10.31.2008

boo-ti-ful day

happy halloween everyone!
here are some pictures of halloween's past....



















that is nette in the plastic little orphan annie costume. thom is the clown in the middle and clint is the man with the beard. i'm not sure who he was supposed to be. i am on the far right, wanting to desprately get off the sofa.





















obviously the clown costume got a lot of use in our hosue. there are pictures of clint and nette wearing the clown outfit too...i will have to search for them. thom was a space cadet. i'm pretty sure my mom made both of these outfits.























fast forward to high school. this was at cannada's house. i believe that cannada still wears the super woman outfit. in case she tries to deny it that is cassie in the front, but i can't remember what she was supposed to be. alvin? but a dog?
that is carol anne on the far left. she had an old person mask and a cape, so i made her a sign that said "little red riding hood, the later years"



















this is a group of us from college. we decided to dress up and go to the corn maze in memphis. brian is in the yellow pants. i believe he was some sort of fast food employee. liza is next to him in black. she was cat woman i believe. sneed in the red did not partake in the dressing up. will todd was michael jordan. torrent in blue and lexie in white in front of him met up with us at dinner...they also didn't partake in the dressing up. miriam was a sonic employee. i am in the back with my classic outfit...partly cloudy with a chance of showers (i carried a water gun). walt jones is in the cap and gown. his outfit changed through the night....sometimes he was the graduate and sometimes he was darth vader. the graduate was more conducive to getting through the maze. josh white is in front of him. he was a ghost...don't worry we made fun of him. hallie was also a sonic employee. and mary john was a ghost with josh. this was one of my favorite nights in college. on the way home we decided to give paul mcleod a visit at graceland too. that in and of itself is an experience.

the next few pictures are of my babies dressed up throughout the years....









































just f.y.i. emily is not wearing a wig!




































i didn't have a picture of annabel in a costume, but here is a cute one of her at the pumpkin patch!

10.30.2008

cleaning

most people do spring cleaning in the spring...most people. i'm either really slow or i'm getting a jump on things by doing it early.
i am possibly getting a roommate in december/january, so i decided it would be nice for two cars to have a place to park in my garage. in order for this to happen i had to go through all the boxes that have been in there since my mom moved from my childhood home. if you wanted to know how my penmanship progressed over the years i had school binders from pretty much every year. i have a box of letters that friends have written me over the years. i couldn't part with this box just yet...the letters are hysterical! and they will be funny, future blog posts! it's funny...there are some things in there that i could have sworn i threw away, but magically my mom rescued them from the trash and boxed them up for me. i really should have taken a before picture of the garage, but i think i would have been too embarassed to post it.
i started cleaning it out last saturday and i still am in the process. i'm not contained to just my garage anymore though. i'm declutterizing the whole house.
i've already taken two car loads to goodwill, and i know that my trash pile was a delight for my neighbors to see.
once i finish with the house i will get back to blogging. i apologize for my slacking. losing my power, headaches from all the dust, painting and taking care of a million things for my dad also contributed to my lack of posting.
i'm hoping that today will be my last day of cleaning, so i should be back to wish you a bootiful halloween!

10.22.2008

blog award















my good friend, cassie, gave me my first blog award. thanks cass! apparently you are supposed to write down 6 interesting things about yourself and then pass it on to 6 blogging friends. i wanted to think of the not-so-obvious things, so i decided to keep a list on my phone as things came to me. well, of course i ended up having more than 6.

here are my top 6:

1. i like strange color combinations. aqua and red has probably been my favorite the longest. in college i had aqua colored walls and a red comforter. in my head they totally went together. recently this color combo has become popular, so it sort of isn't as exciting to me as it once was. i still love it though. i also love light purple and red. i always wanted light purple walls with a red ceiling? strange i know. in college my awesome roommate, mitchell, let me paint the walls light purple and we had a red slipcovered sofa. that might be the closest i ever get to having my dream...unless i can talk my children into it one day! pink and red together are also another favorite of mine. oooo..and pink and red with aqua. i could probably talk forever about colors!

for visual aide here is a picture of my current den. i loved my room in college so much i painted
my whole house that color! it goes with everything! i love it with green too.




















here is the painting that started my love of aqua and red together. i did this peacock batik in high school.






























2. i like to be organized...sort of to an extreme. just look at my pantry...
























it really might be a problem that i'm this organized. do not confuse this with being clean though. i think they are totally different. i HATE (notice the all-caps...that means i really hate it) doing floors and dusting. i always get sick from the dust, so that's probably why. maybe if i did it more regularly i wouldn't get sick.

