What's in my Christmas Ball on IA

This weeks challenge on Inspiration Avenue is

What's in your Christmas Ball.

I had a good think about this and then, while drinking a coffee,

I looked up and there was Bubbles

with his light up Christmas tree and light up presents.

Bubbles is Audreys' pet siamese fighting fish and

a very spoilt one at that, I mean how many fish have their own 

Christmas tree.

Getting back to the bauble thing...

I thought of Bubbles in a bauble and so 

here is my Christmas ball

and to show you the real Bubbles ..

Not a great photo but you can see his light up tree and presents.

Hope the weather isn't too bad up in the northern hemisphere, 

ours is getting back to normal

after having the coldest December day in 100 years! 

It went down to 21 here and only 19 in Brisbane,

see my last post.

Don't forget it's summer here.

Have a great week and thanks for visiting

I really appreciate your wonderful comments.

I have to go and play with Audrey now, 

don't you just love school holidays....

Wet, Wet, Wet, WOYWW

Well what a difference a week makes.

Last week it was wonderful and hot 

and this week

it is freezing and wet, wet, wet.

We are having the coldest december 

for years and I am in a jumper and jeans

when it should be shorts and tank top.

What is going on???

I know I said I wanted rain (it is the start of the wet season)

but I never said cold, not once!

If this keeps up, we will have a white Christmas!

It is only 21 degrees, it should be 10 degrees hotter!!

Anyway that's my whinge for the day now on to my desk for woyww.

I did cheat a bit as the first pictures were taken earlier this week.

Audrey finished school for the year last thursday and

I have to do what I can when I can.

I decided to have a play in my journal and started some little fish.

They were quite cute....

so while we were out Christmas shopping, I decided to buy myself

an archival ink pen to make it stand out more.

The problem was, I didn't get a thick enough one

and so tried Audreys caligraphy pen, big mistake!!

I made a complete mess of it

and so, yet another lesson learned,

buy the right pen in the first place and 

you might do a good job.

I did get some time today to do a quick picture for the IA Challenge, whos theme this week is

What is in your Christmas ball, so here is a sneak peak.

Didn't think I would let you get up close, did you?

Gee, I hope I have time to do the IA blog now.

Have a great wednesday, I am going to get Audrey in from the rain, before 

it starts snowing!

What a week, not much for WOYWW

I haven't been able to get to much this week for my WOYWW. 

Apart from the fact that it is the last week of school for little Miss Auds and there are tons of little shows and parades to go to,

we have had a spate of things breaking. 

First the motor went in my cars driver side window (getting that fixed next week), 

then our security door refused to lock (got that fixed). 

Our pool filter isn't working properly and in this heat it is a must

(they were coming out at 9am today and it has gone 10am, still no sign of them) 

and my eldest daughters airconditioner is refusing to blow cold (that is being fixed next week).  

Everything seems to go at once and to make it worse, I almost had enough money saved up for my new kitchen and you can guess where that money went. 

Needless to say, I am not very happy this week.

Still keeping the room tidy.

One good thing did happen.  I have done my very first painting in my very first art journal.

It's not much but it is a start.

I also bought myself a plain paper journal, so that I can draw and colour.

It just has a plain black cover so I will do up a nice cover for it.

Plus I am left handed so I will have to use the book upside down.

I can't draw around the coily thingy.

I started the daffodil the right way round

and I am having heaps of trouble getting over the bump.

I started this daffodil just before school pick up yesterday. 

I don't have an ink pen so used a ball point, how sad is that!!

(I hope Santa brings me some art supplies for Christmas)

Not sure how often I can blog for a while, 

will try to slip into my room as often as possible.

I am sure most of my time will be spent poolside,

hopefully with my journal in hand,

watching little miss swimming with her guinea pig.

Still waiting for the pool guy .....so finished my picture

and discovered

that you can't use water colour on a drawing journal, oops.


It is now a very wrinkled mess.

Might start another one.

Aged beauty IA Challenge

Yet another hard challenge for me, this weeks Inspiration Ave theme "Aged Beauty"
(don't forget to go across and check out the other IA entries). 

I had this covered  up all mysterious for What's on your work desk wednesday, 

so I hope it lives up to the hype.

I love everything modern and so this was foreign to me.  I don't have anything old (except my husband), that is pay back for suggesting I do a self portrait.  People are not my forte, I can do a stick figure, with dots for eyes but that is about my limit on people, so an old person was out.

Old barns and houses are not me, so I had a bit of a dilemma. 

Spent all day tuesday thinking about what to do and then it hit me.  I love animals and so an old animal may do.   Thinking, thinking, what says old and beautiful in animals, there are a few but none more so than my entry.  This is what I think of as aged beauty.

