March Adventures

March is always a super busy month. I didn't get a chance to work on any art, but have a lot to share.

There was a couple of great morning sun pictures that I got. I love the patterns in the sky.

For St. Patrick's Day we spent time with friends and family. I made this wonderful Irish Whiskey Pie. You can find the recipe here.

I have pretty much quit drinking but I decided to have one Irish Iced Coffee for St. Patrick's Day.

The next day we headed to the local winery for some great Irish Music. This guy was amazing!

I had walked out to my backyard and noticed this wonderful fragrance. I realized it was coming from the Mango trees. I have lived in my house for 6 years now and never noticed this fragrance so strong before. Here are some pictures of what the blooms look like on the tree. I will take pictures as the mangos start growing.

I also snuck some pictures of the Murphy dog.

I finally got around to cleaning and reorganizing my studio, you can read about that here.

March is my birthday month and this year was a big one. I turned the big 40. My sister tried to surprise me by coming down for it. She kept hinting that she was coming and I caught on to it pretty quickly. I was so excited to spend time with her.

The day of my birthday the boyfriend and I had planned to go to the Jupiter Lighthouse and then go to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Those plans got canceled because of the weather. So we decided we were going to go to my favorite breakfast place. I didn't realize it but the boyfriend and my sister had this breakfast all planned out and had a bunch of friends and family up there to celebrate.

Here is everybody waiting for me to show up.

This is when I got there. Our friend Alex decided to dance for me! I think he was over tired from just getting off of work.

Since it was raining and a dreary day we decided to go bowling. Here I am showing my skills.

The next day my sister and I went to the mall and did a little shopping. That afternoon she left to head home.

That night we ended up at the Indian Pow Wow that comes to the area every year at this time. I got this great picture of the sun setting behind a tee pee.

Here is my stash of purchases from the Pow Wow. I got a coyote skull and a handmade tomahawk.

When we got up that morning there were a bunch of buzzards across the street. I actually have a fascination with these birds. I wish I could have gotten closer.

March always ends up a great month. I am hoping to get back into my art in April.

My Small Studio Space

Browsing around the internet I always love looking at how other artists have their space set up. I hope you enjoy checking out my space. 

Back in February on our way home from St. Augustine we had stopped at Ikea and I bought some shelves and another cart for my studio space. I finally got around to cleaning and organizing that space this weekend. So I thought I would share my small corner studio space.

This is the before picture. For some reason I let things pile up and become quite messy!

This is the after with the Murphy dog making an appearance.

I got these cookie jars from Target to put my colored pencils, markers, and pens in. I like being able to see all the colors out in the open.

This is one of the shelves I got from Ikea. I really like that it has all the drawers. I was able to organize so much of my stuff and fit them in these drawers.

This is the other shelving unit I got from Ikea. I use this to hold finished artwork and all the different types of paper I have.

I also got another one of those Raskog carts. These are so useful to hold all the stuff you need to quickly access.

Another finished look!

The top of my table and my work in progress. I am hoping to finish this soon!

And the Murphy dog with another appearance. I love this picture!

Technology Programs Brochure Designs

These are a couple of brochures I designed for two of our technology programs we offer at work. I chose to just show the covers because I wanted to show how clean and simple the design is. 

This first program is our e-Read and Report. In this program the children read the book then answer vocabulary and comprehension questions at the end. They are scored and then the teacher can check how they are doing and decide what level of book the child can read next. 

This second program is to help with a child's fluency and reading rate. It reads a passage from one of the books, then the child reads along, and finally the child reads the passage independently and is scored on how fluent they read.

Both of the programs are really fun and interesting for children who have issues with reading.

February Adventures & St. Augustine Weekend Trip

This year is just flying by already! I realize I missed 2 weeks on the blog. The first week it was because I started a side project and hope to share more on that soon. The second week we had just got back from our second trip to St. Augustine and I was so exhausted.

To start off I did not get any pictures of sunsets or nature for this month (except for a couple during our trip see those below).

I finished a LifeBook 2014 lesson and was able to start on a second one.

Here is a quick sketch for the next LifeBook 2014 lesson:

I bought these little mystery packs for Lego Minifigures I just love the samurai:

I was trying to think if we did anything else interesting in February and I couldn't come up with anything. I think we were excited for our second trip to St. Augustine. We had a free 2 night stay in one of the Bluegreen resorts for becoming owners. We decided to go back to St. Augustine so that we could see a few things we missed out on. The first thing we did when we got there was go to those places. We ended up at the St. Augustine Distillery and the Whetstone Chocolate Factory.

These are barrels of their first batch of Bourbon Whiskey, which was explained as the first batch of whiskey distilled in Florida. These barrels won't be ready for bottling for a couple more years.

These are the stills that they use in their distilling process.

More barrels of Bourbon Whiskey. I was really hoping we would get to taste this but it's just not ready yet.

We made it to the tasting room and the first thing we got to try is the Vodka. They made what they call a Florida Mule. It was so good and refreshing.

Then he made a batch of Gin and Tonics. These were also very tasty.

As we were leaving I noticed this hawk just chillin on the fence.

We then headed over to the Whetstone Chocolate Factory. Yup that is me sporting a fancy hairnet.

This machine was so loud. It was where they pour the chocolate in the molds and it shakes all the bubbles out.

It was neat to watch this machine wrap the chocolates.

By the time we were done with everything we were starving. We were going to go back to the Distillery and eat but nothing on the menu looked appetizing. We ended up going to Mojo BBQ again. This place is just amazing. Look how big this sandwich is, it's the Mojo Club, with Turkey, Lettuce, Tomato, Cheese, Bacon, and Pulled Pork.

The next morning we woke up as the sun was rising. There was a neat little fog over the little ponds.

We had our Owner Review next with Bluegreen. They really were just trying to up-sell us into a bigger package than what we originally purchased. We also found out that some of the things we were told when we originally purchased just were not true. So we will see how this goes. I guess we need to really learn their system.

After the review, we decided to go shopping at the outlets. I was a little disappointed with this, I thought outlet stores were supposed to have better pricing, everything was regularly priced. We then went back to the resort to rest for a bit. I was wanting to wait for the sun to set and go take some nature photography but it got really dark and cloudy so I missed that perfect light and didn't get out there to take the photos.

We ended up going back to the Sushi place we went to last time, and it was still amazing. I wish we had a sushi place closer that was this amazing.

When we woke up the next morning I was going try again to go take some photos around the resort but it was so densely foggy out. We packed up the car and headed to Orlando, because I wanted to go to IKEA to get another cart because they were on sale. I also ended up purchasing a couple of shelving units for my art supplies. The boyfriend just finished putting them together so I will have to show pictures in next month's adventures when I get everything organized.

I also finished the 1st book of the Outlander series. There was a lot I loved about this book and somethings that were hard to take. I loved all the Celtic Folklore that is told throughout the book. This book is based in the 1700s Scotland and there was a lot of barbaric things that happen throughout that we are just not used to dealing with in the here and now. It was definitely an interesting read and I plan to try and read the rest of the series.

Well that is about it for this month. I look forward to what next month brings, which is my birthday month!!!