3. i LOVE hymns. love them. i love reading them and singing them. my two all-time favorites are "how sweet and awesome is the place" and "holy, holy, holy." how sweet and awesome was originally "how sweet and awful is the place" because it meant full of awe...not some of awe. now it is taken the wrong way, so they changed it.

here are the words to it....

how sweet and awesome is the place
with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays
the choicest of her stores!

while all our hearts and all our songs
join to admire the feast
each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
"Lord, why was i a guest?

"why was i made to hear thy voice,
and enter while there's room,
when thousands make a wretched choice,
and rather starve than come?"

'twas the same love that spread the feast
that sweetly drew us in;
else we had still refused to taste,
and perished in our sin.

pity the nations, o our God!
constrain the earth to come;
send Thy victorious Word abroad,
and bring the strangers home.

we long to see Thy churches full,
that all the chosen race
may with one voice, and heart and soul,
sing Thy redeeming grace.

my church doesn't sing this hymn yet, but they better start singing it soon or i might cry! all my old students know it is my favorite b/c i used to make samuel play it at insight all the time!

holy, holy, holy is just an amazing hymn. we used to sing it at RUF in college. it was usually reserved for the last song after les' sermon before we left. they would not play the instruments on the last verse...i still get chills just thinking back to it. it will always have a special place in my heart b/c it was also a favorite of my sweet friend, laura treppendahl. laura was killed by a drunk driver when we were in college. at dinner the night she died she talked about "holy, holy, holy." she said it was a tease. that when we sang it at RUF it was an appetizer to heaven. i have never heard someone so perfectly describe a song than she did!

some of my other favorites are it is well, o day of rest and gladness, for all the saints, dear refuge of my weary soul, whate'er my God ordains is right, come thou fount, how deep the father's love for us, the church's one foundation, when i survey, on jordan's stromy banks i stand, how sweet the name of jesus sounds, o love that will not let me go, be still my soul, be thou my vision, the sands of time are sinking, jesus i my cross have taken, o come and mourn with me awhile (preferably with carrie everett singing)

there are probably more...those are just off the top of my head. each one has a special meaning to me and reminds me of some time in my life, or some person who has influenced my life in some way.

4. i love valentine's day. so cliche i know. i love walking into a store and seeing everything red and pink...and with hearts everywhere! everyone that doesn't like valentine's day just doesn't get it. they always say..."i don't need a day to tell the person i love that i love them...i do that everyday." do you really? i love christmas and easter too...for what they represent...what they remind us of. i wish i lived every day of my life in rememberance of what Christ did...but let's be honest...i don't. i need those yearly reminders. the same is true of valentine's day! we are able to love others b/c Christ first loved us. i love this reminder!

5. i reserved this one for my 3 favorite places....the beach, peru and oxford. i could write paragraph upon paragraph about these three places...but i won't torture y'all.

i have been known to leave in the middle of the night for a beach trip. one time in college harvey, mitchell and i went on what was later dubbed "the shadiest trip ever"....simply b/c we didn't tell anyone we were going. we left in the middle of the night after a football game. i won't tell the time b/c my mom is probably reading this. we drove 8 hours to the beach, layed out for 6 hours and then got in the car and drove 8 hours back. to this day it was one of the greatest trips ever! i adore the beach.

i also love peru. i have been on 5 mission trips down to peru and fall in love with the country every time i go. check out www.perumission.org to find out more about the ministry down there. they are doing amazing things!!

last on my list is oxford. there just aren't enough words to describe how amazing oxford is. i love when you realize that there is so much more there than ole miss. not that i don't love ole miss!

6. here are all my other favorites...shortly summarized.

i love children...pretty obvious if you know me AT ALL. i love children's art. i love the creativity behind it. i would probably decorate my whole house with only children's art if i could! i love meeting friends for breakfast. i love looking at the stars at night. i have to be able to see the stars where i live! i love flamingos and peacocks. i would have a backyard full of plastic flamingos if my neighbors would allow. even before tv was invented i used to record tv shows. i'm not a fan of live tv. i also love a good tv watching party. in college we had dawson's/felicity parties, then ed parties, bachelor/bachelorette parties and now we have office/lost parties. i watch an episode of friends everynight before i go to bed. i think it is one of the funniest shows ever made! i love scarves. i love buying plain clothes so i can accessorize them to my mood. i have a true love for fresca. i think my family is the only family that still drinks it. my mom always has them in stock. my love for fresca is second to my love for sunkist. i had a sunkist habit a few years ago that i have kicked. i only have water at my house now. i love collecting art. the majority of the art in my house was not done by me. i love seeing other people's creativity. i love tocca candles...the cleopatra scent. i can't find it everywhere, but seda france japanese quince smells very similar to it...i thank ridg for that one! i love game nights with my family. we do it pretty much everytime we are all together. while i'm talking about family...i love sissy nights! i don't know what i would do without my sister! i love to journal. i have journals going back many years. secretly i think that someday i'll become famous and they will discover my journals and publish them...ha! please don't let them! i also love coffee. i love making it the night before, so all i have to do in the morning is push a button. sweet relief!


