The Quiet Week

 The beginning of the year everyone is recovering from December, and nobody wants to do anything, thankfully. We've stayed home all week with zero extra responsibilities. It was heavenly. Adam worked hard on getting his new Youtube channel going: "Dogs, Diets, and Recipes." He baked some wheat bread for one episode, introduced Beau, and did a "true confessions" episode too. There'll be an accompanying website with all the recipes. I'll put it all up here when he's ready with enough episodes uploaded for folks to binge on. He's not quite there yet.

I've been drinking hot tea, painting, and editing my latest children's chapter book, Ten Days at Federal Hill. Five chapters down, about 25+ to go! The editing stage is not nearly as fun as the writing stage.

 Painting -- I'm using the tube paints Adam gave me. Here is a first attempt. I used another painting online as a resource.

 It was okay, but I wanted to try again. Here's the 2nd one, after the initial sketching, background, and a some of the fruit were started:

 I spent quite a bit of time getting this one just right, so I didn't want to sell if for $5 as a card. I bought a $1 frame/mat/glass at the thrift store and put it on my bedroom wall.

 Here are some others with the new paints. It takes time to get used to how tube paints behave.

I'm heading to West Virginia again next weekend, and after that trip my weekly schedule will return to its usual racing-around self. The week coming up is my last slow week, and I'm gonna make the most of it! Have you enjoyed these slow days in early January? It helps that we've had bizarrely warm weather. It feels like April out there. Happy January!!!