Wanting Feedback.

There are two things I have almost always known about myself, and those are that I want to be a stay at home mother, and the second is that I want to create and sell art. I am wanting to make a home business out of my artwork, but I don't really know what kinds of artwork people would actually be likely to purchase for their homes. My sister Heather suggested that I take a survey to find out what people are interested in paying money for. I am aware that I will most likely not make a great amount of money doing artwork, but it is what I want to do and it's something I can do while staying home with my children.

What kind of artwork would you realistically buy for your home?
The following are ideas of artwork that I could make and sell: Landscape paintings; Portraits; Storybook Murals to hang in childrens rooms; drawings or paintings mounted on objects such as shelves or wooden blocks (coffee table kinds of things); handmade books.

If anyone has any other ideas or likes the ones I posted please respond to my post. Don't worry about having to commit to purchasing anything, I just want to know what you think.

New portrait finished

This is Tabitha, a co-workers daughter who was married in the Twin Falls ID LDS temple a couple of weeks ago. I need to find some quality fixative to spray on it so it won't smudge when they scan it to put on my CD (for my portfolio). Once I have a saved copy it will go to Vicky and she's very excited for it. After seeing the finished drawing she decided she wanted to pay me to do one of her other daughter also.

Portraits

If anyone is interested in paying for a PORTRAIT to be done of their CHILD OR WEDDING PHOTO, ETC. please let me know. I can do portraits in PENCIL, CHARCOAL, OR PASTELS. The price would be $20 for pencil, $30 for charcoal, and $40 for pastels. They are done on 25 3/4 in x 19 3/4 in Cansom paper, and are studio quality. When we get into our own apartment in the next several weeks I can attempt to do oils also. PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you are interested.

Ryan got the job, and we are moving!!

This last week Ryan got a job for a huge farm. The job is supposed to be an assistant manager position, however they are so busy right now with harvesting that they do not have the time to train him, or really do anything with him, so they put him to driving tractor. However, he has spent all of his time in the shop fixing farm equipment. The job currently does not pay well at all, but we are hoping and praying that as soon as harvesting is complete they will be able to promote him to the assistant manager position. We are so ecstatic that he found a job, he has been looking since March. Right now the hours are incredibly long, and so he won't be seeing much of ethan these next few weeks as he leaves around 7 am and gets home around 11 to 12 at night. We thought that he would just commute for the first while until we knew for sure that the job was permanent, but we've changed our minds and decided to take the chance and move out there, so that Ryan won't have to get home so late. It will still be late hours, but not as late. We found an apartment, it's a duplex that his aunt owns. I am so excited to move. It has been over a year since we have had our own place, and I really miss being on our own. I will be cleaning and painting the place for the next couple weeks, after I get off work, and also I have to start looking for jobs in the area we will be living. I will post before and after pictures of the place we are moving into, because it is in desperate need of cleaning and paint (the last tenants were not very clean) and so we are expecting that the transformation will be pretty extreme. I am very hopefull and praying very hard that this job will work out.

Job hunt, little vampires, and a sick child.

I feel like blogging about something but I don't have anything too interesting to blog about. Ryan has had several interviews for jobs lately, so we are hoping and praying that he will get a job soon. My job is going well, I really like it. It can be a little crazy though, for example we think one of my little ones is teething becuase he bit 7 children today, and it wasn't out of anger he would just randomly tackle them or lean in towards them and sink his teeth in. I decided to nickname him my little vampire, and tried to keep him seperate from all of the other children. It was kind of comical in a way when we were outside and I'm running (on tv they would show it in slow motion....) in and out through the toys yelling "NO!!!!" trying to get to him in time to stop him from biting a little girl, and he stops and looks up at me so innocently with this look that said, "what?".
I got home from work to find Ethan sick. He's happy and playing but can't keep anything down. I really hope it doesn't last long, whatever he has, it's so not fun to be sick.

Today was a long crazy day at work. One of the children I normally have every day came down with Pink Eye yesterday, so today I had to start disinfecting toys. I say start because seriously there are so many toys that it's impossible to do it in one day. Luckily my room is sectioned off into three areas, so I can put the kids in different areas to keep them contained while I cleaned. It was still difficult to watch 5-8 (it fluctuated) 13 mon-1 yr olds and also clean toys. I finally got them down for naps and was cleaning the toys when one of the children in the neighboring class flooded the toilet that our two classrooms share. And of course the floor tilts down in my direction so instead of it flooding out into the other classroom it all came into mine. So it was a crazy day. I'm hoping I can get all the toys cleaned quick enough so the kids can start playing with them again. I wish they would let me clean them in the late afternoon when we combine classes and I no longer have any children, but they would rather send me home early.

Ethan has started his preschool group again, and he is very ready to learn. He loves school, and is responding so well. When he turns 3 in October he will go into the school district with their development program. He's started singing along with things on tv and attempts to do dances that he sees on tv. He loves the cartoons that have singing and dancing. He also has started trying to sing Old McDonald, he keeps repeating E I E I O, and I'm not sure where he picked up the song, but I think it's cute. He loves music and books, and just seems so eager to learn. He is working really hard at speaking, so it won't be long until it all comes together. He loves to count, so I am looking for books on counting, abc's, colors, shapes etc. to help him learn. I'm very proud of him.

So, this week Ethan got sick, and for about 3 or so days was pretty miserable. Since I work now, Ryan was home with him, and I appreciated that he was getting some cuddling time with Ethan, but I also missed being the one to give the love and cuddling when he was sick. This is the first time he has been sick since the seizures last year, so I was very worried the whole time this time around, but he made it through without having any seizures this time. I'm happy that Ethan slept all night last night, and woke up happy and feeling much better. He still doesn't have his appetite back, but I think by tomorrow hopefully he will be back to normal.

I had bought a music cd earlier in the week to try out at naptime so that Ryan would hopefully have an easier time getting Ethan down for naps, and I've fallen in love with this cd. Each night that Ethan has been sick I've put the cd on and it calmed him down enough that he was asleep within seconds. It is amazing the healing power of music, because laying next to him I could feel him relax with the music. So, I Highly recomend buying this cd. It's called Piano Portraits Lullaby featuring Jon Schmidt, Paul Cardall, David Tolk, and Michael R. Hicks.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NmOrQpV5PU This is a link to a promo for it, but it seriously doesn't do it justice. I recognized Jon Schmidt so that's why I picked it when I was looking through music at Walmart, but I was still surprised at how beautiful the arrangments are. I'm thinking I want one for work to play during naptime for my class, or just play as background music throughout the day, because it does have a very peacefull calming effect and it's so beautiful.