lIkE BuTta

SO I FOUND THIS LITTLE BEAUTY THIS WEEK AND... IM IN LOVE. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SUCH AN AMAZING BUTTER DISH? THE BEST PART OF ALL WAS THAT I PAID $1.99 FOR IT. NOW WHENEVER THE BUTTERS ALL GONE I CAN BE LIKE "oH hi aLICe hoWs disH LiFe ToDaY?

Cold California and Lost

lost in a dirty sea...im lost, so lost.

THe photo booth, the picture show. you never crack a smile. get me out of your cold california, i wanna be in the sun for a whyle.

CAkEs, bUbBLeGuM, aNd wOrMs

miss arden and my secret weapon

This little devil, had to be bribed with candy to let me take a decent picture...oh arden betty...the adventures.

Im a cake freek...so when i saw this little number i had to buy it for arden...its magnificent! a delacacy of little deserts on fabric . i once wanted to own my own bakery, get a huge sleve tattoed on my arm, and give free cookies to bums. but then i figured out i only wanted to be maggy gilinhall on Stranger Then Fiction. i love her.
What else? we are potty training....and its....interesting. every day its an adventure. i bought her tinkerbell panties, and shes so skinny she looked like a starved war victim. she hates them by the way...and she says in a loud, almost physcotic voice "cHaNgE mY DIaPeR" so....my strategy with the potty has been simply this...a pretty little bubble gum machine. when she goes on the potty she gets a penny and a brightly colored gumball(AND IT ALWAYS HAS TO BE ORANGE...SHES OBSESSED WITH ORANGE).its worked like a charm..so far.
Oh, one more thing....we found out ardens TERRIFIED of worms!! i have never seen her freek out like she did last night. we will never watch How To Eat Fried Worms again.she even freeked out at the sight of gummy worms!!! worms are ardens boogie monster.

Without a care in this world........

Oh to feel so free.....looking at these pictures of arden betty made me miss summers spent as a little girl. when the weather gets warm i feel so happy ...so free!
the sun has been out....and that makes life just a little bit better. im so over this winter.... over snow and colds.....im done with sweaters and boots. give me sunburns and barefeet. when i was a little girl i ran barefooted everywhere, i wore a thousand mardigra beads and a swimsuit. my skin was brown,my hair ratty, and my teeth crooked...to put it nicely,i was a little trashy gypsy girl. i was that little girl who wore skirts too big for her and boys shoes(the girl the rich mothers thought was so pretty, she just needed to be groomed a little:)....i rode my byke all over town and played in the "field" aka an old abandoned lot behind a highway...in the industrial side of town.this place was my fort...my little playland. old abandoned signs and broken down cars, alice had wonderland...i had the dump. we'd find old wood to build forts with...and we took it sereously our forts became our new home...i even remember poopong in them!!on these long summer days i was gone all day i'd go home only to rummige for change to buy penny candies at the quick stop. looking back,its amazing im alive today. all this and i feel lucky that i had that much freedom. i feel bad for the kids who had it so "normal" the schedules and the dance clases the ones who never went outside. from what i have seen...they came out a bit boring.im thankfull that i was not one of those snotty little girls with the perfect scrunchie hair and no imagination. give me my pink bike,traintracks, jelly shoes, ice cream truks, dirty fingernails, and my sister at my side. i would take a summer day like this over any memory i have.to this day when i see a ratty little girl i think of me.

