blazes

Tree Peonies from the Luckystone Lodge, Q. Cassetti, 2010Its hotter than blazes today, yesterday. A bit of breeze this morning with the weatherman predicting thunderstorms and hail moving the 90˚ temperatures to 60˚ by evening. A perfect evening for the Senior Campout that Alexander Q. will be attending. Planning is everything. I guess it will be a bonding experience for all of them!

My husband the saint had a long dayof it yesterday braving the highways, bridges and tunnels, hot weather, and lots of carrying to get our princess safe in her airconditioned (a surprise) tower at FIT. He came home, ate a bit and then early to bed with the fans whirring. I had a mini date with Alex. We saw the Avengers to both of our fist pumping delight. I love this stuff. So does he. I loved the treatment of the characters particularly the humanizing and recalibration of the Hulk, a creature I never really understood but thanks to the Josh Weeden redux, he is becoming one of my favorites. We all have our Hulk moments…and now I can fullly embrace it.

After some weed destruction at the Luckystone (and picking these lovelies in the picture), I came home to do email (a lot of Farmers Market stuff), and settle in to work further on this big RFP I have been requested to fill out to be considered a certified vendor for a big institution. This RFP is a lot of work and is forcing me to get my act in gear, refresh my resume, refresh my web presence etc. etc. The stuff is all there, I just need to renew, refresh and parse. Additionally, this process has pushed me to review my thinking on the business, and things I need to do to keep us relevant. So, despite my grumpiness, I am pleased with the push.

Gurus Unleashed, a web aggregator of information, tutorials and the like on Adobe Creative Suite products just linked to a Vector Tuts tutorial showing the new tracing features in Adobe Illustrator CS6. Fascinating for those of us who are followers of the great Vector, and live and breathe new opportunities to smooth our our work. The silhouette feature (particularly for our retouching work) is a beauty. Take a look at this tutorial: here>

Need to get rolling. I have a 9:30 call about the nesting dolls.

progress

Just finished up ordering a collection of things for our friends at Redbyrd. Postcards, business cards, custom glasses. I discovered a cool resource for affordable, digitally output bumperstickers and banners: Stickersbanners.com. I think I will order a few things from these guys before I start raving as I do about my new favorite resources online.

Its exciting to have these Redbyrd pieces coming…along with a new label for a new product that these two cool people dreamed up…and they like that too! Yikes. Too much fun.

The Distillery is getting close. Cool on that too.

Alex found out that he was cast as Ike Ketchum, cowboy, in Oklahoma last night. There is a bounce in his step and a happiness that I hadn’t anticipated. I love the idea of my boy in pearlie snaps, chaps and a gigantic cowboy hat. He regaled me about his Handel piece he is singing at school to build his chops…pulling out the sheet music and singing along with the notes to point out the range and craziness of this Baroque piece. My little baroque cowboy.Maybe he could learn to yodel too!

I am going a bit crazy about Dutch flower paintings again. I would like to try to do a very bold, graphic approach—using the layouts, the blocking and suggested palettes as a place to start. I plan on tacking this on to the farmers market vegetable imagery. You will see what will happen as it will be posted as we go.

Rob is home tonight. It will be great to have him back.