Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Second Painting Study

I finished another painting today! 

I found this frame and canvas at the DI for $2 bucks. My apologies to Alice Ives, I have erased her 1982 painting of the Pacific. I flipped it upside down to have her ocean be part of my sky. I think painting over another painting is a great way to upcycle. Even better if it already comes with a frame. I thought the dark brown frame would work with this photo and I like it. My progress as of last night -

I worked on it for an hour or two yesterday. This is from a photo I took March 18 (second pic) when I biked to the ruins. I did not get proportions right in my painting (the ruins are much too large) but that's ok, cause I want them to be a focal point anyway. I need to print larger pics for my reference, rather than trying to paint from my phone screen! 

So yeah, spent time painting yesterday and today. Today Wes did some major yardwork in the front yard for me. 

Yesterday he delivered for Corey by finishing their demo video, and today he put in a lot of work at home for me. Aww we're gonna miss him so much! 

Tonight I almost went to the gym, but instead I went up the canyon for a little walk followed by a sketch of the creek and prayer or two. I found a nice secret spot by the ruins that I hope to go back to soon. 
I liked these scriptures verses on "benefit"... praying for the Lord to help us and let us be of benefit to others. We will wait patiently upon the Lord. 

Saturday, May 2, 2026

Climbing OUTSIDE!

Today Corey and I went climbing outside for the first time ever. 

Our Green River camping friend Craig texted asking if we wanted to go this afternoon. We said yes. Corey also wanted to get in a ride. I didn't feel up to a ride, but then I went anyway. We arranged it for him to meet us up at the Lisa Falls trailhead after we biked up the trail. We figured it would take us about an hour so to meet at 2. We were mostly right on time, except that it took us a few extra minutes to get out of the house. So we were there at 2:10. Craig was ready and we hiked up the short trail to the bottom of the slab we were gonna climb. It was like 60 minutes of instruction and learning, 5 min of actual climbing, and 25 min of figuring out what to do and who goes where. Craig climbed up first and set the anchors with "nuts" and "cams" (see all these new words we learned!) Craig anchored himself at the first pitch, then Corey went and removed the anchors, and then I went up. This climb had a "mantle" move, another new word. The climb is called Lisa Buttress I think? He showed us something on "Mountain Project" about it, and that also said that this was a 5.7 route. I could believe that. Corey's shoes were no good, if we do this again we'll want climbing shoes. It's probably time to bite that bullet anyway. After climbing for over 90 minutes and a bit of visiting, we said bye and finished our ride up the trail to the Ruins. Came down techy. We were gone for quite a bit - left at 1:15 and were back home at 5:15. We met Craig at 2:10, started our climbing at 2:30, and did a whole 16 feet. The mountain looked so cool from up higher! 

We started the second half of our ride at 4:45, and were home in 33 minutes. All was well at home - kids coloring on the sidewalk with chalk.

Wes was a champ and took Peter to his 2:00 soccer game so we could go recreate. Natalie, Owen, and Daniel all went to Peter's game to cheer him on.

Owen had a 9am game and requested that both Wesley and I attend and cheer him on, which we gladly did. Corey took Daniel to his game. And then we left Wes to do Peter. When we left home, Wesley was rallying the troops to work. "All right soldier!..." (He had Hyrum's pellet gun)
It's been really great having Wesley home to help out. We're gonna miss him when he starts working as an FSY counselor soon. Tonight the kids watched Holes. That is a really fun show (except for the nice school teacher turned outlaw murder part...) We've all seen it before, but I guess the kids only caught some of the fun connections back then - today they understood more the back and forth and past and future connections with Stanley's grandfather and Madam Zeroni and they were kinda mind blown - like when Stanley carries Zero up the mountain, that is how the curse gets broken!! WHAATT?!? And then I was really liking what Stanley said about feeling really good, feeling lucky. I want to feel that too - maybe our luck is changing too! Cause we have a clean basement, I make bread now, I've been really coming across a lot of art inspiration with people I'm meeting and stuff, so I'm inspired about that, and today we felt inspired to climb outside, yeah... maybe we're gonna have money soon! Corey said he wanted to get me a new bike for my birthday (aww, so sweet) and maybe that will happen this year. That would be fun. I'll try to keep expectations low, but I'm also going to try out "feeling lucky" and we'll see what happens! I got lucky today with a present from Mel - she amazon'd me a new bread knife! Wow! 
It cuts SOOOO amazingly well. Maybe our lucky is changing. And now it's 12:45, I should head to bed and blog more tomorrow. 'Night!


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...