Chicago

 We took a quick trip to Chicago. 

 I spent a couple days with my childhood friend Kel. 

We visited Starved Rock State Park

 We hiked into canyons and climbed many, many stairs to beautiful vistas.

We ate at Giordano's!  Yummy thick, sweet, cheesy PIZZA. 

We took the train to Andersonville.  It's history is Swedish.  In my youth my family would go here to eat authentic Swedish meals and bring home tons of baked goods from the Swedish Bakery . 

 So I had to get a variety of childhood favorites.  YUMMY!

 We spent Sunday afternoon at the Cubs game!  As you can tell from our picture it was a bit wet.  They played through the 8th inning and unfortunately they didn't win:(

We spent part of a the day at the Science Museum

On the way back to the hotel

we stopped at The Cloud sculpture.

Walked past the famous Buckingham Fountain

We took an architecture in kayaks!  The river was a lot cleaner than in my youth, but it was still stinky and I felt sticky when the water touched my skin. 

We got a great perspective of all the citys buildings. I have mixed feeling about this tour.

It was a great idea and really fun, but the

river was still too yucky to kayak in.

Love this city!

Thanks for stopping by...............



Doodles and Painting

I have been staring at these gesso covered canvases for about a week now.  Stephanie from Homegrown Hospitality has fantastic doodle classes online.  You can also get a lot of inspiration just from reading her blog.  Anyway, I decided to create my little doodle cards onto the big 16x20 canvases.

So I went to AC Moore and tried to match the colors I used on the card with paints.  I painted my background and because I am not a patient person I used my heat gun to dry them.

Next I drew lightly, with a pencil, my flowers all around the brown area.  Next came the filling in of the areas.  It took a long time to paint, dry, repaint, layer, dry....... each canvas.  Then I took a sharpie and puff paints and added the little outlines and details.

Note:  Don't buy the REAL cheap acrylic paint!  They don't cover really well and you will have to repaint the areas over and over!

 Here are the finished pieces!

Thanks for stopping by.................



All Sports Weekend

We have season tickets to the Redskins so we took in a game.  The seats are way up in the "attic"but it was nice to spend time with friends and watch the game.

Lost Bears fans at a Redskins game.

Then we went to the Nationals Baseball game with some friends.  Yes that is a Cardninal fan next to a Cub fan.  It isn't his fault he grew up in Iowa and lost his way to the dark side of baseball.  We still like him.

Plus we were going to go see the Dodgers play the Nats?????





The best part of the game was watching these guys race.  The giant headed presidents race from the outfield, down the first base line.  It is so funny to see these guys run.  Makes me smile every time!



Hi George!