Cat Crazy

I've been teasing myself lately looking at pictures of kitties at the local shelters. I keep telling myself to wait, but there's a cat void in my life right now.... The thing is that I feel like I'm looking for my next top model because you know there will be pictures taken and paintings made. I also was thinking that if I had to get a new cell phone for whatever reason that I'd have to get a new kitty to put his picture up on the welcome screen. Although, I'm wondering if they can take the old photos from my phone and stick it on the new one.... but then again, my phone's fine right now (knock on wood) and still has D's picture right on the screen. I'll get one soon enough....

I received an email from a woman who recently won one of my gift certificates in a fundraising auction and she's bumping up the order from a 5x7 to a 16x20 so there's some extra dough there! She sent the pics via email over the weekend and this is one senior beagle! I'm thinking that I'll take some pictures of the progress as it goes.

Winter blah

Not much has changed in a week. I never did hear back from that Witch Hollow Farm inquiry. But sometimes it takes a while. I did get an inquiry from a person who had won one of my gift certificates and wanted to know if she could get a bigger size if she paid the difference. And of course she can! So we'll see where that goes. Hopefully she's going to get a 16x20! LOL.

It's been 2 weeks and 3 days since I said good bye to D. I have such a cat void right now it's not even funny. But I want to get a back screen door before I get another kitty because I don't want any Hudini episodes. Jason doesn't want to pay installation on the storm door that I want so I'm going to wait til they have a sale of free installation at Home Depot. At least that's what the guy at Home Depot told me to do!

I haven't really sat down at my painting since Christmas either. You'd think I'd get on that by now. I did manage to clean up a lot of stuff off my desk to get that under way.

January lull

It's this time of year where business does slllooooww down. However, I'm still just as busy. I still haven't go together my year end totals or even flipped the pages in my day planner to 2009. I don't know what I'm waiting for!LOL
I was contacted by some one who lives at Witch Hollow Farm in Boxford about my paintings of Witch Hollow Farm. Apparently the daughter of the people who live there found my work on Flickr and now the father of the family wants to talk to me about coming out and do more paintings of their farm house. Excellent!!
And my friends father who lives out in Delaware (I've never met him personally) but says that he has one of my prints of the Scituate light house and has received cards with the same image on it from my friend. So now he's looking to get cards himself. I just have to find them. I gave the original painting to Lennox & Carla when they were married back in 03(?). I may have the image on disc some where so I have to look for that and get him those cards. We shall see.

D is gone. Now, it's 2009

I had to put my cat to sleep this past weekend. It was horrible. I know it was necessary and I know he's sleeping on God's pillow, getting his bed all gritty kitty. But it doesn't make it easier. The house seems so wierd without him there. I'm going to wait a while til I get another kitty. I need to get ready for the new.

and it's a new year. Wonder what wonders it'll bring. I was contacted by someone who lives at Witch Hollow Farm in Boxford about getting more paintings done of their farm. That's exciting! This week, the things I need to do are to close out 2008 and get ready for 2009. Should be interesting.

Deiter

My 16 year old kitty is really sick. I took him to the vet this morning and his poor tummy is filled with fluid and we don't know where it's coming from. So I think this could be the end of big D. I'm very sad. I'm just going to post some more pictures of him. I'm going to miss him so much.

Christmas

I just received an email from one of my holiday customers who was inquiring about her portrait. I shipped out Thursday via US Mail and she's only in Abington MA so it should have taken a day - 2 at most. It's now Monday and she still hasn't received it . I go to the USPS website and they're telling me that they can't track it with the information that they have. I swear this is the last year that I'm using the post office. Next year, it's fedex or something else. I can't have this "not knowing where it is" over my head anymore. It causes more stress than deadlines. Not to mention all the presents that I ordered online and are coming via the post office and they're not here yet!! Or the gift I ordered for my father's birthday (Nov 13) and I haven't seen that yet. Granted it had the wrong zip code on it, but you'd think that the folks at the Cambridge post office would know where Mass Ave is and just send it along. Lord knows where that freakin' thing is. I remember working at a catalog company and we ran into lots of problems with UPS so I'm wondering is there any delivery service that works????

On that note, I'm still scrambling for Christmas .. although my party was last week and work party is this Tuesday and should be a lot of fun. I still have to finish some paintings and make desserts to bring to Christmas dinner.

I wish everyone reading this a happy Christmas and Merry new year!!!! Ho Ho Ho

Christmas Stress

Well, the 14th was the cut off day for orders and I'm all caught up on the commissions so I think that part of my holiday stress is over. Not bad season for a recession stressed economy. Lots of people opted for the smaller sizes out the sizes that I offer (Last year I had done 2 big ones). And lots of people took me up on my coupon offer. Which was fine, because with 20% off a small size you're pretty much only saving $10 or so. But as I do these portraits and a lot are of pets that had passed away over the year, all I can think about is how much these paintings mean to these people and that on Christmas morning that my art work will effect those people in such a meaningful way. THat's what it's all about!!

Now it's time to start stressing about the WedNight Christmas party and then after that I should be cool as a cucumber, right? I am doing a lot of made gifts for Christmas so I'll have those few days after Wednesday to take care of those.

I spoke to a friend of mine on Saturday night and that was a real buzz kill. He was scolding me for not making more money in this "art business" and that it "breaks his heart" so see that I'm actually loosing money on a yearly basis. I had to remind him that I'm also having a great time doing it and that it's not all money and we all have to start somewhere and all that. He wouldn't really listen to me and instead said that I should join forces with him and work for him selling plumbing parts. I may not be making money hand over fist, but I'm sure not going to be spending my time with plumbing parts. Needless to say, I ended the phone call fairly quickly.