Cupcakes, traffic school and "Team Awesome"

This past weekend Naomi decided to make cupcakes for her class for the last week of school.  She found a recipe online and made them from scratch.  Other than helping clean up afterwards, she did it all herself.  She was very excited Monday morning to bring them in and share them.  It was around noon I received an e-mail from her teacher stating that school policy was such that homemade treats aren't allowed, but she'll go to the supermarket after-school and bring in some store bought ones for class tomorrow.... BLECH!!

Today I went to court with Mike who had unfortunately gotten a speeding ticket on the morning he was going to fly to Portland.  It's funny we were so nervous, but all the other people there had done such awful things, yet they didn't seem nervous at all. Anyway it looks like traffic school is in order, and he's decided to sign up for the comedy one, maybe it won't be so bad.

The good news this week is that my circle paintings are going to be sold by an art and craft retailer called S.O.T.A. (Spirit of The Artist), in Philadelphia.  I sent my first shipment of paintings this afternoon.

Today, my ninth grader, Chloe, was building a rocket in science class with her assigned partner, Daniel, out of a plastic bottle.  She handed him some plastic and told him to cut out the fins while she decorated the bottle. She then proceeded to decorate it with many colors, and drawings of her and Daniel and labeled it "Team Awesome".  Her friend came over to observe and said "I know Daniel didn't approve of that!!" Daniel removed his headphones and stared at it for a long time, then he shrugged and put them back on.  Anyway, if their rocket reaches the highest altitude they each win 5 bucks... GO TEAM AWESOME!

The solar cook-off, my birthday and Mike is back!

Yesterday was Phoebe's big solar cook-off at school. When I helped her drop off her oven at school I saw some incredible contraptions!

Before we brought it in we tested it last weekend with some cinnamon rolls. Considering they we just sitting outside on the patio they were pretty good.

We did have to finish cooking them in the regular oven though.

link to source

On Monday I picked up Mike from the airport after his eventful weekend at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival.  Here he is competing  onstage in The Pickman's Apprentice Iron Artist Competition.

And this is him drawing the winning art piece.  All the artists had their work auctioned for charity, but he came home with a nifty trophy.  He also contributed to one of the films that premiered at the festival called Transcendant. 

Anyway yesterday was my birthday and we headed to a theater downtown and saw this....

It was really entertaining and made a great outing, but I was shocked to learn after the movie that my kids don't have any memory of the first movie with Judy Garland.  I was sure they'd seen it. It's such a part of my childhood, watching that movie when it was aired on TV every year. Sometimes it's strange how different things are for my kids. ( They do, however, remember going to "Wicked" last year, but that storyline doesn't connect to this movie.)

The Solar Oven and Visitors from out of town

Last week past in a whirlwind of activity.  My Aunt Janet and Uncle Larry came to visit from snowy Denver, Colorado.  I think they were ready for some warm weather but not the 100ºF plus temperatures we were bombarded with last week. Of course none of us are ever really ready for it. 

Breakfast in a pie shop

This is the restaurant where I left the camera.  As you can see I'm posting photos so obviously they gave it back.

 

After a day of hanging around the big fancy pool in their resort, we decided to try and be adventurous.  We brought them to Old Town in Scottsdale.  It was sweltering hot even at 6pm. 

There are a lot of interesting sculptures and galleries in Old Town.

Phoebe can't help but goof around when the camera's pointed at her.

Did I mention how hot it was?  My Aunt and Uncle couldn't take walking around so Mike and I ran ahead and found a Mediterranean restaurant that had misters and shade on the patio where Oscar (our dog) could sit by our table.

They really liked our dog.

And it was nice to sit in the shade under the mist.  After a few minutes, though, I noticed many people sitting around us on the patio smoking hookahs.  It turns out it was a hookah bar I brought them to!  They took it in stride, however,  and the smoke from the hookahs smelled like strawberry incense.

The next day I decided to go to a place I was more familiar with, The Phoenix Art Museum.

The great thing about the museum is that it's indoors and air conditioned. :)

The lobby is filled with black butterflies (cut paper ones) as an intro to their show "Order in Chaos".

There were thousands of butterflies pinned to the walls and ceiling.  It was astonishing and impressive. The museum was a great day out and they loved the classical art upstairs.

My Uncle sits by the red, caged dinosaur in front of The Phoenix Art Museum.

Anyway last week Mike and Phoebe put their finishing touches on the solar oven....

This is Phoebe applying duct tape. Phoebe loves duct tape, she makes wallets and cases for glasses and pencils (one of these days I'll post some of her creations.)

Their oven is quite huge and impressive!

Today I'm helping Phoebe and her friend test it, before the big solar cook off at her school on Friday. Mike is missing the test as he's in Portland, Oregon right now at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival.  As always we're missing him, but he flies home tomorrow morning.

