Creative Work Spaces I Heart

{Image by cplamann via Apartment Therapy}

So one of the last rooms in our house to be remodeled is my art room. I've looked at a few different spaces that inspire me. The one above is the most realistic for my space. I like how the fabric is used to hide the less pretty things... aka junk. My studio will have a lot more art and craft supplies then the one shown and I'm sure it will be quite a bit messier!

{Images via Anahata Katkin's Blog}

I absolutely love this pink office space. I can be quite the girly girl sometimes. (However I wasn't so when I was younger and I grew up on a farm with a hunting family and horses, so anyone with that background knows what I'm talking about!) My art room won't be near large enough to do this setup. The intricate wood details are awesome! I'm thinking my husband wouldn't get around to doing that project for me. Anyways, just wanted to share the beautiful space.

New Bike and Prayer Prints!

New bike and prayer print designs were added to my Enduring Arts Etsy shop over the weekend and today. Check it out HERE if your interested. I've also redesigned my etsy banner and avatar. Hope your having a great Monday!

A Little Girl's Dream Clothing Giveaway

The chance to win a $300 gift certificate to Eden's Bouquet is going on right now! If you have young children, even young boys head on over to their blog and website to browse and enter. Their collection of clothing is beyond beautiful! (I even love the photography.) If you don't want to enter, put my name in!!! Ha!... no, I'm serious! I would love to win.
(Thanks Amy for sharing the news!)

Water Girl

My fabulously fit husband ran a running race this morning of 15.2 miles. He's never run that far before but ended up doing an amazing job. He came in fourth place overall! He even beat the relay teams! How crazy is that!? He looked like he could have kept going for another 20. Kaelyn and I went every few miles to encourage the front runners and give David a drink a couple times.

I love the creative water bottles above. They will be available soon for purchase at PAPAYA! Check their shop out. They have a nice assortment of gifts and other items to spoil yourself!

Pretty Purple Treasury

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=69494

Happy Friday! I was excited to find out that I was featured in another Etsy treasury. This beautiful collection was picked by Southstreet. Thank you so much for choosing my painting to go along with your other pretty selections! Here are the links to the treasury items above:

1. Purple Bloom Original Watercolor Painting by artwatercolor

2. African Dream Necklace by southstreet

3. Vintage Sweets Necklace by Scandalously

4. Double Ring Round Circle in Violet by IsMoreNa

5. Combined Mini Hoops by Meetalls

6. Pleated Neckline Top by Lirola

7. Pleated Velvet Slouchy Bag by mystudio

8. Plum Purple Freshwater Pearl Earrings by cindylouwho2

9. Purple Rain Lariat/Scarf by Silvia66

10. Iridescent Royal Blue Stained Glass Butterfly by glassnwood

11. Koro by poaplum

12. Inner Strength Fine Art Print by ME! enduringarts

All these artists are so talented! I love this collection!

Fashion Love

If I had a lot of money I would LOVE to have the J.Crew collection in my closet!

Just lovely isn't it!?

New Blog Look!

Photo by i.Anton

I finally got around to doing some updating on my blog. I will continue to work on updating the side and adding more links but at least I have a start. I'm planning on sharing more photos that inspire me and that I just think are very creative and beautiful... like the one above. Hope you enjoy it!

Big News on Monday!

Yesterday was an exciting day on my family's side. It was my parents 35th wedding anniversary, way to go mom and dad! The other big news was I became an aunt! Yippee! Just wish England was a lot closer to my house! Here's a little picture of Andrew. Isn't he adorable!?

Fun Photos!

I'll start from earlier last week... I finished the painting of Kaelyn! It was taken from a photo when she was four months old. Its a fun piece to decorate her room with and the light pink looks nice against her light lime green wall. David and I did get a bunch of remodeling projects completed. His upstairs railing is now in and lots of carpeting and painting is done as well. Still one more room and a bathroom left to do in our upstairs. Not looking forward to that project!

Moving on to last Friday, it was a fun day rather than the normal design/work day. Kaelyn was elated too since her little friend Sydney came to spend the day with her. Not long after Syd came in our door Kaelyn was giving her a hug. So cute! (Sydney is a little less than 2 months older than Kaelyn.) After playing for awhile, us moms decided to take the girls out for a little photo shoot. Of course Miss Kaelyn never looked at my camera once but I still happened to get some pretty cute shots of her.

