the end.

Oh hollyhox.

 We had a good run, didn't we?

Sometimes I'll be searching for an old recipe or wondering how I made a certain craft, and I'll riffle through my blog archives to find it. 

It usually surprises me, because it's hard to remember what life was like, back when I had endless time and energy. I remember planning fun things I could make to post on the blog--it used to be such an important part of my life, and a huge creative outlet. And now I have a hard time remembering I even have (had) a blog!  The seasons of life are funny.

 I spend most of my free time (naps and bi-weekly babysitter time) painting in my studio. It's become so important to my happiness as a mother, to keep that part of me active and strong. 

My painting "business" has been growing and Evan has stepped in as my manager, because let's be honest....I am not good at managing things. He designed me an amazing new website, arranged for professional photos to be taken of my paintings (we'll be making some of them into prints eventually!), and he is going to handle all the stuff that gave me anxiety stomachaches (scheduling, emails, and stupid stupid phone calls). 

It's going to be awesome. 

We have small plans to take over the world :)

Six years ago I started this blog while we were living in a rural farmhouse in northern New Mexico. We had just graduated from college and Evan was working long hours.    

 I had just finished a big painting commission (spooning spoons for a frozen yogurt shop called Spoon Me.  Oh the cleverness of it all!) and bought a sewing machine and a mountain of fabric with my earnings. I made no fewer than five quilts, countless throw pillows, placemats, fancy embellished napkins, skirts, one million bags, and any other possible thing one might make from fabric and thread.  It was awesome.

   

It felt like one long summer camp. I was constantly emailing pictures of my creations to my mom and sister, anxious to share my new passion with someone! 

 And that's about the time I became aware of these weird things called blogs, and thought, yes!  I could have one of those!  And so I did. 

According to my site stats, my most popular blog post is How to Make and Awesome Shirt.  I receive dozens of hits a day from my bff pinterest. It makes me happy to think there are some awesome shirts walking around out there as a result! 

My second most-read post is my trip report of Fern's Nipple.  And I'm pretty positive that almost every person that clicks over to read the post is wanting more pictures of Fern, if ya know what I mean, haha!  Oh Fern!

And when Hostess Twinkies went out of business, I had lots of desperate souls looking up how to make homemade Twinkies.

My personal favorite posts are when we got puppy Gesso—I remember that I couldn't wait to share the news!

And my very top favorite is when I showed off the best thing I've ever made (the baby, not the quilt.  Although that is my favorite quilt!).  He's amazing.

Also, my picnic blanket + picnic pants?  That's a favorite too.  We use that blanket daily in the backyard and I am sorry to report that those pants got eaten by Gesso.

The posts I reference the most for my personal use are the ones for my fluffy blueberry pancakes,

....and these sinful sugar cookies.  I should probably print those recipes out someday, ha!

I've loved coming across random moments I had totally forgotten about.  Like this snap when Evan had a rhubarb crisp hangover.

And I'd almost forgotten about my gnomie! (Gesso ate him, remember?)

I'm excited to finally make a book of this blog.  It will be a treasure to me, full of my favorite projects and recipes, pictures of my little family, some fun trip reports, and many random pictures of my dumb dog.  So basically, all my favorite things.  I will leave the blog up as long as blogger will let me, but as of right now, I don't plan on posting any more.

So thank you, dear reader, for dropping by all these many years.  I like you.

...........................................................

Here is a link to my new website (it's amazing), and I've just joined instagram to share my paintings with the people of social media (still haven't decided how I feel about it....).  So you can find me there if you miss me.  I'm hollythepainter over there.

spring delights

oh me oh my I love April.  I have been enjoying a slower pace the past few weeks and it's been weird and delightful.  I was working like a mad woman to prepare for the art shows and I was feeling a little burned out.  I ran out of panels and made the decision to not order more for a few weeks.  I've been using my free time to catch up on house projects and read books and I've even been doing a little bit of crafting.  It's weird!  But nice!  

I made some new couch pillows!  Our new sofa came with some lovely down pillows and I promptly recovered them in cheerful fabric (it was for the best).

This is what my helper did while I made the pillows.

I am really loving two years old.  He wants to be having fun and playing all the time and will do absolutely anything for an m&m.

My family came to visit!  And my baby sister has really long hair.

Clementines!

My two puppies.

