Emotional coaster

I pretty much knew these last few days would be zingers and I wasn't wrong.  Whenever you walk into your old life and look around and walk back out it's always a little gut wrenching.  We did a lot of that this past weekend.  The house* in the Paris 'burbs was empty and new renters were coming so we were forced to make a quick trip up north to check it out and prepare it for the new people arriving three days later.  We couldn't put it off any longer.

Just for the record I was right in my evaluation of the first renter and his ego.  I never got a chance to blog about it; but he didn't pay the rent much and left behind some serious messes and a mailbox full of recommended letters.  Call it women's instict but  we will have to pay to have the brand new living room floor resanded because his little dog peed everywhere and left stains on the floor and even on the wall.  Did I mention how much I hate renting out this house.  If we could sell it and get out from it with our shirts partially intact I would do it in a heartbeat but no lender can seem to help us find a way out...unfortunately.

Otherwise it's a very pretty house and I'm still a proud parent when I walk through and see all the work we did.  Scraped knuckles, elboow grease, paint plastered in hair,  it was an extremely  rough three years where the payoff was in pure beauty.   I was very relieved that the previous renter didn't paint the doors or woodwork, whew!, and that they pretty much left everything as was.  That was a good point in their favor.  The new renters seem a bit fussier and had a list of projects that they wanted done before moving in, odd because we had five people stop and ask about renting the house just in the short time we were there, desperate people asking if they had any chance to get in.  We did one or two things on the list but stopped short of painting the pipes in the hallway and things like that.  The old plumbing pipes I find really interesting, --from turn of the century and stamped with a scrolled GDF logo--so I'd  purposely taken the old paint off and left them bare.  Projects like that freaked me out a bit.  Hopefully they won't cancel 19 hours of laborous scraping and polishing and paint them all white!  You see why I'd love to just sell it.

We saw old neighbors and had way too many aperos and dinners and wished very fleetingly that we could move back.  I'd had it out with the Savoie Dragon Lady right before we left from home for this trip so I was feeling a bit dejected and unneighborly and lets face it vunerable.   It was a much needed dose of friendliness.   But as we all know you can't step twice in the same river, the river and you change so it never works.  It was kind of like that.  The town seemed suddenly small; the people were still fabulous and nice but the atmosphere seemed stale and I quickly noted that nobody got out and walked much or participated in many activities.  I remembered being like that when we lived there. I was a wallflower in house slippers puttering monotonously about my life, internalized.  It was probably the right moment for it because Charlotte was just a baby, but it couldn't have lasted much longer and it left its mark on my personal life.

After leaving this house for the last time three years ago we moved to China and Seb and I seperated and set about the process of filing for divorce.  It was a bittersweet moment to step back inside and see the scars of our marriage all over the place.  We slept in sleeping bags on the floor and I tossed and turned reliving all those moments the four days we were there.  It was such a mix of feelings handing the keys over to the agency to rent the house to new people.  I wished we were handing it over to new owners instead.  It's almost like that house and holding on to it is like holding onto a moment where everything wasn't quite working.  We came home, brim sloshing with  angst and stepped onto the doorstep of here our little Savoie house bought when we were newlyweds, childless and terribly optimistic.  It has a lighter feel and Dragon Lady neighbor aside it is a happy place with a good history.   As difficult as the four day weekend was it helped put a perspective on everything.

*(if you care to read about this house's history and how we redid it go to Labels in the sidebar and link to This Old House 2)

Happiness is....

To clelebrate Spring a little blog post about my happy spots these days.  Yeah I know it's been awhile since I've popped in here.  I've just been cooped up in my art den drawing scratching off the days until the sun arrives.  I haven't been doing much else.  I've had lots of interests.  My brain is constantly churning but mainly it's centered on those few categories of interests that keep me happy.  It doesn't take much!

Art makes me happy.  I bought a new sketchbook last month and finally; finally FINALLY filled the one I started in November 2009.  I had such a bad relationship with that book.  I don't know why but it just had no identity.  I like my new book.  It's an 8x11 Canson 100g sketch and I'm loving it.  My goal is a drawing a day for the next year and that should have me filling it by one year with four drawings per page.  I'm only drawing in pencil now too.  Big change for me since I've drawn for the last five years in pen.  Funny though because I did that graphite ATC challenge a few months back and now I'm really comfortable with pencil again.  Reminds me of art classes in school all over again with the little tin box of drawing pencils, all serious about which one to use!  Nowadays I just grab an Ikea pencil and get sketching.

I can go on and on about art and fill pages about my workshop I'm conducting, ATC's I'm trading and art journaling but I'll save that for other posts.

Books make me happy too.  I'm thinking about making a vow here to myself to read more starting now.  I've got to get back to reading.  I've set a little challenge for myself to read a book a week but I think I'll make it three books a month instead.  I can order three paperbacks from Amazon and score free shipping with three books.  Anyway, I've been living in a cave since having kids and I haven't read much in the last seven years so any suggested reads, even the obvious ones, will be duly noted.  Right now I'm reading Loves and  Louis XIV by Anotonia Fraser.  I like me a good historical read any day.

