Catherine Holman Giveaway!

Hey, everybody!

No, this gorgeous painting is not mine, darn it.  It belongs to the wonderful and talented Catherine Holman.  She is having a giveaway, and this wonderful painting can be yours!  All you have to do is go to her blog which is located at catherineholmanfolkart.blogspot.com

Go to her Saturday, April 18 post where you will see this painting and leave a comment about the painting.  You will then be eligible for the giveaway.  The painting is called "Beloved" and comes with the most beautiful little story.

You will have the greatest time looking through her blogsite.  She has the most beautiful paintings.  I sincerely mean that, which is why she has been on my "Favorites" links located on the side of my blog since I started this blog.  After you go visit her just remember to come back and visit me!  :)

I have also "spoken" with Catherine a little bit by email and she is the sweetest person.  Once you go visit her, you will be hooked!

The deadline to be entered in this giveaway is Friday, April 24 at midnight, so go visit her now!

Of course, I want to be the one to win this painting, (hee hee!) but if I don't, I hope you do!

Good Luck!

Carol B.

Thank You, Edie Britt

I can't believe I cried over the death of Edie Britt.

In case you don't watch Desperate Housewives, Edie Britt was the neighborhood slut.  Last night, they killed her off.  

Despite the character she played, there was something likable about her.  Maybe it was when they showed, deep down inside, how vulnerable she was and how much she wanted to be loved. There were also times when they showed her strength and determination to survive no matter what the tragedy.  I guess I'm just a sucker when a "bad" person shows their softer side, which is why, in my past, I got involved with too many bad boys I wanted to save.  (Don't try it.  It doesn't work).  But it was the ending that really got to me.  

I wish I could quote the exact words, but I was too busy brushing away the tears to remember, so you will have to know that the lines I write are paraphrased.  But as the final scene was being played out and Edie is talking about the final days of her life and death, and they are showing the vanishing neighborhood of Wisteria Lane and moving up to the heavens, Edie says something like, "They say dying isn't so bad if you've really lived, and boy, did I ever." 

You can hear the smile in her voice because, even though she did not live to see 50, she lived such a wild, full, adventurous life that she could say goodbye with no regrets.

It was this that made me cry.

I thought, could I say that?  Could I die today with no regrets because I had lived a full life, with all the gusto I could have ever wished for?

Hell, no.

I know I could say that I have a lot to be grateful for, but there is sooo much of life that I have never lived because I was either too scared to take a chance or I walked away from chances that were right in front of me.  Why?  Because deep down inside, I wasn't nice enough to myself to go for them.

I'm not saying I want to do wild, questionable things.  Even when I was young I never drank, smoke, did drugs, partied, or ran around.  I certainly don't want to do that now.  But there are so many of those little, everyday things I could do that would make life so much sweeter.  So many times when I could have started up a nice conversation with the person sitting next to me while I sat in a waiting room.  Going to visit my neighbor who lives two doors down from me and yet I've never visited her and the only time I talk to her is when I see her at the store she works at, even though our kids grew up together.  

Spending one whole day painting without feeling guilty.

Dancing with my husband who, this Saturday, I will have been married to for seven years, and yet with whom I have never been out dancing, even if it means I just turn on the CD player and make him dance with me in the livingroom. 

As I write this, I realize this is just the beginning.  As I write this, I realize this is another thing I will have to sit down and write in detail before the days, months, and years continue to fly by, dull and dry because I never took the time to even know what would make me feel like I truly lived a full life, much less actually lived it.

I don't want to die knowing I never truly lived.

So I will write my list.

And you can bug me and say, "Carol, have you done something on your list?"

And I will thank you.

And if you have a list you want me to bug you with, 

I will bug you, too.

Carol B. 

Taking Time To Plan For You

There are so many things I first heard about years ago that I am now finally processing.

I don't know why I do that.  

When it comes to learning things in school, I am very good.  I was always an "A" student.  And yet, when it comes to learning things about life, it takes me years of being knocked on the head before I get the lesson.

I was thinking today about what I heard another artist talking about.  She was talking about designing your perfect day, and asking what it would consist of for the perfect life you want. Not perfect as in nothing ever goes wrong, but that you are living the life you truly want to live.

What exactly would that day look like?

What exactly do you want?

Not, "oh yeah, I want to make a living as an artist" (or whatever your dream is) but what exactly do you want? 

What are the details?  What would each hour of each day consist of in order to live the life you want? 

Lately, I have been seeing some of the things I have wanted getting back on the road after having been sidetracked several months back.  But I can tell that I am still wasting a lot of valuable time and I am not anywhere near as productive as I know I can be.  

After listening to this particular online artist talk about not being vague with your dreams but to look at your life and define exactly what it is that you want, I realize I have not done that.

I heard that lesson a million years ago, about having goals and writing them down in detail, but that looked so boring and like it would be too much work and take too long to do.  It has finally hit me that yes, it takes a little time and work to do, but it would have taken maybe just a little afternoon to do and it would have probably saved me years and years of wasted, unproductive time.

I remember when I was getting my teaching credentials a few years back we had a lesson called "Spending Time to Make Time."  Not being Ms. Organized, I thought, what a stupid waste of time detailing every minute of every day's lessons.  Through trial and error I finally learned that yes, guess what?  If you take the time to write out beforehand everything you need to do, it saves an enormous amount of time because you have already planned out everything and prepared for every lesson, as opposed to the way I originally did things, which was to do them thinking I had everything under control, and then finding out I hadn't properly planned for this event or I forgot the materials I needed for that event.  Once I started planning my days and lessons in detail, what a difference it made in productivity as well as success.

