Merry Christmas to All.

HAPPY, Merry Christmas indeed. The day has dawned brighter - both literally and inside my "attic." I've been dusting away a few "mind cobwebs" and using art to help the process along.
Here is our Oregon sun, finally come calling around 2 p.m. Everything is dripping as the ice and snow melts in the trees and on the roofs.
I took a picture of one of our birdbath snowcones. This is a ceramic birdbath my mother made for me. It really should not have spent the winter outside, but ... guess what?
Today I worked on housecleaning, which in its own mindless way is a good sort of meditation. Scrubbing the tub gives you time to think and you can certainly use it as aerobic exercise if you've waited as long as I have to clean the tub.
Company is coming on Sunday so I'd really like to have a clean bathroom. Sometimes people check out the tub, did you know that?
In between I made a batch of cornbread for the meal on Sunday. We are having an open house and, of course, I will prepare enough food for a small army. (Here I am in artistic "watercolor" mode, thanks to Photoshop, posing by the sink and clean dishes.)
There was laundry and folding clothes and getting wood and building a fire in the fireplace. We had steak on the barbecue for dinner with a green salad and brussel sprouts. Need some greens this time of year! (Looked nice and I almost took a picture, but I stopped myself. Enough with the pictures. Let's just eat it - not shoot it.)
Then it was time to paint paper. It's plain white drawing paper, and I painted it on both sides with white gesso. (I want to try clear gesso. Someone in my SoulJournal group mentioned it. You can order it from Dick Blick. I really want to see if it coats journal pages and images better than the other things I have tried. I am not happy with matte gel.)
Anyway, with the gesso I mixed in acrylic paint - sprinkled water on some of it, and on other pieces painted on more gesso and then wiped with a wet paper towel. After the paper had dried, I stamped it with a homemade blue foam block stamp I embossed with old keys. Then I stamped a bird print in a few places. (I carved that stamp, inspired by one done by Mel Stampz - love that lady's work.)
Then I decided to emboss them with gold glitter and a heat gun. And then I used a "tag" cutter that my pal Sylvia loaned me and some yarn. Now I have quite a few tags, which will come in handy on Sunday when I give gifts to family members we didn't get to see on Christmas.
Or I can use them for some other purpose. Do you see the paper I used to cut out the tags? Now there are openings - arches - that might be perfect to glue in front of other pictures. Stuff from magazines that need to be spotlighted in their own little arch or shrine. Best get to bed. Another big, exciting day tomorrow - femminismo

The Dark Is Rising ... .

Today, as the snow began falling here in Oregon, was the day to read that book by Susan Cooper - "The Dark Is Rising." I read it when I was about 30, and it was a spooky experience because I began reading it on a day it started snowing - exactly what was happening to Will in the book!
(Read the book series if you haven't. Some of them are better than others, and I haven't seen the movie. I'm afraid it won't be as good as the book.)
The same is going on today, with mini drifts of snow almost all day. Outside the temperature is lowering - as the dark is rising, getting close to official winter with the solstice. The wind is knocking bushes against the side of the house, making things even spookier. The thermometer says it is 24 degrees! Brrr!
There is an animal living under our house, we are pretty sure. I found the insulating block knocked out of the ventilation opening near the front of the house on Saturday. We were going around making sure we were ready for this cold weather. I put it back in, wondering what was going on because I had already replaced it once.
I came back by later and found it out again. Something must have come out. I got down on hands and knees and took a close look and found the screen has a hole in it - about big enough for a cat.
We were afraid to close it up for good. The animal would be locked in and - well, a dead animal under the house? Maybe not quite as good as a live animal. It's just trying to stay warm but, sorry, it doesn't belong under the house. Maybe we could borrow our neighbor's humane trap? We'll see.
On Saturday, Sylvia brought us cobbler made from their garden-grown squash. It was delicious! She and I had a cup of tea together and talked for a while.
After she left I cooked up a batch of winter vegetables with onions, garlic, olive oil and a little white balsamic vinegar. There are parsnips (such a perfumey taste to me - so exotic), beets, butternut squash, another kind of squash - so yummy. And the kitchen smelled like heaven.
Then I made clam chowder. We had a warming supper with cobbler for dessert.
Today, Sunday, while it snowed, I did some journal pages in my altered book. And I carved a new stamp. I did the rabbit on Saturday. I like the lady face. I made one in the snow too, but it was so powdery the picture sort of "blew up" and collapsed in.
Also, today I watched "Prelude to a Kiss," an old Meg Ryan, Alec Baldwin movie and I had forgotten how wonderful the old man in the movie was: Sydney Walker. I see now, after looking at imdb.com, he was the original "Old Man" in the play written by Craig Lucas. Marvelous writing, too, in the movie. Alec Baldwin was very good, I thought, playing a young man who has lost his love when she switched bodies with the Old Man. I love movies about people switching bodies and lives. Anybody up for that? Anyone want to go to work for me tomorrow, in the snow, and proofread - while I live your life in Key West drinking margaritas by the pool? Anyone? - femminismo