Fashion makes me happy.  I have a a place to play now.  My closet ie. my fashion playground, looks amazing.  I'm so pleased with it.  It was a year in the making and made on a super small budget but it turned out so nice.  My husband is so cool that he's also building me a shoe closet downstairs that will hold over 200 pairs of shoes.   And yes I do have over 200 pairs of shoes--mostly heels that I barely wear because I have to hike uphill four times a day to deliver my kids to school, but I have them for when I want to wear them in the house and you know, check the mail.  I probably have way too many clothes and accessories but I'm a girl and it's my prerogative (ear worm alert)

Makeup is another happy spot.  I'm totally addicted to those You Tube makeup bloggers  (Michele Phan, Ruth Crilly...), so much so that Charlotte is addicted to watching them too.  No excuses.  A guilty pleasure like chocolate.  I've perfected lots of makeup in the past year watching these videos.  Charlotte watches them on her own.  She even has her own little makeup table in the bathroom.   She  is nothing like me at that age.  I was such a tomboy.  I guess my mother being a hairdresser  and makeup artist turned me off from it until I was a teenager.  Charlotte is the only five year old that can do a smokey eye.

Complaint time.  Why is makeup so expensive in France?  I would love to have a cheap option right up the street but no it costs a fortune.  I am in dire need of a visit home to spend all my piled up birthday money at CVS.  I can spend hours in that pathetic little store.  Talk about happy spots!

Cooking makes me happy.  I am still eating 80 percent raw vegan foods, but I have been baking for my family.  I got a bread machine which I love.  It's my new best friend.  I love the way you can just start it up and go.  I haven't got the kids 100 percent sold on it yet because they're so picky and so used to chemically filled sliced bread (my bad).  The machine bread is really good though.  It's really fun to make.  On Sundays I still cook traditional lunch and dinner.  That's why I'm 80 percent raw and not 100.    Each Sunday I make a feast from my Julia cookbook.  I miss cooking if I don't get out the pots and pans.  This weekend  I'll indulge completely.  Easter holds no boundaries.  I'm even eating cheese.

Lots of other things make me happy but those are just a few silly ones off the top of my head!

Hey baby it's cool man

The kids are on vacation and so am I for a few weeks and  this means we have more time for art and I can sign up for some more trades with all my down time.  Here's a fun one I just finished called called "Lost in the 70's"  I decided to do Linda, Elton, Jim and David.

Elton didn't quite get it right but he was really fun to draw.  I can see myself doing a whole series of Eltons and Bowies based on their chhh.chhh...changes.

Graphite ATC trade

I did a super three card ATC trade last month and  I got some great cards back.  To be honest I've been mildly disappointed in some of the trades I've made in the past six months.  I hand draw or paint nearly all of my cards and they take me about three hours each, so when I get a card back with a scrapbooking sticker stuck on it or a glittery mess it puts me off wanting to trade ever again.  I don't expect everyone to trade a mini Van Gogh but I do like when someone puts in a lot of effort and it shows.  It means they respect their art and I get to have a piece of that.  That's the fun part.

On my ATC trading site which is lots of fun and slightly addictive, I signed up for a graphite trade.  Here's what I sent, (four cards by the way because you always send an extra card as a gift to the gracious hostess of the swap)  I am slightly obsessed with Mayans:

    and here are the three amazing little cards I received in return:

It was a really gratifying trade.  I think I might do more graphite cards in future trades.  They're really stunning.

A sort of scrapbooker rant

I just got a new keyboard and after nearly six years typing on a Mexican keyboard ay carrramba!  I am now back to a French keyboard.  The qwerty to azerty downshift  thing is a little tough but it's appeased by the fact that now I have the good  accents!  in the right place!  yay!  No more upside down exclamations !!!

I 've been making some art journaling videos and watching lots of them on the internet to get ideas.  Some videos are excellent with real artist touting real ideas and some unfortunately are not so excellent.  Some just give art journaling a bad rap.

Here's what bugs me.  It's usually the same type of personality and excuse me for pigeonholing but it's often a former scrapbooker turned "artiste". The problem is they  put all these horrific  embellishments on their journal, stickers and prepackaged crap and call it art.  Okay art is subjective I know but sadly this is not art.  This is craft.   Okay just move on to the next video right.  I mean forget them.  I'm sorry though.  What annoys me most about these people's videos is the hawking of the products.  Everytime they use a product they have to tell you what it is!  It's a giant whorefest for overpriced products.  And some of these people have BINS and BINS of these products.  The money spent on this embellished glitter art!  Calamity!  Paul Cézanne is turning over in his grave every time one of these videos gets uploaded.  And people are saying to themselves "art journaling is THIS, ugh and even if I wanted to do it I have to buy all that crap?  Uh; think I'll pass" and then the whole thing gets a stigma associated with it.

In the great spirit of counteracting anything that goes against the grain of doing something the natural granola way I'm going to start sharing some tips.  These will be some of my very own DIY tips for art journaling.  You don't need Homespun Exacto Glue or Stayrite Ink Dyes or even Lou-Lous Own Fixater or any of these overpriced piece of crap things to art journal.  These are swiss army knife journaling tips.  These are art jornaling war ration tips.  You don't need much to get started.  You just need some cheap paints, a pencil and a few trips to the garage.  Later you might want to invest in some better paints and maybe some inks or watercolor crayons but always, always, always make trips to the garage and don't worry about ruining your art for posterity.  Archival quality?  That's just ridiculous!  You're here to make a mess and if it falls apart and turns yellow in fifty years who cares.  I'm sure by then everyone will be making digital copies of everything in like 3D or something with smellovision.

Sorry for the rant and if you read this and you're a scrapbooker it's nothing personal.  I too like glue and pretty pages.  Just go easy on the glitter and don't call embellishments "embies" or I will hurt you.