Day 35- Syrup

Syrup you ask? Yes I drew a bottle of syrup, but there's a really good story to go with it. What is the price you would pay to take a shower before 10 at night? Today the price I paid was pancake syrup. Except I wasn't the only who paid the price. Simon paid everyone else. Everyone being Desi, the dog, the floor, the table, the carpet, the sofa, the dog kennel, and then Steve and I via cleanup. I didn't get pictures of Moby, I did get picture of Desi.
Mistake 1: We let the boys play together while we showered and got ready. Mistake 2: I didn't clean up breakfast first. Mistake 3: Did I mention I left my 4 year old unattended?
Steve got out of the shower and ready first. He went to check on the boys. He called for me to come quick, come now, I had to see this! I looked. Desi was standing in the middle of the front room with a huge grin on his face, patting his head. Not exactly patting though, more like sticking and unsticking his hand to his head. He was completely covered in syrup, and he was happy. I imagine it must have felt cool to have your hand stick to your head if you've never experienced it before.
I got got out of the nice clothes I was wearing, Steve sent Desi up to me and I plopped him in the bathtub.
Next Steve found the dog. Poor puppy dog, I wish I had taken a picture of him. Even more covered than Desi and then after he went outside he came back with sticks, leaves, dirt, and grass stuck to the syrup. Moby had to go outside. Simon was nowhere to be found. Hiding. In the bathroom trying to remove all evidence from his hands and clothes. He was found naked in the bathroom trying to change his clothes before we realized he was covered in syrup. When Steve found him he said, "Uh, Daddy, I need new clothes." Busted. Up to the bathtub too.
Steve cleaned the carpets. Steve cleaned the table. Steve cleaned the sofa. Steve cleaned the dog kennel. I cleaned the boys. Simon went and helped Dad clean too.  Moby got cleaned. The downstairs bathroom got cleaned (they get really dirty after you give a dog a bath, but that's a whole 'nother story). I was no longer clean. I was sticky. I smelled like wet dog. Lego Lord of the Rings got deleted of the Xbox.
And that my friends is one of the exciting things that happened in our house today. I'm not gonna tell you about how Simon knocked over and broke a grandfather clock yesterday, Steve took the shattered glass door in to get replaced today. Oh wait, I just told you. Boys+parents distracted by football game=disasters. Multiple disasters. But that's a whole 'nother story too!

major shadows on this trying to get a focused picture

the bottle was halfway full. or was it half empty?

In the following pictures Desi has absolutely no water on his head or hair- everything you see is syrup.

line down the nose- syrup.

matted hair- syrup

dribble on the nose- syrup

product making the hair stay down and stick out- syrup

 glistening drops in the the hair- syrup

 brown all over the forehead- you guessed it- syrup!

all clean! this boy is too cute!

I can't believe Simon did this. He was in major trouble. New consequence is loss of toys/tv/video games. Lord of the Rings Legos (demo) is his favorite thing right now so that's what went. Whatever he is currently playing with is what we take away because that seems to have the most dramatic impact. Time-out wasn't working so we had to get creative. Perhaps this story should have gone on one of my other blogs? Oh well, there's a drawing of a syrup bottle so it can totally belong here, right?

Day 33- Angel riding a Dolphin

I wish I had a clever title for today, but I don't. My sis-in-law Kristy who gave us the elephant I posted yesterday texted me a picture of this beauty today. She said she got it for our anniversary this year and was sorry she missed it (honestly though, who remember those things for other people besides yourself and your parents maybe?) It's a soap dish. I can't say much more, I don't think there are words out there to do this justice.

 Just realized the picture is out of focus from when I snapped a picture of the sketch with my camera. Whoops, you aren't missing out on too much though so don't worry, my drawing didn't really do it justice anyway and I was looking at a tiny half inch picture on my phone when I drew it.

Day 32- Elephant

I love this golden elephant, and I will draw it again this year. Today is just a quick sketch of it, eventually I will do a more detailed one, it has a metallic finish and ridges etched into it which makes for lots of dramatic differences and lots of fun shading. But for today a sketch. My sis-in-law Kristy gave this to Steve and I one year for our anniversary. When she gave it to us I was kinda like what the heck does an elephant have to do with our anniversary, but I freaking love this thing and it is always front and center in our house, he is just so cute, I can't explain it, I love him and he is so perfect! There are a few things I don't quite like about the sketch but I was tired and didn't care too much. Things being the ear not being rounded right and the little bit of shading in the front that I did do looks awkward, and I made his trunk curve forward to much. I didn't do this cute little guy justice, so I will definitely be doing him again eventually, and it will probably take a couple of hours instead of 5 minutes.

