Plein Air Painting

We seemed to have skipped our Winter here in Florida. Day after day it's sunny and mild. What's an adventurous artist to do? Go outside with your paints and do a little plein air painting. Plein air is simply a French term that means art outdoors. We're lucky enough to have preserves tucked in every area in Palm Beach County. In September last year, the City of Wellington opened up the Wellington Environmental Preserve at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Everglades Habitat. Now, that's a mouthful. Consequently, everyone just calls it Section 24, which is what it was called for decades when it was an undeveloped piece of land on the west side of Wellington.

Four of us brought our chairs, easels or tables, paints, brushes, and canvases, and set out to paint what we saw. We are trained painters, not-so-trained painters, acrylic painters, and a watercolorist.

As you can see, we all came up with different paintings, yet we were all looking at the same view. I'm glad we didn't have the same results!

Tony created this with acrylics.


I also used acrylics, and infused some brighter colors to exaggerate what I was seeing.

Bobbin used watercolors.

Linda painted with acrylics, mostly using her palette knife.

If you'd like to visit Section 24 for your own plain air painting, photography, birdwatching or hiking, you can find it by traveling west on Southern Blvd. After the Binks Forest traffic light, continue west to your first left. Take that left, which is Flying Cow Road. Travel 3 1/2 miles south to the northern entrance of the preserve. There is also a southern entrance, but there are no restroom facilities there. It is a .8 mile walk over two boardwalks to the trellis area where we pitched our chairs and easels. For a 1 mile walk, you can visit and climb the observation tower. Since this area was reclaimed, it needs time for the planted trees to grow. It is already populated by quite a few species of birds.

Inspired by: Jill Berry

I recently purchased Jill Berry's book called Personal Geographies. Jill creates art that is like a map of her experiences. She uses different style maps, creating them completely from scratch or altering photos using Photoshop. Each map tells a story about some part of her life.

I became interested in her art when I stumbled on her blog. She's generous with her experience, often posting directions to artwork she has created. She posted a little tutorial about making a cover for a book, and inserting two signatures of pages for the book. She did a simple painting on the cover of beach dunes and the sky. Well, being quite the beach girl myself, this caught my eye, and I knew I had to make my very own beach book.

Here is the painted cover and some closeups.




You take the mid-point of the cover and fold that in half. Then re-open it. Take the mid-point of each half and fold those in half. They create the front and back covers, and they are now two-sided covers, instead of the inside being white.


I folded paper to make two 5-sheet signatures. Five sheets folded in half make 20 pages, so this is a 40-page book.


The signatures are stitched in. I used embroidery floss, but I think next time I'll use waxed thread. I had trouble with the threads coming apart and stitching through the middle of one. I also didn't quite understand how to put two signatures in, so I struggled, and made up my own technique.


While I was at it, I painted another cover, that is ready to become a book.



I realize this wasn't really a Jill Berry map project, but that will be my next adventure. If you'd like to read Jill's blog that is devoted to maps, you can see it here.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I think we've all been experiencing a mild Winter, up until about this week when finally some areas received snow. We get our share of cold days, but this year we've had about ... 2. That's it. Two days. One of them was exactly a week ago, but then each day we warm up, warmer and warmer, until another cold front comes in. Yesterday we broke records -- it hit 87 degrees. Today we got a cold front and it was 63 in the morning. That's about what it's like for us in Florida.

Did you know that we grow our backyard vegetable gardens the opposite time than the rest of the country? Being a Florida native, I hadn't really put that together. We can't grow a lot in the summer, unless you really work it, because it's too hot and buggy. We have to grow our vegetables from October through May.

Since we finished our pool in the backyard, we needed to plant new sod to cover the dirt yard from having 6 months of trucks driving back there. We planned a vegetable garden in the dirt, surrounded it with wood, and planted the sod around that. We put the seeds in a little before Christmas. We actually could have done it sooner, but that's how it worked for us.

This is our garden after about a month:


And this is it today:


So far, we've eaten and given away a ton of bibb lettuce, spinach, and mesclun mix. Recently we've gotten a few red and green peppers, and soon we'll have tomatoes. We've also planted corn, sunflowers, green beans, and snap peas.

