking I will try to go with him to Copenhagen. He will have one really busy day of work, but otherwise we can actually hang out for a few days there. Send me your tips for Copenhagen if you have been! Especially neat museums or markets that you may have visited there.
(Bonus: my mother-in-law is going to come stay with the kids so it will be our first real kid-free trip since Malcolm was born! Second bonus: this trip happens at the end of June, so I will have wrapped up my work for the school year and can truly relax!)
I turned 38! Ben and I celebrated by staying at the Fairmont Palliser, having an afternoon swim, eating good food at Bar Chouette (the scallops were my fav), mini-golfing, and having dessert and drinks at Major Tom (which is on the 40th floor, and has the best view), sleeping in, and brunch (where else?) at Primary Colours where we bumped into our favourite former neighbours.
I tried my best. My work (as a speech-language pathologist) feels tougher than usual this year. There have been huge changes at my work during this school year, a massive increase in our caseloads, and I have also seen a significant increase in the complexity of my work this year. It never feels like there is enough time to do as much as I would like during my work days. (Not to mention all the things that take time and energy outside of work!) Starting in April, we decided we will put Rosie in day-home for one extra day per week so I have some extra time for work, for art, or just for myself so that I don't burn out.
Okay, this one is new, but AMAZING: the other significant thing I did at the end of March was starting a new migraine medication and it feels miraculous to me. I have had migraines ever since I was a teenager (except when I was pregnant with my kids!) and these constant headaches have a big impact on my life. In recent years, it feels like I have been managing them better. I get Botox all over my head and neck and shoulders, I take preventative medications, and I also have good meds for when I get a migraine. (Not to mention a million ice packs and 'headache hats' in our freezer, always ready for me). The severity of my migraines has been much better with all these things in place, but the frequency of them has still been high (probably around 15 days per month where I need extra meds in addition to my preventative ones). Anyway, I started this new medication maybe 2 weeks ago and haven't had one migraine since. Seriously, this feels life-changing. (It's called Qulipta if you are curious). It was only approved in Canada last year, and it's expensive if you don't have coverage (thankfully, I do). Between Qulipta and Botox, my annual cost would be around $10K if I didn't have coverage! (But is more like $20-30 for the year out of my own pocket because of my coverage.) Keeping my fingers crossed that it continues working this well for me. As always, I get carried away when I actually make time to write on this blog! Thanks for reading if you have made it this far. May your spring be full of flowers, kindness, and hope.