Perspective

In the midst of this trail I am enduring with regards to my home, comes Katrina. It's amazing to me that when you think you have it bad, the Universe perks up and says "Now wait just a minute! Here's some perspective!" Given all that I have seen on the tv in the last couple of days- the heartwrenching stories of people losing EVERYTHING-homes, their personal belongings, some of them even their lives, and the survivors being stripped down to the bare bones of exsistance, I must give my head a shake and be utterly thankful that my own situation is NOTHING compaired to theirs. It's a humbling thing to see.

This disaster has reminded me of that familiar feeling of grief and despair I felt in the wake of 9/11, a feeling that moved me to action. If you are fortunate enough to have not been affected by Katrina, please think of those that were. Get out there and do what you can where you are. Everyone can do something! Contact your local aid centers and volunteer some time if you can't afford to make a donation. If you can afford to, write a cheque! Every dollar counts. People often forget about the need for blood after a disaster to help those who are injured. If you can donate blood, call and find out where the next clinic will be and when and then make an appointment to go roll up your sleeve. Please everyone, do what you can. We need to remember we are always just one slight twist of fate away from needing help like these people are. "Everything you ever do for anyone makes a difference."

The Gypsying Life Continues...

For those of you keeping track, this Wednesday, the final day of August will mark 6 weeks in exile. I am happy to report though that we now have FLOORS and LIGHTS. (SEE?!?) The insurance company decided at the 11th hour to put new lino throughout, not just the bathroom. This meant racing home to remove furnature in the hall, kitchen and dining area (and unpacking the entire contents of my canning cupboard!) so that the work could be done. A royal pain in the short term, but I know we will be happy about it in the long term.

Just to add a bit of fun, the hotel also kicked us out of our suite and back into the regular hotel room last Thursday. This meant packing up everything and then unpacking most of it in the smaller room. Apparently someone had booked our suite way back in April and the hotel was not willing to bump them to another room. (Two ladies, on vacation.) Somehow I think the fact that we are a family and homeless should have trumped their vacation, but I just couldn't get the hotel to agree. The ladies checked out this morning and after the cleaners went through, we were able to have it back and will keep it for the remainder of our stay. I am HOPING we are able to come home by the long weekend. If I cross my fingers and pray real hard, it might just happen!

In the meantime, just for sanity's sake, I went to Bellingham's ATC swap on Saturday with friends. We had a great time shopping and had lunch at the Coliphon Cafe, just before we went to swap cards. It was so nice to get out of the hotel for the day.

Once I get home, I have alot of updating I need to do to the website-lots of pictures to upload and some other new things to add. I can't wait to have my computer access restored. I miss my computer!!

Anyway, that's the scoop! I hope everyone is having a good last hurrah oh summer before school starts. Oh and have I mentioned how happy I am that school will be starting soon?? *grin*

The Zen of Painting

Yesterday I taught a visual journaling class and after seeing all the gorgeous colours combinations of watercolour paints my students used, I was itching to play with them myself. I got up early and started experimanting and eventually I had some really cool backgrounds to use for ATCs for tomorrow's swap in Vancouver.

Then I got fiddling with my brand spankin' new Xyron (The one I WON at Artwerx) and did some laminating of my ATCs which I then turned into fridge magnets. Needless to say one thing led to another and now I am on my way to Staples to buy some more magnet sheets. FUN!!

I will be posting a whole pile of new pictures to my website when I get home. I have so many new things to share!! HURRY UP RESTORATION GUYS!!

At The One Month Mark

For those of you following the ongoing saga of the bathroom disaster from hell, I bring you the following update:
After ONE MONTH, I finally have walls, a ceiling, a mocha paint job (which had to be done twice since the painter used the wrong colour-white- the first time!) and this evening I discovered the knarley pit has been cemented over. *sigh* Now if only they could forge ahead and get the new throne, sink and cabinet in there so we could come home.

