Dad's Birthday

This painting was done for my Dad's birthday. This photo is of him and me a LONG time ago. It has always been his favorite. I really struggled trying to think of something to give him this year, and then I thought I'd try to paint a version. You can see my painting on the left and the photo on the right. I'm not really great at painting people, but I was really happy with how this turned out. Dad seemed to really love it and that's really all that matters.

Well, it seems I've been a very bad blogger and not posting in a long time. I've been busy enjoying my summer. My harp lessons are going well and thankfully I'm improving quickly. I don't feel quite so uncordinated now, but I still cant play what I want to since I'm still learning. Its definetly been a good thing to do, and I think it'll help my teaching when my piano students return in the fall. I know fully remember what its like to be brand new to an instrument.

My piano is progressing nicely according to my last report. The soundboard is in good shape, so I'll come in under the estimated cost! Wonderful news. I'm anxious for its return. I find myself walking into my office and wanting to just play and not having it there is so sad.

In other summer activities my softball team is doing well, we're tied for first and we're still having fun. My art has been a little slow. I had a week of not being inspired to do anything. I think that has passed now. Maybe I just needed a short break. We went to the Ann Arbor Art Fairs this week and saw so many great artists. What talent all gathered together.

I'm off to run errands. Have a wonderful weekend.

Busy busy

Edited to add that Janet won my birthday drawing and received the polymer lion. Congratulations to my lovely blog friend and thank all of you for stopping by and the well wishes.

Life has been really busy lately. Its not bad, just a bit different for me. Things for the loan are done and approved and we'll sign the papers on Friday so that means hopefully the piano will go out next week to begin the restoration. I've also been playing the doctor shuffle and going for lots of tests. I'm confident that nothing super bad is going on, but they need to check something and make sure its still ok. Hopefully after todays test and the follow up visit life can return to normal.

The recital I hold for my students yearly performance is Friday so I've been busy perfecting everyones songs and easing their nerves. I finished teaching last night and I am free from lessons until my piano returns hopefully close to Labor day. Mentally it will be wonderful to be away from teaching, but financially I'll have to be more careful than I have been lately. Again, this isn't a bad thing, just different.

In preperation for the piano to be moved, I've been cleaning and organizing my office. This is a monster task as I'm far from an organized person. I bought some inexpensive storage units and assembled them to line one wall of the office, and sorted through my stacks of stuff. Its looking really good in there. I actually wanted to spend my evening in there and laid on the futon and read a book for a bit last night. Its amazing that I didn't think the mess of that room bothered me, but now that its all neat and arranged, I absolutely love it. I sure hope I can keep on top of things and keep it nice.

So my exciting news is that I'll be starting harp lessons the last week of May. I've commited to 3 months of lessons and rental. I figure by that time I'll know for sure if I want to continue to persue learning another instrument. I've wanted to learn the harp for about 10 years, but just recently found the opportunity to rent an instrument. It seems like this was meant to be considering that my piano wont be here for the summer and I was worried about how I would deal with that. I played the organ for a wedding last Friday and they had an aunt perform a harp solo in the ceremony. It was really beautiful and made me even more eager to begin my lessons.

My softball league started up last week. We played a fun game against the team we lost the championship to last year. We won and it was a very sweet victory. I was catching and every throw they made to me when there was a runner trying to score I was able to tag them out. It was a good fielding day for me. I didnt hit so well, but it was the first game so hopefully I'll get back in the groove. I at least got on base and scored twice. It was fun and that is the only reason I play. FUN!

The 2 pendants pictured today are made of polymer clay. I have tons of molds that I have made from many buttons and charms. We made these pendant together in class so I also had access to some other molds. Anyways, we pushed the clay in the molds and then sat them on a sheet of clay in a pleasing arrangement and then cut out the shape we wanted. We filled in any open space with little balls of clay to make it appear more complete. I did the orange one in class, but wanted to see what an all frog one would look like. I used a color to imitate jade for the frogs. I actually like the orange one better, but the frogs are cool too.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I had a wonderful birthday complete with a trip to a winery and finding a hopping dog birthday party in full swing. To say that I had fun would be such an understatement! I'm sorry this post is so scattered, but that seems to be how life is at the moment. It keeps things new and unexpected and makes for some fun and interesting times. I hope you are all doing well and experiencing lots of joy in your lives.