Day 31- Dinosaur Lamp

Every night when I am sitting in the boys room in the recliner nursing Desi I stare at Simon's lamp on his nightstand and I think, "I should draw that for my picture one night." Tonight I drew it, except I wasn't in their room when I did it, and I couldn't remember exactly what it looked like, so I had to look it up online and find a picture of his lamp so I could draw it right. Since I'm not posting a picture of the actual lamp this time, none of you would actual know if it had 3 spikes on its back or 4 or the exact curve of the back, but I wanted to get it right. I think this type of drawing is called a gesture, when you kind of just get the the gist of what you are drawing and are all detailed. At least in my mind gesture drawings are supposed to have squiggly edges instead of straight lines, so that's what I did. I actually added the squiggly lines after I was done with it because it just seemed too boring without them.

Day 29- Cell Phone

Earlier this week Desi dropped my cell phone into the dog bowl. Luckily I still have Steve's old phone hanging around just in case something like this happens. I actually keep it in the diaper bag in case we are out when this happens. Prepared, I know. Really I just know my self and my kids and what we are capable of. I'm honestly surprised my phone still works with as many times as it's been dropped on the ground, thrown onto the ground, stepped on, dropped in water, etc. I've had this phone since November 3, 2009. That's a pretty long time, and this thing has held up to a lot of abuse. But anyways, after Desi dropped in the water bowl, I screamed and grabbed the phone out of the water. I tried to pull the case off so I could take the battery off quickly, but of course I couldn't get the case off. The case falls off every time I, or Desi, drop the phone, but of course this one time I need to come off quickly, it doesn't. While I was trying to yank the case off I saw the screen light up everytime I pushed the buttons accidentally, so I knew it was still working but I didn't want the water to fry something. I finally got the case off, pulled the battery out and stuck the battery and SIM card in Steve's phone. Of course this happened on a day when I was trying to schedule meeting up with two different people who's numbers I did not have because they were on the phone not the SIM card (back up all your numbers onto your card! Now! Go! I'll wait!) Anyways, I let my phone sit for a day just in case even though I was pretty sure it was okay since it was turning on while I was taking the case off and it was. I love my phone. I've only had Samsung cell phones and they are the best, I beat the crap out of them and have never had one break or die or screens crack or anything like that. Love my Samsung's! So without further rambling I present to you a slightly out of scale drawing of my dear cell phone!

Day 25- Anniversary Flowers revisited and a few guilty confessions

I may have cheated on my picture a day blog already. I have may have cheated more times than I have let on. Today I cheated. This week I cheated. A lot. I drew both shell pictures on the same day. I also drew yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and the next day all on the same day. :/ :) Why am I telling you this? I don't know, but I am, and I'm still dating them all with different days and pretending they were all drawn on each day. They are still a drawing a day, just not drawn on that day. And hey, it's my blog, I can do whatever I want right. Right? And you'll keep reading even though I am cheating sometimes? Right?
Today is another quick sketch of that pretty lilly from the anniversary flowers my sweet husband gave me almost 2 weeks ago... How's that for yet another confession on this post. The flowers have been nearly dead  for a week and sitting on the table still because I love them. Nothing to get you to clean up like having company over!

Day 24- Anniversary Lillies

My anniversary flowers are mostly dead, but they were so pretty I kept hanging on to them. We are having company over though, and it's a little embarrassing to have these dead flowers sitting on the table, so I took a few pictures of the dead flowers so I could draw them. All that's left now is a sprig of eucalyptus and some purple flowers that I'm not sure what they are. The stem on of the big beautiful lillies broke and the lilly was hanging upside down, but I thought it still looked very cool so here it is. Just a quick sketch, very quick, like less than 5 minutes, which compared to the 2+ hours others can take is, well, quick.

