Made my Day

Paintings by Hand-Painted Weddings.

Did you know that the morning glory flower lives for one day? Well, actually, it is less than a day. It blooms when the sun comes up and wilts and dies by sunset. I bought a morning glory plant this year, and it is honestly so exciting to see one of the flowers blooming in the morning.

I know I am such a sap, but I can’t help but think what it would be like to live for one day! First of all, I have noticed that the flower won’t even open if it is raining, like it is today in Philadelphia. I get that! I wouldn’t want my only day alive to be on a rainy day either! What would you do if you only had one day to live? I know I would be grateful for every second of that day! So that is something to remember on a rainy Tuesday after a long weekend…gratitude for every second!

Paintings by Hand-Painted Weddings.

Currently, I am in the midst of a bit of painting exploration. I am playing around with different painting techniques in order to further refine my painting style. For instance, I naturally paint very detailed but am more in love with the paintings I do that are more loose. I’ve got to admit this is the same with my life. I’m constantly working on the balance between ambitious hard work and trying to go with the flow and allow my intuition to guide me. It is interesting how similar my painting inclinations are to my own personal inclinations. I believe that if people analyze how they work, that many of us have this in common.

In this painting series, I start off by showing you the original painting I created at the lodge this past weekend. This was the view from the deck looking off onto a barn and, in the distance, the Blue Ridge Mountains. The second two paintings (Take 2 and 3) were created using the original painting as a guide. You can see that I got a little bit more loose as I continued to revisit the same painting (ie. Take 3). There are things I like about all three of the paintings. I love the texture in the barn from the original painting. I love the bark on the large trees behind the barn on “Take 2”. I love the tree textures, the bright colors, and the mountains in “Take 3”.

Last night my husband I returned home after a long weekend amongst the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia. We stayed in a lodge with 18 very unique and intelligent people as a 30th birthday celebration for one of Carl’s best friends. We played games (I was impressed by how many people on the trip adored Settlers of Catan), watched the meteor shower, and made some delicious food! I even got in a little bit of painting, but I’ll save that for a later post. No one had cell phone service or internet access at the lodge so it really allowed everyone to decompress. All in all, it was a very relaxing and fun mini vacation!