Top Ten Things That Happened to me in 2012

At first I was going to put this list in chronological order but that made me have to think too hard. And then I was going to put the list in order of importance, but I was too indecisive- except for number one. That one was clearly the most important- the rest were all somewhat of a tie, I think.

1. Moving to Locust Street. This is important because it meant moving away from Highlands Ranch, which represented oppression and isolation and embarrassment to me. I remember December of 2011 when we were setting up our artificial Christmas tree in our Highlands Ranch home for the fifth time, and I said something like "man, wouldn't it be great if this was our last Christmas in this house?" But as soon as I said it, I realized it was ridiculous and unrealistic and I tried not to get my hopes up. But despite my worries and pessimism, things came together and our house sold and we found the perfect house in Denver, and every day I've dwelt here since feels like such a huge blessing. I feel "at home"- like this is where we are meant to live. It seems to have marked a turning point for our family- a fresh start.

I painting this in the side of the house as a reference to the street name.

2. My second year participating in the chalk art festival. I actually did get around to posting about this on the blog, so I won't say too much. I had a fun time and won "best use of color". I also felt so thankful to have Matt as my assistant and he made me feel so supported and encouraged.

3. The hot air balloon festival. One of my favorite childhood memories is going to the Colorado Springs hot air balloon festival with my dad when I was a little girl. This year I went with my dad and Roxanne and it was just like I had remembered it- magical.

 

4. When I heard about this happening:

5. Going to the Book of Mormon with my brother Luke. I spent two hours online fighting for them last January, and then got to go see it in August. It was fabulous and ridiculous and wonderful- especially in light of all my Utah memories.

6. Thanksgiving in Kansas. We had quite a few good adventures on the way there including the genoa wonder tower (a location off my bucket map), the best bathrooms in America, and a dead man in Lucas (but we weren't allowed to take a picture or I would post it here).

Inside the wonder tower

Parts of the bathroom above.

Rock city in Kansas was really cool too.

Ugh. My thumbs are getting tired. iPad typing is not too easy. Maybe I should have made it a top 6 list.

7. Rocket winning the school science fair. When I picked him up from school that day he said, "that was the happiest moment of my life". And that makes it one of MY happiest moments too.

BTW, he looks much more humble in this picture than he was in reality.

8. Visiting the Mother of Cabrini Shrine with my good friend Stephanie from Utah. It was unplanned (we actually planned on going to redrocks). It was a beautiful place where you could see all of Denver, and I'd like to go back in the spring when the flowers are blooming.

9. Eating an awesome blossom on my birthday. Also, thanks to matt, lots of friends gave me lots of caps which always make me happy.

Chilis no longer makes Awesome Blossoms, but you can get the same thing at Texas Roadhouse or Outback Steakhouse.

10. My gingerbread house party. And I already said enough about that right?

Typing with just my thumbs, is making them really freezing cold, so I wonder if it's somehow cutting off the blood to my thumbs. My next post will be shorter.

 

Art rage

Ok I'm already at it again and it's not even next year yet! I just wanted to show you the cool art I can make on my IPad. I use a program called artrage. This is a drawing of Roxanne I did while she posed for me on the couch the other night.

Ok now I can't find all the other pictures I was going to show. Maybe I really should quit for the night.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Testing Blogsy

 

It's about two hours until 2013 and I am sitting by the cozy fire using my new iPad that I got from my parents for Christmas. I was thinking that the IPad might make my blog (something that used to bring me a lot of joy) a lot easier to maintain. Anything I can do while sitting on the couch is much more likely to get done. However, the IPad means the posts will also be much lower quality- photos taken from my phone's camera and many typos and silly autocorrect.

So I just spent 4.99 on a blogging app called "Blogsy" and after watching the tutorial how to videos, I'm excited to get started and try out some of the great features. First, I'm going to try to pull in a picture- it's supposed to be really easy.

Ah, there. This is a picture of my gingerbread house this year. Remember last years gingerbread party? This year went much better. People took their houses very seriously (probAbly because of my threatening invitation), and there were some amazing results. Here's some of my favorites:

Heather made the super cool sugar skull house. Everything she does turns out beautiful.

