Looking back

Looking back over this year i have accomplished quite a few things i had hoped for in 2014.....

I tried out a few new hobbies and really liked them....

Wood carving, see the post here...

Woodburning, here

I also had fun hiking with family...here

 And did a lot of paintings....some are  here, 
 here,  here, and here

And tried some new foraged foods.... here., and here,

And started a garden...here, here

And canned tons from our garden...

and made a lot of smoothies from my garden... here and here...

 And i worked on  a children's picture book..here and here..and .. The bee queen's message

And wrote almost a complete novel... here and here and  wild phlox season

I joined Nanowrimo, ICAD, PPF,, and Creative Everyday month in November...And i am sure there's more.... But i am starting to really plan goals for 2015 over the next couple days... Once i get the tree down and all. I'd keep it up longer but with the extra pets here over Christmas it's too hard to keep them all out of it. (With my two cats and a dog and with the two cats my oldest daughter brought home with her for the week, and the 3 animals that belong to my second daughter who is living back home again, that makes 5 cats, two dogs and 1 bunny).

It's almost as hard as keeping my son (or myself) out of everybody's christmas chocolate or the christmas fudge!

Hope everyone had as nice a christmas as we did here!

Day 8

Been writing; up to 9000 words now and even though that seems like a lot it is less than i need to write if i am going to make the 50,000 words i need for Nanowrimo in November. So i plan to write as much as i can today to get ahead, i have lots of ideas now that i am back to thinking of the novel again.

But also, my mind skips around alot, and i seem to go from one hobby to another to another....

so i did just a little bit on this woodburning mandala i started months ago....

 It's still a work in progress....

AEDM day 6

I hate computers, we just took ours in to be fixed, and now it's worse than before and we even just bought a better antivirus program as well.... argh!
but it's working long enough to post my little bit of creativity lately....

I sketched these mandalas in red in my novel sketchbook, (just a sketchbook I use for the maps and family trees and other visual info about the novel i want to keep all in one place) because one of the characters in my novel, Bennett, does redwork embroidery so i was doodling her designs. Of course I haven't even added that fact to the novel either.... and,

when i was doodling, the permanent marker exploded. I will look like my hand is bleeding for days....

Art everyday month, day 2

I wrote 850 words toward my goal of 50,000 yesterday! Yeah... It's a start.

Here's a sketch from my novel sketchbook, a drawing of the old marble water fountain on the Moon Family Homestead....

Jacob Saberman made it for his wife Tess on their 25th wedding anniversary. I doubt that info will make it into the book though....

still writing

 The novel I just mentioned I am writing ( I am up to 65 pages!) is set during the time the Phlox  bloom...

well in googling "Phlox" i learned these flowers that we have everywhere in June are not even really phlox. they are Dame's Rocket, or sweet rocket, an invasive species, unlike phlox which is native to North America.. They have 4 petals. not 5 like true Phlox. And their leaves are jagged and staggered around the stem unlike Phlox which are smooth and even around the stem. 

I have called them phlox my whole life.

I have probably never even seen real wild phlox.

I feel lied to.

 

So, I decided to use that in the novel. In it, plants already had personalities, so now my phlox have become, not down right liars, but sneaky and mischievous. They just stand there, waving  a little in the shady areas, laughing at our little lives as we run to and fro...

work in progress.... a novel called Wild Phlox Season

I know I said I would have a video, but not only didn't i finish putting the video together, I didn't finish that painting from last week...

 instead, i started another, did a bunch of little sketches, and wrote. 

It is, for some reason, embarrassing to admit I am trying to write a novel.

 I have no writing experience, except of course I read and write a lot. 

But I have never tried to write a novel. 

It seems too daring and self-important.

And then if it's bad, it would be humiliating, and if I never finish it would be one more thing I didn't complete...

 the list of why not to admit this out loud is endless. 

But I am trying anyways because these 6 women are in my head, and they do stuff in my imagination all the time, so why not try to get it all out on paper.

 I have been slowly working on it since November.

And I have had the idea since I did 29 faces 2 years ago...

Sometimes, writing it for me has been about sketching things from it, or drawing maps, writing out their family trees and fun stuff. 

Really, I have no idea on how to write a novel so I am just stumbling along and we'll see.....