Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy time with your family. Many blessings friends!!

Mawage...

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...

I sometimes feel like our upcoming nuptials are all I talk about. Then I think, hey you don't really talk to anyone here so you have full right to blog about it. Mike, as you know, proposed on the fourth of July. Well, it's mid-November already and I can't believe it. On the day he proposed we had exactly one year and one month until our set date. Now, we only have eight and a half months until our wedding.

It has been so exciting for us. and time has quickly slipped by. Being apart makes it very difficult. And by difficult I mean I get cranky after long periods of not seeing him, i.e. the four month separation until Christmas, and not being able to enjoy our time together as an engaged couple. Difficulties aside, it also makes our wedding day that much more spectacular. I am marrying the most wonderful man on August 4th.

I don't often have time to sit and think about the stature of this event. How grand and life changing it all is. Sometimes if I catch myself daydreaming, I snap back and think "We're getting married!" ala Carrie Bradshaw intonation, hand gestures and all (see, I love my sex and the city). I find myself not really grasping all that I'm planning. We have the florist, the photographer, the color scheme, the chapel, the reception site, the bridal party chosen, and my pastor. I know what we're doing for the invitations, the escort cards, the centerpieces, the favors, the wine, the music, etc. Very rarely though does it hit me that I am planning our wedding. OUR WEDDING! *gush* But when I realise, my day is marked by elation and extreme "ants in the pants lets get married" emotions.

Michael is just as excited, though he's very cool and collected, very "mannish" about it. And that's perfectly alright. He is the more levelheaded one in our relationship. So, I am planning this great thing that is the ceremony and reception. It will be a time that will be all about the bride and groom, but more importantly, will be about the friends and family that brought us to the point where we could make that lifelong commitment to each other. I'm going to marry this man, grow up with this man, have children with this man (darn cute babies), and be with this man until we die.

I'm going to be a mess on our wedding day. If I hold back the tears it will be nothing short of a miracle. I love him. Simply.

My Paintings

To indulge ego in me that wants to be let out time to time, here are a few of my newest paintings. Three to be exact. One, two, five...! The landscape i am not thrilled with at all. But i'll throw it in with the other two because hey, some of you actually want to see what i've been doing with my time in school.

my ugly ugly landscape

the complementary one..."Cornfields"... finished. Although, I may do some retooling of the actual cornfields. Not my favorite, but i like it.

i think i'll call this one "Fleet". The light is a little deceptive, but this is the best i could do tonight. "Fleet" only took me about two hours and i LOVE LOVE LOVE it. LOVE it. So much. I really do think i've found which technique works best for me. Thank God for impressionism, right.

a detail from "Fleet"*. This is the foremost ship.

*title may change, in likely event please proceed cautiously to exits.

Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to me! I've lived here three months today.
One: I can not believe it's been three months, let alone mid-November
Two: I feel like I've been here much longer
Threeve: I was born here, I belong here

Happy Anniversary to me...what does one get ones self for a three month anniversary? Good question self...

I...[part 2]

am still obsessed with Robbie...(my baby got me his new disc- YAY!)

can't believe her new single samples "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music. No, really!

LOVE Lily Allen! If you haven't heard smile...well, lets just say, YOU SHOULD!!

[no picture]

am really excited to try Michael Chiarello's Pea Whipped Potatoes. Really. Yummm..

love seeing my handsome young brother...yes, he's single ladies -wink-

actually taught kids how to make these bugs. wow. (proud mom moment) :)

Artist?

So, I'm almost done with this painting. We had to take an artist- in my case Maurice Vlaminck- and copy one of their paintings in complementary colors. Vlaminck is one of the premiere fauvist painters. This means literally, the Wild Beasts. Thick lines, bright colors, lots of paint, lots of texture characterized these works. His work started out looking more childish like Gauguin. He had little art training, but after time developed a style closer to Van Gogh or Cezanne (very Cezanne) and sometimes Matisse. The Fauvist movement was short lived and his paintings became more subdued and orderly. I painted "Cornfield". This doesn't mean much to you since you can't see the original. I don't have a picture of that one. But here it is...my newest painting. I'm really starting to come into my own and I'm quite proud of it!

There's more to the world then DARFUR!

This is a reminder to myself to write about this topic. I'm not saying focus should be completely redirected from Darfur, but it's not the only humanitarian problem we've got. Not everything happens in africa people! I'll finish tonight hopefully when i have time. Some topics will include:

• Burma (Myanmar) and the Junta whose military dictatorship, which was never legally elected, is destorying a population and leading to yet another civil war
• Ukraine and it's lost children. Thousands of children from ages 3 to 15 (they become legal adults when the turn 16) live in the streets, or rather underneath them, all year long. Kicked out by parents who can't financially support children, they are displaced and left to survive in the tunnels below Kiev. Heating is regualted by the state, and along these underground, and sometimes above ground, pipes live a class of lost children.
• On a brighter note: MICRO-LENDING! http://kiva.org/ A little going a long way.