last week a show at the utah county art museum started, a show for all of the students of the studio that i painted with from january to may. i entered three pieces for the fun of it: flair, dakota girl, and embraced by tradition. on the first friday of every month provo has a gallery stroll, where all of the downtown galleries stay open late and people walk for gallery to gallery. the utah county art museum typically has an artist's meet and greet for all of it's participants and families. so it was with the intent of meeting and greeting with other painters that we set out for the evening.

after an hour and fifteen minutes on the freeway i was beyond frustrated. a trip that normally takes 40 minutes had stretched and grown and now we were late and my nerves were fried. i sat down with some refreshments and let my kids play in a spinning door, much to the chagrin of every old lady in the place, buy hey, they were all in one place having a great time. after recharging i went to leave, maybe hitting a few other galleries, when the studio owner approached me and let me know i had won first place.

first!

at this point all of the little things that had been bothering me just melted away. i had never won anything before! but my little gal had taken first place. all of that fretting, all of the hours, had been counted. the competition was judged by two unbiased BYU professors; felt nice to have people who don't even know ME appreciate my work.

i feel overwhelmed with gratitude: my teacher who spent hour upon hour helping me to bring her to life, my husband who has sacrificed much of his creative time so that i could spread my wings and fly, my mom who watched my kids every tuesday so that i could paint, and the sweet hearts in my life who have supported me when i didn't feel like i could take the pressure of completing it.

we went back down the long hall to take a picture all together. i approached this little old hippie man and asked him to take our picture with my painting. he seemed all too eager and loved my painting as well. after studying it for a few moments he asked, "so were you, like, a chinese girl in a previous life?" hrmmmm, not that i can recall...

the show will run through the rest of august, so if you get a chance, go visit her. and while i was originally a little upset about the placement of my paintings, it now seems apropo that they're at the end of a long hallway, close to a new doorway.

i'm feeling especially bloggie today. plus reading and catching up on a winter's worth of unread blogs. i'm sorry for being so absent! facebook sucked my internet and real life out of me i think! in my blog hopping i came to an old friend who was offering a new and great kind of giveaway. here are the rules:

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make for you!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a song. It may be a self portrait or maybe even some creation I haven't yet dreamed up. I may draw. I may bake you something and mail it to you. It may not be big or impressive. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure! (Nor I at this point...)
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? The catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to post this same information on their blog and leave a comment telling me they did will win a fun homemade gift by me! Let's keep the chain of love going around!!!

let's call in having a "pay it forward" moment. just something beautiful from my heart to yours.

speaking of pay it forward moments, my dear mccabe is offering the most inspirational tool ever come up with. art camps for little girls, and you can be a part of it! using her workshop i'll be offering my own mermaid warrior art camp for little gals this summer. watch here to see my girls and a bunch of others. catch the spirit and come to play!

this morning we had our big contest drawing... there was a lot of drama among the judges, tension was high.

first i wrote out all of the contestants and then the monster names. i was helped by this scoundrel:
After cutting them out we drew first for the names of our monster friends. F picked out the name, "Mr. Shimmy Sneeze" by georgia dear for our blue fuzzy friend. F was a little grumpy as you can see.Secondly we drew to name our little monster. E pulled out kathleen's submission of Groony:
then it was time for the big giveaway! we gathered all of the pieces of paper and put them into our blue bowl of truth. we could a hardly contain our glee. G closed her eyes and . . .pulled out kathleen's name again!

some people have all the luck!

thank you all for participating, i wish i could make one for EACH of you. Groony will be in the mail very soon! have a great weekend!

i've been making monsters all weekend. i think it's high time for a little one little monster contest. if you would like to win this little monster just leave a comment before thursday, october 9th, at midnight. you'll get an extra entry if you leave a good monster name for him, and you'll get a third entry if you link to my contest on your own blog. ;-Di made these loosely following the instructions from this site. all they entail is making two crochet (or knit!) panels about the size of pot holders. use two contrasting colors of the fun fur, or eyelash, for fuzzy monsterness. i stiched black felt circles onto one panel and then glued on googly eyes. i hand stitched the panels together, although i think in the future i might get over my fear of sewing machines, and then stuffed them with batting pills. (there a ton more really cute halloween patterns here)
come now, they need a good home. happy haunting!

after my fiasco of a contest, i now give you your winner:

Patty of Whee all the Way Home

she is the official winner of a 4-pack of homemade autumnal cards, some of which are featured below. i should mention that she won by the same tie-breaker rules found in olympic gymnastics. i could bore you with the details... or i could just pick a winner from the four of you lovely ladies. just know that the judges love each of you equally-ish.