here are the 6 people i have chosen for the award:

1. my sister: www.thecrazyoreillys.blogspot.com

2. ava aycock: www.avaandbrookie.blogspot.com

3. sally black: www.sallyandwayneblack.blogspot.com

4. brittney strong: www.dstrongfamily.blogspot.com

5. laura estrada: www.justinandlauraestrada.blogspot.com

6. nikki bonham: www.nikkibonham.squarespace.com

7. amanda eaton: www.ericamandafamily.blogspot.com

...i obviously can't count.

and i have two on reserve.....
hallie and harper for when they get back from africa. their internet usage is limited in africa, but maybe this will keep their blog going when they get back!


right click on the blog award picture above. click "save picture as." it will save in your pictures file. write 6 interesting things about yourself and pass it on to 6 people. you may want to comment on their blog and tell them you have nominated them.

10.13.2008

good and bad

good things: recovering precious pictures, two art shows and pieces hanging at smitten

bad things: losing a few pictures, having to buy a new memory card, getting sick and having an eye that would scare small children

it seems that data rescue isn't so much of a hero after all. i can't totally discredit them because they were able to save the majority of my pictures. for some reason my pictures from one day were not recovered. that was our day in dallas with caroline, dendy and millie. i also lost the precious picture of alex surprising cailin at the door when we first arrived in san antonio. i do have pictures from san antonio, but i have to go through them to find my favorites. after i did the recovery program i tried every way possible to clear the memory card and reformat it, but it looks like i'm going to have to invest in a new one. it would make me nervous taking pictures on that thing anyway. those things are expensive, so for now y'all will have to suffer with blurry photographs from my college camera that i keep in my purse.

two of my art shows were this weekend. they both were on friday night, so i tried to split my time. i started feeling sick on thursday night but tried to push through it. i woke up at 4:30 friday morning and felt horrible. i was able to get back to sleep, but didn't realize that i happened to pop a blood vessel in my eye when i was sick. really??
i went to my mom's friday afternoon to finish framing my art. i felt like i had some non-feverish version of the flu. my sweet mom told me to sit because she could tell i wasn't feeling well. i started putting on my make-up and that's when i noticed the white part under my lower eyelid was red. awesome. it was 4 and my art had to be at hal & mal's by 5:30. ever since i had meningitis i've had problems with my eyes. my doctor sent me to see a retina specialist a while back. in his own words....my optic nerve is "special." it's apparently shaped different than all of y'alls. something happened to it when i had meningitis and i have to get it checked out every 6 months or so. if you ever have meningitis...go to the eye doctor afterwards.

i feel like i should say something here. in high school my real eye doctor gave me someone else's perscription and messed up my vision. i took it upon myself to find my own doctor. i decided to go to lenscrafters in the mall....hey, i was in high school! that actually has been the greatest decision ever. i love my eye doctor. her name is dr. patton. she has fixed my vision and brought my perscription back down and she's the one who sent me to the retina specialist.

i really don't know why i'm telling y'all all of this. long story short. i decided that it probably was no big deal, but i should just go get it checked. since they take walk-ins i was in and out by 5. everything is fine with it. it burst when i was sick the night before. i have to wear my glasses and it should go away in 2 weeks. awesome. my sweet mom took my paintings down to hal & mal's for me.

my mom, nette and i had a fun time at the art show. they hung the art from these really cool wagon wheel pieces. my two pieces are in the picture to the left. second wheel from the right. they are both oils. one is of onions and the other is a small peacock. the pieces had to hang the whole night, so they are still for sale if anyone is interested. that show was only a one night thing, but my other two pieces will be hanging at prep until the beginning of november.

also, smitten has 5 of my things hanging in their cute store. they are in ridgeland on jackson street by the railroad tracks. go check them out!

i have another show coming up this weekend at lake caroline. i started feeling a little bit better today, so hopefully i can crank out some pieces before saturday!
























here are some pictures of the things hanging at smitten and what i will have this weeekend









































next time i'll iron the pillowcase and take them out in the sun! some of these are old stamp designs that i freehanded and altered a little bit. i have over 70 patterns and lots more animals!
