As if things weren't stressful enough, if we are still in the hotel next Thursday, we will have to vacate the suite we have been in for several days. Apparently someone booked it way back in April for their vacation (Our suite is the primo one-it's huge) and the hotel is unwilling to bump them. The selfish part of me thinks that my being homeless and having to live there trumps their vacation any day, but them's the breaks. Nothing I can do about it. So...Thursday we will pack up our stuff for the 4th time and move to another room for a few days till the vacationers leave. That is unless by some modern day miracle the restoration guys actually focus on my bathroom alone and get it finished so we can end this hellish exile. I have been a pretty good sport about it for the last month, but I fear I am now at the breaking point. Enough is enough. I want to get my life back.

In any case, I think when all's said and done, I will be breaking a bottle of champagne over the new loo in celebration of our return to normalicy. Keeping my fingers crossed that that will be really soon!

Artwerx Review

Warning: This is going to be a long post so go get yourself a cuppa tea and make yourself comfortable!

So here is the run down of my Artwerx experience:

Friday:
I arrived at the hotel at 4:30 p.m. and checked in for the weekend. Penn and I were stay out in Richmond so we could have the feeling of a real art retreat. When we booked our room way back in January, I thought it would be a nice change to stay in a hotel for the weekend and not have to drive back and forth to the events. Little did I know! LOL! I registered us both and picked up all the little goodie bags that you get when you participate. Lots of fun stuff in them and we were also given lovely steel mugs with Artwerx and the date engraved on them. Very cool!!

Anyway, I didn't take any classes on Friday which turned out to be a good thing since my dear friend Lisa was graduating from Massage Therapy that afternoon and I was invited to attend. Friday night was however the vendor's market at which I dropped a few bucks. (Classic understatement!) It was crazy busy, mainly because there was alot of great stuff to be had. I bought some charms from Sally Jean, a whole pile of goodies from Papier Valise and a mica kit and some copper from Quietfire Designs and a rubber freebie. Penn also gifted me with some rubber from Lost Coast Designs which was very sweet of her.

By the time we finished oogling and shopping, it was after 9 p.m. so we went off to the restaurant to have dinner and pour over our purchases. We crashed and burned at about 11 p.m., but I was so excited a barely slept a wink.

Saturday:
Up early and off for a quick breakfast before heading to Nina Bagley's Sticks and Stones class. I have to say jewellery making is completely outside my comfort zone and totally new to me which is why I decided to take that class. As a result, since I wasn't relying on skills I already had, I had to concentrate really hard to know what I was doing. What I really enjoyed about the class was that the ladies sitting next to me, Carol and Lori Ann were great and we were swapping odds and ends for our jewellery. Lori Ann was hugely helpful to me. She had taken another class with Nina the previous day and was quite confident in creating the wire twists and connectors so she was able to show me exactly what to do if I got stuck. (Angels come in all forms!)

I worked my butt of, drilling with a dremel underwater to make holes in shells and stones so I could add them to my necklace. I managed to complete my piece. It's not exactly how I envisioned it, but for a first effort, it wasn't bad and I will know next time what I will want to do. You have to start somewhere!

Penn and I had lunch with Janice from Papier Valise. It was good to take a bit of a break from the heavy duty concentration of the class and just chat and grab some lunch. I was pleased to learn that Janice is every bit as lovely in real life as she is online. Must be those good Easterner roots! *hee!*

After class, Penn and I had just enough time to run up to our room and dump our stuff and then make a quick grocery run to the corner store from Fruit Loops and milk for Sunday's brekki before heading back to the Thirsty Turtle for a get together of the Byhandartists. (Suzanne Cannon's Yahoo group.) I was hosting a danglies swap and there were 7 of us in the swap. The danglies turned out to be jewellery so everyone ended up with a neck full of jewelley! It was fantastic! It was really wonderful to put some faces to the names I have become familiar with online over the last couple of years. Everyone was really friendly and kind. Suzanne surprised us with some raffle prizes and I won a collage packet.