Day 23- Ammonite sketch

Today's picture is another version of yesterday's drawing. Just a sketch of the ammonite. Ammonite is a fossilized shell. Ours is from Madagascar 120 million years ago. We bought it at the Rock Shop up in Virginia City once when we were on a date there in the winter time a few years ago. Virginia City is fun, but it's definitely a lot more fun in the summer, and there's more to do there in the summer. This past fall Steve and I went there and took my mom, dad, and sister Leslie. We went and did a ghost tour. It was a little hokey, but pretty fun I thought. After the ghost tour we went to the cemetery in town that was featured in the show Ghost Adventures. That part was spooky and I was pretty scared at first.

This is the Ammonite

This is my sister and dad in Virginia City last fall

Day 22- Ammonite Pointillism

My parents are here visiting and today is my mom's birthday! Happy Birthday Mom!! While they've been here we have been doing some thrift store shopping looking for a nightstand for their guestroom. My mom just refinished an old door from the house on our property in Illinois. Although it's not actually our property anymore since my parents sold the place almost a year ago. I will do a picture of that place someday, it holds a special place in my heart. Anyways though, my mom refinished the door to use as a headboard and it turned out so cool. While we were out shopping one of the thrift stores had a really cool pointillism picture so I decided to do pointillism for today's sketch.I got tired of making dots so it isn't quite finished, you get the idea though.

Day 21- Break day

This is a picture I started a long time ago. It was supposed to be a gift for my mother-in-law, but I never actually finished it and gave it to here. I did a grid transfer drawing of my son, and my nephew. I need to add my other nephew and son now too. One of these days...
P.S. about the lame writing, still tired because I am posting all of the 15th-21st at the same time, and I'm so tired, my eyes keep rolling back in my head and I keep forgetting what i'm typing. Hope these past few days make sense... I know it doesn't make sense, because it's not actually days, the past few posts.. hopefully the posts make sense, if they don't I hope no one kills on our walk back to the hotel.  Oh my goodness, don't know what I'm typing, I'm thinking about my and Steve's trip to Belize and walk home from a restaurant after dark and how scary it was, don't know where that came from though. Ugh, I need to go to sleep. Goodnight!

Day 20- Candlestick

Tonight I sketched a candlestick while watching the movie Elektra with my dad and husband. My mom went to bed early, I think she was probably tired from driving up from Vegas. I am so excited my parents are visiting, and I think it's cool they get to see my side of the picture a day blog, the part where I actually draw a picture every day, and they get to see the process of me drawing and how long it actually takes. It was neat. SO here is today, a candlestick. I have a pair of these. Steve and I found them at a thrift store in Sparks after we bought our new house. They were only $.97 each! This same thrift store is where I found my pottery barn pillows with down inserts form $2.97 each! A steal if you ask me. This one probably took me 1-2 hours while we were watching the movie. Probably closer to 2 because I don't remember all of the movie which means I was not paying attention because I was drawing.

picture taken later at different angle and with different lighting than when I drew it

Day 19- Dog Brush

Tonight, while the boys were in the bath I combed Moby with the doggie brush thing. He sheds a lot, and he has black fur, so it makes my carpets look really dingy. The other day I emptied the canister before I started vacuuming and by the time I did only the front room, the entire canister was full of hair and dirt. Yuck! So in honor of my close relationship with Moby's brush I present to you a drawing of Moby's hair brush. (I am so tired, I keep falling asleep while I type, so I hope this ends up being coherent)

Day 17- Pumpkin Head

Today's picture is my baby Desi-boo (who was actually a year old when this picture was taken this past fall).  He is holding on to dad's pumpkin at a pumpkin patch we went to with my sis Les, her two kids, and my mom when we were last in Idaho. It was really fun and the kids loved it. We got to ride in a "train" to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins then we rode it back to the rest of the place for games and a corn maze. It was pretty fun, it was a little cold outside, but that's okay we had fun anyways.

I purposely did not include his head. At first I was going to do the pumpkin only, but then decided to add Desi because I wasn't sure how to shade realistically without him there. 

