Announcing...
This is the flyer for the wrapping party coming up on Saturday the 13th. If you live in the Denver area, be prepared to be invited to this agian. This is the text in case it is too small to read above:

Give a Special Gift this Christmas...
You are invited to a party that will help you give a special gift, in more ways than just one...
Bring to this party the gifts that you've bought for your loved ones. Let us wrap them artistically and elegantly to express the love inside. In return, your donation will help bring clean water to third world countries who desparately need it. Visit www.charitywater.org for more information about how your donation will help save a life! If you decide to donate $5, you will not only come away with an exquisite gift for a friend, you will also give the gift of water to one person for five years. $20 will give someone water for the rest of their life! Even smaller donations add up to save many lives.
When: Saturday, Decmeber 13th, Any time between 1-8pm
Where: 10176 Woodrose Ln, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129
Phone: Call Naomi (303) 346-0425 with any questions
Christmas treats and warm drinks will keep you toasty by the fire as your wait!

I will also be selling my jewelry line, "Fresh Bling" and donating all the money to Water For Christmas.
If you are in the area, feel obligated to come!

Four Completely Unrelated Picture From the Life Of Naomi Teddy was pooped after Thanksgiving.

Luke is a rockstar when it comes to karaoke.

Luke and Sarah.


Taking Roxy's braids out is a freaky thing!

Two Completely Unrelated Short Stories From the Life of Naomi

Story #1 The Tale of the Ungrateful Book Return

Today my number one "todo" on my todo list was to return "The Introvert Advantage", a book my husband had checked out, but was fearfully overdo, which was keeping some other introvert out there waiting. I love the library's new personable book return drive-thru machine. When you drive up to it, a little slot, like a mouth, opens up, and guides your returning books into it, then gobbles them up and then politely says "thank you for using the automated return system, goodbye." But today was different. I drove up, the mouth opened, ate my book, and was silent. I waited for a moment to hear it say "thank you" but it never did, and there was a car behind me so I drove off and counted the machine unusually ungrateful. My next stop was the gas station. After inserting the nozzle into my gas tank, and starting the gas flow, I sat in my car to wait. As I was sitting there, I looked down onto the floor of my car and to my horror saw.... "The Introvert Advantage"!!! I gasped! If the library book was right there, what then, did I put into the automatic book return machine?!?!?! And it then dawned on me that the machine was ungrateful because I had done it no favors! I figure out that I had actually given it "The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher", a book that I actually own and haven't finished yet, but keep in the car to read whenever I have to wait somewhere. The next thing on my todo list was to go back to the library and ask the automated machine if I could please have my book back. It complied and I made sure to say "Thank You".

Story #2 The Tragic Virgin Mary Misunderstanding

The other day Chloe (who is 10) was looking at some of the Christmas cards that I had laying out on my counter and commented, "I don't understand why Mary was a virgin. I have just never really understood that."
"Well," I began "You have heard the Christmas story, right? It was a miracle that Mary was a virgin and still got pregnant with Jesus."
"But, then, I thought she was like with Joseph and all?"
"Well, they got married afterwards but they didn't have sex until after Jesus was born."
"They didn't have sex?" she said, with obvious confusion on her face.
"Um, yeah... they didn't have sex. Do you know what a virgin is?" I asked.
"Yeah, it's where a girl is gay, right?"
"NO!" I exclaimed, "that's LESBIAN!!! A virgin is someone who has never had sex!"
Her eyes widened as a lightbulb clearly went off in her brain, "Ohhhhh! I always get virgin and lesbian mixed up. Now I get it."

Virgin. Lesbian. Easily confused. It is tragic that she had gone all these years thinking that Mary was a lesbian. I'm so glad I was there to clear things up for her. God always uses me in the most unexpected ways.

Christmas Cheer

Yesterday I risked my life for the sake of bringing Christmas cheer to those who drive by our house... Matt was at work, so Rocket took this picture of me. I instructed him to dial 911 should I fall.

Happy Birthday To Me

Yesterday was my birthday. The best part about it was that when I logged into Facebook, it said I had 14 new notifications! That's because Facebook reminds all of my friends that it is my birthday so they can tell me happy birthday. I felt so loved.

As has been tradition for about the last 5 years, we broke out the Christmas tree, set it up, and decorated it while eating Papa Murpheys pizza. The pizza part isn't a trdition, but the tree part is. Look at what a lovely family we were:





Do you think Matt and I look like total dorks in this picture?







