A Painting a Week

I used to paint 10 paintings a week when I was selling on ebay, several years ago. Now I am lucky to paint one per week. For about 3 or 4 years, I didn't paint at all because I was just burned out. I am amazed at people who can paint something new every day. That is quite an accomplishment and I think very tough to do. I have to admit I am not to the point where I can whip out a painting at a moment's notice and have it be good. I still have to work at it and even then, it can be a real dud. The best paintings that I have done were really accidents. I just poured paint all over the paper and let it run together at will, then I painted my subject over it.


Here is "My Cat" watercolor and acrylic painting and it really is a painting of my cat!

"My Cat" in my Etsy Store

$52.00 earned- Cashcrate
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A Pomeranian Dog Painting

My friend's daughter got a little Pomeranian mix puppy for her graduation present. It's very cute and inspired this painting of a purebred one. Spring is around the corner and I can't wait. It has been a long dreary winter and I for one will be glad to have the sun shine on my face. Also can't wait for the spring flowers to bloom. I will be taking my camera out to shoot some more pictures and hopefully I will have more great material to paint.



Pomeranian Original Watercolor and Acrylic in my Etsy Store




$46.00 earned- Cashcrate
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Yuwie Pays You to Social Network

I had signed up with Yuwie last Fall but due to other commitments, I did not do much else. Now that I have had some extra time, I went to the site to see what the hoopla was all about. It looks very much like a Myspace page with the main difference being that Yuwie will pay you whenever someone views your profile, blog, your friends, comments and picture pages. Serious money can be made if you have a lot of referrals working under you. Yuwie takes its advertising revenue and splits it among its users unlike Myspace and Facebook.



No doubt, there is quite a bit of work involved to get those page views numbers but I have seen Yuwie checks with sizeable amounts on them so it is possible to earn some serious cash. Yuwie is growing by leaps and bounds and I am sure it will continue to do so now and beyond.

New Painting for the Month of February

I have been trying to create more artwork and as a result, have not spent too much time on blogging. It seems like time just flies by. I am wondering what happened to all the minutes in the day. There is no time to get everything done. This is the latest painting I have done, titled simply - Grapes.



Watercolor Original Grapes- in my etsy store.

GFCF Weekend Trip

This past weekend, a group of us went on a wine tasting trip to several wineries in the Walla Walla area. It was fun, although the weather did not cooperate at all as we were hit with freezing rain and then a giant snowstorm. Several of us had turned 50 so we thought it would be great to get away and do something a little different. My son came along and I wanted to see how difficult it would be to travel with him. I brought along gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) bread, muffins and a whole mess of GFCF snacks. We went to a deli for lunch called the Merchant Ltd. and it had several sandwiches. One thing on the menu looked like it would be GFCF and so my son had that. It was a chicken salad with pineapple, olives and a mustard oil dressing. Not totally sure it was GF but it was our only choice. The rest of the food was very good and we really enjoyed it. For dinner we went to the Creektown Cafe. It is a tiny restaurant with a very good reputation and it certainly lived up to that. I had called ahead and was told the chef would work with us on the GFCF entree and was well versed in diet restrictions. That was a relief to me. There was a sea bass dish on the menu that would have worked great except my son is not a big fish eater. The chef ended up making a grilled chicken breast for him with french fries. Andy was in heaven. He really enjoyed his dish. All of the other food was just excellent. For our first time travelling on the GFCF diet, it was not too bad. It went a lot easier than I had anticpated.

Gluten Free Product List

I have spent quite a bit of time looking for gluten free products. I just got through emailing Walmart to see if they could send me a list of their gluten free items since they have about 1200 GF products on their shelves already. Problem is I don't know what they are. I have found a few already but it takes a lot of time reading the backs of every item. Many don't have Gluten-Free in big letters on the front. I also found Safeway's Gluten Free product list on Gluten Free Steve's Blog. Who knew they had such a list! It's 12 pages long but it will be a life and time saver.

We are two weeks into the GF elimination diet and it has been going very well. I know that it certainly would not hurt Andy to be on it but whether it makes enough of a difference, we will have to wait and see.

I was watching Dr. Christiane Northrup on Oprah the other day and she was saying that as we get older, we have a much tougher time digesting wheat. She suggested that 1 out of 4 women have gluten intolerance issues. That number is huge. The more I read about gluten, the more it sounds like we would all benefit a lot by not eating it.

I have been trying lots of GFCF (gluten-free, casein-free) recipes. Andy has been the guinea pig but this latest one, he really liked.

Gluten Free/ Dairy Free Peanut Butter Cookies

1 tbsp flax seeds ground
3 tbsps water
1 cup natural organic crunchy peanut butter
1/2 banana mashed
1/4 cup brown sugar packed
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Microwave flax seed and water 30 seconds until you get gel like consistency. Mix the rest of the ingredients in. Drop by the teaspoonfuls on to the ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9 to 10 minutes. Makes about 12- 14 cookies.

This recipe was fast and quick and passed the taste test with flying colors!(Do not freeze cookies for later eating, they get too soggy.)

New Paintings to Keep A Smile on My Face

I have decided to make more of an effort to work on original paintings. This has been great for maintaining sanity in the midst of chaos. I wanted to do some winter pieces and also spring which is one of my favorite times of year.

Here are two of my efforts:





These are called, "Winter Crabapples" and "Bloom of a Peony" respectively. Now in my Etsy Store.