Long overdue but look my Nikon's back!

I have a few free minutes so I figure I may as well post something. I have no idea how long it's been (whoops!) but it feels like quite a while.

So much going on these days...first thing to report is that my awesome camera lens is back - yes! I'm so happy and inspired by my camera again. I have only great things to say about the camera shop that helped me out. International Camera Technicians in Mt. View. A very sweet German man and his son who run an old school shop. He ended up sending my lens out to Nikon with a note saying "Rush! Baby due in March and needs camera ASAP!" I didn't tell him to do this at all of course but it sure made me smile when I saw it on the receipt. Pricing was fair, service was awesome - can't ask for more.



The trees are popping out all sorts of blooms around here. We have some major chill and rain on the way again but Spring is 'round the corner. Such a relief to me...I'm hoping for lots of outside time once our little babe is here. Bird'll be happier, I'll be happier, hopefully baby will be happy. I've been wondering what he's going to be like. How I'll cope if things are totally different than expected. Mourning a little bit my last days of having Bird as my only child. That might sound strange but I bet most parents go through this.

I technically have to get to THIS FRIDAY to be able to have the baby at home (37wks). I've been really taking it easy. Then I plan to get back to my regular self as much as possible (heavy lifting, busy busy, etc.). Last week we all went through some version of the stomach flu and it was terrible. Really. Terrible. I got sick Tuesday night and although I only threw up a couple of times my stomach was in pain for a few days. This for some reason caused me to be in a near constant contraction. It was so uncomfortable. Thankfully it was done by Friday and I'm also thankful it's only the second time in my life I've ever had some kind of stomach flu. At this point in my pregnancy it's like I have no immune system (!). I'm ready ready ready for a change. Even if that means sleepless nights ;o)



My days have been full of Bird of course...playing (a little slower than normal) and entertaining and teaching. I found her a trike off Craig's List and she loves it, although is totally frustrated by it too. Ah, new skills to tackle.

I've also been in deep clean/organizing mode in the studio. I've just been chucking stuff that I don't need anymore - no mercy! And going to town with a label maker, haha. I've been learning what I enjoy organizing (paints & sewing supplies) and what's a total drag (papers).

I'd love to have this place all picked up and set in order before baby arrives. I'd love to be able to come out here and say "oh, that's what I was working on" and get back into it, rather than come out here and frown at the piles of things I need to mail out, take to the basement, file away or sort. Currently on my list to complete is a simple quilt for baby. But I'm making myself wait till every thing else is done - a reward of sorts.

Below are a couple shots of some of my ceramic work :o) They aren't fired or glazed yet. And it's been near impossible to get over to the clay studio to take my last load of stuff (house #'s for a friend and a big platter I rolled from the last of my bag of clay). It's kind of an odd process to me. Clay work seems to take forever...you make something from wet clay, wait till it's at a certain state of dryness before you can do additional things to it, bisque fire it, then glaze it, then finally fire it again. When you're doing this on someone else's time table it can take a really long time. But I'm totally thrilled to have taken the class - ceramics are SO fun and I've loved being able to apply myself in a different medium.





Now to tackle another pile of papers!

Happy day to you - hugs, Devon :o)

Remodel, renew, refresh, then rest

Hipstamatic pic of the "coffee cup shelf" and glass knob hook in new laundry room

Mentally & physically exhausted here...we've been determinedly working away on the house in preparation for a home appraisal today (which will determine a value for our home & thus determine if we can refinance). Combined with the "nesting" nuttiness I already have, I've been in Jared's words a "tasmanian devil". Now that the inspection is done I've fallen in a bit of a heap. Sucking down my afternoon life blood of English Breakfast tea and chocolate chips/walnuts has helped but mostly I can't wait to veg on the sofa tonight and do nothing.

