**~Happy Friday everyone!~**

I did upload some new art journal entries here within the past couple days if anyone wants to see.

And thats pretty much my only news. Other than that nothing going on. ***~Enjoy the weekend!~***

Current Mood: lazy

I got a really pretty postcard from veiltail in the mail yesterday. Thanks Kim!! Its even got a bunch of little stickers on it--love the one you put next to my address of the parrot:-) And the fishie one is kewl. Kim I still need your address to send you one back. I've got the postcard, just need your address. Email me (on user page)OK?

I think Eenie Beanie is getting ready to take his first flight soon. Tons of wing flapping going on. He's starting to turn away from feeding after he's had about half of what he usually gets. Birds will drop a little weight just before their first flight. Its like natures way of insuring that the first flight is successful.

He still plays in his little baby birdie playground which is all those stuffed toys. He knows *all* of them. Not having brothers or sisters of his own, I think he adopted these stuffed animals. He squirms to get out of my hand now when I'm feeding him cause he isn't eating so much and so he can go check up on his buddies. He scoots his little butt into the midst of them, gets cozy and takes a nap with them.

I got some cleaning up to do today. Maybe even pop in some laundry and get that done. Also want to work finish working on a manga pet I started. I got two Inu-Yasha books from the library that I'm enjoying reading and mostly looking at how the manga was done.

From the research I've been doing on the Internet..manga seems to be a love it or hate it thing. Its a form of cartooning tho that seems here to stay as its popularity hasn't faded, just increased.

Oops, call coming in from my Mom. Be back in a bit.

I have so much catching up here to do today. John had the computer over the weekend playing at Neopets. I got on here only a few minutes at a time and tried to catch up some but I'm still way behind. Well today I fix that:-)

The baby parrotlet has a name:-) Its "Eenie Beanie." Remember how I named the first baby that didn't make it "Beany." Well I still wanted the name Beany in some fashion. When I was a kid I always liked that saying on Rocky & Bullwinkle. My brothers were the real fans of that cartoon so I had to watch it. I mostly only liked the following saying:

Bullwinkle: Eeny-meeny chili beanie, the spirits are about to speak.

Rocky: Are they friendly spirits?

Bullwinkle: Friendly? Just listen...

Well his name comes from that. I spell it a little differant. He'll probably mostly be called Eenie for short. Its got meaning to me on several levels.

1. He sleeps with a Beanie Baby who Ty named "Chili" which is in that saying too.
2. He is the eeniest thing in the pics of him with those Beanie Babies.
3. Beanie was the name of my favorite cat from many years ago who got his name from that saying and would roll around every time he heard his name "Beanie" or the saying.
4. It comes from a cartoon that contains "Rocky" which was the name of another of my cats.
5. Its a cartoon...Peanut, this baby's Grandpa parrotlet had a cartoon name too.
6. And to top it all off, I keep thinking he's a reincarnation of other pets I've had before... so yes, the spirits are about to speak :-) Besides he likes it!! Whenever I say the whole saying he cheeps and otherwise he doesn't cheep much at all. But he does when I tell him the saying everytime :-)

What else?

I updated my art journal here with a drawing of our BBQ grills and why we don't use the gas grill anymore--its a wildlife sanctuary.

I took these earlier and didn't get a chance to come on and post them. The baby parrotlet is definately a boy. His feathers are opening and there is some blue on his wings (theres more blue under the top layer of green on his wings that you can't see) and on his rump which means he's a boy. He's got about half his feathers open. Still has a lot of pinfeathers, especially on his head --thats all those white feather shafts you see--which will open up this week.



He's growing up really fast! He is doing more wing flapping, walking more but still a little wobbly, can scratch his head with his little footie, likes to nibble on things and my fingers --so light I can't feel it tho, and is preening himself.

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I don't know if its my ISP or LJ but everything is going soooooo slow. Pages are taking forever to load :-(

I updated my art journal here.

About an hour ago, I started getting a really bad headache and other stuff. My right ear is bothering me..the ear canal swells up when its allergies or sinus stuff with me. Weirdest thing is, its only the right one that does it. And my eyes are itchy and very tired too. Must be allergies.

I keep thinking today is Friday.

Just woke up. Groggy. Birdies are all awake and cheeping tho. In about 10 minutes I have to handfeed the little baby. He's growing sooo fast now! My weekly pic of him, which I take tomorrow, you won't believe how much bigger he is. He's getting ready for weaning foods --little starter foods. He plays with Rice Chex already..can't munch down hard enough to actually eat any but he picks them up, drops them and nibbles veeeeery lightly on them. And broccoli...same thing. Teensy tiny light nibbles..can see his tongue when he does it :-) Mostly he just plays with food at this point. I have to pick up another can of baby bird formula at PetsMart today. For awhile he'll still need that even when he's learning to eat a little on his own.