 

This is a trailer park ginger bread house with a white trash nativity scene. Everything is edible except the car. Even the PBR cans and tires lining the driveway.

This picture doesn't show how cool this house that Jodi made is. She used melted jolly ranchers for the stained glass windows and then it lights up from the inside.

This is Rockets "rocket" gingerbread house.

This one Roxanne made. Her and I found these awesome twizzlers at the grocery store that were multicolored.

Well I feel like I'm pushing my luck now and I better go ahead and publish this post. I already lost everything once and had to retype it all. And I need to go get myself a glass of wine so I can be sipping it by the fire when midnight arrives.

2013!

How do I make that a bigger font? Oh. Like that.

 

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Chalk Art Festival 2012

So, this is going to be my synopsis of the Chalk Art Festival this year.  If you're on facebook, you probably already saw all these pictures, but now I'm just adding words. 

This is what I did last year:  

 

The first thing I had to do was write my sponsor's name up top.  The sponsor pays money for their name to be near my art, and they hope for that to be good advertising for them. 

Then I started in with the outline of my image:

I included this image because it shows the photograph that I was working from.  It's a picture of Roxanne making a funny face.  Also, notice the chalks in the square container.  They are chalks made by Terry Ludwig.  They are super super nice and he let me go into his factory and buy dinged pieces for a discount.  I watched the other artists struggle with their lower quality chalks and felt a little guilty.  Also, Terry came by a few times to check up on me and make sure the chalks were working good for me.  I felt superior and lucky to have such a valuable connection. 

And this is just another picture of me getting started...

Now this picture is telling.  It is me staring up into the ominous rain clouds lurky in the sky.  Rain clouds are chalk art festivals' worst enemy. 

Just about every kid that came by, imitated the picture so their parents could take a picture.  A couple adults did it too.  I didn't anticipate my design being so interactive in that way, but it was perfect. 

This was when it began to rain.  The artists kept pretty calm, although they looked sad.  The public acted like someone was dying, and I felt a little weird about that.  I didn't know how to respond to that.  I didn't want to be like "oh whatever, I dont care", but I didn't want to act like I was devestated either because that would be embarressing.  Looking back though, I think it was a good part of the experience.  It was an interesting step in the process, and I do believe this was about the process more than the outcome.  It forced the artists to stop what they were doing and bond with each other.  People who are emotional about the same thing bond easier.  I think I learned most people's names while it was raining. 

The rain continued for maybe an hour and a half. Not knowing when or if it would stop was the most difficult part. 

This is a picture of it in the process of drying.  The brighter parts of the painting are the dry parts and the darker parts are still saturated.  Matt and I walked down the street to a bar and had a drink while we waiting for it to dry completely.  And speaking of Matt, he was the most wonderful assistant I could have ever asked for.  When I think of him on those two days, it's proof he really loves me.  Because he stayed out there in the heat and the rain, and got me whatever I needed, making trips to and from the car, or whatever.  He probably did the same amount of work, but I got all the credit.  None of the thousands of people that walked by ever said "wow, you're doing a really good job!" to him- they just said that to me.  But he did everything he did, just because he loves me. 

After the rain, I worked for abother 4-5 hours until it got too dark to see my colors anymore.  By the time I left Saturday night, I had my picture back to the condition it was in before the storm.  I was especially excited that night that I had gotten a plot under the romantic Larimer lights.  Then when we got in the car to go sleep on someone's floor, like we had the night before, Matt surprised me by telling me that he had booked us a hotel room.  Hotel rooms are my favorite thing ever. 

And this is my butt getting back to work early Sunday morning.  The heat and crowds became unbearable really quickly. 

This was one of my favorite pictures of my piece that I found online. 

And this is the final product.  The picture was taken by the chalk art association.  I think from a ladder. 

I had to leave early Sunday because Friday was sick and in the hospital.  Also because the kids were really hot and really cranky.  But at around 6, my good friend Kyle called me to tell me I had just won the category for "best use of color"- which is a huge honor.  There is over 200 artists, and only 9 categories with winners. 

