Year: 2022

I follow a few artists on YouTube and thought it would be fun to post my sketch and painting of one of Alan Owen’s tutorials!


Alan Owen has that breezy, easy style that so many of us long to be able to pull off. I spend to much time fiddling around and stuck in details and I long to be a a landscape painter that gives the “impression” of the scene, not a copy. We always want what we don’t have, but I don’t call this blog “Learning New Tricks” for nothing! Alan uses some interesting paint combinations, I am trying to be more consistent with my trial and error so I wrote out his colour recipes and a quick sketch/painting.

If you are like me, you are forever trying to find the perfect green. I learned the hard way that a tube of green is usually not your friend. In this painting, the palette is muted but the green quite lovely, it is a cadmium yellow, windsor blue and raw sienna. I don’t have raw sienna (thought it is now on my list) gold ochre is listed as a possible substitute. I tend to mix my greens with ultra marine but the windsor blue mixed nicely and I will try using more often. I also like the grey we put in the sky, it was also a mix of cobalt blue and Indian red ( I used alizeron crimson). I didn’t do the sketch book until after I finished the painting, if I had I would have realized there was going to be a house! I put a bit too much shore line in front of the house, these people are definitely not going to get flood insurance…

For my next tutorial I started with the tiny painting and color chart.

I haven’t done the exercise on real paper yet but I love the grey from cobalt and burnt sienna!

I enjoy Alan Owen’s videos and find him easy to follow, though I do pause to catch up when I need to!

I found a list of some additional watercolor tutorials, some I have watched and some I plan to watch! As a visual learner, I really find watching other people work gives me so many ideas.

I like to watch terrible television. Having children forced me to watch less terrible television in both quantity and quality. I can’t take back the years I watched, “Rock of Love” or even “Daisy of Love.” Regrets, I have a few. I did love my Top Chef and Project Runway years. Even Survivor was fun in the early years. Come to think of it, I watched the old TLC “A Love Story” and “A Baby Story,” these were truly terrible shows, ver boring.

Netflix currently has the second season of “Love is Blind.” Unlike my early years of terrible television, I now have this thing called “streaming,” and I have pretty much watched the whole thing in two days. I have a few thoughts:

  • This group of millenials uses the words, “Like” constantly, like even more than like the valley girls of the like the 1980s, like really
  • Constant cursing, f-bombs are apparently appropriate for pretty much any situation, even a family brunch or dress shopping with your grandmother!
  • If you give people a constant flow of alcohol then they will “fall in love.”
  • The lighting of the interviews in the “pods” made everyone look freakish.
  • What was the deal with the golden goblets? Product placement for a future line of wedding tableware? ” There is a hilarious meme about the golden cups in this post!
  • The music throughout the series is TERRIBLE, which probably means I am too old to be watching this show. There is also far too much Sal’s ukulele playing. But Caesar needs his own show.
  • I won’t even get into Shaina’s cowboy hat…

I won’t spoil the results of the show, there plenty of ups and downs in this train wreck!

At this moment, I have over 115,000 emails in my yahoo account, 60,000+ are unread. This account goes back 2 decades and actually has quite a few emails that I reference to establish dates and places. If that sound like an excuse, that’s because it is an excuse. I also have a gmail account which only has 6,600 emails. I use email as a digital filing system but many of these are promotional offers that I am reluctant to delete because I “might” need them. I watch a lot of Hoarders and this is basically the line every hoarder uses as they stash yet another broken tooth pick into a pickle jar. By the time the offers have expired, I have had 200 more emails stack on top of the now useless emails. I am the little old lady surrounded by clutter, bushwhacking her way through the digital trash.

The same the applies to my digital photos. I do not know how many digital photos I have but I do know I had to upgrade to the 200 GB storage. I have some OCD tendencies and get very anxious about deleting photos off of my phone despite having two different digital back ups. The result is a phone which is often sluggish and frequently running out of memory. When I need to free up storage in order to send or receive an email I will search through my gallery and find the oldest video that I know is backed up and delete it, instantly freeing up just enough space to get the digital “city code enforcer” off of my back.

Two weekends ago, I was recording an indoor track meet. My son was in the lead of the 3200m heat and was rounding the last lap (or what the officials declared the last lap which turned out to be an error) when my phone ran out of memory and stopped recording. Not only did I miss what should have been the end of the race but I lacked any video proof of the disaster that was the officiating of the race.

