June 17, 2024 Monday--5am

Good morning!

Some days this is all we may get for clouds--lol!  I'll take it.  Better than gray skies and rain. :)

First of all--test results came in and no cancer--all is well. 

Keanna came on Tuesday.  

The drywallers sanded, sprayed on texture (like an orange peel), and painted this week!  Dagan sent me pictures of the tan base color.  All done!  I think that was on Wednesday.

Looking into the main room (hard to say "Great room" in a tiny house--lol!) toward the living room.

From living room toward kitchenette side of room.

Bathroom.

Studio.

They even fixed and repainted down the stairwell where they put in some dents and scrapes hauling down the drywall.  Will be nice when the electrician returns so we have some light down there.  So exciting!  May have cabinets installed this coming week!  Whoohoo!

Was 95 degrees on Wednesday!  Good grief!  I finally had to clean my AC filter and close the place up.

I worked on ICADs.  I'll show them all together.  

6/8 color: orange/ prompt: wave  (Obviously thought of this famous painting immediately and tried to draw a similar wave and Mt Fuji.)  Used my Sennelier palette...and for the next three, also.

6/9 color: extrovert (a kind of yellow)/ prompt: potpourri  (Some of these prompts are not great and I do skip them sometimes.)

6/10 color: Dutch tulip/ prompt: orange  (As you can see, I actually accidentally switched the color and prompt--oh well--like this better.)

6/11 color: flutterbye/ prompt: ferris wheel  I was in no mood to try to draw a ferris wheel--lol!  Made blobs and let them dry.

Did some squiggly line drawing...and ended up liking this one.  

6/12  color: yellow slicker/ prompt: ellipse  The top of the cup is the ellipse--ROFL!  Was in the mood for something silly and fun.  Used my first Altoid palette I ever made with the mishmash of paint tubes I had collected.  Used that little palette for the next three this week.

6/13  color: forest/ prompt: lost and found  Huh?  I should have done another abstract or something.  They can't all be winners--lol!  I started with a tree stencil and thought I could make a kind of scary forest a person could get lost in.  Not great, but I got to try these new brushes I had gotten ages ago that are supposed to make leaves or petals easily.  So it was worth it.  The leaves were fun!

6/14  color: pine forest/ prompt: recipe  Another forest green?  And recipe?  Just decided to play with swiping some color on the page and letting it bleed.  Was fun to see what the colors were in the old palette.

Since you guys don't know what I am talking about with all these little handmade palettes...

These are so old I can't remember what empty plastic container these first two are even from.  Cough drops?  Who knows?  What I would do is buy a small set of tube paints from different companies or just buy red/yellow/blue at least to try them out.  Was so long ago...I think I made all of these gradually between 2000 and 2004 when I was in college.  Bought empty half pans and full pans for really cheap and put them into an empty Altoid tin or something similar.  I saw it in a magazine.  Yes, this was before I was online.  And before people had caught on to what a good idea it would be to include actual color samples--lol!

Cheap Joe's.

Schmincke

Sennelier

Here's the first one I ever made from the three kinds of tubes I had--Sennelier, Schmincke, and Winsor Newton.  I had added Ws and Cs for warm and cool colors, I believe.  (Which I still don't fully understand.)

Learned rather quickly that the half pans are much more difficult to use because they are so small--lol!

M. Graham.

I used pop bottle covers!

Maimeri Blu

Winsor Newton.  I do think this container was from something called Fisherman's Friend cough drops.

Holbein

Daniel Smith.  Most expensive, as I recall, but I really liked them...still do.

Now the next two handmade watercolor paints I purchased from an Etsy shop maybe 5-7 years ago?  Can't remember.

They are a novelty type of paint with shimmer.

I bought these around the same time from Iuile Watercolors on Etsy.

They look very similar to the other small palette, but I can't remember if they are from the same shop.  No label on the "Fun" palette above.

But this is where I got the free dot paint card with my order that I recently finally used.

I did really like the Daniel Smith paints, as I said.  

So much so that I ordered a set of DS Mixing Colors.  Came with a little chart even.  That must have been somewhere around--goodness!--can't remember.  Must be 7-9 years ago?  Not too long after I moved here, I don't think and that is over 9 years ago. 

