Hi, I’m owlsowner one of Donna’s 2 children. every now-and-then I will be putting a fact about owls on this page. I will also be sharing any art that I do with Donna. I also might be doing art with my sister, who will also be doing things on this page, and if I do then I will share that as well. I am also doing colouring at the moment so I will be putting that up as well. I don’t really know what else I might do to be honest.
Today started nicely, waking up and saying morning to hubby, realising I had overslept, but that’s OK its a bank holiday and we can relax for the last day before he goes back to working from home tomorrow. Off he goes to make the coffee and pretty soon the unexpected chaos of the morning begins! Hubby calls for help. Apparently we have a “visitor” courtesy of our cat! Its alive, healthy, brown fur with two big ears and a tail – the visitor, not the cat. He is big, black & white and disappeared as his “job is done”. Queue the next 45 mins of the two of us, in our PJ’s trying to catch said uninvited visitor. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, he is now MIA and we have a makeshift trap waiting for him, thanks to Melanie on Snowpiercer, hubby put together this fun item that is now adorning our lounge…
Home made mousetrap
We decided there was no point going back to bed, so everyone is up “early” today. Well, before 10am is early for us on a holiday!
Breakfast had, kids and husband off to play on various devices, I decide to catch up on a quiet art day.
Item 1 – A master-board. I caught part of a Facebook Live from Jolene last night, so today I finish it off this morning. Who knew several layers of watered down acrylic could give so much fun! I have 1 finished board, and 3 more than need doodling
Masterboard
Item 2 – Photograph the crochet blanket I’m making. Its the “calendar blanket” tutorial from Jayda in Stitches This is such a great way to learn to crochet (the american named stitches) and takes me just an evening in front of the TV usually. Last night’s TV accompaniment was Top Gear and Castle.
My 12 month Crochet Blanket
Item 3 – Continue making my two “Donna” Fabric journals. I really enjoyed making the last one from Willa’s course. This time I’m going for it alone, trying to remember all the “steps” and actually also trying to remember it’s OK not to do the same, as these are mine and they are therefore unique to me! I have two on the go and it feels like a little production line. Not really sure what I will do with them at the end, I might keep for myself or maybe launch a selling page somewhere. There is a market for them, but the question is are mine good enough to sell…? Hmmm
Two “Donna” journals
An idea of the pages
Item 4 – Do my April 5th doodle page for my challenge. Today its the Mindful Giraffe notebook and Pitt Pens. The paper doesn’t really like the Pitt pens, they are pitting as I layer the colours which is disappointing. The spread today however is very much showing the weather. We’ve had snow on and off all day, little fluffy flakes that have done nothing, interspersed with rain clouds, sunshine and its pretty chilly and windy. So different from yesterday!
Day 5 April Spread
Item 5 – write this blog for day 5 of Effy’s blog along
Item 6 – Post the blog and read at least 3 other blogs and comment.
Item 7 – Just realised I meant to make slow cook sausage casserole dinner today…. oops, sausage and chips it will be then!
Item 8 – Teach the youngest how to use the blog, can’t wait to see what he comes up with for his first blog page!
Blog-Along with Effy
Disclaimer:
All opinions expressed here are my own. I paid for any products discussed. I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.
It’s Sunday 4th April 2021, Easter Sunday and the sun has been shining all day here in our part of the UK. I woke up in a blind panic overnight, “Oh no what will I blog about today? Why have I signed myself up for this challenge? I never have anything to say!”. I did fall back to sleep eventually but I hadn’t resolved the question and I still woke at the normal time worrying about what I would write! So I decided instead of writing, I would just have the day with the family and see what comes out of my head later to write about. So, it’s now 5 pm and here I am and I still have nothing to say (I think the word count probably begs to differ)!
Easter Eggs
So 8 things about my day:
We had Hot Cross buns for breakfast, and very yummy they were too. We were also surrounded by our chocolate Easter eggs, teasing and taunting us. Amazingly the kids have not asked to eat any of it so far, this can’t last for too much longer I’m sure.