Running out of memory was not something new, it’s kind of a running joke in my family that I will use up every bit of memory and then fill an sd card. It was the first time I missed an important event that I didn’t get a chance to re-do. That night, I ensured that both of my backups were current. Took a deep breath and deleted every picture and viedo from my phone. I will not lie, it made me absolutely nauseous. Photos have always been important to me, as a kid a dragged my 35mm “Tomato” camera everywhere. To this day, I have boxes of photos that I took documenting my life from 3rd grade on. Digital hoarding has only made it easier to stockpile photos.

Why is it so hard to part with photos? I even find it difficult to dispose of terrible double exposed duplicates. When I take digital photos, I take multiple shots of the same scene, trying to distinguish which of the series is best and ultimately deleting none of them. I guess for me, I am seeking to document that I was here. Photos are proof of life, our life.

After the initial wave of panic wore off, I felt liberated. Not only did my phone run much faster, I could move forward and make new memories. By holding on to the the past, I lost my ability to not only capture but to enjoy the present. Sometimes you have to delete it all in order to move forward. It will take me a while to refill my memory, I am trying to take more video while I still have kids at home who will roll their eyes at me. Maybe someday I will bring myself to tackle the 100k yahoo emails. Until then, I will hide my digital hoard from the prying eyes of the outside world and continue to keep memories.

Being a parent is a weird hybrid of caretaker and warden. Intellectually we know that our job as parents is to raise helpless babies to the point of adult self sufficiency. But it all happens so slowly. Like waiting for a clogged tub to drain, it seems like nothing is happening until the tub is empty. Somewhere between changing diapers and taking the SATs, the water level changes. You know that kids grow up but it still takes you by surprise when they drive away.

There are 4 years age difference between my children which means sometimes I get a second chance to be more present for a last. They still sneak up on you. When my kids are driving me crazy, the Elton John lyric plays in my head, “Don’t wish it away, Don’t look at it like it’s forever.

When my son was born, among he many books gifted to us was “Let me Hold You a Little Longer.” I am sure the sleep deprivation played a major role but I never could make it through the book without tearing up. I’ve always been an overly sensitive person. I used to think it was a negative trait but the older I get, I accept that this is just who I am. Having an acute sense of the passage of time, even when I was a child myself, has made me sentimental. I don’t like to have a lot of clutter but I do like to collect memories. I take lots of photos but try to stay present as much as someone who is overly focused of the future can be present.

This particular book focuses on looking for your “lasts” with your child. Sometimes the lasts are boldly celebrated with ceremonies, often times the lasts are lost like the subtle change of the seasons. Does the water level look a little lower? Is it dark earlier today than it was yesterday? I’ve tried to make peace with my lasts. I

Recently, I was keenly aware of a “last.” My son is in his 3rd year of running cross-country and on days when I am not at work, I would pick him up after practice. Many if not most times, I take my daughter with me and we go for a run or walk ourselves and then wait for him to {slowly} be ready to leave. The process of getting his driver’s license was a nuisance and it wasn’t until the last week of cross country practice that he actually was able to drive himeself home. Without me. I had spent the entire season waiting for him to be done and then holding my breath the whole time he drove us home. It was the last day that I would be picking him up. The last day he would drive us home together. The last day my daughter and I would “hang out” waiting for him to be ready. That was a lot of “lasts” but I recognized they were happening and I will always remember that day. I felt lucky to be able to appreciate those moments, even if I was yelling about stopping distances and air braking on our way home.

With this in mind, I try my best to remember that happy or sad, feast or famine, this too shall pass. In closing, a quote from the book mentioned above. If you are a parent, you will probably cry.

“I’ve watched you grow and barely noticed
seasons as they pass.
If I could freeze the hands of time,
I’d hold on to your lasts.

For come some bright fall morning,
you’ll be going far away.
College life will beckon
in a brilliant sort of way.
One last hug, one last good-bye,
one quick and hurried kiss.
One last time to understand
just how much you’ll be missed.
I’ll watch you leave and think how fast
our time together passed.”

Let Me Hold You Longer

Book by Karen Kingsbury

Since childhood I have been a “glass half full” or even a “let me get you a cleaner glass” type of person. During the Locke vs Rousseau debates in high school, I always sided on the “man is naturally good” view of the world. In our house, 3 out of 4 of us are optimists, so it’s always interesting to hear from the pessimist in the room. In fact, only the pessimist of our family is anti-jigsaw puzzle so I am going to make a sweeping generalization that only optimists like to do puzzles.

I can think of few things that test this hypothesis more than buying open-box jig saw puzzles from your local thrift store. When buying a 1000 piece puzzle, I suppose one could, remove the tape and count out the pieces before buying the puzzle. One might if one had unlimited time and no actual duties or responsibilities. Or, one could take a leap of faith, trust in the good of our fellow man and plunge headlong into assembling a puzzle of questionable origin. Our family pessimist rolls his or her eyes as soon as the puzzle with the tell-tale grease pen price marking is set forth upon our coffee table. You can hear the pessimist practicing his or her, “I told you so.”

