Keep it simple, make it work #4

Welcome to the fourth week of my decluttering and organizing of home spaces series.

The project´s summary:
9 months to streamline your home spaces and systems

3 months for the practical spaces: kitchen, bathrooms, laundy room

3 months for the shared areas: entry hall, living room, dining room

3 months for the personal spaces: bedrooms, office, hobbies room
1 big task each week illustrated with my own pictures and daily {gentle} reminders, tips and cheering at my Facebook page. Like it to be able to receive them every day and record your progress with a friendly crew!

Theme 1: the practical / Month 1: the kitchen / Week 4: All things hot

Day 1: pots Check for cracks in the ceramic ones and rust points in the metallic ones. Are your teflon ones flaking? Are the seals in the pressure cooker too dry? Check and tighten all handles. Replace the ones that are no longer safe to use. Fancy new ones? Awesome, donate the old ones when you get them..

Day 2: pans Give the handles a good scrub and check if they are woobly. Get all your pans together. 

Day 3: ovenware. Check your glass and ceramic ovenware for cracks. Check your metallic ovenware for rust, that includes your baking tins. Replace the ones that are no longer safe to use. Are you collecting any type?

A personal story here: on the right you will see my old (old is an "I can´t even remember when I got it") glass ovenware. On the left the newish one (2 years of intensive use). Notice the difference? I never let the left one to pile up the burnt oil on the outside. It takes patience and a good metal sponge but washing it throughly each time makes the glass look prettier longer. :)

Day 4: burners. Get your gloves on darling, we are scrubbing the kitchen top today. 

Day 5: the day you have been dreading because you all knew it was coming, right? ;) The oven. Yes, INSIDE the oven. Get an oven cleaning product. READ the instructions carefully. Open the kitchen´s windows. Get a warm caddy if you must. Put gloves on. Apply the product. Follow the instructions.

Day 6: So far we have been doing practical lists on Saturdays. What we need to run the kitchen and food preparation smoothly. We will do a different kind today. We will make a WISH LIST. A long, detailed list of tools,  and electrical appliances we wish for. 

Want to take it further? Make a dream board for your kitchen! 
Gather magazine pictures that show how you want your kitchen to look like, the gadgets you wish you had, the cuttlery, the plates, the mugs ... Everything you´d love to cook/bake with, the serving dishes, the cute details. You can glue the images to a poster board or in your journal. You can also keep them in a box or a file for future reference.
Talking about files: you can also do this digitally, getting pictures from the net and making a collage with them or just keeping them in a file.

This is my "home wish" page for Jamie Ridler´s Wishcasting Journal.
  Day 7: your day off. Dream on! See you next week!

Is it November yet?

Time is a social convention, so I´m starting "early" by setting an intention for Art Every Day Month in November today.

 I´m prepping my materials, choosing media and concepts.
I have decided on the daily scrapbooking, with cards for scraps.
But I´m also throwing in some art journaling for which I will use the quotes journal. I only had 4 spreads in it. Totally love the 4th, I´m ok with #1 and #2 but I truly didn´t like this one:

Right. Let´s cover it up with circles cut from magazines. It all started when I cut the crown seen in my Full Moon Board last month. I liked the ring left over, so I tried it again, this time on purpose.

 Added purple paint on one extreme, white on the other and worked my way along the degradé. Too much paint made the first circle wrinkle and loose grip. Looks like a Full Moon. Moon over tulip fields. Yes, I can live with this one. :)

 This year I will post a daily picture of my working space like in 2011.

 WIP aka my usual "no paint left behind" style. I also had some circles left.

Thank you for your visit today! I´m linking this post to Paint Party Friday so you can look through more painted art and also Blogtoberfest for some blog love. :)

PPF #10 v.2

Thanks Kristin & Eva for another round of Paint Party Friday!
I´m taking part of Ayala Art 29 FACES in May project, so it´s been all about portraits this month. I sketch a lot while waiting for the kids at the school doors.

This is the face I was working on two weeks ago. Now I worked on the background adding some stamping, bubble wrap colouring, watercolour pencil, marker border and a quote by Pablo Picasso: When INSPIRATION comes, let her find me WORKING.
The final stage of these art journaling pages.

