{183} sidewalk chalk

halfway! i'm over halfway! woohoo! i can't believe it. i also can't believe that i'm ONLY halfway done this project. i can't believe i still have to make 182 more names. oh. em. gee.

{155} clouds

while sitting in the park a few nights ago with george i snapped this picture with my phone of the clouds. the only part of the cloud that looked like my name was the "l" so then i photoshopped the rest of the letters in. :)

a {day} off

yesterday was canada day so today was a day off! yay! this was how my day went:

a) slept in till 9:00 a.m.! woot! i took george out and immediately was struck by just how bloody hot it was outside already so i decided to take him for his walk straight away.

b) took george for his walk. only lasted 30 minutes because i was sweating bullets by then.

c) went to tim hortons for an x-large decaf coffee...and three raspberry timbits. oh em gee. these things are amazing. why did i let myself give in to temptation?!

d) watched two episodes of "top chef: texas"

e) decided to dress up as a 50s housewife and make muffins. i proceeded to only listen to frank sinatra and ray charles and dance around the kitchen in kitten heels.

f) ran out to shoppers to pick up a snack (ketchup mini-crispies). i shouldn't have them but since after 5, i cannot eat anymore till tomorrow evening, i said "screw it!"

g) watched another episode of "top chef: texas" whilst eating said mini-crisipies. delish.

h) felt super guilty about eating so much crap that i decided to go on over to A&E's and weed there for a while. i was thinking about a half hour.

i) show up at A&E's exactly as steve is pulling onto the driveway. lol i had even gone to so much effort as to drive the long way around so i could scope out whether anyone was at their house because i didn't want to weed while someone was there. just my luck. no, it was good. steve suntanned, drank beer and entertained me while i weeded.

j) euch. drank 90ml of senokot in order to clean my bowels. i'm in the hospital tomorrow having a small bowel series done (TMI?). not fun. can't eat after 5:00 p.m. and can't eat or drink at all tomorrow. have to be in the hospital before the sun rises. fantastic fun in store for tomorrow.

k) showered all the spiders off of me and all the poison ivy that i crawled in.

kl started this blog post.

m) wrote the next blog post.

n) watched "community". oh, gosh. love love this show.

o) got my stuff all ready for tomorrow's big hospital visit.

p) watched some more tv (a little "gilmore girls"!)

q) went to sleep. time to get rested up for tomorrow.

(the only part i left out was the definite-TMI stuff about the after effects of senokot. lol)

it was a good/interesting day!

{151} sticks

the other day we had some wicked wind in the evening and when i arrived home my backyard was covered in huge branches. so, i stored these suckers and then hauled them out today to spell out my name. of course, my name was too big to fit in the camera lens (and i am not tall enough) so this was as best i could do to capture it.

my mother said to me "but you've already done sticks." and i said, "actually, i've carved my name into a stick and i've taken pictures of branches that looked like the letters of my name but i had yet to lay out the branches on the ground to spell it out." i do think that now i have exhausted the sticks-thing, though.

{129} barren tree

i've attempted to draw this barren tree before but then i got carried away with it and totally messed it up. today, i decided to try again. rather than colour it in and add leaves (which is what was my downfall last time), i decided to leave it at just a simple pencil drawing instead.

in hindsight, it's looking a little sad. oh, well. that's the challenge with this project--some days are just simply going to be much more ambitious and others are going to be half-hearted because it has been a long day or i'm up early or i'm running late or i simply don't want to colour any more! what an incredible challenge this project has been. i'm already thinking about next year's project--i totally think i know what i'm going to do but...i still have 238 days to decide.

{126} leaves

why is it that when i decide to turn to nature for my inspiration, the name never comes out quite as i'd expected (see #90). i thought it'd be neat to cut the letters out of six leaves that were still attached to the tree. but my first few attempts were total fails because i kept accidentally snipping the whole leaf off the branch. finally, i was left with an okay version that i was going to settle for.

my flowers are all planted for the year and i just love tending to them. i wish i had an actual garden so that i could putter away in there every evening but for now my pots of flowers will need to suffice. i just love to dead-head and water and arrange them nicely. then i totally got carried away yesterday and suddenly i'm cutting down branches and weeding behind my fence and just going nuts! i always get these spurts of energy that make me feel like i could life a car. :)

{124} camouflage

today i decided to grab a piece of paper, my pail of pencil crayons and head outside. so, for a good 40 minutes i sat on my lounge chair colouring today's name in a camouflage print.