This was my main view of Kaelyn. She loved running across the bridge.

One of my favorite photos captured, even though she was looking at the other two.We brought bubbles along for the girls, and after I blew some for them they decided to take over. Marci captured the one above of Sydney sharing and letting Kaelyn blow.
This was on the stroller ride home. The girls would hold hands only when being pushed. Glad I grabbed my camera to capture it even if it was a little hard to push straight and take a good picture. Come visit again soon girls! Kaelyn always shows her best behavior when she's around the two of you.

Busy week ahead. Need to get a lot of work done on the commissioned painting and really hoping to get some other design projects done that I've been hoping to do for awhile. Trying to get as much done before working on the third issue of Touched Creatively. Have a great week everyone!

Bantam Photograph Retouched

Pretty much anything you want done to a photograph I can make happen. This was a project request from my brother and sister-in-law. They wanted this specific photo taken of the bantam and then told me what they wanted to see changed. I was asked to change the background, add a pile of dirt, change the name on the door, change everything to sepia (brown tint) but have a bit of the orange color coming through. They also didn't want too much white on the picture as white will not be an accent color in the room it is going in. So here you can see the before and after result. Its been approved and shipped. Thanks for the fun project! I love manipulating photos! If you have a photo that you really like but would like something changed on it to make it even better, please email me at enduringarts@gmail.com.

Growing up so quickly...

I am still in shock at how fast kids grow up. It seems like we just had Kaelyn. Why do they have to grow up so fast? Its like she went from 2 months to 19 months in no time. She sure is at a fun age though. She has us cracking up everyday with something new. Whether its her answers to our questions or imitating us. I wasn't feeling well last night and David put his wrist on my head to see if I had a temp. Five minutes later Kaelyn comes up puts her wrist on my cheek and I was wondering what she was doing. Then she crawls up on me and puts it on my forehead and I had to laugh; I realized what she was doing. The whole night she was Nurse Kaelyn seeing if my temp was okay! Due to a headache, sore throat, and an on and off again stomach ache I wasn't able to make it to art studio day today. I had been planning on going for a month, and was ready to get my commissioned painting finished up. Was bummed about that but I did work on it for awhile this afternoon at home. I've also been working on a picture of Kaelyn at night. It will work perfect in her room when I get it done. It makes her smile too.
I only have about a quarter left on Kaelyn's picture. This was when she was 4 months old. I love her smile! It makes the commissioned painting look small but really Kaelyn's is quite large. It is 2 feet wide! The house painting is only about half done. I have a lot of details needing to be added. I will post more pictures once they are completed. Have a great rest of the weekend and stay healthy!

Little Singer...

This was too funny I had to share. I was busy printing and here Kaelyn grabs a little weight and just goes to town singing. By the time I got the camera her songs were pretty short, but they are still a good laugh! Who ever knew a weight would make a perfect pretend microphone! This entertainer just turned 19 months yesterday. (Sorry the video is sideways!)

Treasury Feature

I was pleasantly surprised to get an email saying one of my paintings was featured in an Etsy treasury. Thank you FiveSparrows for featuring "Seeking Your Path"! It is so much fun getting comments and emails about your work and knowing people really enjoy it.

Well tomorrow should go back to a fairly normal schedule. This last weekend was full of remodeling projects. Saturday was full of problems which I won't get into all the details here, but it was a disaster! I think David hopes to never put in another piece of carpet too. He is so good at it though! :) Now I have lots of things to move around and get organized. David is currently working on a banister for the upstairs hallway. His next project after that is commissioned kitchen cabinets. So I won't be seeing him much for the next 3 months. As for me, other than doing a lot of painting in our upstairs, I've been working on a commissioned acrylic painting of a newly built house in Minnesota and another project involving a photography retouching piece of a Bantam which I will post pictures of when I'm done. Hoping both projects go smoothly and turn out well! Never a dull moment in our household and Kaelyn can't get enough of the newly carpeted stairs... even if she does fall down them! What a determined little bugger! Have a great week everyone!