Day 15- Owl Gloves

My sister Leslie gave me these awesome owl convertible mittens/gloves for Christmas. They are so freaking cute I absolutely love them. They have these little pom pom ears and are brown knit. I realized partway through this drawing that drawing knit gloves is a bad idea. There are a ton of little threads making up those suckers. So I kind of cheated and made the look of the threads without actually drawing every single thread. It is surprisingly difficult for me to fake texture because I am a bit of a realist I guess you would say, and I like to draw things exactly how they look, so not doing the real texture was difficult, but I do like the way they turned out. I really need to get a manicure, my nails are horrible and uneven. I've never had a real manicure or pedicure before can you believe that!? Just sisters and roommates and myself have done these nails.

picture of sketch taken with my camera, what looks like shading at the bottom is actually the shadow of my camera.

 picture taken later at a different angle

My orange chair

I just though it would be fun to post a picture of one of the things I have talked about often in my posts so far. My orange chair. I love my orange chair. I actually have two of them. I bought them when I was in college, summer 2005. My best friend and roommate Arielle and I were at a thrift store just a couple blocks from the apartment we lived in, when we stumbled across this beauty! It was love at first sight for me, and I just had to have this chair, it was perfect! the color, the lines, the style, the buttons. I'm not sure what it was, but I had to have it, and it had to be mine! So I bought it, even though almost every apartment in the Provo area comes furnished, and I didn't really need it, I bought it. I want to say it cost $20, but I can't really remember. Arielle and I carried it down University Avenue together (it's one of the main streets in town), you know she loves me if she was willing to help me carry it, and put the ugly thing in our apartment! We got honked at and whistled at a ton during that couple block trek back to our apartment, it was quite entertaining I'm sure to see two tiny girls carrying this hideous chair down the street. Now you may be wondering where the second one comes in, since I only mentioned one so far. Well, a few days later, I was back at the store, and they had another one! Another hideous orange chair, it's twin, a match made in heaven, there were two glorious wonderful chairs. I couldn't just leave it there when I had it's companion in my apartment, that would be cruel, they were friends, soulmates, they'd lived their whole lives together, and who was I to separate them and end their life together? I'm sure they'd been together for at least 30 years, maybe even 40! I can't remember how I got the second one back to our apartment, but it didn't matter, I had two matching wonderful orange chairs. I still love them as much today as I did that day I found the first one. And they are so so comfy. One is up in our loft area and one is down in our family room, we always fight over who gets to sit in them. One day when we have better seating in the family room they will both be up in our library loft with a cool end table between them, but for now, they are separated once again, this time by a railing and a flight of stairs.

Day 14- Break

Break day again! Thank goodness. There is no way I could make it through an entire year of this, it's really hard to find the time to do this and actual dedicate and apply myself to whatever it is I am drawing. That drawing of my dog earlier this week, it took me over 2 hours to work on, and it still wasn't quite perfect. Today's picture is another one from out of my high school art class sketchbook. It is some roses that were in my mom's garden. I think they were yellow roses.

Day 13- Nightstand

It's late, I'm tired. I don't want to come up with something to draw, but I'm carrying all my stuff in to my room to plop down into my bed  and draw something. So I set it all down on my nightstand, my sketchbook, my can of pencils and pens, and my phone. Why do I carry around the whole can? I almost always use the same pencil anyways. I think about doing a "gesture" of my lamp, but then decide to just sketch my nightstand and lamp area. I love this little vignette. A picture of my sisters and me from a long time ago, a vase of orchids, a sculpture my sister gave me (it was from a previous marriage of hers), a picture of the Reno temple, a painting I did for fun one day in college at that same sister's apartment, and my lamp. I made it, out of ribbon, fabric stiffener, and a large bouncy ball.

Day 12- Anniversary Flowers

Today is our 6th Anniversary of our Wedding! Married 6 years. Sometimes I think, 6 years, that's barely anything, and other times 6 years seems like quite a long time. Either way, I'm very happy to be married to Steve. I love him, and he really is my best friend, and quite attractive to boot, I feel pretty lucky to have him. This morning he brought me breakfast in bed when he got home from work (have I mentioned he works nights so he gets off work at 8ish am). He brought me two plain glazed donuts (my favorite) and some strawberry milk. He also gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and a very sweet card. I was lame and didn't do anything... I know, I know, I suck horribly. But we are finally going to go on a date on the 16th, I'm thinking to celebrate our anniversary, so I will have to have something special for him that night. In honor of the flowers he gave me, I chose to sketch one of the lillies from the arrangement. These lillies in the arrangement were orange and beautiful, sadly the boys end up destroying them on the 15th while I am in the bathroom. The entire contents of the vase (flowers and water) end up on the dining room table and floor. Not to mention all of my paints and some other stuff. Mom is very, very, angry. We also had lillies at our wedding, those ones were white and beautiful. My mom did the flowers for our wedding and they were so pretty.

