My First Giveaway!!!

I mentioned a giveaway last Friday didn't I? Alright, well here it is. In honor of our new puppy, and in remembrance of our sweet Duke, I am going to give away an 8x10 Custom Pet Portrait done by little 'ole me. The winner will be able to choose what medium they want it in: color pencil, black & white charcoal, oil painting, acrylic painting, or watercolor. The winner will be required to send me a photo of their pet so make sure you have a good one in mind! We will talk more about that when we email each other.

All you need to do to enter is leave me a comment and tell me what pet (name, type of animal) you would want a portrait done of (and don't forget your email if I don't have it!).

I forgot to add that this contest is open to residents of the US and Canada only! =)

You will have until Midnight (eastern time) Wednesday, October 7th to enter. The winner will be chosen the old fashioned way, out of a hat, by little Jimmy =) and announced on Thursday October 8th sometime.

A little fyi: This will be the first time I have done a pet portrait for someone. I am hoping that doing this will help me get back into doing more artwork! If it goes well, you can be sure I will have more artsy giveaways in the future =)

Showing off My Art

I am joining in the MckLinky Blog Hop this week and showing off some of my artwork. Here are a few older things I have done, its been a long time since I have had time to do anything. I sure do miss it! Can you tell I had a thing for frogs? Those are now hanging in Jimmy's room. The first one is colored pencil and the other 2 are oil paintings. The chickadee is colored pencil and the tiger is ink.


Here are some wooden signs I have made, painted by hand. If you like these, make sure you stay tuned to my blog for a very special announcement coming soon.... ;-)

Thanks for stopping by, make sure you go and check out all the other artwork on the blog hop!

A New Turtle, a Drawing and a Stargazer

Where HAS Ali been? Well, I have been a busy little bee! Here is a little of what I have been up to.

Remember this post? Remember the part about the turtle sandbox? Well....I FINALLY found one with eyes (lol, I am pathetic I know)! A friend of mine told me about one last week, her friend was selling it for $5 and she didn't think it had eyes anymore, but at this point I didn't care. Just wanted to get one so Jimmy could finally play in the sand with his toys his grandparent's got him for EASTER! So we went to pick it up and it turned out it was in great shape and DID have eyes AND the lady selling it even threw in some of her son's sand toys & hotwheels cars he didn't want anymore. What a great $5 deal! Here are some pics of the little man enjoying his "new" sandbox:

Awww, yay! It has eyes! ;-)

Not sure he likes the feel of the sand:
Thinking the sand is alright, but still not willing to get too into it...he sat like this pretty much the whole time. I love how his little toes are all curled up!

Oh, cool, Daddy built a racetrack!

Ok, now remember THIS post? A LOT of you won't because it is from FEBRUARY! But anyway, I started this drawing back then...and am still working on it. Now you probably think, geez is she slow...but in all honesty, I have probably only worked on it for about 20 minutes MAX. I just haven't sat down and FOCUSED long enough to get it done. Another 20 minutes or so would probably be enough, so now I just need to git 'er dun! Oh yeah, here it is.

Not bad for not having drawn in I don't know how many years. I will have to do a post of some of my old stuff, I found a bunch of pics from my old geocities website, so I already have them on my computer. Maybe I will show them to you next week....


And finally, there was this post. And now there are these:

GORGEOUS! My beautiful Stargazer Lilies are blooming, ahhhh I just LOVE them! My very favorite flowers, they just make me smile =)

Besides all that, we went to a garage sale of a friend's on Saturday and got soaked in the rain, major downpour! Sunday we went to church and a chicken roast afterwards and then today a friend came over and brought her 2 kids and we had a nice playdate. It was great to be able to talk to another ADULT for once ;-)

Ok everyone, thanks for stopping by and I will hopefully be catching up on my visits to y'all's blogs in the next couple days, I am so behind and miss knowing what is going on with everyone! Have a great (rest of the) week!

Wooden Signs

Here are some wooden signs I painted by hand (well, I traced the text from a print out - with a sharpie because I didn't have any carbon paper - and painted over it by hand). =)

I am feeling the call....

Something people may not know about me is my love of drawing. Ever since I was a little girl, I have drawn everything. Growing up, my favorite thing to draw was horses (big surprise!). I drew and painted in high school. But then I went to college for graphic design and things went from charcoal, colored pencils and paint and brushes to computer layouts and fonts and keyboards and photoshop. All of which I really enjoy, but I have not actually sat down and drawn anything for I don't even know HOW long. Enter little Jimmy last year, and you can imagine how my life changed even more, leaving me with not much time for anything extra besides diapers, feedings and laundry. Well, lately I have stumbled upon a couple of websites/blogs where I have found some beautiful pencil drawings of horses and other animals. It seems like I just keep "finding" them. So here I sit thinking, hey, maybe it is time for me to try to draw again. So tonight, after the baby goes to bed, I am going to sit down and try to draw either one of our horses or my dog, Duke. It all depends on how I "feel" because I have to have the inspiration or it won't come out well at all!! =) Wish me luck! I am so excited to find who I used to be and bring her out of hiding.

Birth Announcements

Here are the birth announcements I did for my nephews. (I was not paid for these - no money made on the mouse that looks just like a famous one...It just matched Conner's room's theme!!)

(edited to remove last names)