Last year I was given a pile of old gardening magazines; I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do with them, but I held onto them because I just had a feeling that they’d come in handy at some point.
It took a while, but I was right.
believe it or not, these millions of scraps of paper were somewhat organized
January is officially over, and Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter (i.e. he saw his shadow). Although his history of predictions is ✨questionable✨, he may be right this year, because there are still plenty of low temps and chances of snow on our forecast.
January has been a month of intense creativity for me. Work has been extremely slow (as per usual in January), and although I’m currently very poor, I’m always happiest when I’m not just sitting at my desk painting all day.
Although pet portraits are a great staple for me, I’m hoping for some new opportunities to come my way in this new year.
The weather forecast was right (despite our doubts): winter storm Albatross arrived, and we woke up to a winter wonderland on January 19th.
The temps plummeted during this storm, so although the snow started off heavy and wet, the majority of it was dry and powdery — the perfect combination to coat the landscape in 5-6″ of pristine white ❄
January 18th was the last day that we got truly decent temps. The morning was warm*, and rays of sunlight were shining through the rising mist over the stonewall.
Very New England-core✨
*a winter’s “warm”, of course
although I despise what the invasive bittersweet plant does (and do my very best to not let it produce berries on my property), its winter display (in my grampa’s yard) is always impressive
If you’ve found yourself on any girls’ social media pages lately, chances are that you’ve seen someone trying the heatless sock curls — and I finally tried them too.
I’ve seen a million different products being advertised for heatless curls, but I’m not willing to spend money on something that’s such a gamble. (and that looks to be kinda complicated to do by yourself)
I’ve tried my fair share of curling methods over the years; all heatless, of course, because I refuse to kill my hair again after I bleached it to death with hydrogen peroxide when I was 14. My hair was fried, broken, and stretchy when wet (a very weird experience) for a couple of years until I grew it out and cut it off.
Ever since then I’ve been scared to do anything that will cause damage to it. That means no straighteners, curling irons, or curling products.
ft. my support local street cats t-shirt from GOODVIBEQUOTESSHOP on Etsy
Everyone who lives somewhere where it snows knows that there’s snow…and there’s
❄snow❄
Riley Mae tied some branches onto the bird feeder by the kitchen window; she set it up for photo opportunities, and it works perfectly because the birds will even come to the feeder while I’m sitting on the glider just a couple feet away from it. This is a little dark-eyed junco (left) and a house finch (right) a.k.a a Hollywood Finch
It finally happened: I painted my deer skull, and ‼spoiler alert‼ it came out better than I imagined it would.
I’ve been talking about this project for a hot minute, but it was just too much for me to seriously think about for a while. I was scared to jump into it prematurely and ruin it (it’s not like I have an unlimited amount of skulls here — all of mine are very special and meaningful to me).
the gold detailing really brought the project to life
A collection of photos taken back in September during our little vacation down by the coast 🌊
weather at the end of September is really a coin toss ’round here, so we were pretty lucky to get decent temps, even if we did get quite a bit of clouds and a few passing showers
