Technical Difficulties.

Oooh hello! Well somehow, Blogger lost my index page or did something terribly silly with it. I feel absolutely positive that it ... ahem... had nothing to do with me.

So, I made this little sign to replace my missing index page. I went back to blogger to play around with it in hopes of discovering the problem or solution. After trying to re-publish my last post again with no success, I decided to re-publish my entire site. Voila, it was back. Just like that. I am such a dolt sometimes!! Ah well, happy to be back.

Hey is it just me or does it seem like we need some more around-the-house pictures here. It feels like I have been incredibly digital lately and that I am lacking some real photos. Whatya think?

Hope you are all having a fabulous day! xox=vv.

Beautiful Mrs. Dawbis.

Hello again delightful people! I have some truly lovely things to share with you and I thought I would do so in chronological order. With that in mind, allow me to present to you, this beautiful postcard from this beautiful girl.

It is the most incredible post card that I have ever seen. It arrived in such good condition that you would think the usps stamped it and then delivered it on a soft silk-covered down pillow. I love it in every way, shape and form. The only thing that I could cherish more than this card is the friend that it came from!

Hugs to you all and thanks for letting me share! Thank you again Mrs. Dawbis! xox=vv.

Traveling Down Meme-ory Lane.

So, the Mister and I have been saying stupid things since the beginning of our times. Literally, I think my first words were "Smurfs wear shoes," which makes absolutely no sense at all! For some strange reason though, I have started writing down these nugget-shaped quotes to share with the blog world when I sense that the time is right. While I am not ready to share all of them, I thought I would share some of the dog related quotes for Darling Miss Jessica & Fidel's meme.

Basically, this meme requires that I tell you five strange things about Charlie (although I am afraid that these may truly reveal a bit too about his owners). Here goes.

1. On the subject of Charlie's favourite treat, the man said to me -

"I don't know. He's already had two paper bags today and we don't want to spoil him."

2. On the subject of Charlie's disposal of bodily waste, I said to myself -
"Charlie is pooping up a storm. I guess that makes him a Storm Pooper."

3. On the subject of the ways I find to "play" with Charlie, I said to the man -
"I started a pillow fight with Charlie today and totally won and then I was all like "Yeah Bitch!"

4. On the subject of creating a scrapbook for Charlie (or any other dog) the man came up with the following theme -
"Hopes... Dreams... Liverwurst."

5. On the subject of Charlie's enduring love of jumping up to put his paws on your shoulders so as to simply facilitate the chewing of your random upper body parts, I said to the man -
"I am getting the worlds most annoying hug!"


Now, what have we learned about Charlie from this meme list?
1. Charlie absolutely LOVES paper bags, but even more-so if there are tortilla chips inside.

2. Charlie is a large dog with large waste.

3. Charlie's skills in a pillow fight are lacking, especially when compared to my mad-crazy-pillow-weilding-skills. Also, if I am ever in a pillow fight with some thugs in a back alley some where, Charlie will NOT have my back.

4. This meme is as close as Charlie will ever get to a scrapbook that he could call his own and that makes him sad.

5. While I have taught Charlie to "give kisses" (more commonly described as bashing his nose against your face in a swift jabular motion) his hugging skills are still currently lacking.

Okay now, I am supposed to list five other people to participate in this meme. I can only think of two though! Update: I am totally inept at memes. I just found out that the one person I was going to tag (who has two dogs) has already done this meme *pout* I will add people to this meme as I find them I guess. Sorry!

Have a wonderful night everyone! xox=vv.

Curious.

Hello there fabulous people! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and I hope you are having a fantastic day! We are getting ready for Moms, but nothing else too exciting.

So, I am curious, has anyone:

read this - blink

picked up this - juxtapoz

or participated in this - sticker traders

I am considering blink, in love with juxtapoz, and excited about the idea of sticker traders. I would love to hear your experiences, thoughts or even questions about these three. Then again, I love to hear from you about anything! Have a great night dear ones. xox=vv.

Am I On The Crazy Train?

I feel as though I've been smoking something, because I really find these to be quite fascinating. They look best at the largest size. I guess I love the look that something has rustled the leaves on the other side of the trees.

I don't know yet, but this may possibly be a print for sale? I would love to offer custom colors on all prints. Is that tooooo ambitious? Are these totally boring you?

No cleaning today. I have been so under the weather. I hope that you are all having fun, fun, fun though! xox=vv.

Phoning It In.

Well, here is one more. I am technically phoning in this post (technically not literally) because I am tired and I posted twice yesterday, so I think that makes it okay. *smile* The paper color here is really more of a lovely light turquoise blue, but the scanner does not really do the colors any justice.

Our house needs a serious cleaning. It is about four hundred times dirtier than usual (this time I am being literal). I think I will be cleaning till moms gets here. That will be loads of fun! I hope that you all have a lovely weekend though! xox=vv.

Thank Yous.

I have a lot of "Thank Yous" to say. Soon, I will share some of the absolutely beautiful and fun things that I have recieved lately. In the meantime, here are some little "Thank You" postcards that I painted last week, which will be on the way to their recipients in the morning.

Of course, these could not ever express my full gratitude, but I hope to send some more fun things in the near future. Moms arrives in one week and we will be pretty busy, but I feel like I will finally have some time to do a few of the things I really want to do. I hope to make some more buttons and create my first gocco print! Yipee!!

I hope you are all having a wonderful day! I am going to reply to the past comments now, so check in a little later if you are interested! Thank you all! xox=vv.