Almost forgot about the only big metal palette I ever bought.  Lukas.

This was so long ago...I think I bought this when I took the night class for adults at a local high school back in the early 90s.

You have all seen my big porcelain palette again lately.  I bought this around the same time as I was making all my little handmade palettes--early 2000s.  So old that I have no clue whatsoever which paints are actually in this palette--lol!  No idea.  But they all work just fine...all of them in all of the various palettes.  That's what I love about watercolors.  :)

So most of my collection of watercolors is quite old and gathered over many years.  But I am adding some new paints!  I'll show you later.  Not today--lol!

 Thursday I was going to go over to watch the boys while Dagan went to a luncheon at work.  Dagan called and said the guy's wife had covid and they had to switch it to the next week, but I went over regardless.  Dagan could run and pick up meds and such over his lunch then without the boys.  

Yes, Gramma looked up on the blog when we had worked on the Minecraft house...so Ian had been able to find the particular world we were building it in--lol!  And it is now labeled--Gramma's House.  

Ian suggested an entire floor be built above my first floor that was a huge aquarium!  Okay!

Liam was busy part of the time playing a different game on some kind of handheld gaming contraption.

The screen is cut in half.  Liam is on the top half and Ian and I are on the bottom half building my house.  This was Ian adding on the aquarium floor.  Those are pixelated fish swimming around.

It is all very confusing to Gramma.  Nothing makes much actual logical sense in Minecraft worlds.  I don't know how they can remember all the rules and all the abilities of the various creatures and all the rest.  We are in "Creative" mode, I was told, so that we aren't being attacked.  Well, thank goodness!

Before I left I wanted to go downstairs and see the place all painted for myself.  

The boys came with me.  

I believe the cabinets are next!  Every step it looks more and more like a real home. :)

Been closed up since Wednesday when it was 95 degrees.  Been in the 80s every day.  Supposed to have a reprieve in the 70s for three days, I guess, now this week.  That will be nice.

We so seldom see company on the patio anymore.

Allie was excited.  This adult rabbit was relaxed and taking a bath--lol!

Meanwhile...end of the week...went to use the blinds in the studio...(they haven't been touched for like three years now--besides being miserably ill, I can barely reach them over the art table).

Went to twist them open...

...and the string snapped right off.

I don't like maintenance to come over when I'm not here...so Leah said she'd bring over a sheet or something and hang it up for me.  I'll deal with it after I am done with all these appointments.  But in the meantime, ever since cataract surgery I have trouble with bright light glare (causes aural migraines) so I'm fine with having a sheet over the window for a while.  That's why when I WAS in there, I haven't touched the blinds and left them closed.  Should have left well enough alone, eh? LOL!  

I haven't been doing the ICADs each day.  I usually miss a couple-three days and then do more at once on a good day.  Whatever works, right?  And I always clean everything up, of course. 

I don't know if you can tell but the three brushes I used to make the leaves are kind of chopped off on one side.  I was getting the hang of them.  I'll have to try them on flower petals, too.

Here's the stencil I started with for the forest ICAD.  I think I prefer the trees being what you color and not around them.  I forget what this kind of stencil is called.

Well, I suspect we have lost our lawn care company.  

Do you see how tall the grass is?  It is going to seed!  They mowed at the apartment across the way.  They even mowed a strip on our side of the sidewalk, too.  Wonder if they will come to mow this week?

Oh, and Dagan sent me pictures Sunday.  They put the sticky backing on the jigsaw puzzle the boys put together for my studio.  Ian is pointing to the missing puzzle piece.

They showed it to me when I was there on Thursday--piece missing.  Wanted to know if I still wanted them to back it for putting up on the wall?  I said yes.  They have looked high and low for the missing piece.  You can hardly notice it.  Nobody nor nothing is perfect after all, right?

I think it will look colorful and bright--and they put it together.  Yup!  I will hang it.  :)

Well, that's it from here for this past week.  I have a new dentist on Tuesday and will watch the boys on Thursday.  They might start installing cabinets on Tuesday.  And I have some new paints to set up and ICADs to play with.  Life is good!

Allie--she is living the good life, too.

Till next week, my friends!  

*love and hugs from Fargo*

P.S. In case you're wondering...Blogger won't let me change my font color anymore.  Black it is.