Photo Friday!

Happy Friday, gang, and Happy Birthday to Sarah Elizabeth!!

*Random fun fact, or maybe not so fun... my Hamilton tickets arrived in the mail today, on the 215th anniversary of his death.  July 11, 1804 was the duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr, the sitting Vice President of the country... then Alexander died the next day, and Burr went right on being America's VP and was never prosecuted for deliberately shooting someone in the open street. ("Everything is legal in New Jersey.")  It's pretty fascinating stuff!

Anyway, on to some recent pics... here is Loki last Saturday joining Sarah, Kelley, and Amber on the couch as we watched the video for our first Bible study (on Lisa TerKeurst's It's Not Supposed to be This Way).

Sarah hosted and made Pioneer Woman breakfast casserole for us.  Kelley brought fruit pizza, Amber brought milk and orange juice, and I brought donuts.  Yummers!  Favorite meal of the day!

On Sunday, Chettles invited a crew of people to help his new clients/friends paint their new home! lol  He bribed us with free dinner. ;-)  The Myers were also there, and it was fun times!

Jessica and Evan working on the high stuff... that's by far the worst part!  Karli and I did the reachable edges  and trim stuff, then went to pick up dinner at Raising Cane's. =)

We had eight people working in one big and very well-prepped room, so it went pretty fast, all things considered.

And since we're on the subject of painting, here's the latest evolution of this painting, which I'm still not sure I'm done with. lol  This pic = my first abstract painting that I did way back in 2008. I like the swirliness and the sideways heart at the top left, but I wanted to mute the bright colors a little...

After trying for approximately 5 minutes to paint muted colors over the intricate pattern that was already there, I decided to paint it all out and start fresh.  I dunno what my impatience is with art projects - I think it's partly that I don't like having my table messy for very long.  But I didn't have enough paint, so the background is a mix of like 4 different colors. lol  I don't even know.  Then I was trying to do a fun swirly circle thing over some of the existing swirls I could still faintly see.  And if I had stopped here, I might've been happy with it? lol

But I did not stop there - I kept making more circles and blurring them over each other.  Most of what I used here was metallic paint, so when I hung this up in the hallway lighting, the circles were barely visible.

So I grabbed some brighter colors (what I was trying to avoid in the first place) and went kinda crazy with it, and it was a hard pass when I saw this one hanging up. lol  #waytoomuch #dizzy

So I used all the colors and blurred all the chaos back out into this happy, peaceful introverty painting.

But it felt too boring all by itself, so I grabbed some gold leaf flakes and went across it with those, and I'm semi-satisfied, so that's where we are now.  But I may finally go buy more paint stuff and spend more time preparing and create something I like better later.  Either way, I was in the mood to paint and process all that's going on lately, so it was a relaxing project for me.  And it always makes me happy to think about how there are several other layers beneath what everyone can see on the surface, even if some of them are a hot mess. lol

That's all for now.  Hope you have a lovely weekend!! ❤