Something is wrong with our fridge. It keeps frosting up on the inside. Not the freezer part --thats seems OK. Its inside under the freezer where the milk and eggs, lunchmeat and everything else is. John defrosted it and it frosts right back up inside within a few days. He's trying to see if its anything he can take care of, otherwise gotta call the landlord out. I hope its something he can fix.

I started my pomanders yesterday...ran out of cloves and went to the Home Economist for more...that is this nice bulk spices store. Everything there is in clear plastic bins, you scoop out how much you want into baggies and fill your own jars at home. Its super fresh and a mere fraction of the prices of grocery store spices. I got enough whole cloves to fill three of my small spice jars for like 50 cents total. Whenever I run out of spices, I go there. Was in kinda a hurry yesterday but got the whole cloves, a pesto mix, and some candy for John's candy dish at work. They have candy, coffees, teas, flours, baking stuff, snack mixes, nuts, all kinds of stuff in addition to spices there.

I made a stir fry last night for dinner. I make it, take out my portion before I season it up at the end for John. Trying to make sure I don't get too much iodine so have to stay away from soy sauce and most Chinese sauces. I used boneless chicken, baby corn cobs, water chestnuts, yellow pepper (hope the yellow pepper is OK cause green ones have iodine), green onions, gingerroot, pea pods and just sprinkled mine with a few drops of Kikkoman Lite soy sauce--very sparingly. Then added soy sauce and oyster sauce to John's half. Put it all over the top of these noodles that are like angel hair pasta. Hopefully it was a low iodine dinner (cause of Graves disease). I miss so many foods esp. Chinese! But mine tasted good still tho altho I really wished I coulda had his:-)

What else? Not too much. Well better go feed the baby and come back :-)

A couple years ago, I had opened a Cafepress store so I could make some Spiral Goddess t-shirts for myself from one of my paintings. I *thought* I had closed the store and out of curiousity double checked this morning. I guess I never did delete the store afterall because the account is still there just no activity on it. I hadn't been promoting it or anything and so I was not making any sales from it.

Well thats not actually a bad thing...I'm glad the store is still there. They have a lot of new products since I last looked 2 years ago. Fun stuff, not just clothing. I'm gonna keep it and add new items to it. If anyone is curious and would like to see it, click here. Its only got 2 designs in it that I'm keeping there and those 2 designs are on various products (follow the links). I took out some old designs this morning so I can put up fresh new stuff in the next few weeks:-)

This afternoon I'm gonna make some pomanders out of lemons and cloves. I made some of these years ago with oranges. Its a nice fall craft and I'm in the mood cause our weather has been cooling off. I'm sooo glad we don't have the bad humidity anymore.

Baby birdie news..its a boy! He's definately got blue feathers opening up (the girls are all green). Now I gotta start thinking of a name for him. Something cute and ends in "y" or "ie" cause they learn those names good...like Pippy, Jilly, Nutty, Sweetie, like that :-)

I just posted a new entry in my art journal here for anyone who would like to see it.

find the baby birdie..

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Just got a few minutes here cause I'm gonna go back out and hit garage sales for an hour this morning. Yesterday I waited till later to try going...baaad idea. I got pretty sick in the car because the sun was too hot by then (my car has no a/c..its been broke for years). Its 8AM right now, fed the baby birdie, others aren't all woken up yet so don't have to feed them for a bit. I'm gonna go out early this time :-)

You know why I want to go? I have to buy action figures :-) That cartooning book I got suggests getting action figures to help with putting in your shading on your characters. You shine the light source whichever direction you want on the action figures and you can do your lights and darks in your drawings --thought that was an excellant tip. Theres so many garage sales around here with nothing but toys that that shouldn't be hard to find at all!

About cartooning...I actually taught kids cartooning classes (those were for grades 5-8) years ago at a local park district here after school and in the summers. I taught a lot of art & craft classes there for like 2 years or so cause I was their only art teacher and this was a brand new art program they were launching. They gave me a nice big room that was all mine and free reign to come up with the classes. Well the kids kept asking for a cartooning class. I didn't really know anything about cartooning at the time. Parents started asking at registration when there would be a cartooning class for the kids cause the kiddos kept asking their parents. My "supervisor" kept asking me to do it...I had to learn very fast what I could about cartooning, and basically just stay a couple steps ahead of the kids. Fortunately, I found some nice books geared towards teaching children how to cartoon and used those as a basis for my class. It turned out to be the most popular class offered there and I repeated it. It was generally frowned on to repeat a class --they wanted new and differant classes each time. You could teach the same subject but you had to have new projects all the time. Except for cartooning...it was so popular the way it was I got to just repeat that one with minor variations. I always had new kids coming. I also taught papier mache, jewelry, beginning drawing (used childrens materials for that one too), experimental painting, sculpture and so on. Taught various levels of classes to K-8th but cartooning was for the older kids. I really enjoyed teaching the kids and they loved the classes. So this new manga/anime (whichever!) is fun for me to try right now. I like it better than "regular" if you can call it that, cartooning.

Well gotta run for now. Hoping to hit those garage sales when they open :-)