We're loving making salads every day. I picked up a cookbook from the library that has some great, simple, salad dressings, and I've tried a few of them. It's called "Young and Hungry" by Dave Lieberman. He's a young bachelor who's all about making simple meals using fresh ingredients. The perfect book for someone with a garden in the backyard or a farmer's market down the street.

Here's a lunch I made one day using one of his dressings:


I don't remember all the cheeses that I used, but I have cucumber with cheese and fig jam, some Spanish Manchego cheese (love that! especially when it's aged and crumbly), roast chicken, sliced capiccolo and prosciutto, and fresh mozzarella drizzled with olive oil and fresh rosemary.

Are you enjoying your weather? Maybe you'll get to start your garden a little early this year.

Adding to My Collection

Are you an artist? Are you also an art collector? I am both, and I love collecting the art of others. Living in Florida, we are at the start of the outdoor art show season. For the next three months, we have a few choices each weekend of wonderful art shows to attend. I've been to many, but there was always one on my list that remained elusive, until now. Last weekend I went to the biggest of them all, the Las Olas Art Fair. This show goes straight down the closed-down Las Olas Blvd. in Ft. Lauderdale, with 300 artists. I've seen a few of the artists before, and bought some of their pieces. There were a lot of new ones too. Here are some trends I saw:

-- Not a lot of traditional oil painting, but the ones there were amazing.
-- Most of the pottery was Raku.
-- The jewelry at this show was top-notch. Jewelry booths didn't take over, though, like at a recent show where 56 of the 250 booths were jewelry.
-- Resin-coated paintings are really in. I saw about 10 artists who did that. I'm not sure I like it though. It gives such a shine to the piece, and I really like texture and being able to feel the texture of the painting. I guess growing up in Cocoa Beach, they just remind me of surfboards.
-- Mixed media paintings are developing a stronghold in major art shows, which is nice to see. I like the combination of paper with paint, and the addition of pencil and other media to the paint.
-- Blown glass is becoming more popular. I saw some amazing artists who are stretching the boundaries, including geometrics in blown glass by layering colored glass upon colored glass.

And finally, here is the piece that I got. It's hanging in the main room of my house so everyone can see it.


It is a long, pottery tube that could be used as a hanging vase. The artist's name is Tanya Tyree, and she is from Afton, Virginia. She explains that this piece is hand built, without the use of molds or templates. She adds original abstract drawings, it is glazed, and then raku fired. What I like most about this is all the different motifs -- house, sun, bird, trees -- and you see something new each time you look. The colors are great with my buttery-yellow wall and light blue and brown furniture.



You can see more of Tanya's art here.

What a Christmas Season

Want to hear something weird? When I was growing up, we didn't put up our tree until Christmas Eve. Of course, I didn't think that was weird. I loved it. In fact, when we were real young, Santa Claus put up the tree. Can you imagine the amazement when you woke up Christmas morning, and a tree was there, with all the presents? I loved that tradition. I think it came from my Dad's German mom. Anyway, I still am a little off with the rest of the world in having a tree up. I like to put it up around the 18th, and leave it up to around the 3rd. This year was different. We hosted my husband's family for Christmas on the 4th, so we needed to get the tree up early. His cousin came from England for Thanksgiving, and stayed a bit extra, so we wanted to get the Christmas celebration in before she left. So, for the first time ever, we put our tree up early. On December 1st. (We refused to do it in November.) Here we are putting the star at the top of the tree.


A week or so later, we visited Santa at the mall. My son was there, taking the picture. I didn't make him sit on Santa's lap this year. I think maybe I did last year. I should probably have made a rule that once he reached six feet tall, he wouldn't have to do the Santa thing.


Christmas in our house is actually a 3-day affair. Christmas Eve is exciting because of the preparations, Christmas Day is great, and then the 26th is great too because it's my son's birthday. For the past two years, we spent Christmas up north, giving the kids a wonderful snow vacation. This year, the kids really wanted to spend it all at home, and my husband had all those three days off, so it was great. We started by hosting 14 people for Christmas Eve dinner. It was 80 degrees during the day, so we were able to eat outside. What a fun night. Everyone brought a dish, so I didn't have to work too hard.