10.10.2008

my hero

www.datarescue.com is my new hero!

so, i told you that something happened to my camera, my flash drive or my computer which made me lose all of my pictures from texas. i did some research and discovered the greatest website ever....data rescue. they let you run a demo of the program before you buy it to make sure that you can recover your pictures. it recovers pictures or any file on a memory card. the program is only $29 which is the cheapest i could find. some out there were in the hundreds...and they didn't let you test it beforehand! the external memory card reader was $7 from best buy. for a total of $36 i am able to recover precious pictures!
i hope this never happens to anyone, but if it does don't give up hope! it wouldn't work if i had decided to give up and take more pictures on top of my memory card, so just keep that in mind.

i'm the happiest person ever right now, but i am waiting for my registration key from the software....so i guess officially i don't have the photos saved yet.

10.09.2008

roll tide

no, i'm not an alabama fan now. it seems like everyone i meet now is though! all of my friends at church are HUGE alabama fans. brooke loves them and even clint and jack started cheering for them.

a couple of weeks ago i had lunch with two of my friends from church. they are both married to two alabama fanatics. one being my preacher. they both brought their daughters, who are the cutest things ever!!

this is avery. she belongs to my friend, vicki. i mean...look at those curls!

















this other sweet little girl is mary ella. her mom, mary margaret, is the one trying to get her to say "roll tide" by asking her what an elephant says. if you look closely she says it very softly.
they are such loves!!!

10.08.2008

watch this

earlier i told y'all about a clip on one of my friend's blog. she changed the name of her blog, so the link didn't work. i just now realized that.

here is the clip. trust me...it's worth the time it takes to view it! you will probably view it more than once to be honest. this woman is crazy and i'm just waiting for this clip to wind up on some news/comedy segment.

catch-up

i'm back home from texas and i'm trying to catch up on everything...this blog being one of them.
we had a blast in texas. don't worry i'll tell you all about it as soon as i can get my camera to cooperate. there is something wrong with my memory card, so i'm having to download a photo rescue software to retrieve all my pictures. it's going to be a sad day if that doesn't work and all my pictures are gone for good!

i have a small camera that i keep in my purse all the time, so i have some pictures from the trip on it. it has not suffered the same fate as my big camera.

before i left for texas i went with my family to the gluckstadt german fest. i love fall and the nice, cool weather. i think my sister loves fall even more because of all the festivals. she is a festival junky. i like to celebrate too, but she and her family hit about 3 festivals a week! the gluckstadt fest was fun because it was about a mile from my house. here are some pictures from the day.






















































i feel like i need to explain the next couple of pictures. while we were sitting there my sister pointed out this college-aged guy wearing a lederhosen and said i should take a picture. i sadly missed the photo-op. mental note: always have my camera ready....especially at festivals! about 15 minutes later he came over to our tent and started talking to us. this was my chance! but i thought it would be really awkward if i just started taking a picture. i put my camera in my lap and non-chalantly tried to take a picture. annie is sort of blocking him in the picture, but i had to show it. he and his friend had a dog that they let the kids pet. i felt like it would be ok to take a picture of the kids petting the dog...but my main focus being the lederhosen.






































as soon as he left our tent i spotted another pair of lederhosen. this time on a small child. i held the camera down on this one too because i didn't want to be obvious. if you know either of these people...i apologize for finding humor in their attire. i mean no harm.























we had a great time at the festival. it was a hot day, but thankfully i hadn't taken the tent out of my car from the grove. my awesome brother-in-law went back to my car to get it, so we were able to have some shade! i am not sure if it was legal for us to set it up, but i highly reccommend it if you go!

10.01.2008

what i've been doing

here are some pictures taken with my cell phone. i apologize for the angle, lighting and overall poor quality. i haven't had a photo shoot with the paintings yet, so this will have to do for now.




























that little guy and i became good friends last night. it is what i was working on til 4:30. here it is in the frame, but not totally secure yet.





























i realize now that i didn't even get the frame. i'm sorry...i will blame it on the lack of sleep, the fact that it's a phone camera and i was rushing.




























these two pieces will go to the prep alumni show next week. they will be hanging at prep the whole month of october. i have a bad feeling that they are still going to be wet. what can i do?




























i'm really excited about this one. i've done about 30 similar to this one, but with different patters and animals. these will be for sale at smitten in ridgeland.
is it bad that i'm absolutely about to go to bed and it's only 9:20???

busy...

i know it's been a while. i've been busy painting, so i haven't really had time to blog. i finally finished my largest and last piece last night. in true em g style i finished it at 4:30 am. awesome. it's probably going to take me a while to recover from that one! i can't believe i used to do that all the time in college. i have to deliver two paintings to prep on tuesday, so just pray that they dry enough over the weekend for me to take them! now i have to go varnish a few paintings i'm hopefully taking to smitten this afternoon. i'll try to get some pictures up tonight.
tomorrow i leave for texas with my mom and alex! i'm so excited!