The Finish Line

I made it! I was a bit nervous taking on the challenge of posting every day this month, but I am so happy that I did. It was a great motivator to keep the creative juices on a deadline.

I only had a few days at the start that I felt a bit worried I wouldn't have something to post. I had a few rough spots - one night Blogger wasn't working, another I had a late start on a project and kept missing important sewing elements, but over all, it was just a great experience. I honestly think it was a good amping up for myself to post more and keep trying new things to show here on my blog.

Thank you to everyone that has visited - commenters and non-commenters - you all helped spur me on. I felt I had an audience that wanted to see what I was up to and that meant a lot. Since I'm fairly new to the blogging world and was quite intimidated when I first started. I was shy to draw attention to myself, but then concerned that no one was looking at my blog. This process really helped me put myself out there a lot more and I am so happy for that. Thank you for all your support! :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Cookies & Camera

Tonight I wanted to relax a bit, and for me, one way to relax is baking. It works out good because I am relaxing and still being productive. And in addition, I love sharing the treats - I'm taking some with me to work tomorrow.

I set up a great shot - milk, cookies nicely placed, pretty fabric in the background - and realized my camera is on the fritz. It seems minor, but the piece that slides over the lens (triggers off and on) has gotten slowly worse lately and finally just isn't working. We are hoping we can fix it with a bit of fiddling - and not break it more!



White Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Sorry for the poor photo, I had to use the camera on my imac.

I wanted to add a little color to the post, since the cookie photo wasn't great. Here is something I did while learning to use watercolours. I know it is pretty simple, but I still like it and can't wait to get more practice with watercolours.

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Illustration Friday - Zoo

I'm very happy to live amongst the natural zoo of animals every day.

Thanks for looking and I hope commenting :)

Have a wonderful weekend! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

A Quick Sew

I didn't have much time tonight after work. I had to run an errand, eat, and then did a little online shopping for a few things for the studio. I was able to throw this basket cushion for the cats together to post about. I have been meaning to make a cushion for the boys to lay on, instead of just a towel. So tonight's tight deadline was just the motivation I needed to get the job done.

I used part of an old pillow case to make the new cushion with. Then I made the flannel cover to fit - for easy washing!



Ollie demonstrating how to use it. Man, getting a cat to sit still for a photo is one amazing task at times. Sheesh! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Card - Holiday Goose

Here is another holiday card design I will have up in the shop soon. These are a variety of colors I was playing with and really like the simple white one the most. But they all appeal to me in some way - muted, bold and earthy. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Bunny Trio Printed Cards

I am feeling under the weather, but I got these sample cards printed up today. I can't decide between flat cards or folded. I prefer folded, what do you prefer? The shop will be selling folded versions for now, I might add flat cards eventually.

I'm also showing a couple options for envelopes - keeping it simple with white or spicing it up a bit with the lime green. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Christmas Card

I'm slightly behind with the holiday cards. It was hard for me to get in the holiday spirit so early, so now I am going to look over the designs and rework a few.

More to come and in the shop over the next few days. I put the knitting needles down after finishing the scarf and back to the computer and drawing table I go.

All card paper is 100% recycled, including envelope. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Scarfin'

Okay, so I admit I am a slow knitter! But I'm working my way slowly through this scarf. I am very happy with it and think I am learning a lot. I learned to knit last winter, so my first scarf ended up being a complete mess and I had to restart it many times. I don't wear it now because it has a hole in it. ha! So this one is much better and I can't wait to wear it! A little voice in my head says I should make it a gift for someone, so we will see if I keep it.



I love the yarn. It is very soft and I like the neutral color. I can wear this with anything. I have a lot of store bought striped scarves (which I LOVE), so this is a nice change and very versatile. And that exact reason is why I am thinking it might end up being a gift for someone. I might just have to buck up and make another one!

I'm loving this 4 day weekend! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Thanksgiving

It was a busy day of prepping and cooking meals. Chris did most of the food cooking this year, I just had to pick out what I wanted (I'm pretty finicky). I just made the Apple pie and Buttermilk biscuits. The whole spread was unbelievably good - pie to come later.



