Camera came as promised by Amazon last night.  Charging the batteries, checking out the lenses.  I can't wait to take it out and see what I can do with it.  Watch out world!

Half way through the work week.  I've gotten some arty stuff done that I'm proud of.  Still have works in progress that I'm working on.  I've started adding photography back to the site.  Still have lots of images to go through.  

Sometime before 8 pm tonight UPS will be bringing this package of goodies to my door.  Happy early birthday to me!  

Going to plan some photo shoot outings in the near future to share the outcome of this expenditure.

Did a little bit of cleaning/organizing in the studio.  Might not be apparent to the naked eye.  But I did get some stuff done.  Really… I did.  Didn't do any painting, however.  That was a little disappointing.  But, sometimes life happens.  Or sometimes nothing happens.  All you can do is pick yourself up and try again.  So that's what I'm doing.

I bought myself an early birthday present.  Something I've been wanting for awhile.  I've been using a Kodak Easy Share camera… which was as it says Easy.  But I always wished I could push it further.  It's been a dream of mine to upgrade to a digital SLR camera.  I've gone and done it.  Canon EOS Rebel T3.  Not the most expensive, but expensive enough.  Now I'll just have to learn how to use it.  Should get delivered tomorrow.

I also need to get out more and take pictures.  I love doing it, but don't always take the time.  I've got a long weekend coming up that I was not sure what I was going to do with.  5 days off… in a row.  And I have been telling myself I'd stay home and do art things.  But sometimes I tell myself that and it just doesn't happen.  I spent a whole lot of time accomplishing nothing and just have wasted days.  So I think I'm going to plan a few short road trippy type adventures for myself.  Nothing too huge.  Day trips.  There and back again.

Even just thinking about it now is getting me excited.  I can't wait.  And hell… maybe that'll get me inspired to get my butt back in gear and get my photography page on here back up and visible.  

A lot of the pictures I had been taking were limited to a few things:  flowers, ducks, water.  Reasons?  Not because those are the only things I like to look at.  But those were me sticking in my comfort zone.  I know where the Lyndale Rose Garden is in Minneapolis, and I know it's beautiful there.  So I know if I go there I'm bound to find something beautiful to look at, photograph.  And I'm comfortable going to Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.  Which is where all the duck pictures and water pictures are from.  That's also a place I feel comfortable.  I used to go there and walk, a lot.  Especially at hard times in my life.  When I needed to clear my head.  Be at peace.

I've got some time to plan.  It's not this weekend, but the following weekend.  I'm off Thursday through Monday.  Holiday weekend.  Maybe I'll even find a place to watch fireworks for the 4th.  That is something I used to love doing, but it had gotten corrupted by the past.  Maybe…

Thanks for stopping by!

Just picked up a turtle mocha cooler from Caribou, heading into the studio to clean.  It's a disaster in there.  For reals though.  Both desks are a mess.  Chair is stacked full of stuff.  Makes me crazy just being in there right now.  Time to take care of that so I can get back to creating and stuff.

Last night didn't go completely was expected.  But wasn't a total bust either.  I did watch some #Lifebook2014 videos and start working on this week's project.  So that's something.  I also got inspired to start a mixed media piece.  However, now that I've started it, I'm not feeling great about it.  Not saying that I can't save it.  I'm just not really happy with it right now.  I'm going to try to change the sketch and see if I can get to a happy place with it.  We'll see how it goes.  

Didn't get a chance to do the website stuff last night, so I'll probably work on that tonight.

*cheerio*

Will be working on more updates tonight.  Hoping to get through the "Paintings" section of the page to get that back up and running.  Shouldn't take too terribly long, but will be adding the watermark to all the pictures.  And I will be eventually going through the photography page and adding the watermark to those as well as organizing those photos.  Deciding which ones make the cut.  I have a lot more photos that I'd like to add, but I need to find them first.  

At some point I need to get busy working on the Etsy store aspect of what I want to do.  I'm excited about being able to offer some of my artwork for sale.  To start out with I'll be selling originals, although I might also do prints.  I need to get good copies of the originals to decide if I want to do that.  And… I need to figure out the tax side of Etsy, which just thinking about that I found overwhelming.  And it's why I don't have my Etsy store open yet.  Taxes scare me.  lol

Anywho…  That's what's going on with me tonight.  Thanks for stopping by.

Making progress... So I can't complain.  Some of the artwork is back online and visible.  I've changed the layout of the site some.  Nothing major, just a slight change.  It'll take me a little bit longer to get the paintings page and the photography page back online.  There's more of those than anything else, so it'll just take time.  But soon though!  And going forward now that I know what I want to do before I put things online I can do it before it's uploaded so I won't have all this downtime again.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tonight I'm going to get at least some of the art back online.  Baby steps.  I think I was feeling overwhelmed by the project as a whole.  But if I break it down into sections and make it a little more manageable I should be able to start making progress.

Also on my to-do list for this evening will be to get my studio straightened up.  Right now it's a disaster.

#artistlife #likeaboss

I've been kind of all over the board lately.  And I've decided I need to try to pull myself back together and get on the right path again.  I've got lots of plans of things I want to do, but if I don't schedule time for myself I tend not to get a lot of the things done.  I can be easily distracted when I'm at home.

So, my goal for tonight is to get into my studio and do some serious cleaning and reorganizing.  Right now that room is a complete and utter disaster.  I've bought lots of new toys recently and had several projects going on.  And everything has just kind of gotten thrown back into that room.  So my desks are a mess and everything is everywhere out of it's place.  Not a very welcoming creative environment.  Also, I'm going to make a schedule for the rest of the days week.  A plan of what I'd like to work on each day, and how much time I'm going to commit.  I'm not going to overbook myself, as that usually leads to being a complete failure.  Baby steps…

I'm also thinking about hooking up rock band in my room.  That might take a bit more planning, as the drum set is buried in my art room closet.  It also depends on the amount of free space I have in my bedroom once my new bed is set up.  I think in the long run, I'd like to learn how to play guitar.  But for the short term… I think rock band will serve it's purpose of quieting that musical bug.

Other reason for bringing this all up, I'm going to start making bigger strides (hopefully) with the updates to the website so I can get the art pages back up and viewable.

Thanks for stopping by!

#randomsauce

My business cards came today... Feeling official.  Now just need to push forward and keep doing what I need to do.  To make it really official. 

#puttinginwork