Free Bunny pin cushion pattern and tutorial

Hop on over to my sewing page to find the bunny...and don't forget to have a look around and leave a comment!

Thanks everyone!

Joann

Studio Tour

some pictures of my studio over  on my studio page

Pages Update

Crackle top Ginger snaps recipe on my Gluten free page
Some older works in my Portfolio
Classes update
Something new on my sewing page

New Work

Thicket - American Tree Sparrow

currently exhibiting at Paint Ontario

Lambton Heritage Museum, Grand Bend Ontario

Titmouse - Plum Blossoms

acrylic on panel

Currently exhibiting at "Paint Ontario"

Lambton Heritage Museum, Grand Bend Ontario

if you are interested in either of these paintings please visit Paint Ontario from

March 9th to March 31st 2013

or email me for information

another kick at the can.....

Hi All!

I'm going to give this another try....  I tried to limit this blog to my artwork and photography which are my greatest passion but I have many other creative interests that over my life time have shared space with my career as an artist and art teacher - my hobbies I guess you could call them. I've sewn clothing and home decor my whole life,

roman blinds in our family room

made quilts for our beds, knitted sweaters for myself and my family, embroidered my jeans and blouses as a teenager in the 70's,

yes, I still have one of those shirts!

crocheted scarfs and doilies, tried needle punch and needle felting, created boxes full of decorations for Christmas,  Easter and Halloween,  made all sorts of funky garden decor items to accent my perennial gardens, candles, weaving's....you name it, I must have tried it! Some I loved, some went into the "won't try that again" bin.  Currently I enjoy my sewing and quilting, I am having fun with felting old wool sweaters and the cute stuff I can make from them and I also try and squeeze in some time for sculpting seasonal characters in papier mache.

Man in the Moon

I have added a tutorials page where I will occasionally be sharing some of my how-to's with you. First up will be a pin cushion perfect for Easter!

  I have also added a page for gluten free recipes. I have suffered my whole life with "irritable bowel" that turned out to be not just a gluten allergy but full blown undiagnosed celiac disease. I love to bake, always have and I even won a few ribbons for my baking ...and so, to come to the realization that I have to re-think what I have eaten my whole life was quite a life altering moment for me!

 So I cheated...and I cheated...just a little bite won't hurt will it?  Well it did, and it does...so having had a good look at what I could eat from the dry and tasteless pickings in the "gluten free" section I set about to reinvent all of my treasured baking recipes as gluten free versions and you know what...if you start with a good recipe converting it to gluten free wasn't that hard and the results are nothing short of AMAZING!  Cookies, cakes, puddings, pies, sticky gooey cinnamon buns - Gluten - who needs it!

GF Bread...well, that was another story!  I can't tell you how many "bricks" went into the compost or out to the bird squirrel feeder until I finally had it right.  My recipe smells like wheat bread, looks like a whole grain wheat bread and most importantly tastes like wheat bread. 

Ben and Bailey

BEN

I don't have time right now to post the WIP to go along with Ben and Bailey so I am just going to go ahead and post their finished portraits for now...and I will post the WIP pics that I did manage to take on the WIP page....(((sigh))) after Christmas!
... (when will we learn to not do renovations in December!)

Bailey

...aren't they just gorgeous animals, and very much loved by their happy owners

Ref photos and WIP's to come!

Please leave a comment if you enjoyed Ben and Bailey!

It's been a while...

OK, I suck at blogging! I knew I would which is why I hesitated for so long to start one.  Even though I look at lots of other peoples blogs - art blogs, quilting blogs, gluten free blogs etc and read with interest what other people are "up to" I just can't wrap my head around the idea that there are people out there who want to know what lil' ole "me" is doing day by day.  Do you care?  If you do please leave me a comment...that is if anyone out there is still interested enough to be following! LOL

I really didn't mean to be gone for so long...I was away for a while, well a couple of weeks actually, after hubby and I caught a miserable flu "bug" that laid us flat for way too long. The start of it was quite interesting from a purely scientific point of view...within hours of each other we both realized we were SICK! 
...and there was only one time and one place that both of us were together and could have been infected simultaneously...but I won't mention which major fast food chain is probably responsible other than to say we won't go there again!

So we slowly got over that, we lost over a full week to doing nothing...but being sick...and then because we had lost so much time and were still functioning on only a couple of cylinders we had so many fall chores and "getting ready for winter" chores that had to be done that I just didn't have time or energy for quite a while.

Late fall is of course harvest time, and thank goodness we had such an extended fall!

Some of the bounty from my garden this year...I canned about 2 bushels of tomatoes in total, some into Roasted Tomato pasta sauce and the rest into jars ready to be added to soups, stews etc. Those 2 little pie pumpkins were from a couple of volunteer plants that seeded themselves into the garden...they went into our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, that we ate al fresco out on our back deck because the day was so warm.

And then we had to get through Halloween, I added a couple of new guys to my Halloween decor this year, these 2 make me smile every time I look at them and even though we are into the Christmas decorating I still haven't put them away! LOL

I was going through my bird photo uploads, there weren't really a lot of those either, I didn't feel like hiking much and not much of interest visited the yard this fall, at least that I noticed and got pictures of.  We did have a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker spend about a week with us and I was able to get some good shots of it one afternoon while it systematically drilled rows of holes in our crab apple tree

My birthday is in November, and I can only remember one other year when it was as warm as it was this year, a good 75% of the time it is snowing and miserable on my birthday but this year the weather was still warm and sunny...and I still had roses blooming in the garden!

Now how often do you have roses still blooming in the Ontario snow belt in November?

....and I guess the rest of my time in November was taken up with Christmas commissions, and again I was so far behind that I didn't even stop to take pictures of them until the last 2 that I just completed, and even then I only managed to get a few step by step shots of them.  When you're in the flow and working it is hard to remember to stop and take pictures.  Even though all have been delivered to their owners I will upload the photos I did take in a couple of posts yet to come....

See you soon!

Please leave a comment!