This is what it looked like to our jealous neighbors who might have been spying on us.




Even grumpy ol' Miss Heart came back inside from the cold and got into the Christmas spirit- after taking a warm bath with Roxanne and changing into some Christmas panties and a dress. She'd better not even think of touching any of those wrapped presents under the tree- as you know, Miss Heart can be awfully naughty.

Dr. Sketchy's November- Bijoux Lemieux Posing for Dr. Sketchy's this month was the exotic and glamorous Bijoux Lemieux. She has posed for Sketchy's before, but is always a treat. I was more pleased with my photographs of her, than I was with my drawings- you can view both of them here. She had some extraordinary costumes and fabulous poses including the sword on the head balance, which she amazingly held for the 20 minutes pose, which I think would have given me a headache.

Above, you can see that my African friend, Traci, is enjoying herself at Dr. Sketchy's. This was her third time coming with me, and I think I've gotten her hooked! She shared her markers with me and paid my entrance fee... I realize I can't expect this from her all the time.

Above you can see the display and judging process going on. Vivienne Vavoom (in the red shirt) hosts the event. Freshie (in the navy blue) plays the tunes to inspire good drawings. Bijoux (in the skirt) is checking out the drawings of herself.

I especially enjoyed a fun little excersize we did for the first time this month. For one of the ten minute poses, we would pass our drawing to a new person every minute. By the end of the pose, ten people will have worked on one drawing. This is what the drawing I started with ended up like. I hope we do this again next month, because I really liked messing with other people's drawings.

What our baby would look like...
ok, I've waisted enough time on the computer today...

Poster Contest

Jesus is a Friend of Mine...

If you watch this video, you are guaranteed to be singing it for the rest of the day, possibly to the annoyance of others around you.

Part THREE of THREE:

Stuff that Matters:

Water For Christmas

I am a strong believer in thrift shops.
I hate being advertised to- it makes me feel like I am being duped. I hate buying new things- there is a ton of perfectly good old things out there. Packaging bugs me- I know how much it costs to print something at kinkos, so when I throw away packaging, I just mentally imagine something else I could have printed for the cost of the packaging that I just threw away.
This Christmas I got permission from everyone in my family to give only second hand, homemade or otherwise incredibly thrifty gifts. Everyone is in on it, and we agreed to all keep our gift under $5 each. This way, we are not participating in the Christmas consumer frenzy which turns consumers into the consumed, all while wasting a whole lot of money for the sake of a tradition. Typically, we would have spent $10-$15 per Christmas gift.



Here are some examples of what I have found to give so far:
For Milo, my 5 year old nephew, who I am fairly certain won’t read my blog and spoil his surprise, I am giving a toy drum and a batman padded vest. For the two items combined, I spent less the $5.

I have been wanting to buy my son, Rocket, a automatic baseball pitcher for a while now- mostly because I get tired of pitching for him, and if it were up to him, he would be hitting a ball with a bat 24 hours a day. A couple months ago, I saw one on sale for $30. I seriously considered buying, considering that they normally cost around $50. But I didn’t. Last week, at the local Goodwill, I found the exact same baseball pitcher, in like-new condition for $4.99, and even has working batteries in it! I just need to buy the balls to go with it. It is now hiding in a very very secret location, waiting for Christmas morning!!!! (DON’T tell him!!!)
I can’t feature many more thrift shop Christmas gifts on my blog, because I can’t give away any of my secrets before Christmas. But, believe me, you can find some really nice quality gifts for a fraction of the price of normal stores.
By cutting the cost of gifts for Christmas in half, I’ve freed up a lot more of the budget for more important things. If you think that recipients will be put off by receiving a used item, I suggest supplementing it with a card from Water For Christmas explaining that because you didn’t aid the commercial craze of Christmas, $5 was given to provide life saving water for one person for five years. I don’t know who would want to return that gift. That comes to a total of $10 per person, and depending on how many people you are exchanging gifts with this Christmas, you could save dozens of lives of real people. Ask yourself- is the alternative really worth it?? Also, be sure to tell people that you'd rather have “water for Christmas” too.


I became aware of charity:water through Jody, who is heading up a gigantic campaign that she is calling Water For Christmas. $20 is enough money to provide one person in a third world country water for life, so in essence, $20 saves a persons life- what $20 piece of merchandise could be as valuable as that?