After we got back to our room, I set up a workshop in our bathroom from Penn so she could learn how to make shaving cream paper and bubble paper. It was pretty funny listening to her blowing the bubbles. We were laughing and I kept thinking she would forget herself and inhale the bubbles through the straw instead of blowing out and get a mouth full of soap and ink! (She didn't though!)
We finally cleaned up and hit the hay at midnight. Again, I was too keyed up to sleep.

Sunday:
Thank god for the alarm, because Penn and I would have over slept without it. We woke up with just enough time to grab a quick shower, eat our cereal, check out of our room, load the car and dash to class. The one glitch in all that was that we didn't have spoons for our cereal, so I ended up starting the day with 4 Fruit Loops to my credit. Good thing I was too excited to notice how hungry I was!

Sunday was Sally Jean's Lighthouse Class. It was amazing. She had wonderful ephemera to share with us, lovely little kits made up and she has such a great teaching style. She was very down to earth. positive and approachable and worked very hard to make sure everyone was as comfortable as possible. I loved that she walked around the room giving lots of encouragement to everyone and offering help where it was needed. I really enjoyed the energy in the class and it was great to work on something I felt was "my thing" (collage) so that I could just relax a bit and enjoy the creative process without having to think too hard. I was pretty nervous about soldering, having tried it in the past and having NO success with it, but surprisingly it wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated and I managed to get a good result. By the time I left, I had my house constructed and all that's left to do is to paint the base and wire the light bulb, which Mr. Sally Jean graciously showed me how to do.

*As an added bonus to my weekend, I managed to win myself a $500 US PProfessional Xyron 1250 Machine!!! It was competely unexpected but I am excited about playing with it!! Woohoo!


So, I would have to say for me the best part of Artwerx was probably just learning some new skills and also getting to hang out with old friends and make some new ones too. It was really satisfying to spend time in the company of other artists and to fill up the creative well again.

I will be posting pictures as soon as I get a chance. I am still in exile do to bathroom repairs that are crawling along at a snail's pace, but hey! I have walls now!!! (The wrong paint colour, but I have walls!) Tomorrow will mark a month since we had to get out and it looks like it will still be another couple of weeks. *sigh* You have no idea how much I long to be home and get things back to normal. The only way to get through this is one day at a time.

Anyway, I am so glad I went to Artwerx. It was the best time!

And On It Goes...

Still in the hotel and waaaaaaaiiiiiiting for our bathroom to be fixed. *sigh* It's taking forever!!

On a positive note though, only 2 sleeps till Artwerx!!! WOOOT!! I am so excited and can't wait to learn something new and spend time with good friends. I will take lots of pictures and once I get back I will try and get computer access so I can post them. In the meantime, have a good weekend everyone! I am off to play! ;)

Update from Exile

Hi Folks I am still in the hotel. So far, after 16 days, the restoration guys have completed a mere 2 days of work on my bathroom. As it stands now, the ceiling has been torn out, the lion's share of the drywall on the walls and all the lino-it's down to concrete. Hopefully the drywallers will get started today. I will be popping up to the house later today to see what, if anything has been done. Looks like we will probably be here for another 2 weeks or so. All I can say is if you rent and don't have insurance get it!! The coverage for the hotel bill alone makes it worth it. Also if the pipe had burst, rather than leaked, we would certainly be facing having to replace almost everything. That would mean big $$!!

In the meantime, I am working on preparing for Artwerx. (No mean feat when you can't be at home!) Only 7 more sleeps! I am so excited!! Looking forward to meeting new people, hanging out with old friends and just generally refilling the creative well. Let me just say that after all this hoo-hah in the last few weeks, my spirits need lifting in a major way.

If anyone has been emailing me, please be patient. I have had trouble accessing my mail from the hotel-the public computer has had viruses several times, which keeps the browsers from working. It's a drag. I miss my dear little computer and this whole experince has made me think about the merits of a laptop, let me tell you!! I hate being so cut off.

Okay, enough bitching and moaning!! For those of you Artwerx bound, see you there!! :)

OOOO! Just as I am standing here wrapping this up, a friend called to tell me the parcel from Celine has arrived-a chunky book! I am off to collect it! More later!!