The sun has been shining all day today so I decided to make the most of it and do some gardening. We want to turn the front lawn (that’s stretching the term as it’s just moss!) into a mini wildflower meadow. So my job today was to de-weed and rake over and de-moss as much as possible, two and a half hours later and I think it’s looking okay.
Hubby made lunch and I was definitely ready for it! Yummy tuna and salad sandwiches, followed by homemade Cinnamon Rolls – that hubby spent the morning making. They were SOOO good, lucky there is some left for later!
Back out into the garden with the back garden in my sights this time, for more de-weeding and de-mossing. The only way not to have moss here is apparently to remove all the grass and put down something else entirely. But I like grass, so we plan to work with what we’ve got, and have wildflowers in the back garden too, but we have a lot of garden design and planning to continue with before we do that. So for now, its a continual tidy-up of the borders. On checking the greenhouse, I note that some seeds have germinated.. yay! The dwarf beans are keen, just hoping the runners, tomatoes and other seeds (I forget what I’ve planted!) will germinate and I can keep them going to feed us later in the year, oh and I check on my chitting potatoes too, they not quite ready for planting just yet.
Hubby came out to help, he used a garden fork to aerate the front lawn, and I shook on a full box of wildflower seeds we bought from the Marie Curie online shop. We watered in the seeds and by complete accident I managed to soak hubby with the hose! Honestly it was an accident but I laughed so much it felt so good to laugh so much, despite being at his expense. Fortunately he took it well, and got me back! I love this man so much, we laugh and joke so much!
Time to do my daily art piece! This is the journal challenge I have set myself. What to do? I’ve decided that for this test it will be my Archer & Olive Journal and Faber Castell Pitt Pens. But what to draw? Looking to the internet for inspiration and I settle on Easter Eggs.
I’m super lucky – Hubby has decided to cook the dinner so I get to write this whilst smelling the delights from the kitchen… Spaghetti Bolognaise, yum yum!
In all of this I’ve not mentioned what the children have been up to… Well they are Pre-teen and Teen – so although they have been outside all day, they have been plugged into their devices for most of it. Now the device batteries have run out I have told them “No electronics” and they have both disappeared to their rooms… They are waiting to be called for dinner… which has just happened so Bye for now….
Today is day 4 of Effy’s blog along, I do enjoy reading other posts. I hope I’m not going to start stressing whether people read my page or not, I’m sure that’s not the blog along intention!
Disclaimer:
All opinions expressed here are my own. I paid for any products discussed. I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.
It’s day 3 for Effy’s blog along and I’m really enjoying this, it’s making me get out of my comfort zone and really think about what I am doing and what I want from my blog!
Today it’s about Happy Mail. Last night I wanted to do some watercolour work – it’s my first art love and one that I seem pretty remiss in playing with lately, so I decided to spend Friday night with a glass of wine, my watercolours and my favourite tutor Karen Campbell.
I am a member of a widow peer support group, WAY, and as part of this I am a member of the “postcard swap 2021” group. Where we have buddied up again for this year and will regularly send each other happy mail. Being widowed, you are often left alone because people don’t know what to say to you, especially as time goes on and their lives carry on, but as a widow you feel “stuck”. Stuck in that time of loss and grief, of being alone, that your life has ended along with that of the person who has actually left this earth. So as part of the peer support group we look out for each other, we build friendships, we talk to each other and we support in the lows as well as the highs of our day to day continuum. Me, I have “moved forward” (note I did not say moved on – we do not move on, we do not forget our loss, our love, our life, but we move forward carrying them with us into a new life) I have a new life and have remarried, and have stepchildren. But for someone new on the journey, just breathing or getting out of bed can seem a monumental challenge, so getting some mail from someone that “gets it” is, without doubt, a massive thing.
So, I painted postcards to send to my group with the express desire to put a smile on their face, that they know there is someone out there that gets it, understands and has their back.
