Archives: Organization

Do Over

5
Home, Life, Organization

mama y bebe

mama y bebe

Happy New Year!  Since January was a wash for me, I am declaring a new New Year, right now.

I have fantastic news to share and it happened toward the end of last year.  My watercolor birdies are being used in the packing for a mother and baby products line in Chile.  :)  I think the end result looks beautiful, Carmen at Leon Del Monte did a wonderful job!

One thing I did manage to get done in January was to re-open my shop on Etsy, three new prints have been listed (Sweater Whales, Cool Cats and Slouchy Bird).

Since most of the house is organized and under control (ha ha), I ‘ve been focusing on getting things organized digitally:

Feedly – working well for checking up on favorite illustration sites, beauty gurus, you name it.

Inbox Zero – the number of emails in my inbox is embarassing and crazypants so I am becoming a little ninja and anhilating them one by one. 

 sunset

Here’s a sunset shot from December I wanted to share.

kale

kale chips

Thanks to Michelle Kondrich and her kale chips recipe, I was able to try them out.  Not bad for my first go but it still tasted very kale-y.  I’ll try again though, Raul liked them too.

Kale Chips

Take one bunch of kale, tear all the leaves away from the stems.  Try to keep them on the small-ish side.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Drizzle with olive oil (go by instinct the more you make it), toss, then add salt and toss. Bake for 5-6 minutes, take it out and shake it around or use a spatula to flip it over and stir it around.  Bake another 5 minutes.  When you do it the first few times, keep a fairly close eye on it.  The best is when it’s mostly crispy but still greenish.

 

juice

green lemonade

I made some of my Green Lemonade to go with the chips, delicious!

Green Lemonade

3 fuji or pink lady apples
5-6 stalks of kale
1/2 lemon
1 head of romaine
bit of fresh ginger (to taste)

I cut out the apple cores and get rid of the seeds in the lemon. Toss all ingredients in a juicer and you’re good to go. 

bird visitors

We have no trees in our backyard and the deck has stairs so all the nature action is on ground level.  Found a beautiful bird feeder and this little couple has claimed it as their own already.

This post was random and all over the place but this is how January left me. Feel like I’m playing catch up.  Blowing the dust off of my goals and going at them full force again.

Workspaces

2
Home, Organization

So it’s official, we have a crawling baby!  Yayyy!  A long-time goal of mine was to get organized and knowing our baby was going to be crawling at any moment was a big incentive.

All done with the office so I thought I would share.  I LOVE seeing workspaces. Seeing the set ups that work for others helped me plan out my space.  Plain logistics played a part too and I found the perfect piece of furniture for my big printer to sit on at an antique store.  I could only fit so much on the desk and I wanted an open feel since my old desk was the kind with drawers and a hutch attached.

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This is the watercolor station.  I use my light table here too when I’m tracing my scanned images.

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Lightly packed bookcase for some reference materials.

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I have my cutting board and painting storage over here.  The top ALEX drawers are from IKEA (so happy we have one here now, I could scream) and they hold my paintings, rulers, stamps, ink pads, etc.  The lateral file is for all of our household files.

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A closer look at my messy watercolor station.  The flower painting was found at an antique store, I have a small addiction to antiquing/treasure hunting.

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A different view, baby needs a play area so this is one of  hers, in all it’s glory.

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Thankfully I have storage cabinets so I could get the open desk I wanted.  From left to right: mega Epson printer for prints, small Canon printer for scans, iMac, flat scanner is down below and Wacom tablet is on the brown boxes.

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My watercolor palette, spray bottle, paper towels are essential. There is a work in progress painting too.

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Everything up top I don’t reach for as much, I have been using the same 5-6 brushes lately.

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The Cool Cats painting I finished and posted yesterday.

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Some vintage bottles, a broken Baby Ben antique clock, 2011 Anthropologie sheep ornament and my Anthropologie E cup for my pens and pencils.

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Lastly, the reason why I can have some free desk space, this is my filing cart from The Container Store.  It is the BEST and it was suggested by Kacy Paide of The Inspired Office.  I file everything for  my art here.

Hope you enjoyed the tour, have a great day!