Advice on turtle painting

Lately I have attempting to more actively promote my shop on Etsy.  In an effort to see how my products are doing in targeted searches I tried a search (on the Etsy site) on sea turtles to see if I could find my painting "Beneath The Waves"

Beneath The Waves

As I scrolled through the paintings I was disappointed to see it wasn't showing up very quickly, but gradually I noticed something else that was almost alarming. First I noticed this painting...

From a store called FairySomnia. 

 

Then I saw a very similar one from another store called MundoMeo.  Which was surprising until I saw the same store had another turtle for sale....

Let's call him MundoMeo #2.  But that wasn't all....

Here's one from a store called ThalassaCrete, and the same turtle is here...

In the MyFishArt and it's painted on metal.

This one from  JuliaLikesFrogs is painted in acrylic with additional animals.  Where is this turtle coming from you might ask?  Well here he is, Mr Popular....

I call him #12 in the Google image search.  Anyway my advice is to get your photo reference from page 2 or later of your google image search.

The Pet Convention

On Saturday we decided to head over to the "Pet Expo" at the Phoenix University Stadium (mostly because we were running low on free samples of pet food that I picked up from the last festival).

We brought Oscar because the website said we could.

We went down and down and down.

It was like a lot of conventions with many booths.

Except there were also A LOT of dogs.

This was the only cat we saw walking around though.

 We did see a hairless dog sitting on her little throne.

They asked if I'd like to pet her, so I did.  It was like petting a slightly sweaty person.

There was also an agility course to watch dogs bound around.

In the back of the stadium was a dog diving demonstration.

Naomi loved watching them, but when I went close to watch I got soaked!

I learned something important though.  Apparently this famous cat, aka Grumpy Cat, is local to the area, and he's just signed a deal with Friskies cat food.  

April's lineup for "Art of The Red River"

It's radio show time again....
 

Frank Burkhauser and his family at the SOTA craft gallery.

 Our first guest will be Frank Burkhauser, owner of SOTA Spirit of the Artist, an American Craft Retail Gallery in Philadelphia. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in NYC, he followed a dream to open a business with family members and SOTA was born. He assisted curating group shows throughout his art education and worked for many galleries and museums in Philadelphia and New York. This experience combined with a love for art and all things handmade led to SOTA becoming a national award winning American Craft Gallery and an institution in Philadelphia.

"Nebuchadrezzar" by Richard Kane Ferguson

Our next guest will be artist, Richard Kane Ferguson. Richard has worked extensively in comics, gaming and film, for clients such as Marvel, Cry for Dawn and was the lead artist on Magic: The Gathering. Richard’s iconic characters have seen worldwide distribution in a number of formats, including print , video games, promotional films, packaging and a plethora of other promotional materials, from lunch boxes to coffee mugs. Some of Richard’s characters have even been featured as life-sized 3-D sculptures in Wizards of the Coast’s interactive gaming entertainment center initially launched in Seattle.

"Spike The Mixed-up Monster" illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Our final guest is award winning children's book writer and illustrator Melissa Sweet from beautiful, Rockport, Maine. Melissa Sweet has illustrated nearly 100 children’s books from board books to picture books and nonfiction titles. Her collages and paintings have appeared in the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Madison Park Greetings, Smilebox and for eeBoo Toys. Some recent titles include: The Sleepy Little Alphabet by Judy Sierra, Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya, Baby Bears Big Dreams by Jane Yolen, and Day is Done by Peter Yarrow.

Join us for great conversations in art. To listen in go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2013/04/23/art-of-the-red-river

A Solar Oven, the Festival of the Arts, and a random fish

Construction has begun on Phoebe's science project....

She and Mike are building a solar oven for school. I think it'll be fun to try and cook in it this summer.  I read online you can even bake bread, though we'll probably stick with cookies.

 On Sunday we went out to Tempe to visit the Festival of The Arts.  As we arrived we spotted two of "The Living Trees".

 It seems they were finished performing however.

 As they left a trail of children followed in their wake.

Then to the children's astonishment the "trees" entered the elevator.

It was a tight squeeze.

Bye trees!

On the left is the Science Diet booth.  They were giving out pet food samples.  Between the five of us we got enough samples and coupons for the dog and cat to eat for a month.  Thank you Science Diet!

Being an arts festival there was of course some fabulous art to look at.

Mike found a pretty glass squid to photograph.

This steampunk fish sculpture was pretty amazing.

They had some great sculptures at this booth.

 

Fortunately the girls all wore stripes which made things easier in the crowd.

Naomi took some time at the kid's station...

So many potters were at the fair, but this one really had quite a display...

 Both sides were pretty incredible....

It was a hot day but the sky was clouding up.

 

On Monday a hot wind began blowing. It turned into a cold dusty wind, and then it began to spit rain.  This morning it was cold again (50ºF) and everything was covered in mud, then on our walk with the dog this morning we came across something truly odd lying on the sidewalk...

This guy was huge and we're about four hours from the Sea of Cortez so I guess he came from the river.