Apparently TypePad has been up and down today, I almost thought I wasn’t going to be able to post this evening!

My sister-in-law came over this morning with some pictures to scan.  We bought Grandma and Grandpa a digital frame for Christmas.  (A 10.4 inch frame from PhotoVu).  Unfortunately, it wasn’t here before Christmas (delayed at the factory in China….), but it is finally here and we are working on loading it with adorable pictures of our kids.  She ended up staying and chatting for quite awhile which was nice — it gets a little lonely here at home sometimes. 

Speaking of adorable pictures — I haven’t looked back at some of the really old ones in a long time.  My kids are cute now, but oh my heavens — they were SO CUTE CUTE CUTE when they were little.    Here’s one of my

favorites — Chocolate Chip Cookie Faces.

I did manage to get some stuff done or at least worked on today.  I’ll post about one of them tomorrow, since it’s a WIP, but the other is progress on my 12x12x12 for January.  I’m not going to post any pictures of the quilt itself, but I will post a picture of the thread I ended up using for my thread painting.  It’s some of my new ARC poly thread.  Very fun.  This thread is nice to work with — runs great in my longarm.  I’ll use it in my embroidery machine, too, someday….

I still have more work to do, and I decided that I’m going to probably be doing some beading.  I hope I make it in time for my reveal on the 16th!!!

Remember that cool new software program I talked about yesterday — ArtRage??  Well, I played with it a little bit more today, too.  I imported a picture of one of the boys, and used it to create a pencil drawing of his face.  I did trace to get the outlines of the shapes, and another time I will try to use the picture as just a reference and do it freehand.  I want to be able to draw so that when I draw things, they look like what they are supposed to, without being cartoony or stick-figures.  I realized something the other day about this.  I want to be able to sit down and draw a chair, or a face, or a tree, or whatever, but right now, my brain doesn’t really know what shapes actually make up those things.  I can’t just make them up out of my head, because that information just isn’t there yet.  I need to continue working on drawing from reality.  I did this some last year (I got Danny Gregory‘s book The Creative License and I got the book Drawing the on Right Side of the Brain), but I stopped for some reason — I need to get back on that bandwagon.

This is far from perfect.  I’m happy with how this turned out.  I know a few things I would do differently next time.  I’m particularly happy with his eyes.  Aren’t they gorgeous?

(That’s his seatbelt underneath his chin — his Daddy took this through the window while we were stopped getting gas — you can see the pump in the reflection…)

I think that’s enough rambling from me for tonight.  Thanks to all who visit.  Please comment if you can!