Day 155: Christmas Gift Ideas ;-))

Watching Sunday morning news shows and saw the Heissmann trophy winner Robert Griffin's socks!



Superman socks with an attached cape which you can just see peeking out of his pants leg.  The socks are now unavailable anywhere except on EBay for lots and lots of dollars.  Would have been a fabulous Christmas gift if I'd known about it ahead of time. 




So.......went looking for other strange ideas and found this:

Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit

Here's the text from the website:

A lot of people put interesting artwork, magazines, or even novelty toilet paper in their bathrooms to take your mind off what they are there to do. I’m not really sure that it is a good idea to be distracting someone that probably has attention issues to begin with, why else would they pay attention to these things, but if you’re going to do it, do it right!
The Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit is definitely doing it right. This aquarium kit turns your boring toilet tank into your own personal fish tank and will be turn your bathroom into one of the most talked about things in your home. The two-piece tank separates the flush water from the fish water, so you won’t have to worry about losing your goldfish to some random flush. Get the LED light and enjoy watching your fish all night long.




The kit includes everything you need to get your own 2.2 gallon Toilet Tank Aquarium up and running.

• Two-piece Aquarium Tank, Dual-Filter System With Pump, Two Nine-inch Artificial Plants
• Basic Aquarium Guide, Flushing System, Flush Valve, Fill Valve
• Fits two-bolt tank to bowl configurations with a two-inch flush valve and a bottom-mounted, fill-valve inlet
• 2.2 Gallon Aquarium Volume Fish ‘n Flush 19.5″ length x 8.5 ” width x 13.75 ” height

Turn your bathroom into the most interesting room in the house with the Fish ‘n Flush Toilet Tank Aquarium Kit. Available at JL Ryan for $171.50.

You can tell I'm a'wastin' the morning, not painting.  Christmas is getting awfully close and I'm getting busier and busier with all those frantic thoughts of .....  trees, decor, gifts, food

so I thought I'd throw the fishtank toilet out there for those of you who are looking for gift ideas!   ;-))

Day 1: 2012 "A Great Year Ahead"

I wake up every day determined to both change the world

and have one heck of a good time.

Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.

E. B. White

from another day on the prairie blog

Everywhere I go, everyone I talk to, Everyone, absolutely Everyone, is thrilled that 2011 is gone, totally, over, through!  And Everyone is absolutely thrilled that 2012 is here, the year of the Dragon, the year of good things happening to good people.

So here's to 2012, a good year, a good vintage, happiness, friends, having one heck of a good time.......all those things that make life wonderful.

Haven't painted since 2011, before Thanksgiving.  Things get crazy in everyone's lives towards the end of the year and if you haven't figured out how to control yourself and your time? Painting time takes a backseat.

Today, because of a looming deadline of January 31, I painted most of the day away.  The project?

 

"The Conversation" I've been having with my internet friend Nancie Johnson of New Jersey.  The final version of the "Sketchbook Project" must be postmarked by January 31.  We took the sketchbook issued by the ArtHouseCoop apart and created a conversation based on the book by Milton Glaser and Jean Michel.  I've mentioned this book before because of its fascinating format.  These two men had a long distance conversation with paint.  Whatever was on the right hand edge of a page had to be continued onto the next page by the second painter until the final page of the conversation which was supposed to "wrap around" and connect back to the first page.  I think Nancie and I did a pretty good job (as beginners at this long distance thing) and tomorrow I'll be photocopying it for posterity.  Then I'm going to learn a few bookbinding skills in order to get all of the pages securely back into its cover.

As soon as I finish photographing our work, I'll show you the final progression of the two conversations we had.  We both painted a painting to start the book and I'm planning on mounting one book visible from one side of the Sketchbook and the other book starting at the other, reversed, end of the Sketctchbook.  I know this is all as clear as mud, but perhaps when I can get the pictures up you'll understand more.

And then to complicate my life with a few more deadlines, I entered the Limited Edition Sketchbook Project which has a deadline of April 30.

All of the sketchbooks get digitized by the ArtHouse Coop, which gets their funding from all of us who buy the Sketchbooks and participate.  The books also tour the United States in various cities: This year the tour comes to Los Angeles!!  Last year the tour went through San Francisco and my son and daughter and their friends went and looked up my book and Nancie's book (this is how we met - I commented via the internet on her book) (I think that's how we started) (maybe she commented on my book via blog watching).......

More on Day 2: 2012.

Oh, and in the interim, there was plenty of time to waste cruising around the internet looking at other peoples' blogs.  Found some wonderful stuff out there which I'll be posting.  It's absolutely amazing to me how many talented, talented people there are out there!