Photos of the Week: Grove Creek Trail

Thanksgiving is almost here!!! Do you have your turkey ready?  I'm lucky this year. My very own mother is cooking the turkey for me. 

The fine fall weather has passed and it's cold now, but since I missed posting these hiking photos, I'm going to post them now and pretend that it isn't 30 degrees outside.  

It's a rare occasion when the husband has a day off at a time when our son is in school.  We took advantage of one warm afternoon and explored a new trail together to blow off some stress. The adoption home study is not for the faint of heart (and neither is hosting a birthday party with 13 little kids!).  With our home study, we have had to give so much information about ourselves, like really personal stuff, and we've had to do a lot of soul-searching to figure out how we really feel about things, our weaknesses and strengths, our parenting style, and so on. But, we know it will all be worth it one day. I can't wait for that day!

Holiday Home Decor Ideas: Decorate with Watercolor Winter Forest Paintings

We had our first snow of the season this week and it was magical! It got me in the mood to paint some winter forest scenes.

Turns out, painting misty, snowy forests are addicting.  I painted three versions and I'm working on a watercolor tutorial to show you how I painted them too! 

Once I had the paintings all finished, I popped them into some white frames and set them up with some golden Christmas decor.  I'm thinking I need to go with golds, greens, and whites for the holidays this year. I'm loving that color combination! My frosted twigs and scented pine cones are the perfect match for these three paintings.

For the Love of Pumpkins

I've been busy painting more versions of my mint pumpkin.  Pairing a pumpkin with flowers turned out to be awesome!  I need to do that more!

I actually got around to painting all of my mini-gourds and pumpkins this year. I set them up on my art room table and painted away.  They have such incredible shapes and colors.  I could have painted about twenty more of these, but ran out of time.  

Photos of the Week

Another beautiful week of beautiful weather, although, I wish it were more rainy or snowy here.  We need some kind of precipitation soon or my beautiful lake may dry up.  So sad to see it so low this year.

Well, it's November! A time to be grateful!

Last week I was grateful for:

• my camera (as always- i'd die without it)
• a good neighborhood with friendly neighbors (Halloween was a blast!)
• another art deal with Hobby Lobby!
• that my son didn't require any medical attention when he swallowed his loose tooth- it passed just fine :)
• my hard-working husband who earned himself a bonus
• my two-month-old nephew that I got to babysit on Friday night.  He is the sweetest baby ever.
• I had the privilege to vote early

Fall Florals and Pumpkins

It's been a crazy fall! I just finished a huge licensing project which I'm not able to write about yet. It involves car illustrations and comes out next summer.  So you'll have to wait a while to see those.

These little paintings I can write about, so I'll share some fall/ autumn watercolors I've been working on. I'm hoping they end up in Hobby Lobby next year.  Fingers Crossed they like these!