Speaking of before photos, I plan on also taking some of my scrawny frame, before I embark on a regime of fitness over the spring, to get in shape for the summer. Not that those photos will be for public consumption anytime soon! Not, at least until I have “after” photos to go along side them.

In other news we pitched in on the Earth Hour event tonight by turning everything off and spending an hour illuminated by candle light. Avie didn’t really know what to make of it at first. But it ended up being fun in the end.

We have a lot more space here and with a full basement to play with, it means the little bean can have her very own playroom and Mom and Dad can have space for their art’s and crafts, of which I took advantage this week, taking on the skill of sewing! Having never used a sewing machine before I managed to measure cut and make not only a curtain but also 4 cushion covers just from scraps of fabric we had laying around. All with no planning or much thinking… Well except when it came to closing the 4th side of the cushion covers where I had a bit of help.

I’m pretty proud of my handy work. I guess I must have learned something from all the years of seeing my Mum’s crafty sewing hands at work.

Speaking of our arts, Crystal’s first solo art show is ongoing at L.A’s Black Maria Gallery right now. I think her collection turned out amazingly well. I keep meaning to have a go at painting myself,  but right now I am about to embark on a drawing course, by way of the book; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I’ll have to update on my progress.

I started up this post to mention that I have just finished putting together Crystal’s new Art portfolio website, which can be found at www.crystalwalllancaster.com I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. It is all about the art, so we tried to keep the design and colors pretty minimalist. I think it worked well, go check it out.

Also recently I knocked up a shelf for our studio. It’s been so long since I did any kind if DIY project like this that I forgot that whole “planning” stage. I just went straight to measuring and cutting based on the measurements in my head. As it happened, this worked out just right in the end, but it would have been so much faster if I had sketched it all out on paper first instead of having to work out all the numbers in my head each time I had to make a cut or drill a hole.

I’m pretty proud of it, but all credit has to go to my Dad for teaching me how to do all this stuff. For my next project I’d really like to take on this Four Color T-Shirt Printing Press which I think would be awesome fun. Crystal and I actually bought a mini screen printing kit though, which we haven’t used yet, so I guess I should give that a whirl first, maybe I’ll just put that project on my infamous to-do list. Speaking of T-Shirts, I’ve also, of late, been adding designs to the Spreadshirt Marketplace, so check those out too.

Laters,
Paul

It felt so good to have friends and family here too, can’t wait until everyone comes back, can’t wiat infact for our next trip to England, hopfully we can make it over before the year is out.

Right now I am working on a few projects. This Blog will be getting an update, I have a couple of T-Shirt designs up my sleeve, and I’m helping Crystal out with her portfolio website now that she is pulling out the paints and starting to do gallery shows, we are both escited about that! So I’ll have a link to that in the next few days. I’m also going to be setting up my flickr gallery (finally), and will be adding lots of pictures from our awesome new digital SLR.