Back In My Nest

Back home, back in my studio, back with my furry Zoe making dough in my lap, back after another lovely lazy weekend with My Lovely Mother, my love Ciera, and my bros' Cam and Chris. We ate! (burp) We watched DVD's, and also Somewhere In Time (twice) on TV on Saturday night. We ate again when my bro', Bobfather, came over on Sunday with his lady and her daughter, and then prepared a bonafide love feast for us -- melt-in-your-mouth BBQ pork and chicken, homemade guacamole (you know Toni was loving that), homemade pico de gallo, beans, salad, dill potato salad, rice with sweet corn mixed into it ... burp! refill plate! burp again, start over.

Saturday when we arrived, I unloaded 5 bags/boxes of art supplies onto their cleaned-off dining room table -- ink pads, paints of every sort, decorative tapes and scissors, brushes, folders full of images and paper scrap. Cam and My Lovely Mother presented Ciera with a new journal, and I'm telling you, that child filled the entire thing in 2 days. Ciera and I sat at that table and took turns throwing out ideas for the next page. We also wrote a little book called Five Puppies and each took turns with illustrations for it. We taped and painted and shmooshed and made hand prints and nose prints and doodles and pressed pages together and made pockets and sprinkled stickers everywhere and cut images out of the stack of magazines I had and used stamps from the 4 notebooks of rubber stamps I brought and stenciled and stapled and ... well, you get my drift. Ciera, it must be said, stayed 45 steps ahead of me when it came to ideas for what we'd do on the next page. She'd finish her page and attempt, each time, to wait me out as I worked on mine -- but she had time to jump rope, chase the puppy, change clothes, and argue with her Daddy about brushing her hair before I ever finished one of my pages. Sometimes she did 4 or 5 pages while I worked on one.

So. Yea. You know this journal I've been working on? The one where I have been focused on trying to create the backgrounds slowly, as I go, in order to have them be more connected to the actual written journal entry? Well, uh ... Houston, we've got a problem. Toni is now 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) background pages ahead of her written journaling. Ciera is nothing if not inspirational. Also, one does not merely 'watch' Ciera make art, one is compelled (ordered, bossed, commanded) to make a matching page in one's own journal. Complete with suggestions and tweaks for possible improvement provided by Ciera. (She's also DEAD ON with her suggestions, so I pay close attention. She is a color guru, absolutely FEARLESS, and I need that.)

Yesterday, I finally took my lazy but ever-more-pungent self in for a shower ... wasn't in there a full 4 minutes when I heard a blood curdling SCREAM followed by serious Ciera sobs! OHMIGOD!!! I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair as fast as I could while imagining the use of scissors gone awry ... dashed to the living room as soon as I was decent and found that Ciera had stapled her finger trying to reload staples. Not just a prick, she full-on STAPLED her wee digit. Daddy Chris had to extricate the staple, apply medication, kisses and bandage, while My Lovely Mother, Unk Cam and I hovered waiting to administer hugs and oohs and poor things! I also offered to kick that stapler's ass, and Ciera handed it right over for a whooping! [Note: must buy Ciera a new stapler, a GOOD one!]

We came home early this a.m., as Double BB needed to borrow my truck. I spent the morning catching up my February prompt backgrounds, then succumbed to a blissful nap with Zoe curled up by my toes. Have been sorta pushing papers here and there and back again since I woke up; think I'm calling it an art day -- will do the journal prompts on these later. I also received my GORGEOUS BIRD STAMPS from The Tuscan Rose today, but I'm going to wait until I'm more mentally refreshed to give those a whirl. I have a feeling they'll consume me for a few days.

Thanks to everyone for emails and comments about missing me -- that surprised me! In such a lovely way! My little weekend at The Ranch was everything it always is: love-filled, relaxing, Buddha Belly Inducing (oh, to cook like ANY of my brothers are able to do!), art-inspiring (thanks, Sweet Bear!) and just simple good times. The best!

A few visuals to be posted tomorrow, promise. I'm off to play chase, pounce & bounce with Zoe -- I missed her!