Does buying open-box puzzles from Goodwill make you an optimist or fatalist?

As we learn in school, the altruism gene allows animals to make sacrifices of themselves in order that others of their species will survive, prosper and procreate, thus helping then entire species. When I donate or re-donate my puzzles, I try to ensure they are a complete puzzle and have found that my fellow puzzle people do the same, Thus, the hypothesis is proven, we are free to be fruitful and perhaps multiply.

Life is like an open box puzzle, you never know if you are actually going to have all of the pieces. Even when we don’t have all of the pieces, the process is the fun, not the finished work. Because in life, the finished work is pretty much the end. I like to think of returning my puzzles to the thrift store from whence they came as a sort of reincarnation. A rebirth, a new chance for someone else to participate in the process.

The only puzzle that is impossible to finish is the one you never start.

I’m not sure why I have given my shop the cold shoulder. I haven’t had negative feed back, though I am always worried when there is no feedback.

Perhaps it is the medium itself that is the difficulty. Painting isn’t the problem, I have lots of paintings and only have a few listed on Etsy. It seems fake to sell prints even though the majority of art sold on Etsy is not original artwork. I am trying to teach myself some graphic design skills to transition into a more digital/repeatable artist. Maybe I don’t like that idea and that is why I am ignoring my Etsy shop.

Seth Godin is a great writer and pod caster. I recently listened to his episode about wabi sabi. The basic gist of wabi-sabi is that the imperfections are what makes us love something. The unique qualities impart an essence made more powerful because it is not repeatable. For me, the magic of creating a watercolor painting is the variability of your results. No two paintings are the same. The intersection and interaction of the pigments, paper and water create happy accidents.

Selling a print of a watercolor ruins the wabi-sabi. Or does it? If the image is moving and worth looking at, couldn’t more than one person possess it?

Clearly, I need to refine and define what exactly I am trying to do with my Etsy shop. I need to do something about all of these painting or I am going to end up on an episode of Hoarders.

Until I figure this out, I will continue to paint my happy river rocks, the perfect yet imperfect leaf, and to seek the most vibrant shade of green. For now, I will ignore the Etsy shop in the room.

Piles and piles

I really like to kayak. My kids really like to complain about kayaking. It’s a yin/yang type of thing. We opted to stick the kids together on a tandem kayak with the hopes that their whining and negative comments would cancel each other out. It didn’t but my husband and I could paddle out of ear-shot so I considered that a win.

We had kayaked Stump Pass Beach State Park a few years earlier, our kids were younger and even whinier at that time. Both times we launched from the parking area, using a local outfitter who dropped of the gear and picked it up from the same place. We used SUP Englewood and found them friendly and responsive.

This is a great place to kayak, I recommend going early. We did the four hour rental starting at 9 am. The pass can get busy in places with boat traffic though much of it is quite shallow which helps to limit the size and number of boats.

You can paddle to the far end of the beach and park the kayak and explore the beach. This time, they were dredging the far end of the pass/beach so we had to park the kayaks a little further up.

The water is very clear and there are lots of fish. marine life and birds. This is especially true if you skip the main stretch and loop around the islands where the water is shallow. There aren’t many mangrove “tunnels” in this stretch, though you are literally in the mangroves. Don Pedro, a little further south has more of these small inlets to explore.

  • crab!
  • artistic shot
  • anemones?
  • bird
  • really clear water

If you are looking for something to do besides beaching and shark-toothing, kayaking is a great family activity. I bring a soft cooler with water bottles, usually these are sit-on rather than sit-in kayaks which means there isn’t a dry storage space. A beach towel is nice to sit on or to put behind your back. There is a place to stow a small amount of “stuff” at the rear of the kayak, but it will likely get wet, zip lock bags can save the day!

On a previous trip we rented kayaks and went to Don Pedro Island, just below Stump Pass. I remember the beach here being really cool, accessible only by boat. The park was closed the day we were kayaking, I would highly recommend visiting this park if you can!

Though running is my preferred exercise, kayaking is so peaceful and allows you access to places you can’t see any other way. I like to consider it a leisurely bike ride through the water. We have kayaks at home, we don’t use them nearly enough. Part of the reason is the mental block of having to take them down, put them on the car, strap them in, drive them around, unload, launch, paddle, land, reload, unload, store. It is so much easier to show up and have literally all of the heavy lifting done for you! Apparently I am lazy and I just realized this. Blogging can teach you so much about yourself.

kind of crooked, I was holding a paddle and trying not to drop the phone. tilt your head.

