29 faces - 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15

Whew!! I've been feeling a little like this Picasso-esque lady - slightly off kilter and with permanent bad hair days! Ballet and karate lessons have resumed in full swing along with our weekly Home-Ed get togethers….. as well as ongoing trips to visit various healing type folk who will hopefully fix a stuck jaw dilemma that my 17 year old daughter has. And on top of all that, she needs to be taken to and occasionally picked up from college…… and its no wonder I'm probably even looking like that horror with the blotchy skin!! 

So, of course I'm waaaayy behind with my 29 faces, sigh…… although the positive thing is that I've had to be a bit more inventive about where I draw! I now draw in the car by the seaside, on the desk in the waiting room at the Bowen therapist and scariest of all, in a cafe!!!! 

Never mind, I shall try my hardest to catch up!

In the meantime, here are a few of the latest - the last four are all really quick and the photos are rather dark but I am just wanting to document them and feel the satisfaction!!! 

Thanks so much for stopping by here and having a look at my sporadic rambling.

29 faces - 7, 8 and 9

Busy, busy here so all I've managed is a few pencil sketches. I suppose its all practice but I would have liked to have a bit more time to do some painted faces.
The faces at the top were done after watching a tutorial from Tam at willowing.org and are a lot of fun because they can look childlike and naive and not at all realistic. The two bottom ones are meant to look a little more realistic than they do but lets just pretend that I was aiming for delicate, narrow boned faery-like creatures, ok?

I am very much enjoying this 29 Faces Challenge but it does add a tad of stress to my life - I mean, I do want to do art every day but when other tasks arise it poses just a teeny quandary……how long can I leave the tasks that must be done for the one single 'task' I want to do??!!

Have a look at some of the other blogs in the challenge, there are just so many fabulous artists hiding out there!

monthly 9 - january 2015

A new title for a new year - the name has been changed for a while but I'm just implementing it now! When Christine started this challenge she called it Slow Living Monthly Challenge or something like that and as I joined in each month I began thinking that there was no slowness about it! Each month seemed to be filled with gardening, cooking, busyness,  creating, repurposing and busyness…..anything but slowness! Although Christine meant the title in a different way, it always seemed to me that my life is indeed filled with so many 'busy' bits that there are  really hardly any 'slow' parts and all I was chronicling each month was the busyness - when I should have been sharing about the relaxing!!
So, I was really pleased when she changed the name to Monthly 9 - it makes me feel like its okay to write about the stuff that got done not the sssslllooowww bits that were just to be savoured from the verandah with a glass of wine or a cup of tea!
Anyway, enough thinking, lets begin….

Nourish - this month its all about garden food. If its growing out there, then thats what we eat! Capsicum, cucumbers, tomatoes as well as pasta with pesto, strawberries with cream (no one complains about that!) and potato salad.

Prepare - well, I can't say theres been much of that this month. January has been reasonably lazy and holidayish and not much thought has gone into any preparation at all! Usually I make a large batch of plum jam using roadside fruit (from a very loaded tree not far from here…) but this year I've still got quite a few jars from the previous batch we cooked up last January and as I was feeling a tad uninspired, I didn't bother.

Reduce - the only thing I can think of that I've reduced in January is the amount of old second hand books that get thrown out if no one buys them from the op shop. I've been picking up a few beauties and creating some very nice journals from them along with old children's workbooks. They do make such cute journals!

Green - once again, nothing to report. I've always thought I was a nice 'shade of green' in my day to day life but I'm beginning to think I'm a fraud!!

Grow - now on the other hand, this category is always fairly well covered! We finally harvested and stored all the garlic (maybe I could have put that in the Prepare category?) we ate blackcurrants, dug up the onions, harvested and enjoyed the first of the potato crop, picked bucketfuls of strawberries, have eaten so many cucumbers that we are already sick of them and have swooned over the sunripened and very luscious tomatoes! Yes, its that lovely prolific time of the year again and oh how I love it!

Create - this one too, is well covered! I am still painting and drawing my way through my various journals and have joined in with a few online classes and challenges. A very generous friend gifted me her no longer used set of pastels and I've had a lovely time practising with this new to me medium. I think I've taken on more arty challenges than I have time for but I blame that on my disappointment at not going to TAFE to do the Visual Arts course I had planned on. Due to some changes in our business, Stuy now has to work outside of our home and so I no longer have him here to spend time with the last two of our homeschooled children. I was bitterly disappointed but have accepted that it just wasn't the right timing…sigh…. And so I must practice when ever I can at home, with the help of tutorials and online classes.

Discover - I have been listening to a lot of podcasts in January. Lots of inspirational women speaking to women about womens business. And art business. And just business. I've discovered a whole lot of interesting information since my lovely man gifted me with a new phone for my birthday in December. There are just so many awesome and inspiring women covering subjects from self love to creating calm homes and all things between!

Enhance - I'm sure I had something to put in here, but I just can't remember now….I should have written it down immediately!

Enjoy - there were quite a few outings and picnics in January - spot of fishing, a laze around on the rugs and a beautiful sunny day - combined, they make for a perfect memory!