I am glad I talked about it here because I can see that just in writing my thoughts about this down here in detail, I now feel more excited than ever to get down to the business of making a detailed plan for what I really want in life.  And I will be anxious to see the results.

I hope you don't take as long as me to learn lessons.

If you do, heaven help you  ;)

Hope you have a great weekend!

Love,

Carol B.

   

Beauty Truly is in the Eye of the Beholder

Have you seen the latest YouTube video sensation?  

I wanted to post it here, but apparently it is now so popular that it has been disabled from being copied.

So instead I will tell you that this is Susan Boyle.  I think she is from Scotland.  She was on the British version of American Idol, which Simon of American Idol also judges.  

I can only tell you to go to YouTube and look up Susan Boyle.  You will see many versions of her appearance.  Pick one of the longer versions that are over seven minutes long.  

As you will see, many people were starting to ridicule this woman who wanted a chance to display her talent just because she is so far from looking like what the world deems as "good enough," which means physically "beautiful enough."

But did she ever give everyone a smack in the face, including Simon.  

It is beautiful.

It is awe inspiring.

It will bring a tear to your eyes.

So go watch it, already!

Love,

Carol B.

Creativity

I've been thinking about this mysterious thing called Creativity.

What is it?  

How do you get it?

How come I am not as creative as so and so?

So many things you go through when your heart's desire is to be creative.  

What I find to be true is that the desire to be creative is the desire to express yourself.  This desire to express yourself can come in many different ways according to the person you are. Maybe you want to paint or sing, play an instrument or garden, cook wonderful meals or take photographs of the world around you. 

We all have different ways to express ourselves.  Expressing ourselves is expressing how we see something, whether it is with color, design, taste, sound, or touch.  And then there is happy, sad, bold, quiet, peaceful, raging.  The list is endless.

For those of us who may have difficulty expressing ourselves, what stops us?

I believe expressing ourselves means believing in ourselves.  Believing that our voice counts and that we, as human beings count.  

So how do we believe in ourselves?

By Honoring our spirit.

This is such a loaded topic in which I have so much to say, and so much more to explore.

But what I want to say is that being creative doesn't mean being perfect and waiting until you can paint that perfect painting or take that perfect photograph or cook that perfect meal.  It means honoring the voice of your spirit by picking up that paint brush and brushing it across the canvas, digging up the ground and planting those flowers, picking up the camera and pressing that shutter.  

Just take that first step, and do it day after day, just to show your spirit that you Honor it, that you Honor its voice.

The skill will come later.

But just for today, Honor your spirit by giving your spirit a voice to express itself.  Let your spirit sing with Creativity.

It has waited long enough.

Express yourself today.

Carol B. 

A Painting in Progress

Hello again and I hope you all had a great Easter weekend!

I'm continuing what I started as my post on Friday.  I thought it would be fun to show a painting in progress.  I have never done that before.  I have always shown a finished product. But I love to look at other sites where artists talk about how they do their work and when they show how that work progresses, so I thought I'd try it myself.  I hope you enjoy it.

If you read my post on Friday you know that I had started to post this on Friday but I had no idea how to post pictures in the place and order that you want to post them.  Every time I tried to post more than one picture they would all post at the top and not in the order I wanted them, so I could never tell a progressive "story" with my photos.  I asked on Friday if anyone could please help me with that.  

So the first thing I have to do is acknowledge the wonderful Ms. Julie King, who quickly came to my rescue, and I mean in a snap!  So I will also tell you that you have to go visit her at her site which is located at juliekingart.blogspot.com.

You will see her wonderful artwork, photography, and very uplifting and inspirational writing. Of course, do not go there until you have seen my wonderful post first!  HA HA HA!

All kidding aside, I thank her for generosity in helping me to do this and you can go see how wonderfully she posts her pictures because she really likes to show off with how she posts all her pictures.  HA HA HA!

Ok, before she decides she will never help me again, I am going to show the photos of my work in progress.

I started off with a little idea which I sketched in my notebook.  I played with the colors.  

This is what it looked like:

I then sketched in the design on a canvas.  I did not take a photo of the initial painted sketch I did on canvas.  But the next day I worked on the face and this is what it looked like:
Since I took this photo I have worked a little more on the background and of course I still have to work more on the face and everything as a whole, but this is to show the beginning of this work.

I have to say, when I first started to paint in the face I panicked because I had not done a face in a long time and it was not at all coming out like I wanted.  But I took a deep breath and I said, "yes, Carol, you can do it," and I continued and I must say, I am very pleased with the positive direction in which things started to go.  I can't wait to continue and see how it turns out.

So, now that I have posted my pictures and wrote about them I can see that the information Julie gave me really worked!  It's so exciting when you learn how to do something that you thought you would never be able to learn.  In case you have a site and don't know how to do this, go to my post on Friday, April 9, look in the comments section, and you can read the directions Julie gave me.

So again, thank you Julie, and I now give you all permission to leave this site to go visit her!

'Til later,

Carol B.

Happy Easter!

You can't please everyone.

But have a Happy Easter anyway!

Love,

Carol B.