They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Each year, I try to channel my inner Viking and embrace winter. I navigate through the shortest days, hopeful that each day is in theory getting more daylight than the day before. I run, despite the cold. Every January I am injured. I assume it is a combination of improper warm up and cool down as I am trying to get back into a warm space. This time it was my right plantar plate injury, I didn’t push it and stopped running for 3 weeks, slowly adding in short runs. I think it has healed but it has been so cold and I am afraid of re-injuring myself. Despite an aversion to indoor exercise, I bought a stationary bike. My hope is that when I am too injured to run, I will at least be able to bike. Maybe I can put my hair in curler and yell at the tv at the same time. Getting old sucks. I did shave 3 minutes off of my previous 8k time at the Christmas Town Dash so I like to think that my pain was not in vain!

I guess this title is a tad dramatic but this is my blog and I was dreading this trip. I haven’t read a Harry Potter book. I am probably the only person I know who hasn’t read a Harry Potter book. I have nothing against the series, deep down I am a rebel and I think I have been resistant because I want to buck authority with the least risk to my physical well being.

The youngest member of my family is a middle school girl who loves Harry Potter, has read all of the books multiple times and has long conversations with me about the personalities and difficulties of the various Potter People. Even though I haven’t read the book, I nod along and throw out the few words I know, “Muggles, all of them!”

The magic of Disney is something I don’t understand. Perhaps I was brainwashed as a child by parents who were rebelling in their own way to be anti-Disney. I don’t particularly love crowds and the few times I have been forced to go to Disney World (it’s a thing) I was hot, tired and underwhelmed. I am also very cheap and the little adding machine in my brain kept tallying up all of the people I was fighting my way through, times hundreds of dollars a ticket, adding food and souveniers. It’s hard to imagine that all of the people I saw had retirement and or college savings but I know that sounds judgmental so we will stick to the “I am not a theme park person.”

What to do then when your wonderful little girl wants nothing more in the world, or for her birthday and Christmas, than to go see The World of Harry Potter? We put aside our personal feelings and stoicism and minimalism and we plan a trip to Universal.

I am not a guidebook writer so I will not go into great detail but I will share some helpful tips, some were even gleaned from a Fodor’s guide given to me by my Disney loving mother-in law.

Tips to Survive Universal Studios Orlando if you are afraid of theme parks

  1. Stay on property. Not having to deal with the parking situation is reason enough but the perks of staying in Universal are huge. The biggest perk being early park admission and EXPRESS PASSES for each person!
  2. Get the Universal express pass, it was the best thing I did for the whole trip. Money wise, staying in one of the premium hotels where an express pass is included is a huge savings. Don’t let the $400 a night price scare you. You can use the express pass from the moment the park opens on the day of your check-in till the time the park closes on your day of check out. So even if you only book the fancy hotel (some aren’t really fancy) for one night you essentially get express passes for everyone (in our case 4 to a room) for 2 days! And these are the unlimited use passes costing over a hundred dollars a person per day!
  3. Bring a very small back pack, I have a foldable hiking bag that worked perfectly. Universal provides free lockers at all rides where belongings are prohibited but they are not very tall, maybe 4 inches high? We placed our cell phones, keys, etc. I also packed granola bars and 4 empty water bottle into my small hiking bag. Fill empty water bottles at fillings stations or if you don’t want to carry anything around, there are cups of water available at most food/drink stands
  4. Take the Hogwart’s Express, both ways. It is worth it and so easy with the Express Pass. The attention to detail is amazing and this is from someone who didn’t even care about the books!
  5. Buy a lanyard/badge holder (or if you are like me and you have 4 Busch Gardens lanyards that confused everyone who saw them, bring those). Your hotel key becomes your express pass and it will be scanned every time you get in line. I thought lanyards seemed lame when I read it in the Fodors book but it made it so much easier than fumbling around in a pocket for our pass and definitely reduced our fear of losing it. Lanyards are sold in the park but like everything else they are overpriced so I would look on Amazon first.
  6. If there is any chance of rain, bring those cheap, disposable ponchos. It poured while we were visiting the park, the ponchos made it bearable. Throwing them away when we left the park was even better! Not wet luggage!
  7. Use the Universal app, you will have up to the minute ride opening and wait times. This was huge for us when rides would re-open after rain storms.
  8. The food is pretty terrible and expensive. It was just as terrible and expensive in the City Walk so if you are looking for convenience and to save time, stay in the park to eat. If you are close enough to walk to your hotel, make sandwiches and salads there to save money.
  9. There is hand sanitizer everywhere so if you bring some with you, it doesn’t need to be much, wipes are probably a better option.
  10. All the lines get longer throughout the day even with the Express Pass. This is not the time to sleep in. You are paying good money to see everything you can in the park, take advantage of the early admission! Go early especially if you are using the perks of staying on property. Go straight to Harry Potter and then work your way towards the front.