Just last night I painted our bedroom trim, painted touch ups for the hallway, painted the back door and areas of trim throughout the kitchen, stripped the porch french door of its protective film and razor bladed the dry paint from 2 days ago, then helped Jared cart out dry wall chunks from the wall he was demo'ing in the laundry room (future) bathroom. Then swept up the gazillion rocks Bird decorated the back patio with (while I was painting the french door...) and did general clean up throughout the house. And that was after making dinner & getting Bird fed and with Jared getting home an hour later than usual. Insert long sigh here. In the days before I also (finally) painted the (unfortunate) feature wall in our LR to match the rest of the room. And I should probably note that our laundry room is done (!!) - except for soft goods like a panel of fabric next to the washer/dryer and curtains. It looks amazing & it's super functional. I included just one tiny picture above - no Nikon yet - so just an iphone hipstamatic image for now.

Little painter

The weather has been crazy phenomenal here. I'm so sorry for all of you living in the winter freeze from hell. I got my fill in Montana over the week we were there for Christmas. I'm a Panama girl through and through - and start to wilt w/o soaks in the sun. Today Bird ran outside in just a shirt and diaper and laid on the deck in true sun worshipper style. Hilarious. Needless to say, we're spending lots of time playing outside :o)

Now to get my head back into the things I was working on previously - what were those things anyway??

Hugs, Devon

A Stuffy Gorgeous Afternoon

Losing the battle to my second cold in 3 weeks (what??). Not happy about it. But I'm continuing on with my "can't take anything" (as in, no hard core cold medicine) regimen of neti pot with salt water, airborne, and oscillococcinum. It does seem to be helping me at least feel human and functional.

Bird is napping...only because I got wise about using a baby gate. This is one of those days she wasn't into the nap idea but I was really into it. Thank you baby gate. And thank you to Bird for being so sweet & playing for a bit and then getting yourself into bed and covering yourself with the duvet and the blanket. Left me with nothing to do but get myself some hot tea & prepare for the afternoon ahead.

We're meeting with a mortgage broker today to see about refinancing...big stuff. Please cross your fingers, say a prayer that we're able to accomplish this. It really is about taking care of our future selves. Which is hard to do (meaning you make sacrifices here & now in the present) but will make life easier later on. It's the responsible thing to do - wow, J and I are so grown up now ;o)

In other news...my clay class is over but I have a gazillion projects left to complete. Here are the house numbers I'm working on for our place.

Hand carved stoneware clay forming into house numbers 

And in what I think is even bigger news (since I'm hardwired to the sun) it's been freaking gorgeous here!! Talk about a mood lifter :o) Sending sunshine to everyone!!

Hugs, Devon

ps - yes, that's an iphone picture above...still no fixed Nikon.

Worker bees

Tuesday morning here...feels like Monday because we were off yesterday with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. I admit we didn't do anything to serve the public & honor Dr. King. We were working our tails off on the laundry room (well, Jared was mostly). Saturday we got all the drywall installed, Sunday we flubbed around a bit (chilly foggy wet weather wasn't very inspiring) but then Jared got a late afternoon jump on the window & door trims and got a good head of steam. And Monday was a biggie day - Bird and I played together most of the day while Jared pounded away at all the beadboard & trim installation. It's a small space - tiny. But it's FULL of trim - 3 windows & 3 doors worth. And being an old porch with a sloping ceiling and parts of the exterior house shape and stucco defining the interior space, it had plenty of tricky cuts. I spent a bit of time at Lowe's Saturday night trying to find a contour gauge tool (their website said they had 4 in stock...) with no luck. Eventually we found one at another store on Sunday. It's basically a row of pins set into a metal bar - you push it against a shape (a curving wall, etc.) in order to get the negative space. Very handy tool!

Now it's my turn in the space. I'm essentially the "finisher" in the family. The room requires an obscene amount of patching & caulking before I can get going on the priming & painting. Luckily, I love this kind of work. It's annoying wearing a respirator & gloves (caulk is pretty nasty stuff) but it's so satisfying seeing an old beat up piece of wood blend seamlessly into the room with a little TLC (we used a mix of old & new wood for the project & it's a lovely combination - the old wood came from our former tiny closet).

In other news...I'll hopefully have my camera back soon. I dropped my nikkor lens off at a nifty little camera shop yesterday. A older German man (and his son too maybe?) run this gem of a shop & I've heard the best things about them. Hoping they work some magic on my sad lens. I miss it.

