Happy 4th of July

 

This is a 4th I will truly never forget!

Our church held a 24 hour prayer vigil to pray for our country and our first most cherished liberty, which is our religious freedom.

Our youth group participated in the vigil by spending the night in the church hall and going into the church to pray and spend time with Jesus intermittently. 

Isabel spent the night and I made it until 4:40 AM, when my tired old body headed for home for a longish nap and I returned for the morning mass. I applaud the moms who stayed all night, and the ones who did early morning 3:30 to 6:30 am shifts.

When I arrived this morning-still quite bleary eyed-the kids were energized and joyfully cleaning up the hall. 

They were filled with the spirit! 

 It was wonderful to see.

I know you will all agree that we LOVE our country, and cherish everything she stands for and is founded on!

So proud to be an American mom today!

And after another nap, suprisingly, I feel pretty good!

Bring on the BBQ and fireworks, I'm ready to celebrate,

thankful for this wonderful country we call home! 

 

 

Poppies

The whole time I was painting this I kept hearing the wicked witch from 

the Wizard of Oz saying,

"Poppies...poppies will make them sleep..."

hehe!

I'm painting my way through an instructional book on 

how to paint flowers that I bought at Michaels.

Learning is fun!

Getting married

This is my beauty getting married in September. Every day it becomes more real!

I'm so happy for her but its still hard to let her go!

Love you so much my darling!

Watercolor poppies

Got the scanner working!

My first attempt at poppies.

On TDIPT this month

 

Ophelia and her daisies!

Click here to go to TDIPT Mercantile for more photos!

Flowers in my garden

I can't believe I took this picture myself! I am loving these coneflowers this year!

Been working in watercolor the last couple of weeks, including the week I was on vacation in Traverse City Michigan.

I just got a new printer, so when it is completely set up I will have some scans of my work to show. But for now, just flowers from my garden!

My palette

I got my new palette from Cheap Joes yesterday, and spent all morning setting it up and painting a picture of it. I put this painting in the scanner and it is just coming out so bright, it really looks better in real life. Maybe I should take a picture instead of using the scanner.

Anyhow,

 this is the way I have set up my palette for now. A lot of my colors are Koi and Cotman, and I would eventually like to replace them with Windsor Newton. Some of them are just not as transparent as WN.

I need to add a violet next, so I don't always have to mix it.

I love my new palette and I am learning so much about color mixing from this book:

It really explains everything so clearly.