So. 2021…. whew.

I live in South Texas. So we’re currently enduring record setting cold temperatures to go with our pandemic. I don’t think that would be a combo I would have chosen. To avoid making light of a situation, and to avoid Northerners derision, I will just say that you should check on any of your Southern friends that have (HAD) plants… We are not okay. I can’t even take pictures of all of my dead succulents. It make me so sad that I didn’t get TONS of pictures of them before. I have an ice plant that was just gigantic and now, it is so so so dead. 😦 They were all winterized and covered and in my garage, but that’s how cold it got here. We were lucky in that we only lost power for 24 hours and have a generator. Also, we never lost actual water, and have only had to deal with a boil water notice. We have a gas stove, so we were able to have hot food during our 24 hours without power. We had to deal with a hyper toddler and 2- 90 lb dogs that couldn’t go outside, but that was all. Somehow, my beatiful tropical fish did not freeze either. So, we’ve been very fortunate.

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Unfortunately, with all those distractions, painting time has been quite dear. So I don’t have a lot to show for all the ‘free time’ I’ve had. The Great Bearded One did decide to go all-in on legos here lately… So we’ve been doing a lot of those. lol. I even did all 4 of the Lego Harry Potter books things. They’re hard to take pictures of all open, so you’ll have to google it. Unless there’s interest, I’m not gonna spend the time to take them. 🙂 We’ve had fun doing these all together, as the Tiny Overlord is starting to be able to do some fine motor stuff like this and it can hold his attention.

But all was not lost! I did manage to paint a few things, and got some hobby-ing done! I got a cool new rack from the reaper store, and hung up some blister packs to free up some space! I didn’t realize I still had so many in their packaging! This was actually a really great space-saver, and at 25 bucks I couldn’t pass it up. Go grab you one to clear up your space!

I’m a little more than halfway done on my Duo challenge for Reaper Challenge League. MaxStyles and I decided on Norkers this time! I think I already mentioned how we came up with our orange and green dog-esque coloring, but I also couldn’t decide which one I liked the best, so I decided to paint all 4 that I had. There’s one more available, a boss on a dog, so I may have to get that one eventually too. When I get them all done, I’ll get some really good pictures. Until then…

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And I poured some resin on these little feesh!! I’m planning on sending this onto my friends that made them for me as a thank you. The resin is so super shiny, it’s difficult to get a good picture, but the orange one is coming up for a bit of something. 🙂

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Along with things that I have done recently that are creative and fun, but not painting, we made strawberry jelly! There is a place near our house called Froberg’s farm that you can go and pick seasonal fruit and flowers and pumpkins. The Tiny Overlord always enjoys it, and its a nice way to get him out of the house somewhere outside during all this madness. He is a pretty good strawberry picker, and I feel a need to fill the 1 gallon buckets they give you RIGHTUPTOTHETOP even though you pay by the pound. Goblin brain like full bucket. 🙂 So we bought them, cleaned em up, and made jelly!

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This brings us to the sad part of the update. During my jelly making, I received the call that my supervising physician passed away. It was not a call I had been looking forward to getting (obviously), and I was so distracted that my jelly in completely boiled over, killing my instant pot, and covering my white cabinets in bright. red. jelly. Of course, this means that after about 2 weeks of confusion, panic, canceled patients, and changed plans, I’m in the market for a new job. I was super happy there at first, and I’m heartbroken for several reasons about his passing, but that’s life, I guess. My plans of working somewhere for 20 years will change, and I’m sure something good is out there for me. If you know someone who needs a pretty cool FNP, gimme a holler.

On a positive note, I get to spend a few weeks with the Tiny Overlord during his super toddler-y 3 year old stage. 🙂 He can count to 14 reliably, 20 most days, knows his entire alphabet and how to spell his name, and has a grasp of the English language that is staggering. Of course, I have a book full of things he says that are hilarious. Yesterday he told us, “later is my favorite part of the day!”.

Anyways, I think that’s all of my excitement for now. Reaper expo live is next weekend, so maybe I’ll see some of you online.

Let me know what you think!

-marinealRose