I didn't *really* finish this one either, I had more I wanted to do but the boys walked in at this point, and came straight towards the flowers I was drawing and bumped the vase and moved them, and since so much of this one was dependent on the angle and lighting it couldn't really be replicated elsewhere in the house, and I am satisfied with this even though there is lots of white on the page still.

I snapped this photo of them after I was done sketching from a similar angle as when I was drawing.

Day 10- Mobius

This is our dog Mobius. In real life he isn't quite so skinny looking, and his face is a little darker too. I love this dog, he is the perfect dog for us, and we were incredibly lucky to find him. He had only been at the pound for about an hour before we found him. Steve wanted to go to the pound earlier in the day and I just didn't want to, it didn't seem right to me to go look for a dog because I wasn't sure yet if I was ready for one, and like I said, it just didn't feel right, and we were kind of in a hurry to go have lunch with Steve's old lady friend Rachel. Luckily, we didn't go earlier in the day, we barely made it to Rachel on time anyways, and we wouldn't have found this dog. I have no idea why anyone would get rid of this dog. He was picked up by the county and no one ever claimed him. He is the sweetest guy, he is about 2-3 years old, loves playing catch, likes going on walks, is great on a leash (doesn't pull), doesn't bolt from the house when we open the front door, isn't aggressive with his food (Desi can be down at the dog dish messing with his food while he is eating and he doesn't care), doesn't beg for food or jump up on the counter or table looking for food,  is kennel/crate trained, house trained, doesn't jump on people, doesn't jump on the furniture (unless we tell him it is okay, he is now allowed to get on Simon's bed, but that is it), rarely barks, gets along with other dogs (except for the ones in Steve's family, which he gets along with ok, but the other dogs are kind of aggressive towards him trying to exert their dominance and it just scares Moby), is a little timid and shy but so loving, has the sweetest saddest eyes, loves the boys, loves Steve, and loves me (although he always brings the ball to Steve even though I'm the one that throws it! and it makes me really mad too). Seriously the perfect dog, someone spent a lot of time training him, and I can't imagine why they would leave him behind even if they foreclosed on a house and had to move suddenly, you'd think they would have given him to someone they knew! I also love that his left ear is always cocked, it's flopped over a little.

Day 9- Mobius Strip

Have you ever heard of a Mobius strip? Today I drew a Mobius strip in honor of our new dog we got at the pound today. Steve named him Mobius in honor of some robot protector thing in a video game, I just think it's a cool name. Regardless, we had some friends over and both people in the couple separately explained to Steve and I what a Mobius strip is, and we even got a demo, I have to admit, they are pretty cool. What you do is take a strip paper, turn it one time and tape it together. You now have a Mobius Strip, a three dimensional object that only has one side! Really, it only has one side. Don't believe me? Go ahead, find some paper and tear off a little strip, I'll wait while you find some paper and tape.... Now take a marker (sorry I should have told you get to a marker or pen while you were looking for the tape, they are probably in the same drawer), take your marker and start drawing a line down your strip, trace along it and just keep going, before you know it you will have done a line across the whole thing, and ended where you started without lifting up your pen! Craziness I know! So anyways, in honor of our new dog Mobius, and my math nerd self and friends, here is my very simple drawing of a mobius strip. 

It's sideways, blogger made it go sideways and I don't know how to fix it...

P.S.- The reason our friends told us separately is because the men were at our house watching the kids and playing video games while the women were supposed to be at a church activity. I went to pick up Ellie and Leslie and a dog kennel, and we ended up just staying at Leslie's (and Ricky's) house chatting for a few hours. Whoops! (While we were at Leslie's though was when she told us about a mobius stip, when we got back to my house is when Terre told us about them and made one and did the drawing a line thing, so cool!) Then Ellie and I went back to my house where she was able to get her husband Terrence, and kids and go home. It was a fantastic evening for the ladies and men, and I am excited that we are finally making a few friends in our new congregation at church.