Want to see my table? Here it is:
P.S: my "desk" is our dining table. That means I put stuff out, work and put stuff away. My working space isn´t like that allllll the time. ;) And yes, I´m verging OCD when placing my materials in a line. :D

Now, there is something I want to say to you:
If you are coming from the PPF link, let me tell you this: YOU are one of the most interesting peeps in this world, that´s why I keep going back there. :)
 If you are coming from Jamie Ridler´s Wishcasting Wednesday: my truest gratitude for your loving & continuous support. I´m wishing for you too.
 If you are coming from Sunday Snippets: it´s sooooooo cool to get to know you and your vision of the world. Thanks for being my eyes where you are.
 If you are coming from Creative Every Day: keep creating my dear! You are making this planet a better place.
Yay for International Internet Day (May 17th)!

I love my local community too. That being said, I haven´t been able to form a local art/business tribe. I think I haven´t been asking the right questions. In a place this big there must be some "same wavelength" women. :)

It is great timing that Jennifer Louden is offering a "Learn to Create your own Mastermind Group" course! She will teach topics like the different styles of groups and how to determine what style you want, the  structures, finding the right people and how to manage the group. Groups are formed by humans, and as such they evolve and change. Lots of useful "how to"s about that too. :)  If we have met before you will certainly recognize some of the cool interviewees names and jump for joy. If we haven´t: check them out! They are awesome! Danielle LaPorte, Andrea Sher, Tanya Geisler + Rachel Cole + Kate Swoboda + Bridge Pilloud + Julie Daley + Jamie Ridler, Fabeku Fatunmise, Elizabeth Marshall, Mark Silver + Michele Christensen + Molly Gordon + Michael Bungay Stanier + Eric Klein (Louden´s group).

The dates: May 22nd & May 29th (4 pm Pacific / 7 pm Eastern) ~calls will be recorded~

 Finding the right people is nowadays the one point I need to master the most. The "more than one" group comment got my attention as I know there are people I like that have some points in common but not others and mixing and matching is an art. :D
After reading about Jennifer´s offering I met with a new mom from my girl´s class. I might be on my way! :D
 

PPF #7 v.2 plus Found poetry

Multitasker me is doing three posts in one:

POST ONE: As Jamie Ridler is living her dream of visiting Paris with Justin, there isn´t a Wishcasting Wednesday prompt this week.

POST TWO: My colourful bookcase. These are our bare essentials, having gone through a deep decluttering last year.This does not include my art books, Daniel´s engineering ones or the kids books. If it were for my husband´s our books would be ordered by size. As a librarian I have them by topic and then by author. History, tourism, fiction, biographies and reference are the main subjects of interest for us.

 This is my Agatha Christie collection. The ones in Spanish and oldest ones in English are my mom´s. I bought one in Portuguese in Brazil in the late 80s. In 1992 I bought one in Russia because it was super cheap and it was in English and Russian. I found 10 for ten pounds in a second hand shop in Chester, England on our first week living there in ´93. I can´t recall where I bought one in French but it was in Paris in April ´94 and I added one in Italian from the Termini Terminal in Rome in Dec. 94. Daniel brought me one in Japanese in June ´96 and one in German in ´11. Oh, the Dutch one! I bought it at Schipol and the assistant warned me about it being in Dutch because she said many customers were too jet lagged to notice what they were buying. I told her it was for my Christie collection which I could see puzzled her but was too polite to push the issue farther. :D

 Why am I showing you this? Because I´m playing along with Quinn McDonald´s (the author of Raw Art Journaling, a book for people who want to make meaning but don´t know how to draw) readers in finding poetry in their books´s spines.

The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding

Sad Cypress

Crooked House

Towards Zero

is totally lame, specially after finding:

Five Little Pigs

They Came to Baghdad

Sprinkling Cyanide

At Bertran´s Hotel.

Go read what other people found. There are some that are waaaaay cool. And sweet. And intriguing.

POST THREE: Quinn´s comment encouraged me to take the plunge and have my journal as bilingual. That is the way I am after all, living in Spanglish.
I had been stucked with "her" for a while. Non of my quotes fitted her as she looked as if she was up to something. I found a sign at Tracey´s wall in Facebook and knew "THAT" was what "she" was up to. ;)

Posting for Paint Party Friday, Issue # 7 Year 2. Visit other paintings peeps by the links at the original PPF post. 

PPF #4 v.2

This is the wip I posted last week for PPF#3. In fact I had considered it "done" but Carla Rey   was absolutely right when she said "Just look at that determined expression. I think she has quite a strong personality, and that you might find yourself drawn back to work on her some more. You might be done with her, but I sort of doubt that she is done with you."

And yes, here she is looking a bit more contented (her mouth is slightly fuller and has a hint of a smile). "What is the lesson (in this)?"

Working on her next:

I liked her head pose and hair but the colouring was going very wrong. Starting over, keeping the structure.