Ever since I was a kid I loved cranberries and rolls. I didn't eat much else, except for mashed potatoes. So I had to take a picture of Chris's Cranberry-Ginger Relish with my biscuits. Yum!

Once we cut into the pie I will post a picture. But we are both digesting for now.

I had a wonderful quote I wanted to post, but I lost it somewhere in my emails. I am going to post that once I dig it up.

I'm off to digest, knit and watch Return of the King.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

And here is the pie! We had it with vanilla frozen yogurt - mmm good!



(added Dec. 3) The quote I meant to post - I finally found it!

An Anonymous 16th Century Harvest Homily:

Please be gentle with yourself and others.
We are all children of change,
And none can say why some fields blossom
While others lay brown beneath the harvest sun.

Take hope that your season will come,
Share the joy of those whose season is at hand.
Care for those around you.
Look past your differences.
Their dreams are no less than yours,
Their choices in life no more easily made.

And give.
Give in any way you can.
Give in every way you can.
Give whatever you possess.
Give from your heart.
To give is to love.
To withhold is to wither.
Care less for the size of your harvest
Than for how it is shared.
And your life will have meaning.
And your heart will have peace. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Ball-o-yarn

As I mentioned in my 5 random things post, I love/need a soft scarf. So today I went to pick up a couple skeins of yarn to start a new scarf during the holiday weekend. I ended up finding a sale going on and I had to buy quite a few more. Also, I can be extremely indecisive so I tend to buy something if I just can't decide. I'm not an experienced knitter at all, I have only made one scarf and I had a few mistakes during it. So I am hoping for a easier time and something to post about.

This is all I have to show right now because I am busily making an apple pie from scratch tonight. I will have pictures of that tomorrow I'm sure - if I don't forget in my eagerness to eat it! :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Silk Screened Holiday Card

Here is our second print. It came out pretty great. Some of the smaller type on the back - "100% recycled paper..." are losing their middle hole. We think we might need to try an even finer screen to get that perfect. But the front image printed wonderfully. It is such a blast and I'm so excited to try 2 colors next. We need to get some small hardware so we can register the paper and screen properly before we try multiple colors. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Five Random Things

This post is 5 random things about myself. I was tagged by the talented and inspiring Flora. I wanted to think of unique and humorous things to share, so hopefully no one thinks "what a wacko!" after reading this :)

1. I have an uncontrollable knack for coming up with random pet names for the people and animals I love. Usually the pet name doesn't make any sense, a few examples: Noodle or Nud (Chris), Popsicle (my dog), NeeNee (my black cat), Minnie Moop (another cat) and Puddle. These are not their real name names, just little nicks, that have no reasoning behind them, except they flow from my mouth and stick.

2. I feel naked without a soft scarf during the fall and winter. I looove them. (reminds me I need to start knitting a new one!)

3. I have an insane sense of smell. I consider it a curse at times.

4. I tend to have conversations with my little NeeNee (my black cat) about how her day was. She is very chatty when I get home from work. So I listen to her and tell her I'm sorry she has such a hard knock life - at this point I usually sing "It's a hard knock life for ya!" a few times. She also likes to tell me what Chris has been up to that day and it is never in his favor - it is a lot of fun :)

5. I love my back scratched - I've been known to drool slightly when I get really relaxed from the scratching.

Now, here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well
as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I was only able to come up with 4 names, these are my lucky picks:
Curt
Alicia
Danielle
Silvia Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Superstition

I went with the superstition of a ladybug on you is a sign of good luck and my love of black cats. I know that whenever a ladybug lands on me or anything near me it makes me smile. I was insanely infatuated with ladybugs as a child and still think they are the sweetest bug.

This site was a great source to read up on the many random superstitions out there. I'm not too superstitious, but there are some I abide by, simply because I figure why taunt the voodoo!