Here's what we woke up to Christmas morning.


And here it is about three seconds later. Well, maybe a little longer. My kids actually sleep in on Christmas. I know, all you parents whose kids wake up at 5 hate me right now. I woke up at 7, just because I couldn't sleep in if I tried. I had breakfast and read the paper, and at 8:00 my daughter finally woke up. We held her back until 8:30 when we let her wake up her brother.


We had Christmas dinner on the patio too. I was ambitious and made a ricotta/cranberry/pecan-stuffed turkey breast that was amazing, and a prosciutto/fontina/basil-stuffed flank steak on the grill. We ate so much, no one was interested in dessert. Now that's a feat!


The next day we celebrated Michael's 17th birthday. We took him down to a Brazilian restaurant where we could eat to our carnivore's delight.


We capped off the holiday season with a trip to visit my dad and brother in Cocoa Beach. My sister was visiting with her family from Virginia. We gave the kids a treat and surprised them with a limo ride. We took it out to dinner then drove around looking at Christmas lights. Here we are before we left.


And here's the craziness in the limo.


I hope you all had a great holiday season and are looking forward to a bright and merry new year.

P.S. It's no longer 80 degrees here. We woke up to 30 degrees on January 3.

I Love to Bake

Have I told you that before? I really, really love to bake. If I'm stressed or out of sorts, baking is what brings me back. Of course, I love to eat what I make, but I love more to give it away. That's my thing. If you're recovering from being in the hospital, I'll bake you some cookies. Just had a baby? I'll bring you some muffins.

A few years back, we started a tradition of a Holiday Dessert Party. It started with everyone coming over for coffee one night before Christmas, and I would put out a big spread of desserts. It's evolved into a full party, where all the guests bring appetizers or drinks, and I still make all the desserts. I start baking the week before, and have so much fun making cookies, cakes, creme brulee, tarts. I always make my family's traditional cookies: pink spritz with peppermint; white spritz with lemon; and green spritz with peanut butter and almond. These are amazing and actually called Velvet Cookies. They really do melt in your mouth. I also make thumbprint cookies. My mom always put candied cherries in the middle, but I put chocolate chips or a dollop of raspberry jam.


For my husband's firefighter friends, I always make a Red Velvet Cake, although this year I made cupcakes. I also made vanilla cupcakes with ganache frosting. So simple, and so good. My favorite go-to recipe when I want to bring a dessert with a bit of "wow" to a party is my Caramel Macadamia Nut Bars. Those are to die for.


I've still got a few leftovers in the fridge. They're great for late at night. If you're interested in any of my recipes, let me know. I love to share.

Back to My Blog

I've been neglecting my blog, and all my readers, for awhile. Mostly it was because our computer was dropped, I had to get a new hard drive, and I lost all my photos that were located there. I just don't think a blog post is fun if it doesn't have a photo attached. I also took a much-needed vacation from the computer during Christmas. I didn't even check my email from December 20 through January 2! Since I work from my home, a lot of my work is generated by emails. I had a few hundred to go through, and now I'm updated. I took my computer to the geek-expert who easily regained my internet access. Then I spent the day re-loading all my programs, and the next day re-loading some photos. So I think I'm back in business now!

For the next few blog posts, I'll tell you about our holiday season. But for now, I'll show you a little culture. Have you seen any Shakespeare lately?


My son recently played Mercutio in Suncoast High School's production of Romeo & Juliet. Michael was the comic relief in an otherwise tragic play. He gets drunk at the ball, flails drunkenly with his sword, and then ultimately dies in a sword fight with Thibault. We thought the casting was a bit funny, not because Michael can't handle a comic role -- that's actually what he's best at -- but because at 6'3", it seemed odd that Michael was felled by a 5'6" Thibault.


Michael performed 7 times over 3 weeks, and I saw 4 of them. I can't wait to see what he does next!