After years of thinking about it, I finally painted my little cupboard green.  I feel really good about this decision (there was much too much brown in the family room!).  Fun fact: I used the leftover paint from the family room walls phase 1.  I also re-painted the baseboards in almost every room, re-stained the bathroom vanities (it was worth all the dead brain cells.  I think.), and I'm currently in negotiations to paint the laundry room.  Pretty sure I'm driving Evan nuts with all my projects!  I updated our family blog with 9 (NINE!) posts and then I ordered our 2014 family year book (100 pages! eep! $!).  Check check check check.  Feels good to check stuff off my list!

Happy Spring to you!

the olive.

Almost three weeks ago I put a bunch of paintings at the Olive.  The next Sunday night was an artists reception.  There was all sorts of fancy cheese and grapes and a wine glass full of water for me.  Some of the cheese smelled like a damp basement.  But some of it was good! And I woke up with a cheese hangover the next morning (those happen in your stomach...ouch).  But I'm getting ahead of myself here.  

I invited almost every single person I knew to the open house and it was such a beautiful night.  It almost reminded me of a movie.  You know, girl moves to new town.  Girl is pregnant and sleepy and a little bit lonely.  Girl has baby, makes friends, remembers the importance of painting.  Girl CANNOT stop painting vegetables.  Girl puts them in restaurant and all her favorite people come together to eat stinky cheese and make her feel really special.  The end.  It wins an oscar.  Probably.

I totally cried on the way home.  Probably because I had been really stressed out, but also because it really meant a lot to me.

I went back the next week with my friend to snap some pictures and I told the people sitting at the tables to "just act natural....but also act like you are really really enjoying sitting by these paintings".

Six paintings have already found a new home (probably somewhere where they're not stored in a crowded closet!), and it makes me so glad.

So I guess that's it.  Below are a series of redundant shots taken at the Olive.  They have pretty good cake there, but their pizza is off the hook crazy amazing.

  

Parties, Puddles, and Painting

^^ Harvey is playing the harmonica here.  It was very soulful.

My baby turned two last month and my husband turned thirty two.  When did we start getting to be such old people?  They were both royally spoiled--I even made Evan this ice-cream-cake-roll and, dude, filled with mint cookie ice cream, it's pretty super duper.

We've spent a lot of time in our rain boots looking for puddles and my favorite part is that Harvey likes to walk with one of our trekking poles (collapsed so it's really small), and he looks like an old man.  There is a kitty in our neighborhood who is really friendly and she usually comes with us to look for puddles. 

My show goes up in two weeks and I'm really excited.  Tonight we are adding hanging hardware to the backs of all the paintings (it might take 80 hours, but I hope not).  I've appointed Evan to be my manager, and he made an excel chart to figure out all the prices (we charge by the square inch, how funny is that?), and I've got all the tags ready to go.  Gosh, it's been so fun.

I tried a new thing last month!  Instead of making a meal plan a week at a time, like I've been doing for 7.5 years, I tried doing a monthly meal plan.  It changed my life and I can't stop mentioning it to people!  I mean, I've never looked forward to planning our meals before, and it seemed like every week, I'd be left scratching my head, wondering what the heck we should eat.  BUT!  With this new system, you only have to do it once a month!  And because you have so many slots to fill, you start to get creative, and you try a bunch of new winner recipes.  And then, this is my favorite part, next January, I already have my meals planned!  I KNOW!  I'm going to do this all year long, trying to add lots of variety and seasonally appropriate menu items, and then for rest of my life I'll never have to plan a menu.  See?  I know.

On Saturday after a long (good long) day in the mountains, where, wait for it.......we saw THE SUNSHINE (!!!!!), we were very hungry. I was throwing together some chili, and I totally ditched the recipe and improvised and we ended up with the best pot of soup of our lives.  And I took some notes after I'd recovered from my soup-coma, and I'd like to share it here now:

Holly Rocks the Chili  (it's a working title)

olive oil

garlic salt

onion

zucchini

carrot

bell pepper

sweet potato

frozen corn

15 oz. black beans

15 oz. pinto beans

15 oz. diced tomatoes

1/2 box chicken/vegetable stock

salt, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, red pepper flakes

cilantro* (do not skip! this is the secret ingredient!)

As you can see, this is a very precise recipe, with very exact measurements.  I added some olive oil to my pot, and all the veggies, diced to uniform size.  I added the spices--we like it spicy, so I went heavy on all the hot stuff--and then dumped everything else in (oh! be sure to drain and rinse the beans).  I let if simmer for almost an hour and served with cheese, sour cream, crushed corn chips and freshly cooked tortillas.  Bonus points if you have avocado.  

*I found these frozen cilantro cubes at the grocery store and I add them to basically everything I cook and it makes everything taste at least 50 times better.  They are 1 tsp each of finely chopped cilantro in olive oil--for this recipe I added 4 cubes