Before I show the picture,

it has been very cloudy this week and I just can't get a good picture of my painting

(plus it's a blonde thing with a camera) so I have a few, so that you can get the gist of what I was trying to portray.

This was with a flash, so a bit harsh

Or maybe this one is better?

How about a close up?

Or two..

Here it is on my desk

It really is a cute painting in acrylic on paper, if only you could see it in person
or I could take a decent photo.  

Many things wither with age, but I think the old tortoise is the most beautiful thing. 

They really do age with beauty.

Have a great week and I hope next weeks IA is easier.

It came!!!

Just had to let everyone know that my beautiful journal arrived today. 

I am sure it arrived today because everyone sent messages willing it to come. 

Thankyou to all who sent good thoughts. 

Here is the journal

Fooled you, that is just the wrapping, here is the journal

The photos aren't great as it is really dark and cloudy (but it still won't rain, just teasing us).  The colours are really beautiful and the watercolour paper is really good quality.  No more cheap shop paper for me, I might even do a decent watercolour now.


I got the journal from Joy Studio via etsy.  I met her through the Poppy Spree and I will no doubt buy from her again, even if the post does take forever.

Only problem is that I have to go and pick up miss Audrey soon and I won't be able to use it for some time.  Tomorrow is her speech night and I have to take her to the hall in the morning to practise and then bring her home at lunch.  Have to clean the house in the morning.  Might sneak something tonight.

Mysterious woyww

Last week I shared my entry into the Inspiration Ave challenge, so this week I thought I would be a little more mysterious and only show a little bit.   Here is my workdesk today for woyww

It is a little dark as we have cloud cover and hopefully a storm this afternoon (haven't had rain for ages).

This weeks theme for the I A challenge was aged beauty, which gave me yet another hard one to come up with.  Dear husband suggested I do a self portrait, the cheeky devil, but I can't do people so that was out and I like modern things so have nothing 'aged' to paint.  My house is full of glass and chrome and bright coloured furniture, which was a huge problem when my husband first moved in with me.  He had come from an old fashioned Queenslander, with heaps of wooden colonial furniture (eek).  Needless to say most of that has been disposed of and only one bedroom has the wood furniture in it (not ours).

I thought everyone would be doing the old furniture and face thing, so I have tried to think of something else and you can see just a snippet of it under the paper.  The frogs are just some practising I have been doing to get used to this paper so no clue there.

I have to say I am quite proud of this painting as I did it in just one day, it is very small but very detailed and if the clouds go away by friday, I hope you will like it too. 

It is amazing the picture was done at all as I had a bit of trouble getting started this morning.  My paints are quite old and I am lazy and don't wipe the tube before putting the lid on, plus I usually have a paint brush or two in my mouth, so speed is of the essence.  To get the paint out I often have to use pliers to twist off the lid but this morning I had a slight accident and the whole top of the tube came off, emptying half of the paint all over my hand.  Then when squeezing another tube it developed a crack down the side and again with the handful.  Should have done some finger painting!!

I got there eventually and now I have all day tomorrow to play with the frogs and start some other things. 

I still haven't received my journal that I bought from USA. It was posted on 7th Nov, so I shouldn't expect too much from Australia Post.  You would think we lived way out in the bush with how long it takes to get a parcel.  So Mr postman if you are looking, please hurry up and bring my journal, I can't wait to get started on it.

Summer must have.

I was reading a blog by my favourite blogger, Tracey Fletcher King, and she was instilling the virtues of summer in our wonderful Queensland, when something struck me.  Tracey had left off the most important must have for summer around here and that is pictured below.

Okay, so not my best effort at watercolour, but it is on drawing paper and I did it by hand, hence the bent can.  Sorry, I digress.  For those not familiar with this can, it is the one thing that keeps us Aussies sane through the long hot summer.  It keeps those pesky mosquitos and sand flies at bay, without this we would spend our entire summer, swatting and scratching.  Both Tracey and I live on the coast and that makes those pests worse and I'm sure they are bigger. 

Tracey was talking about pine lime splice (the ice cream) and what memories that brings back.  For me it was hanging out the back window of the car while eating them on the way back to high school after lunch.   It was the 70's, so you could hang out the window, plus we were in Phillips (high school mate) car and his window didn't wind up, so it made it easy to hang out.  Life was so much simpler then, shame the kids don't know the value of that piece ice wrapped around the ice cream.

I am now much older and I can still enjoy the little pleasures in life......

this is what I wake up to every day, it's the view from my bedroom window (taken at 8am on sunday morning).  We are very lucky to live in this great country, sorry to all those who have snow at the moment and thanks to Tracey for bringing back all those memories via the Pine lime splice.  Think I might go and get a box.....