This is what I am asking of you:

1. Cut the cost of your Christmas giving to friends and family by atleast half, and then supplement it with a Water for Christmas card which tells how much money was given to Water for Christmas and exactly what impact that makes on real people. Click on the photo for a larger resolution version to print or message me and I will mail you printed versions ready to give. Click on the icon to the right to make your donation and to read about this incredible organization.

2. If you live in the Colorado Springs or Denver area, come to a Christmas present wrapping party hosted by me and my mom. Incase you are not aware, my mother is a professional present wrapping artist, which means that if she wraps a gift for you, it will be the most beautiful gift you’ve ever seen. Even if it weren’t supporting a worthy cause, it would be worth forking money over for! If you’re in the Springs mark your calendar for December 20th. If you are in Denver, mark your calendar for the 22nd. We hope to wrap over 200 gifts, in exchange for donations. More detailed information about this, as well as pictures of beautiful presents, to come.

Stuff that Matters: Chapter TWO of THREE:

The Pathetic Planet

As you will notice, this is chapter two in my "stuff that matters" series. However, blogger is not very condusive to succesive blogging, as it posts the most recent post first. Thus, in order to read my posts in the intended order, you must make sure you back track and read "chapter one" first, if you have not already.

In a gigantic grand stadium, there is a gathering of galaxies. Among the hundreds of billions of galaxies gathered there, there exists one particularly freckled galaxy, and on that one galaxy, is one tiny freckle, so miniscule that we must look at it under a microscope in order to see its features. It is round, and blue, and brown and green. On one side of it gathers a peculiar breed of people….

These people are hard to understand. They are complicated and babble about things like “economics” and “politics”, but none of that is understandable. What we do know is that they are wealthy. Of all the wealth that exists, they have almost all of it. But they have just as many real needs as all the rest of the people that exists. And after they have taken care of their needs, they still have a lot of money left over. And everyone wants that money. So some of the more clever ones among them, create more needs for those people to spend their money on. They come up with gadgets and toys like toe separators and onion choppers and flying saucers. Then they take pretty pictures of them and mail them to the other people, who look at the stuff and decide if they want it or not. They record beautiful people using the beautiful stuff and then show it on televisions so that the other people can decide whether or not they want the stuff. And they spend millions of dollars to package up the stuff really fabulously, even though the other people are just going to throw away the packaging, into their trash bags that get put into a trash truck and taken to a big trash place where all the trash accumulates- billions of dollars of trash. And when the people get tired of the stuff they bought it goes to that place too- the trash pile. But inevitably, not all of it makes it to the trash pile. Some if it falls out of the trash bag, or the trash truck, and eventually ends up in a gigantic floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean, where there is also a community of billions of dollars of trash.

A special time of year is coming up. It is called Christmas. At this time of year, these people get extra excited about buying the stuff for other people. In fact every one of these people is expected to buy a thing for everyone else. They will spend 450 billion dollars buying each other really pretty stuff, so that everyone will know that everyone loves each other. Each one of these people is estimated to spend about $791 dollars, to keep this “stuff trading” tradition going. The extra thrifty ones may spend about half that much and they will be very proud of themselves for finding stuff for cheaper prices. And most likely, within a year, most of that beautiful stuff will have found its way to the ever growing trash pile, and at that point the people will start searching for new, prettier stuff.

But on that same little world, not too far away, across an ocean, past the trash island, exists another type of people. They don’t have the same wealth as other ones, but they have the same basic needs. They need what every person needs to survive- clean water. And when they don’t have clean water, they drink dirty water, because that’s all they have. But the dirty water that they drink to survive is killing them- 42,000 of them die every week after they get sick from drinking the dirty water, in fact, it’s the most common reason anyone on the planet dies. About 38,000 them are children. Children who are loved by parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. $20 is what is would cost to give one of them clean water for the rest of their life- but they don’t have it. $20 is what it would cost to save a life. But they don’t have it, so they continue to die.

These two peoples know about each other, but they can’t see each other. The ocean between them is too big, and they can’t see that far. So on one side of the world, the stuff cycle continues, and on the other side, the death cycle continues. And, I have to ask, how could a good God let this happen? How could a good God look down on this planet and see a mother holding her child as he dies, and know that she is experiencing the most excruciating pain anyone can experience, and let that happen?