I didn't really take many pictures of the rest of the festival- mostly because by the time I was done with my piece, the crowds made it nearly impossible to view anyone elses.  But you can view all of the winners here. 

We are supposed to close on our new (to us) home in Denver tomorrow.  I hope to be able to be a more consistant and interesting blogger after that, since moving to a new house will make most of the problems in my life dissapear, thus making it easier for me to be a perfect person.  I know a lot of people are looking forward to that happening. 

Moving

So the plan is that we're moving... if God wills it so (I always add that to show God that I still know he is in control, so that he doesn't do something drastic to remind me)  This is a dream come true.  The map above is an illustration mostly for people that don't live in Denver so that you can visualize the city.  The blue little car at the bottom represents where we live now- it is a car because living so far south means we spend a lot of time in the car driving north.  The yellow money sign is the house we are under contract to buy.  It is a money sign because moving is as good as winning a bunch of money.  The purple telephone is sort of where Luke and Sarah live.  It's a phone sign because mostly we only communicate through calling and text because we live so far away from each other- it can take an hour or more to get to and from each others homes.  The star is where most of the cool stuff happens in Denver, and thus, we we end up driving to a lot.  Oh, I forgot to add something to show where Matt works.  That's important too- and it's why we couldn't move right into the middle of the star (well... because it's too far from matt's work and because he doesn't make a million dollars a year which is what houses in the middle of the star cost).  Matt's work is like where the two major interstates cross at the bottom of the map. I also didn't add where my parents live.  That would probably be right about at your space key on your keyboard.  But even though we'll be farther from them, they are happy because it will be easier to see both their kids (and grandkids) when they come to Denver without having to go to opposite ends of the city... although I don't think my mom has ever realized how far apart Luke and I live because she often calls me and says "I'm leaving Luke's house now, so I'll see you in 20 minutes"... ummm... more like an hour.
Ok this post is the worst one I've ever posted on my blog.  If I were reading it on someone else's blog, I would have quit by now.  Sorry.
Also, I just noticed when I published this post that for some reason some of my words are being turned into links to advertisements.... lame.  And in the first line, when I say "if God wills it so", the word "wills" is linked to an advertisement about writing a will... making this post even lamer than I thought it was already going to be. 

Lazy Post

This is a lazy post.  I'm pulling pics over from Facebook to try to update the blog. 

Did a fun body painting event.  Had a PERFECT model.  I also painted a suitcase this same way.  
















I'm painting a piano to go on the 16th street mall. 




The 16th street mall is a very touristy location. Most of the people there are tourists or homeless people.  With the pianos on the mall, pianists can play for tips from the tourists. 
The "Downtown Denver Partnership", who arranged this painted piano program rejected my first two designs.  In the below picture my fish is saying "I sleep on the 16th street mall at night" because right now the city is trying to pass an ordinance to ban homeless people from sleeping on the mall at night (currently at night around 200 people sleep on the streets of the outdoor mall).  Some say the ordinance is trying to "shoo" them away to some other neighborhood... some say it's motivated by compassion.  I'm not sure. 


The evil DIA horse is on one side of it... 

 

And this is the bench: 

The toilet seats finally went up in the penny bathroom: 

All of the seats (minus the ones turned in really really late).  Mine is the open mouth one and the one baby doll face in the lower left.  Roxanne is the one in the lower right and the mona lisa one two over from it. 

One of the stalls: 

 

 

Roxanne was Laura Ingalls Wilder for a school presentation.  Isn't she such a darling?!

 

Over spring break, Roxanne and Elise painted their faces: 

 

And I used the "percolator" on this picture:

 

 

Also.... we are under contract to sell our house.  

I have dreamed my ENTIRE life of not living in Highlands Ranch, and it seems that my life long dream is almost about to come true!!! I really can't believe it, but we haven't actually closed yet (May 22), so I dont want to jinx it by getting my hopes too high.  Haven't started looking for a new house but I have incredible dreams of living closer than 30 minutes away from Denver.