happy holidays!

well friends, i am off to my sweet hometown tomorrow morning, bright and early.

boulder, colorado, here i come! i am so so excited. this will be the first time i've been back since i moved to georgia in august, and i am practically jumping out of my seat. i *love* boulder at christmas time, and this will be a particularly lovely holiday, because one of my sisters and i both moved away from boulder at about the same time over the summer, and my family will all be back together again for a week!

i'll be blogging sporadically though the holidays.......
can't wait for 2008! i think it's going to be a good year. lots of good things in store.....

*wishing you a happy holiday full of love, cuddling, and lots christmas snow. :)*

cuteness and more cuteness!

{look at our pigtails! this is my sister jill and me. i'm on the right.}

i just had to share some of these photos because i cannot get over how hilarious and cute they are. these are all photos of my siblings and me when we were little! i was at my family's house for the 4th of july and got sucked into looking at old pictures, and, oh the miracle of scanners! now i can broadcast them to the entire world.



{jill and me again... that was my favorite shirt. glittery pink panther, oh yeah.}


{britt and marc, oh so cute. britt is in a hand-me-down skirt from me...}

{biz when she was a baby! ha ha!}

{marc: not bored. jill and jess: definitely bored. check out my tights and cool sweater with a yellow skirt!! the height of fashion i tell you...}

{britt taking a bath in the sink. :) }

{jill and me again}

{i think i was the ring leader for this type of thing. i've always been one for funny faces...}

hope you enjoy the blast from my past!

ps... this is us now...

california dreamin

i am back from california, tanned and relaxed, the 4th of july is now over, and i am not at all ready to get back to work! ryan and i had a great vacation, and the wedding was lovely. above is a photo of tim (ryan's little bro) ad his new wife monique opening the painting that ryan and i gave them (ryan made the frame-- so awesome). they loved it.

tim and monique got married at the wayfarer's chapel in palos verdes, california, and it was gorgeous. the highlight of the trip for me: seeing whales spouting off the coast while at the church!! i'm not kidding. it was so awesome.

the wedding was beautiful. i love weddings. i'm such a girl. poor ryan got so much wedding talk this week......

and my personal favorites from the trip:


(i *heart* ryan!!)

{random day of the dead stuff in a shop in santa monica...}

weekend family fun

oh so much fun with the family this weekend. :) saturday was my sister's grad school graduation, and last night was the celebration party for my mom's gallery being officially one year old! go blink gallery!

lily pads at DU

me and jill and biz being silly...

britt, me, jill, biz, and our mama...

all the sisters [minus biz] and mom after the party at the med restaurant...

jill and britt posing as america's next top models!

and the real kicker...


ugly photos of everyone! this is more fun than i can even describe. it is endlessly amusing to look at bad pictures of the people you love! now i need to get one of ryan, as he was working last night and couldn't be part of the fun. :( i'm sure there are many more ugly photos in our future, though!

life changes

i'm not really sure why i'm feeling the need to post something about this today, but i guess it's just to get it out of my head a bit more than it has been the last 6 days. my grandma nancy died yesterday morning of cancer. and it was terrifying. she spent the last 5 days of her life in hospice care because my poor grandpa just couldn't give her the 24 care she needed; it wasn't safe for her to be at home anymore. i have never seen anyone battling cancer before. i remember when me grandma called and told me a year and a half ago that they had found a cancer spot in her throat and on her lung, and it didn't seem real then, and it doesn't seem real now. i've had the privelege of spending some time with her since then, as my grandma and i have always been fairly close: we're both artists, we like to do the same kinds of things...

so i would go over to their house and visit, talk about gardening, tell them about my latest projects, or what ryan was up to; she'd tell me bits and pieces of what she was going through, but overall, she did not complain. everyone just thought she was going to get better.
but she wasn't getting better. the cancer came back, in her back this time, and she got weaker and weaker, and smaller and smaller, and it hurt to eat and swallow, and then she had trouble walking, and she was on so many pain pills that she couldn't read or write anymore and needed help with more and more things.

it's really strange to watch someone getting sicker and sicker. when i last saw her she was in a semi-comatose state, not even recognizable as herself, and i cannot get this image out of my head. it is haunting me. but the crazy thing is, as scared as i was to go see her like that every day, when i walked into the room and stood next to her, and kissed her on the forehead, it was just my grandma. sunken and bony as she was, it was still my grandma, and i could tell she was still in there. and the last thing i said to her was i love you, and she flickered her eyes open, and i know she heard me.

she died at 4:00 yesterday morning, and my grandpa and 2 of their daughters were there with her. i haven't really been able to get anything done this week; it's all i can think about. in a way it's like a piece of my childhood just died. i have so many memories of my grandparents, since i was a tiny kid.

anyway, i guess she's not suffering now, but it's still hard. why is change so hard? i know everyone dies, but it feels so unfair that some people die like that, with so much pain and suffering.

here's to all of you out there who have lost loved ones to terrible disease and hurting.
but the sun is shining and life marches on. so now i get to remember my grandma and love my grandpa while he's still here. what a special thing to have grandparents in your life.

what a special thing to have people in your life...

a little soiree!

i had my family over for a little feast last night. here is what i made. lentil salad, tomato-cranberry chutney, cashew-peanut balls, white bean-rosemary dip, baked tomato eggs, green healthy coleslaw, date truffles, and chocolate pudding. it was absolutely delicious! (and healthy!) it was a lovely night.

me and my sister

this is me and my sister biz. she recently discovered the coolest feature on my computer (photo booth) and we have had ridiculous amounts of fun taking photos of ourselves making funny faces. for some reason it hasn't stopped being funny, even though we've taken over 300 photos.

biz is a dancer and almost 16, and she is a truly cool girl. sensitive, intelligent, hilarious... i'm so proud of her. this weekend she and my cousin danielle are coming over so we can make big furry halloween costumes. i'll be sure to post pictures of us in all our ridiculousness when they're done. poor ryan is going ot have to deal with fake fur all over the living room and noisy girls while he's trying ot read organic chemsitry or phisiology or something. i sure am glad i'm an artist and not a scientist!

off to lunch and an interview with marni for the new gallery website she and my friend susan are creating-- check it out at www.artcareeresentials.com
It should be up ad running sometime in the next week or so.

Happy fall to you!