More on what you can do to help this seemingly pathetic planet coming soon…

Stuff That Matters: Chapter ONE of THREE:

The Terrible, Tragic, Disastrous, Ice-cream Social

Summer was in full swing, and I deemed it was the perfect time to plan a joyous ice cream social. I had imagined all of my best friends coming together to enjoy the sweetness of ice cream in the park as well as the jovial fellowship that would follow. First, I sent out e-vites to 100 of my friends, coworkers and church members, to notify them that I would be hosting a get-together that would be accompanied by a few of the most tasty flavors of ice-cream. I was pleased when 75 of my friends RSVPed saying that they would be attending my party. The night before I went to the grocery store and picked out 10 large tubs of ice cream. I also knew I would need to provide eating utensils for the occasion, so I bought a package of 100 paper bowls and 100 plastics spoons, which was certainly enough for everyone, and a couple extra just incase there were other people at the park that wanted to join us.
When the day of the party arrived, I noticed that the sky was slightly overcast and there was a forecast of thunder showers. I observed the sky and was delighted when the rain cleared away and the sun emerged 15 minutes before my party was scheduled to begin. Sure enough, many of my friends showed up, eager to eat ice cream and have fun. I dished up the first comers at least two scoops each and was delighted to see how much they enjoyed the treat I had provided. At one point, I caught a glimpse of my friend Sue grabbing 3 spoons to put in her bowl.
“I can eat my ice cream faster this way!!!” she said as she stuffed two spoonfuls of ice-cream in her mouth at once.
Then I saw Sally, a lady I have always known to be extra thrifty, stuffing a whole handful of spoons in her purse. “You just never know when you will need an extra spoon! I am sure these will come in handy!”
Then I was caught off guard by the sound of laughter behind me. A little baby was getting quite a thrill out of putting a bowl on her head, letting it fall off, and then repeating the trick with another bowl. “Isn’t Bobby just the cutest baby?! What a precious little bowl trick! Do it again Bobby- I want to try to take a picture of it!!!”
And then Penny, my extra cheeky friend, began sticking spoons in her hair, “Don’t these make lovely hair decorations?! How awesome of me to think of this!”
“Oh I guess they do… I would have never thought of that.”, I said, but had began to notice that only half of the people that had said they would come had arrived.
By this time, the children on the playground had become a little rowdy and began throwing sand at each other. Debby, who has always been a very innovative mother, grabbed a handful of bowls and spoons and gave them to the children in the sandbox. They made great sand toys for the kids, and occupied them for quite some time. But after a while, the children again grew restless.
“Hey kids!! Come over here and sit at the picnic table! I have a craft for you to do!!” Called Diane, the crafty lady. I was amazed as I watched her direct the children in how to create a butterfly out of a bowl, three spoons, and some markers for decorating. The children loved the craft and afterwards they imaginatively held their butterflies above their heads and pranced in the grass to make their butterflies fly through the air.
Then I saw in the distance, a large group of people approaching the park. It was the Smithies! I had started to think that they would not make it, even though they had said they would come.
“We’re so sorry we’re late”, said Don Smithie. “We couldn’t leave the house until the rain stopped because our car broke down yesterday, and we didn’t want to walk in the rain.”
“No problem at all! There is still more than enough ice-cream left”, I said as I scooped up a nice big ball of chocolate ice cream. But, to my dismay, as I reached for the stack of bowls, I realized that they were all gone. And then I also noticed the empty box in which the plastic spoons were once in.
“Oh no!!” I gasped. Billy Smithie began to cry. He had been looking forward to ice cream ever since he was bribed into finishing his spinach soup at lunchtime.
Then some more of my friends also showed up, “Hi! We got caught it traffic, but better late than never, right?!”
“ummmm… yeah” I nervously stuttered.
The bowl and spoon dilemma became even more of a problem than I could have ever imagined. Some of the kids tried to eat ice cream out of their hands, but then their fingers got too cold, and they started to scream. Kids had ice cream dripping down their arms and on their shirts and they were trying to lick it off before more melted. The entire party became a huge dripping, sticky, bawling ice cream mess.
The tragedy was making quite a scene, as children cried, dropped their ice cream on the ground and parents tried to clean up. Still, some guests who had already eaten acted like they didn’t notice by looking the other way or by acting like they were too busy monitoring the children on the playground. But no one could have missed what was going on. Shelly said quite brazenly, “well, if you guys had just arrived on time, none of this would have happened, right?!” No one bothered to answer her question.