 I must have been feeling kind of blue as I gave her blue skin and a grey background. She has orangey hair though. Still some fierceness in her.

 Fireflies came from a story I read at Karen´s and the circles from a You Tube video by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

And now she is a redhead!!!
More on her next week.
I need to find a name for her. Specially since all three have been "her" so far.

PPF #3 v.2

Last week "she" made an appearance. I could have called her done at this stage but kept going.

Light acrylic base and watercolour pencils. The light gave her a rosy complexion but still the brush strokes were visible which annoyed me at this point.

Where´s she gone this week? you ask in dismay. She was covered by a more solid colour, skin tone to beging again.

She looks a bit grimmer this time around.

But she is done!

Week 7

First: another round of "365: a storyteller with a camera", week 7´s summary. If you´d like to see some art journaling, you may scroll all the way down. :)

Week 7 will be known as the iPod week, as we were "on the road" a lot and I used it for my daily pictures. Or the appointments week. Mati was 16 last Sunday so we are going to all the annual check ups plus a few extra ones. I just realized the iPod/apps thing. I´m easily amused.

Feb 12th (43/43): our birthdays! Mati had a single blue candle for his 16 and I got a single pink one for my 45. Weather was nice and we organized an outdoors party. That being said, the Wii is the best toy ever to entertain nine kids age 2 to 17. :D

Feb 13th (44/44): Monday, app to get Mati´s lab results. Yay! Everything in "normal" range.

 Feb 14th: playing hangman with grandma Lili while waiting for dermatologist´s apps.

 Feb 15th (46/46): waiting for the dentist´s app. Yay! Both kids are still cavity free. :) Quickest app ever for Mati as being 16 he doesn´t get fluor any more, just an overview and off he goes. Tati had her fluor but it was real quick anyway.

 Feb 16th (47/47): taking advantage of the mall´s air conditioning on a 39°day. Tati chose another Cathy Hopkins book and Mati got "How to make your first sale". He is looking for sponsors for his You Tube page with over 1000 suscribers.

 Feb 17th (48/48): eye doctor app. There were no other patients so Mati didn´t even have to wait and I have no waiting picture. Lol! We were just about to get into the car when I realized I was missing my pic and went back to take this one from outside. :D

Feb 18th (49/49): hubbie had to work on Saturday and I kept him company at the showroom.

A lot of the pics taken this week didn´t  make pic-of-the-day but were cool anyway. :)
For Paint Party Friday this week I showed my title page for a new quotes journal. Faber Castell watercolour pencils on Canson white paper.

 Would you call this scrapbooking? It has no picture as it is the title page for my Web section of my planner.

 Collage art journaling. Just as I´m back at painting and journaling, I´m back at completing my Wishcasting Journal by Jamie Ridler. It is a very powerful tool. The question I asked here was answered less than 18 hours later.

Paint Party Friday # 49

Honey, I´m hoooome!
After two months and a half, I´m back at Paint Party Fridays.
In fact after two months and a half I gathered my stash again. All of it. Just like it happens.

Dining-room table: painted art journaling on the left, scrapbooking on the right.

 Kitchen table: collage art journaling on the left, written journaling on the right.

 My word for 2012 is expansive. My iGoogle has a sticky note that says: Deeper than the ocean, higher than the sky. Yes, in English. I found it that way and loved it that way.
Now ... when things get stuck. My plan was to paint the title page with my word and use the journal for guide/intention quotes. Faber Castell aquarelle pencils on Canson white paper. You might remember the deep greenish/purple colour of the sea in Las Grutas.

 You see where this is going? If I wrote "deeper than the ocean" and then "higher than the sky", ocean would be written in the sky and sky on the ocean. And it just didn´t sound right the other way around.
One day I was telling hubbie about it and as I translated it ... it sounded perfectly the way I needed it to be in Spanish! Tan alto como el cielo, tan profundo como el mar. (We use as deep as the sea, not ocean.)
Voilá! My title page for this year´s art journal.

AEDM 2011: Day 21 Let it rain

For Art Every Day Month I show each day what I created the day before. My table on Nov 20th.

It all started with "I´m empty", meaning I had no ideas. You can see my photographs box on the table. I was shuffling papers for a couple of hours and no ideas for scrapbooking came to me.

Then I remebered Ok Go´s song that had the line "running on the fumes". Yups, must be that. AEDM took everything I´ve got (another line from the song).

Cue to endless repets of Let it rain while painting this. After the first colour I remembered the Travelling journal series by MaryAnn K and looked for my pen to write what this piece was all about underneath the colours as I had seen her do:

PS: Ok Go also has a song called "A good idea at the time" ;)