I'm running quite late with this Monthly round up this time but I am very busy cooking, cleaning, planting, weeding painting, ahem……
Do stop by and visit all the other interesting blogs that join in with Linda at Greenhaven for this great end of month look at our achievements!

29 faces - 4, 5 and 6

A couple of days ago, I felt and looked (in the kids eyes, at least) like this ^. 

Yesterday, I was more like this……melancholy and despondant ^. 

Today, I look like this. 

Well, okay, I wish I looked like this. 

Calm, serene and beautifully groomed. 

Joining in again with the 29 Faces Challenge. Do have a look at what others are doing. 

29 faces - 1, 2 and 3

Another new project on my list of New Things to Try! I recently stumbled upon a few blogs that mentioned a 29 Faces Challenge in February……... and fortunately I didn't have to wait too long since it was already January! But I did forget until yesterday and so I have to also tell you that I did all three of these faces in the one evening using a new technique that I also discovered in my blog hops.
No, I don't spend all my days on the internet, blog hopping and the like, but I do spend an hour each night (very late, ahem) just after I've done my own artsy stuff and just before I turn off the lights, reading my fave arty blogs and gaining inspiration and motivation. Of course, sometimes I do follow leads and links and then find all sorts of new ideas that I really must try……!!!

So, having 29 Faces in mind and having seen this method of drawing, I decided I'd give it a try using a YouTube tutorial. I used this one which was the first good one I came across and thought she did a great job of explaining the method. The blue man at the top was the first one I tried and its actually from a photo of my dad, although the only similarity are the blue of the eyes! The gorgeous rainbow woman was the second attempt and she was from a large picture of a model in a glossy magazine and I am very happy with how she turned out.

For this one on the left, I used another magazine pic which was only half a head and once again I'm happy with her. But the thin head on the right was my attempt to draw the corresponding side without having one to copy and it turned out rather lean and elongated! Oh well, I like three out of four so thats not too bad!

When I first saw this style of drawing I thought it would be quite difficult and while it does take some thinking about, and if you don't mind extra facial lines here and there, its not as hard as it looks. I really enjoyed the process and have plans to try a few more in the next few days - I'll keep you posted!!

Thanks for stopping by!

a raspberry breakfast recipe

This summer, this dry, dry summer, we've finally managed to harvest a wonderful crop of raspberries. All sorts of magic just seems to have come together - warm weather, flourishing canes and best of all, a bird net! Oh yes, the bird net, has been very helpful in keeping out those rascally blackbirds, although any small gaps are very quickly taken advantage of by birds that seem to spend their days waiting for a lucky break! And as you can see, one small brightly coloured chickadee still managed to find her way in under the net on a daily basis……and under the strawberry netting too! She visited most days and the first excursion was always the berry patch! 

While most of the berrys were eaten fresh, some did manage to make it into a meal and that meal was mostly breakfast. Theres nothing nicer in summer than a sweet berry feast to start the day and its even better with home grown ones! I mentioned before, that I'm following an eating plan called Trim Healthy Mama, which, at its most basic, separates fats from carbs and eliminates most fructose. I lowered my blood pressure (which had 'mysteriously' risen after years of very low BP), I lost that bit of flubber that was expanding my waist and I am feeling fantastic! Although I feasted on Christmas food including sugary biscuits (well, it was Christmas) I'm now firmly back on my eating plan and happy to be so.

The following recipe is one that we make a lot, mostly with frozen berries as the berry season is so short lived. We make it in various incarnations and although there are a plethora of these recipes getting around the 'net, I'm just going to share the variation that we make and enjoy using raspberries.

Raspberry Summer Porridge

1 cup rolled oats (not quick oats!)

1 tablespoon whey protein powder

1 tablespoon chia seeds

Pinch of salt

1tablespoon of Natvia* (or to taste - I like it sweeter so I add extra stevia too) 

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

1/2 cup 0% Greek yogurt

3/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk

Optional splash of vanilla

The evening before- 

Mix together the dry ingredients.

Add in all the wet ingredients and stir to mix well.

It should be fairly sloppy because you are going to let it sit overnight and the oats and chia seeds will soak up a lot of the moisture. 

Leave in the fridge.

In the morning, enjoy your summery berry delight!

This recipe is what would be called an 'E' meal which means it is very low in fat and therefore high in slow release carbs. But please don't think I'm dieting and missing out on satisfying fats…oh not so! I'm still eating lots of butter, coconut oil, eggs, cheese and all other delicious fat rich foods, I'm just eating them separately from my starchy foods! If anyone is interested, I'm happy to share more recipes and information although the best idea is to buy or borrow the book and read it for yourself. Fascinating stuff! 

So there you have another summer breakfast to add to the repertoire. Sadly our raspberries are now finished but we do still have strawberries coming on……..

*Lets talk about Natvia. This is a mixture of stevia and erythritol (theres an excellent article about it here) and while I'm not 100% convinced that its completely benign, I do feel its a whole lot better for us than sugar/fructose. Stevia is a fine white powder thats been processed from a small plant and like most things, there are good quality products and cheaper not so good quality products on the market. Natvia is actually just a brand name combining the two sweeteners and is found in Coles or Woolworths in the sugar section.