Debby, the mother who had made sand toys out of the bowls and spoons tried to act sympathetic, "Oh, it's just too bad, that there is not enough bowls and spoons for you all. It's a good thing I only need to worry about my own children, because they are already taken care of. It would probably be best if I went home now."
I was already in enough distress over the apparent failure of my party when one of my guests, whose name I wont mention, approached me and said, “You know, I just have to say, if you were really a good ice cream social host, you would not be allowing this to happen. I mean really, how could a good host, let perfectly good people like the Smithies, have ice cream all over their arms and legs and… just look at Billy! He’s got ice cream in his hair and dripping down his face! No wonder he is crying!” A couple of other guests nodded in agreement and then began to shake their heads at the hopeless and pathetic situation.
It will be a long time before I plan another ice-cream social. First, I will have to recover from the embarrassment of my first social’s failure. My relationship with the Smithies has gone sour due to their disappointment over the situation. Little Billy shivered all the way home as all his clothes were soaked in ice-cream, and then had to take a long bath before he was no longer terribly sticky.
I’m just not sure what I did wrong, or how I could have made sure that my party didn’t end up in a disaster.

*Not too many children were harmed during the making of this story. The ones who were harmed, were compensated with a lot of ice-cream.

Cake Walk

Basically the ONLY volunteering I do for Rocket's school the entire year is for the fall festival. I decorate the door (as seen below), and I donate a few cakes for the cake walk. Before today, I got much joy out of creating the most delightful cakes I possibly could. Last year I created a pirate ducky cake and a spider cake (with eight eyes), but I didn't post a picture of them because I didn't blog so much back then. This year I made four fondant covered cakes. I discovered how fun and easy fondant is to work with through Holly, who has a link to the recipe on her blog. It is like playing with playdough- great fun. I liked imagining children drooling over my cakes and then after being chosen as the winning number, anxiously selecting the cake I made, out of all the cakes, and then glowing as they carry it home. But after actually attending the fall festival cake walk, I had a change of heart, and I don't know if I will participate in the cake donation next year... well, if I do, I will just make ugly cakes- not pretty ones. Maybe I will make a "pile of poop" cake. Or maybe I will intentionally drop the cake on the ground before submitting it. Basically 25 children surrender THREE tickets (which cost 33.33333 cents each) to participate in the cake walk. Then ONE child's number is called, at which time, they get to gloat in front of the other 24 children as they go pick out the cake of their choice. The other 24 children get a practically petrified peice of tootsie roll on their way out of the room. That's it. I felt like kicking the cake out of the one child's hands and redistributing the cake to other more pathetic children... like the cake robin hood... or the cake Obama... or something. Anyhow, I decided that spending hours creating clever and beautiful cakes is not the most worthy cause. Unfortunately, this might mean I have to volunteer at the school in some other way, like helping the children read or something miserable like that.

A Pirate Made Out of Trash...

This isn't what I am supposed to be blogging about right now. The important blog is still in processing, and I worked on it for most of the day today, but then the sun went down early (like at 5 oclock... what's up with that?!) and foiled my efforts to complete my super exciting, super important blog, which you will, unfortunatly, have to wait until tomorrow for...

BUT until then, I would like to show off a little something I did for Rocket's school's Fall Festival. The fall festival is like a HUGE deal at the school, and all the parents are expected to volunteer somehow each year. Since I didn't want to have to help run a carnival booth (I would probably yell at the kids), I volunteer to do the artistic stuff. Last year, when I signed up to take care of the door decorating, I thought it would be pretty easy. The theme of our room was"frisbee toss" so I drew a kid throwing a frisbee, and I thought it looked alright. But when I showed up, I realized that other parents were way more creative and had put lights and pompoms and whatnot all over the other doors. I also realized that it was a contest... and I didn't even make 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, and I was soooooo embarresed. I wasn't going to let that happen this year, so I squeezed my brain out for the most creativest idea it had- trash. The theme this year was "Treasure Island", and I sure hope that no other parents out there come up with something more innovative, out-of-the-boxish, and awesome, than a pirate made out of trash- plus it has a really PC message about recycling and I think public school like that kind of thing.

Items I made my pirate out of: water bottles, milk jugs, shampoo bottles, electrical cords, tin cans, PVC, soda pop cans and liters, nuts and bolts, straws, cleaning product containers, lotion pumps, light bulbs, a door knob. The letters are all cut out of food packaging or magazines and such. The shark is made out of a taco bell plastic platter thingy, and the speech bubble is made out of a milk jug and he is saying "AAaaaarrrrr".