Postcards for my Friends
I really enjoyed doing these. I slowed right down and laughed along with Karen on her videos (she really is the best tutor and makes me giggle so much!). I felt a confidence in following the tutorial and doing the drawing. I know it’s silly but a year ago I wouldn’t have been confident at putting pencil on the paper before watercolour was added. I would have made heavy pencil marks and not been able to erase them, I wouldn’t have liked the finished result, especially the “free” black outlining, and I definitely wouldn’t have been confident at hand lettering the quotes. I would have gone and found my stamps and agonised for ages about where and how to place the letter, I would have fretted that my pieces did not exactly match Karen’s and I definitely would not have gone and found my own quote for one of the images!
Oh gosh, does this mean I am becoming an artist? An artist that is able to be creative…? No I’m sure I’m not, but one day maybe I will be.
I am not a naturally confident person, I have low self esteem, so putting myself out there into the world of creativity is a big thing for me – creating art, writing a blog, posting on Instagram – this is not my natural place to be. My instinct is to say that I am not good enough, the things that I do will be seen as worthless, unworthy, silly, pathetic, rubbish. I wasn’t going to say any of this, but asking my husband to proof read this post has had us talking about me, my feelings, how I view myself and conversely how he views me. I was widowed at 42, I lost all sense of any self worth I had built up by that age (not much but my late husband was good for me and my confidence, I felt safe and secure in who I was when I was with him). When he died suddenly in 2013, I didn’t just lose him and our life together, I lost ME. Fast forward to 2021, I have just turned 50, I am in a new marriage with an amazing man and I have two amazing stepchildren. My life today is happy and full of love and joy. As a family we enjoy our every day – even the pandemic hasn’t taken this from us. I am 50, married with children, menopausal and I am finding a new side to me – I love to be at my art table producing art. But I am not confident. I follow so many tutorials – I have to follow them because I don’t feel I can create for myself, because I have no confidence. I don’t believe I am good enough to do things for myself. So when I do create something that has come via a tutorial but has been tweaked a little to be mine, I do feel immense pleasure, I feel proud, but I don’t yet feel confident.
Oh, as I’m typing I have just realised what this is, I’ve read about this – I didn’t really think it was a thing, it wouldn’t apply to me even if it was a thing – but it is a thing and it does exist – this is Impostor Syndrome isn’t it? “I am not good enough” says my inner voice all the time, no matter how many times my husband and my children tell me that I have produced something amazing, no matter if my posts on my blog get views, no matter if Instagram posts get likes.
Dreaming and having aspirations is allowed ….. isn’t it?.
MARS – The latest Rowanberry box has just landed, and the theme inspiration has came from the recent landing on Mars by the rover “Perseverance”.
The box contents :
April Kit – Full
A box for journalling or letter writing. The themed items include craft papers, stickers, a metallic pigment pad, white pen, note card and envelopes and a circle stencil.
I set up my cover page for April and I also made a little journal from the craft papers.
April Mars Page
I have to say I was a bit disappointed with this box. I know, I know, I want to journal and it arrives and I’m disappointed. But actually, I think what I’m most disappointed in is this is just paper, an ink pad, a white pen and a very tacky little foam stamp that looks like it will fall apart pretty easily. If I was new to stationery, journalling and art then I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with these things. Actually I’m fairly certain that’s where I’ve been with kits before, but at least then they were more stationery (pen) related, and everyone knows what to do with a pen.
This kit, again is making me question my desire to keep subscribing. As noted before I know the theme of next month and I want to see what comes in the box. After that, well who knows? I do know I am starting to feel I could better spend my money elsewhere. In addition to this as Danielle’s business grows and as she now employs staff, I am finding her less accessible to answering emails. She used to be very accessible, always responding, but I now do not receive responses to any of my email questions or enquiries. But I have had a wonderful time buying from Danielle, her shop IS amazing, and I will continue to make use of the shop even if I don’t subscribe to these boxes.
Day 3 Blog Along with Effy
Day 3 of the blog along, I have found and followed so many fun blogs. Diverse, inspiring, interesting. I shall try to list my favourites as the month goes along.
Happy April
Disclaimer:
All opinions expressed here are my own. I paid for any products discussed. I received no payment and I am not affiliated in any way with any brand mentioned herein.