Side tangent: Once I saw this topic I immediately thought of a recent episode of the office when Michael Scott says "I'm not super stitious, but I'm a little stitious". Ha! What a great show, those writers definitely deserve a raise! :)

Have a great week! :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Silk screened Card - First Try

So after several tries we got the image on the screen properly and were able to do some prints today. For our first go we wanted to do a single color, so I quickly blended some ink (not the best color) and this is how they turned out. There are some imperfections and things we learned from this go. What a blast to finally see some prints. I'm very excited and can't wait to print on fabrics at some point. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

A Cat's Heaven

Here is the digital version of the drawing I did and posted about yesterday. I think this turned out nice. It is for a friend of a friend whose 23 year old Calico cat, Princess, just died. It is never easy consoling someone when they lose a companion, but hopefully this will make her smile at the thought of her Princess enjoying herself where ever she is now. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

More Colored Pencil

I'm working on an illustration for a friend. I'm not happy with the sky, so I cut it out for this post. This kept me quite busy last night and thought I would share it. I'll either re-draw it or do it digitally. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Scale

She will scale any wall to help her man... and luckily he has ways to assist her doing that :)

I wanted to have a little fun with coloring pencils and I did! It was a nice change from my usual style. I hope you like it too. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Bunny Trio

A card design that I will have in the shop soon. I'm thinking a flat note card for this one.

Holiday designs still in the works!

Side note: Last night my internet went down at 11:10PM, just as I was writing up my post and about ready to hit submit. It was giving me trouble for 50 minutes, the whole time I can hear that "tick, tock" of doom stressing me out. But it came back up right as I was preparing myself to miss a day of posting. But woohoo I made it. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

In the works

Chris and I are attempting to silk screen print this week. We bought the supplies a couple weekends ago. I got a holiday-ish design done for our first test. I will hopefully have something to show soon.

I had a picture to post, but blogger isn't letting me post it. I will get it up as soon as the stinker lets me!

Edit: yay, it let me post it this morning! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Bagels & Cream Cheese please

My first time making bagels was a close success. I have a few alterations I would like to make next time, like less salt and use the oven to let the dough rise. I tried using my bread maker, and it didn't work well at all. The dough was suppose to double in size and it barely budged. So I turned on the oven for a little bit and turned it off, put the dough in and left the door ajar. When the oven had cooled down I used the oven light to keep it warm. It did the trick.

Since I love Everything style bagels, I made a mixture of sesame and poppy seeds, garlic granules and minced onion for the topping. I used the bagel recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I love this book for the recipes and for the information about prep and good baking techniques.



I made my own veggie cream cheese this morning - which I love. I started making my own last month and it is way easy. I got the recipe from M.S. FOOD Magazine, but I wasn't able to find it on her site easily, so here it is if you want to try - feel free to try some other varieties, I keep meaning to.

Veggie Cream Cheese
8oz. Cream Cheese (I do half no-fat and light cream cheese)
1 Carrot
Half of a Red Pepper (deseeded and spines removed)
1 Green Onion
1/4 c. Fresh Parsley (this stuff keeps really well and great in many dishes)
Black Pepper
Mix it all together and you have a weeks worth of fantastic bagel topping. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Months Ago

Here is picture of some cards I sent out a few months ago for a craft show. Half of the cards sold (I sent 8). I was very worried I would not have any sell, so even just one selling would have made me happy!

I have been keeping busy lately with sewing and tonight I am attempting to make bagels. If they are success I will definitely have pictures tomorrow. My sewing project needs a few revisions and I am going to attempt another. I will share more once I have them completed. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Robot Love Card

I did this illustration last year and made it into one of my greeting cards in my shop. My site look is still being tweaked, but the shop should be in working order. I have put several of my Illustration Friday pieces on cards and in the shop. I am working on a holiday line this weekend - so hopefully something to show by the end of the weekend.

My dream is to sell my greeting cards so I really need to start promoting myself. I have a hard time with that part of things. So where better to start then on my blog and start building up more courage to venture out to other sources as well.