If you can't tell, I am actually really proud of this project- maybe even more proud than any peice of art I've create for a show. The festival is tomorrow... I'm looking for a first place ribbon.

Really Mean

When I am really excited about posting a blog, I tend to let it stew around in my head for a while, procrastinating actually writing it until I can think of all the perfect words. Sometimes those blogs never even get posted.
So while I procrastinate the important blog and continue to let it sit in my head, here is a conversation I had with Roxanne yesterday at the kitchen table. I was crafting together a pirate to go on Rocket's classroom door for the fall festival this weekend and Roxanne was cutting up a milk jug and turning it into a butterfly.

Roxanne: Mom, what if I ruined your pirate?

Mom: Well, that would be pretty mean.

Roxanne: Mom, what is "mean"?

Mom: It's something that's not very nice that could make someone sad.

Roxanne: So, if I took somebody and pushed them into an oven and pushed their arms and legs into the oven too, and then closed the door, and then turned the oven on, would that be mean?

Mom: Yes, that sounds very very mean.

Roxanne: So, if I took someone and put them in the middle of the street and told them not to go anywhere, and then I got in the car and then ran them over, would that be mean?

Mom: Yes, that would be very mean too. You'd probably go to jail.

Roxanne: So, if I took someone and put them in an airplane that was flying and then pushed them out of the airplane and they landed in a jungle and they were lost, would that be mean?
(I think this scenario may have been inspired by "Man vs. Wild" TV show)

Mom: Yes, Roxanne, that is mean too.

Roxanne: If I took these scissors and I cut off all your fingers, would that be mean? Wait- I cut off your nose too- would that be mean?

Mom: What do you think?

Roxanne: I don't know the answer.

Mom: I think you do.

Roxanne: I think it would be really really nice and sweet and cute.

I think this conversation is slightly disturbing, but nontheless, her creativity is sortof impressive, right?

I voted... I actually voted last week, but I saved my sticker to wear on Tuesday. Did you remember to vote? If you didn't, than don't bother doing it now just because I told you to. If you need ME to tell you to vote, then I probably don't want YOU making decisions for America. Likewise, if you need P Diddy, or Paris Hilton, or MTV to tell you to go vote, then I probably don't want YOU "rocking the vote"- leave that to the smart ones, please.

However, if you were planning on voting, and haven't done so yet, please remember those living in America right now, that don't have the right to vote and can't even make their voice heard. And those are the ones whose life are on the line with this election. No, it's not their bank account on the line, it's not their taxes on the line, it's not their education- it's their life. I don't know what policy or issue is more important than that.

And you may be saying that the president doesn't or won't make a difference in this issue, or that the Roe v Wade will never be overturned. People once thought the same about slavery, which was legal for much longer than abortion has been, and look where we are today. Additionally, even if the entire practice isn't abolished, the policies of one of the candidates is certain to greatly increase the number of abortions performed each year- and I don't want to be responsible for the lives of those children that could have been saved with a different vote.

I Voted

Bad Art for Bad People Show #2

On Saturday, Matt and I left the kids in the Springs with my parents, and traveled back to Denver to attend my second art show with the "Bad Art for Bad People" group. The great thing about these "bad art" parties, is that you never know what, and who to expect. Below you can see one of my paintings displayed at the show: Luke and Sarah showed up- one reason I love having them live in Denver instead of the Springs now. Here, Sarah poses in front of my painting of "Samone"... the resemblance is oddly staggering. One feature of the show was the opportunity to make your very own sock puppet (ahhh... NOW you wish you had been there, huh?!). Below, you see Luke and I working hard on creating our puppets. Then our puppets become aquainted with eachother- Luke's on the left, mine on the right. Later, they became disagreeable and fought.
Here, Luke is making fun of my painting of Samone... this was not long before the puppets had their altercation... More or less literally, the highlight of the night was the firedancers who took to the streets of downtown denver with their fire and dance moves. They were extremely difficult to get a good picture of. Although you can't see the details, I am hoping that the sum of the following pictures will present to you the essence of the perfomance.

And then Charity and Joe (the newly engageds) fell in love. That's what happens when you're surrounded by good bad art, fire dancers, and sock puppets. It happened to Matt and I too, but I was unavailable to take a picture of it. And now, here is a small sampling of the really good really bad art that was displayed at the venue:
An angry tomatoe:

Skeletal Fairy Specimens:

Not sure:

A torso:

And that's about all I have to say.