Dear Loren:

Okay, let's see.... this isn't the only thing I've been up to, but it's the most recent:

I'm all caught up on The Walking Dead now, and this is from the second-last episode.  It's Me'Shonne, and if she looks grim, she should: Merle is about to hand her over to the Governor, who is PISSED at her.  She poked him in the eye and now he wants to get even.  

Anyway, I was going for a certain effect with the watercolour, but it wasn't as easy as it was when I rehearsed it in my mind.  Turns out you can't just look at someone else's work, decide you want to emulate their technique and then have it turn out as nicely as theirs.  Especially when they're a professional illustrator and you're hacking around with a waterbrush in the garage.  

Okay, what else...

Oh, I organized the pantry!

I can't show you the "before" pictures - they're too shameful.  Not only was it a messy, jammed-together wreck of open packages, expired products and mysterious bags of strange food; but a bag of potatoes had gone bad in the back.  To the point where they leaked on the shelf and ruined the particleboard, plus smelled like Satan's armpit.  Sooooo, I had to replace a shelf, (housekeeper of the year over here) and put everything in proper containers and threatened the rest of the family with bodily harm if they messed up my work.  It took about 8 hours to get it from what it was, to this.  Two Hefty garbage bags to the dump, a trip to Rona and Home Outfitters for plastic bins and organizers, and a ruthless purging state of mind.  

We are also keeping bees now:

Ants attacked our hives so we put them up on tables in cans of used motor oil.  Not really environmentally friendly, but it did the trick; the ants got the message and scrammed.  Today we're extracting our wildflower honey; then in the fall we'll have canola and/or sunflower honey.  YUM.  

And now I'm going to go make something, so I have more to report next time.  Stay tuned.

xo

Shelley!