i started off by just free-handing the letters of my name first and then i grabbed two other pencil crayons and started drawing these shapes. it was a whole lot of drawing and colouring and my hand was totally cramping afterwards. just using the word "hand" again is making me appreciate so much what my hands are capable of. they are the mediums that i use to create. reminds me of a quote: "i craft because my hands get jealous of all the work my brain does." true story. :)

{109} carved stick

thanks to all the Crazy (yes, it warranted a capital "c") wind we've been having, i've got my share of branches strewn about my yard. then, because the yard is fenced in, all the branches have nowhere to go but...here. great. at least i found this great stick that had the perfect spot to carve my name. it took awhile to do. mostly because i didn't know what type of tool to use so i just grabbed a square-headed screwdriver and went to town. i do quite like the result. it shall be my stick from now on. and if someone says to me "you can't have that stick! it's my stick! it's not like your name is on it!" i will reply "yes. it is."

{104} new plants

i picked up my plants last friday and got all my planting done over the weekend! i always like to save the tags from all the plants because a) i always think i'll do something creative with them and b) because i want to remember which plants i used in case i want to use them again next year.

fortunately, i will get to do with this time around! using an x-acto knife, i carefully cut out the letters to my name in six different flower tags and then placed them next to their blooms for the picture. it's always tough at the beginning of summer when you see your plants so small. i get so impatient for them to be full and colourful! even though i only planted them two days ago, i'm already wandering around the yard checking on their progress and hoping to see some new blooms. a few more weeks, and i'm sure they'll look spectacular.

{91} little rock

i have rocks everywhere. my driveway is rocks. there are rocks in my front flower bed. there are rocks around the back of my house. there are rocks surrounding my rock garden (how approp.). there are rocks around my playhouse. i chose to play with the rocks around the playhouse--mostly because it is the one private area of my whole yard where no one can see me. simply lined them up quickly before g would run through them. as you can see by the blue spray paint, this is the corner where i bring my crafts to paint them because you can't see it from the rest of the yard. that back corner is littered in dried-on paint!

(some perspective)

{90} interpretive trees

i may be grasping at this one a little bit. do the tree branches really look like the letters of my name? well, i guess. it's sort of like when i did my post using google earth. i ran into similar problems then too. but, i saw the "u" in one of my trees and i thought "yes! this is a great idea!" and i proceeded to struggle with the remaining five letters. oh, well! better luck next time. i'll find a better set of trees to do this with again at a later date.

{85} playhouse

the playhouse in my backyard once stood pristine. now, it is covered in graphic design (or scribbles. your call.) created by the Es and various friends' kids over the years. i noticed that one name, in particular, was missing from the wall of art...my own! so, i have added it in permanent chalk.

meanwhile, george was outside with me and completely freaking out because of the brick-work being done on the building behind me. he was trying to hide under the lounge chair, under the garden hose, anything--just so he'd be protected! poor boo! but, while i was drawing on the playhouse, he found the perfect spot to hide--inside! he climbed over all my pots (their storage spot o'er winter) and just sat there. love.

{84} sandbox

quick, who can spot my name first? i thought you could easily see my name in the sand until i uploaded the picture. now, it is too late to go back and fix it because george has since buried a bone where the name once was. oh, well. maybe this will count as my camoflauged name inspired by the "make something 365" book!

(geeps. is he the cutest or what? craz-y cute.)

{58} dirty car message

perfect weather outside to write a message in the dirt on my car! where is the nice hot sunny weather like we experienced last week?! oh, well. another simple creation. i shall locate my creativity soon. but, at least i'm still forging ahead and not giving up!

{15} snow

i have a sneaking suspicion that i will use snow as a medium again sometime but in a different way so i will leave this post's name just that vague.

the good news is that it has been so warm again lately that i've started running again! yeah! i started running in the fall of 2009 but after injuring myself quite badly in florida while on a run, i have found it hard to get back in the habit. i tried running a bit last summer but now that 75 pounds are off my frame, it's easier than it used to be. so, little by little, i'm building up my endurance. maybe by the time "real" spring comes, i'll be much better at it. i still have dreams of doing a marathon some day.

today's name comes courtesy of my back yard and a stick. woohoo. george and i were playing with his ball in the backyard and there wasn't a lot of snow that was still untouched but i found just this little nook of smooth snow. unfortunately the shadow from the fence is casting a strange glow...actually creating the letters and then hanging them from a tree branch or from the fence and taking a picture of my name in shadow is a fantastic idea. notebook!