on a cloudy day

RiLo KiLEy -a bEtTer SoN/dAuGhTeR
i Found rilo kiley in my mail box 5 years ago via a burned cd from my pal laura. i remember locking myself in my parents bathroom...listening to this and thinking wow there is hope.....someone out there feels as crazy and out of sorts as me.it was a dark winter. i worked the midnight shift in a gas station located by nothinhg but open space and maby a trailer park. all i needed was a couple hundred dollars and then i'd plan my next escape.this song among others got me through sleeping all day and cleaning slurpy machines all night. so thank you rilo kiley...i still do and always will need you. here are the dazziling lyrics to one of my favorite songs
SOMETIMES IN THE MORNINNG I AM PETRIFIED AND CANT MOVE
AWAKE BUT CANNOT OPEN MY EYES
AND THE WEIGHT IS CRUSHING DOWN ON MY LUNGS
I KNOW I CANT BREATHE AND HOPE SOMEONE WILL SAVE ME THIS TIME
AND YOUR MOTHERS STILL CALLIN YOU INSANE AND HIGH
SWEARIN ITS DIFFERENT THIS TIME
AND YOU TELL HER TO GIVE IN TO THE DEMONS THAT POSSESS HER
THAT GOD NEVER BLESSED HER INSIDES
THEN YOU HANG UP THE PHONE AND FEEL BADLY FOR UPSETTING THINGS
CRAWL BACK INTO BED TO DREAM OF A TIME
WHEN YOUR HEART WAS OPEN WIDE AND YOU LOVED THINGS JUST BECAUSE
LIKE THE SICK AND THE DYING

AND SOMETIMES WHEN YOUR ON YOUR REALLY effing ON
AND YOUR FRIENDS THEY SING ALONG AND THEY LOVE YOU
BUT THE LOWS ARE SO EXTREME THAT THE GOOD SEEMS effing CHEEP
AND IT TEASES YOU FOR WEEKS IN ITS ABSENCE
BUT YOULL FIGHT AND YOULL MAKE IT THROUGH
YOULL FAKE IT IF YOU HAVE TOO
AND YOULL SHOW UP FOR WORK WITH A SMILE
YOULL BE BETTER AND YOULL BE SMARTER
AND MORE GROWN UP AND A BETTER DAUGHTER
OR SON
AND A REAL GOOD FRIEND
AND YOULL BE AWAKE
YOULL BE ALERT YOULL BE POSITIVE THO IT HURTS
AND YOULL LAUGH AND EMBRACE ALL YOUR FRIENDS
AND YOULL BE A REAL GOOD LISTENER
YOULL BE HONEST YOULL BE BRAVE
YOULL BE HANDSOME AND YOULL BE BEAUTYFULL
YOULL BE HAPPY
YOUR SHIP MAY BE COMMIN IN
YOUR WEAK BUT NOT GIVIN IN TO THE CRIES AND THE WALES OF THE VALLEY BELOW
AND YOUR SHIP MAY BE COMMIN IN YOUR WEAK BUT NOT GIVIN IN
AND YOULL FIGHT IT IF YOU GO OUT FIGHTIN ALL OF EM.

please go listen to this song asap. you will understand why i love it so.

ANGRY LITTLE DOLLS (what im working on right now)

These are just a few of my angry little dolls. i love each one of them because they come from experiences and moments in my life. anger fules my passion for art like nothing else i know. its the hardest emotion for me and yet, the most creative emotion for me. ANGER.

miss arden betty gets stripes

yikes stripes!! so i did it again,and i loved every second of it. when i was working at mariott during my pregnancy i fell in love with the yellow striped walls in the suits. i loved the comfy feeling they created in the rooms and the fact that they looked nice and they were fun too!every day i stood on swollen feet and dreamed of sleeping in the rooms and puking in those pretty toilets! (yeah, i dream big hu?) so, what do you know?? i painted stripes for my sweet bundle on the way. we opted for a gender neutral green and white....and it was so sweet! little elephants and pokadots,perfect for a boy or a girl.....heres a small peek of the wall (boring picture because i had to edit my naked pregnant bellie out:)
Well, when we moved into our new house we had a million jobs to do. you name it we did it! it was fun and hectic and the house is just as we wanted it....except for miss arden bettys room. we were just not up to the task....so we called it good. but this week i had to do something....and i missed those baby stripes oh so much! so yup i did it again....heres the result. i love it and most of all arden loves it. beau and i laugh because growing up we never had nice rooms. i plastered mine with magazine cutouts and pictures of my friends....to cover up my moms choice of pink unicorns...that crap still haunts me. i hated those walls so much, i remember being 6 and wiping boogers on the walls while sitting in bed. beau tells me the story of being moved into colbys room (his big bro) when he moved out. not so bad, but good ole colb left freddy cruger up on the wall..and no one bothered to take the stupid poaster down! talk about nightmares. so anyway, this is just a peek, i need to go to some baby botiques and find some good stuff for the walls...im not much of a decorator but its so much fun!!