I am thrilled...
• to have people visiting my blog and leaving comments regularly
• finding other bloggers are adding me to their blogrolls (this is such a huge compliment to me)

It simply makes me beam - thanks to all of you :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Turkey Illustration

I did this illustration recently for a greeting card coupon. I removed all the information and reduced the size a titch, so it looks a little bare. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Kitty Food Labels

With the new kitties we have been using old peach jars for their food. I made some labels for them.


The illustration I did tonight for the jars.


The jar all labeled and pretty! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Mushroom!!

This past weekend I noticed a bunch of mushrooms popping up all over the place. It seems to be a pretty big deal around here, they even had a big mushroom event at a local hiking park. I didn't go, but I heard it was very cool. I think mushrooms are so interesting and I always feel compelled to yell out "mushroom!" when I see one - almost like I am spotting a unicorn :)

I did some research to see if I could find what kind these were (no luck) and ended up finding this great site. What amazing mushrooms!

Here are a few photos of the mushrooms we are seeing near our house.


These are really black and look like they are exploding over. Chris did his best to get a good shot for me while I was at work.


No mushrooms were killed for this photo. They had already been knocked over and lay waiting for me to pick them up for their photograph to be taken in this glorious vase. :) Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Illustration Friday - Hats

I hope you can read these captions for each picture, if not you can click on the image for the bigger view.
These are the captions from left to right:
• Mitsy Mae showing off her ice skating moves.
• Gilbert's "Lord of the Rings phase" holiday card photo.
• George touring Mexico.
• Mabel passing the aviation test with flying colors.
• Benson practicing for the big game.

Thanks to everyone that commented on my last one, the feedback means a lot. I hope you like this one!

Have a great week! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Pumpkin Muffins

This weekend has been a busy one. Today was baking, a little cooking and cleaning. I took a picture of the Pumpkin muffins I made. They are really good and quite healthy. The recipe made more than a dozen like it said. So I froze half of them.



I was hoping to be able to post my Illustration Friday piece tonight, but I had a slight obstruction while I was trying to work - see picture below. So I ended up being Ollie's pillow while we watched LoTR - The Two Towers. He is a new addition to our home. We adopted him and another kitty, that we named Zeke, last weekend from the humane society, they are very sweet. I haven't really posted any pictures of my sweeties, but I thought this was funny and a pretty good excuse for not being able to work! :)

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Rubber Stamp Making

I went to the art store today to pick up a few things - man do I love going to those types of stores. I saw these wood cutting tools and then the rubber blocks and immediately had to have them. I have been wanting to make my own rubber stamps for years now. I just keep forgetting to actually do it! I have read up on how you can take any eraser and make a stamp. But I guess it takes a store full of art supplies to really get the fire started.

Tools, rubber block and sharpening stone.



My mess and a pretty fun bunny stamp. It isn't perfect, but not too bad for my first try. I also did it super fast because I wanted to have an example for my post tonight.

I used this site for a bit of guidance but mostly it is pretty easy to figure out on your own. Try it. I know I will be making more! Tweet Follow @kellymedina

Jazzin' Up the Sidewalks

Recently there has been a lot of construction going on to fix up the roads near the studio I work at. They did it pretty fast and made some nice improvements to help traffic. They jazzed it up by adding some garden spots on the corners - though they still need to do the planting. They also added these new tiles into the sidewalks. I like quite a few of them, although some aren't really my taste, but still I admire the uniqueness and thought it was a nice touch.


This photo shows how they did the red brick around it. This is my favorite tile.


Here are the other designs. They are about 5" x 5" tiles. Tweet Follow @kellymedina

A New Challenge For Myself

I got inspired today when I was reading A to Z blog and learned about NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I decided I would take the challenge - I figured it would be a great motivator for me.

I will do my best to post about interesting, inspiring, colorful, creative and sometimes yummy treats. I hope you keep coming back to see what I am up to during November. Tweet Follow @kellymedina