The Red Tree.

Hello! This is a quick post to tell you about my very favorite book The Red Tree by Shaun Tan. His description of this beautiful book is equally enthralling, "At the beginning she awakes to find blackened leaves falling from her bedroom ceiling, threatening to quietly overwhelm her. She wanders down a street, overshadowed by a huge fish that floats above her. She imagines herself trapped in a bottle washed up on a forgotten shore, or lost in a strange landscape. She's caught in a tiny boat between towering ships about to collide, then suddenly she's on stage before a mysterious audience, not knowing what to do. Just as all hope seems lost, the girl returns to her bedroom and finds a tiny red seedling growing in the middle of the floor. It quickly grows into a vivid red tree that fills her room with warm light."

I also cherish Shaun's final thought about the book, stating that "... everyone’s experience of ‘suffering’ or ‘hope’ is unique and personal." I hope you find it as inspiring as I have. xox=vv.

Shaun Tan's wonderful site.
The Red Tree at Shaun Tan's site.
The Red Tree at Amazon.com.

VegasandVenice ... Now With Those Fancy Links!

Hello there! Today I got the links up and running. I am trying to finish at least one page a day and then address the required fine tuning (page positions etc). I am having a hard time writing the "info" page. Also, I am not exactly sure what I will put on the portfolio page just yet, but for now it will be some of these sketch book paintings (better ones I hope) and some postcards, and oh ... I don't know what else.

These are not very good but they are little free-hand drawings/paintings done with ink and acrylics. I like the vast little field of color because I love the feel of painting large strokes with smooth paint. I would like to make more little paintings like these to sell if I can find anyone interested in them. I think they will be relatively cheap, because I am not sure anyone will like my style and I will have to feel the whole thing out.

Also, I am switching paints a bit. I may be selling some acrylics (as well as a hardly used, good quality potters wheel and a brand-new lendrum double treadle spinning wheel). I have some student quality acrylics and some professional quality acrylics. They were originally between 4 and oh 20 dollars a piece. For some strange reason though, I LOVE the cheap 99 cent acrylic paint for plaster figures on watercolor paper. If the permanence is all right, I may switch over to that or I may switch to gouache. I am looking for a smooth milky opaque texture. Am I crazy?

Okay this post is way, way to long! Sorry about that. Hey, if you don't mind I think I will respond to comments in the comment section for a little while. Let me know if you are unhappy with this or if you would prefer that I email or snail mail *smile* Thank you all for your kind words, help and support through this time of transition (we are almost there, I can feel it) and always! xox=vv.

Blurry Nut.

Before I begin, please let me say that I did not think that the title of this post would sound so dirty. Oh sure it sounds funny, but really it is quite a frustrating condition. You see, somewhere between Illustrator, GoLive and Blogger the words "Get a Nut" become oddly blurry. Actually, I have already found that it works fine in Illustrator and translates well to GoLive as you can see on this page, but I think that the blogger css is stretching or shrinking it and making the nut blurry. Sad, sad, and sad!

If you have any suggestions or thoughts, I would be pleased as punch to hear them. I am working to get the blurriness resolved and I am building the other pages too. I made a little painting for this post and I will be adding it a little later. I am also going to change a few things about the previous posts so I send my most sincere apologies to the Bloglines subscribers. I will try not to do that too often as I know that it produces duplicate feeds. You can turn this feature off and I would be happy to help with that little procedure.

Hugs and Best Wishes to you all!

Update: The lovely miss solomon solved this problem before I could even conceptualize a way to bother her with this problem! Thank you miss! You are a dream! xox=vv.

What Could Be Wrong?

This is a new test post to test my feed - the rss and atom are still not working I think... hmmph! I think I may have to ask the lovely and talented miss solomon for some help. I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will not mind!

Update: Did I mention that she is lovely and talented? Oh good, the feed got itself in gear before I could really get to bothering miss solomon, but she was, of course, as delightful as ever. Thank you missy!

Well, It's A Start At Least.

Okay, the blogger settings have been edited. Yay! Now, we have to work on making this a little bit prettier and adding the other pages.

If you are here via bloglines or seeing this via bloglines then yippee! I have finally moved the site feed over to this new atom.xml and I have claimed both of these feeds (something I could not do with iweb or golive). This is a part of the reason why I finally made the choice to move back to blogger. I want consistency, but the software that I originally started with did not really provide that.

Hopefully, cute buttons will be back today and then a new shop (sans Etsy)! I will get the links set up to all of you lovely people and the other pages reconstructed. Later I will rebuild the older posts and hopefully we will be settling in this new blog home.

I have some new little paintings to show you and my right arm/hand are feeling much better now so I can spend some quality time on the computer. Yay and Yay!

Hugs to all of you delightful people and welcome to our new space! xox=vv.

Attempting To Build A Blog 7.

I am here. Shhh ... wanna see something fun? I am working hard behind the scenes to make the vegasandvenice experience more enjoyable. I am hoping it will not be too much longer.

In the meantime hope you like the new gift tags which may be available in the shop very soon! Trust me, five out of five kittens agree that these tags are fun! (Okay we only have three kittens, but we are inferring that two other kittens would also appreciate them) and this is just the prototype including my very first button! Ooh and I am trying some new things here. The goal is to make this site efficient so that I can inrease my post rate. so please continue to pardon my dust. We are much much closer now though! Miss you wonderfuls. xox=vv.

*All of your sweet comments were saved to Haloscan at the time of original post*