dROwNDIng PAsT REGReTS In TEA AND cIGARETTEs

i painted this on a rainy night in march a few years ago. it took me about two hours, and i cried the entire time.....in the background i listened to life in mono by Mono on repeat. this song fueled my creativity as music always does. it is key to my creation. because of the emotional attachment i doubt i could ever sell this piece.

death and day time tv....... my fears on paper

irony. this is a word i will use for this journal piece. my fears of motherhood and being stuck home with only day time tv to comfort me were brought together in two seperate pages. what irrational childish fears i had. motherhood is not death i soon found out. it is the opposite really. i guess growing up i saw too many examples of women who LOST themselves during these years of babies and pregnancy. (my mother not being one of these)i suppose these fears arent abnormal tho....but how funny that i associated motherhood with death and death to me was none other then (picture this) me, 30 years old 40 pounds overweight,wearing a mickey mouse t shirt and sweats,a bucket of chicken on my lap. all around me i see piles of laundry just begging to be folded. papers and bills stacked, the baby in an old carrot stained sleeper suit with vomit down his chin. oh,and a toddler with messy pants and a fever. on tv....maury, sally, montell.....and a little court tv if you will. my husband is nowhere to be found...maby with his sexie blonde co-worker at a chilis somewhere...or a motel giving to her what he already gave me back before mickey mouse t shirts and old chicken. SO YES FOLKS, WHEN I WAS A YOUNG GIRL THIS WAS MY FEAR...MY BIGGEST FEAR. and i am proud to say i have concored my fear...my life is nothing like this.im as busy as a bee and on top of it all....but still if it was a choice between death and daytime tv....I'D CHOOSE DEATH. :)dont take this poast as me being anti mother anti homemaker....call it anti depression anti disfunction. its as simple as that.

LOST MY MARBLES

I love old things. old is better. old is beautyfull. my house is old, and thats the only way i want it. the thought of a new home saddens me. all my life i dreamed of a big front porch and old walls with weird plates. i have the porch, now im working on the plates. saturday my friend suzzy and i went antiquing. my finds?? two bird plates and an old mayonayse jar that i filled with marbles.10 cents each!!! i was overjoyed as i dropped each marble in the jar, and me and the little old lady running the place counted them out. suzzy got one to mach. friendship marble jars if you will. who needs rings when you can have marble jars?

our new neighbors...journal art and such

In your eyes i see a darkness that torments you

i painted her in my kitchen listening to the juliana theory.....back in 04? yeah. this painting was very emotional to me. i link songs i listen to with memories, and when i painted this memories of a crazy relationship from my past came flodding back in my mind.my art saved me from this.
WHEN I PAINT I FEEL A RELEASE THAT I CAN NOT DESCRIBE. I KNOW THIS GIFT WAS GIVEN TO ME BY GOD. ITS MY HEALING. FOR ME THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS WORLD BETTER THEN ME AND A SIMPLE DAY ON A TILE FLOOR WITH A PAINTBRUSH IN MY HAND AND AND A CANVAS AT MY FEET.

I HAVE SO MUCH ANTICIPATION OF WHAT THE SUN WILL BRING. THIS IS EMILY WISHING FOR SUMMER

SLOWLY, I HAVE SO MANY PIECES I NEED TO POAST..............THIS ONE I PAINTED ON A SUNNY DAY LAST SPRING.