I'm 31 weeks pregnant! Starting to feel like it too. I have braxton-hicks contractions OFTEN and have definitely had a tougher time keeping up with everything with a 2.5yo to tend to. I'm really trying to cut back on how much I carry Bird (which is a lot) and letting Jared walk Phylo as much as possible. It seems getting out for a walk by myself is near impossible (it's still dark out so early & we're just so busy).

I've been keeping at it with my sketch book and putting together textile designs. One of my goals this year is to make art every day. Be it a tiny scribble or a big chunk of time in the studio it all accumulates into progress & keeping the gears moving. It's been totally fun to have the last few weeks delving into ceramics as well & I can't wait to share some pics (just need the camera...). One thing I'm working on in studio today is a set of house numbers for us. I'm super excited about them!

Have a lovely day all! I'm going to get a bit more painting in (via Photoshop) for my last hour of babysitting time. First, I have to share a painting Bird did the other day (below). I dripped bits of concentrated watercolor on the page where she directed and then she went to town. I just love it! :o)

Hugs, Devon

Bird's artwork - ink & paint, 1/2011

Travel sketchies

Finally got around to some coloring today. It's something I love doing - taking quick sketchbook renderings and giving them a shot of color using my tablet & computer. From this point it's easier for me to tell if something has potential for a textile design too. I'm a little smitten with each one for different reasons - in general the color palettes are making me happy which is the bit of inspiration needed to keep going with a design.

Happy weekending to you! :o)

hugs, Devon

Airplane doodling

Doodle from airplane window

Doodle of an airplane :) 

Changes

I made some to the blog.

It's not perfect but I really needed something different.

Working on goals for the year. Not as many as the 19 I had two years ago but still some good ones.

My nikon needs servicing- I'm not as into posting w/o having pictures to go along with the words.

I dug out my old canon powershot from years ago. Bird had fun with it after nap. Hoping it'll keep the blog going while the nikon's being fixed.

Pregnancy: I'm about 8 weeks from when I had Bird (she was 2.5 weeks early) & I've just started getting that anxious feeling. Is that nesting?

I think the baby (boy) has a name :o) !!

We got our washer & dryer back in and the new laundry floor looks amazing. It was worth all the trouble.

Been staying up way too late these days (vacation mode still on) - Nighty 'night!

hugs, Devon

Year end transformations

At this time of year I'm usually writing down resolutions but instead we're knee deep in a laundry room renovation. Where you see those pipes against the wall is where our stacking washer and dryer usually is. I washed/dried 9 loads on Monday preparing for this week! The space is the former back porch of the house and needed some extreme leveling (long hard day for Jared on Tuesday). Yesterday we had our babysitter for the morning and got our first layer of thinset down then the cement board. Last night when I hit a wall Jared kept going and got the next layer of thinset down then the nifty tile underlayment called Ditra. It's a cheery bright orange. We had a rough night of disrupted sleep from Bird then leg muscle cramps for me but we're back to it this morning! I have a tiny window of time to write this then need to lay out all the slate floor pieces while Jared and Bird do the coffee/playground run.

Have a lovely (and hopefully relaxing) day!

Hugs, Devon

Ps: I'm posting this using blogpress on my iPhone - hopefully it works and looks okay. If so I'll probably use it more often - super convenient and easy.

Merry Christmas from Montana

We've been sledding (lots)!

Enjoying cozy fires & a constant stream of Jared's espresso drinks (oh my the heartburn).

Pulling on & peeling off layer after layer of clothing.

Remembering what cold really feels like (not since my RISD days in Providence).

Exasperated by ill-fitting (pre-pregnancy) snow clothes & all the rigging needed to keep them in place.

Thoroughly enjoying watching Bird enthralled by her older (8 & 12yr) & younger (7wk twins) cousins.

Trying to soak up the extreme beauty of Montana - Big Sky country.

Wishing I'd brought more than my iphone for pictures.

So happy & grateful for family, fun times, new experiences, and this beautiful wild place.

Merry Christmas to you wherever you are this season!

hugs, Devon