Our experience

Never one to keep things simple, I changed my reservations around a few times. The tickets are sold in 5 day blocks so I knew roughly the days I would go. Our flight landed in the morning and I had originally planned on going to straight to the park for the first of our 2 Day 2 Park tickets. Upon further reading, it seemed crazy to squander the Early Admission and not get a full day out of the park so I decided we would stay in the “premium” hotel the following day. The Portifinio is a beautiful hotel and where I had originally booked but it was not available for the following day so we had to stay at the Hard Rock. I was not impressed, the property is pretty run-down, there were scaffolds everywhere for repainting. If I had the choice, I wouldn;t stay there again, I would try the Portofino or the Royal Pacific.

The biggest surprise was where we stayed the first night. I didn’t need to be on property but after comparing prices, reveiws and the ease of getting to our “final destination” of the Hard Rock, I opted to stay at the Aventura. This hotel is conceptualized as a modern/futuristic design. I loved how quiet and calm, espcially when I later compared it to the Hard Rock which was very noisy.

Thr rooms at the Aventura were just my style. Minimalist. No extra throw pillows, no pictures on the walls. Huge floor to ceiling windows, wood plank flooring and very clean. No shower curtain, just glass. It was probably one of the cleanest hotels I have ever stayed in and I am very much a germaphobe. The beds were also wonderful, they were firm without being too hard, I find most hotel beds much too soft. It was a very reasonable price and I could walk to Universal if needed. We spent the day at the pool ( they let you use the hotel facilities upon arrival even though check in is later in the afternoon.) We also explored the other “theme” hotels nearby, the decor of the Cabana Bay was fun to see, they had an arcade and a bowling alley as well.

First thing in the morning, we drove to the Hard Rock, got my Universal Express passes, which also serve as your room keys. We left our luggage in the car, but could have checked it in the lobby, and walked over to Universal! The rest is history!

During our two days, my kids rode every single ride in the park (excluding kiddie rides.) Even my teenage son enjoyed the park. Even I enjoyed the park, especially the Simpsons! The roller coasters were top-notch and the set design and theming was incredible. Harry Potter World is truly amazing and for kids, I can only imagine that it is truly magical. I had no desire to go to Universal Studios, hiking and quiet places are my preferred way to spend a vacation, but I am so thankful to have had this experience with my family. Sometimes you have to be a little impractical. Comfort zones are meant to be abandoned, wear those ponchos and convention hall-style lanyards proudly!

Highlights of Universal Studios/City Walk

All rides are not created and equal and two people on the same ride can have a very different experience. With that said, here were some of out highlights:

  • Perhaps the most visually stunning ride is Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey™ in Hogsmeade. We actually went on this one more than once, there is so much to see and the ride itself is enjoyable
  • I enjoyed the Cat in the Hat, it is very basic but manages to capture the absurd and surreal quality of the book. My kids thought it was weird but I think it’s worth seeing.
  • Butter beer is pretty “meh.” I guess you need to try it, but one shared between us was enough! Go buy a 6 pack of ICB Cream soda instead.
  • Better yet, walk into City Walk and have dessert at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. Though expensive, the quality and quantity are huge. I found the sundaes to be a better value and easier to share. We had the Chocolate Brownie Bark which consisted of several whole brownies and lots of ice-cream. A family of 4 could split this dessert which made it pretty inexpensive by comparison to most of the food we ate during this adventure. The building itself is a cool “steam-punk” chocolate factory and worth a look!
  • The Hulk Coaster was fun, even I went on that one. My kids loved the Velocicoaster, I sat that one out but even my husband raved about how smooth it was. Pass! The Velocicoaster was their favorite coaster in the park. I held the ponchos.
  • The Shrek 4-D movie was fun, I find that series to be entertaining and this movie didn’t disappoint. ]
  • One of our least favorite was The Fast and the Furious, super cheesy. Really, I am on a party van? Luckily we didn’t wait long.
  • Escape From Gringotts was also really well done, even the line has plenty to see. The set of Diagon Alley is pretty incredible, you can even find the dark passage in Knockturn Alley which we found was the best place to shelter during the downpours!
  • We bought a wand. It was hard to use. There were too many people waiting to perform the magic. Much like the butter beer, we did it but I am glad we only bought one!

I turned our passes into a Christmas ornament so that we can always remember the time we braved the crowds and the rain to visit Universal!