A Long Drive plus Draftsmen Podcast equal a Rambling self introspective narrative.

I started listening to this pod cast when it first came out. I listened regularly for quite a while. Then life happened, habits and situations changed and it’s been a hot minute since I last listened. That changed today as I had a 4 hour drive. I started at the beginning of the second season. Ironically one of the long internal dialogue I have been having with myself is why….? Why am I on this art journey. To what end? What do I want out of it other than it is always something I have wanted to do?

The host touched on that in the episodes I listened to today. And it has me thinking….

At this point I have no intention of every selling my art. That’s not to say it won’t ever happen, but it’s not my life’s goal to be a “professional artist”. If it happens more power to me. If it doesn’t I won’t be any worse for wear. But WHY, WHAT is it I am trying to convey? I am not a consumer of art. Most of the art in my home has been gifted to me. I am not “moved” by art. It rarely (if ever) evokes emotion (music is a different story). I don’t want to copy photographs or landscapes (although I do prefer a realistic style at this point, having no deep emotional ties to art, abstract pieces are lost on me). So then, why art? Most of my subjects are from my where I was born and raised (the tropics). I paint what reminds me of home. To bring what is under the sea on land. I would LOVE to have a saltwater aquarium, but travel too much to maintain one. Bottom line I paint for me. I get transported to where I want to be. To where I love. (When I am far from my beloved Florida, 5th generation Floridian, the tropics are in my blood.) to share that tropical love with those who can’t be there all the time, like me (currently landlocked nowhere near the tropics half the year. During cold winter months, my art is an escape.

At the same time I also LOVE the process of watercolors. The science behind how and why it does what it does. The controlling of the water, the uncontrollable aspects of super wet on wet. It’s magical.

*Sigh*

The rest of tonight and tomorrow I will dedicate to making a few artistic goals. There are a specific goals I already have in place, but they are tiny and just a means to an end. I’m talking I will seek to answer the above. My minor goals are learning how to render certain subjects. Something is missing from this journey, I don’t know what…. THAT is what I am looking for… that missing piece. Any suggestions, hints, thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Til next time, take care of you…

Wow It’s been a hot minute

And a lot has changed since I last sat down to this blog. 2017 was a rough year, and started off a string of years that became more challenging than the prior year. I really thought 2020 was gonna be different. It started out SO MUCH better than previous year. Even my husband thought we finally broke the string of difficult situations. JKLOL.

I was done with 2020 when we had to cancel our vacation to Grenada. I know a lot of vacations have been canceled this year. But this was my 5th vacation out of 6 that has been scrubbed for reasons beyond my control (usually dealing medical emergencies). And 2020 hasn’t let me down. This time it’s me…. facing some unknown bladder / kidney issue. I go to get a cat scan next week if the status quo doesn’t change. Not to mention all the other crap going down in the world. I can honestly say the majority of my friends are all “over it”. (Like who isn’t)

But what has changed since I last sat down to this? Lets see, I closed my Etsy store (that is a dumpster fire that I am glad I bailed on before I invested too much time and money) and turned my attention to a life long dream of learning to draw and discovered watercolors…(not in that order).

For the last two years I have taken two art classes and have watched TONS of tutorials and spent HOURS painting. I’ve learned an incredible amount and now can almost comfortably call myself an artist. I have come a long way. I have got a long way to go. I am no “fine artist” by any means. My favorite mediums are graphite, water soluble graphite and watercolors/gouache. I prefer to paint beach scenes and all things aquatic. You can take the girl out of the tropics but you can’t take the tropics outta the girl. As of right now, my work isn’t for sale. Although my daughter says to slap a price on it and see what happens LOL. Who knows, maybe by the end of the year, I’ll have the courage to do so! I may just look around here and see what other artist post. I never thought to check out blogs for Watercolorist…

Cheers!

hfc

The 10 day fast that wasn’t…

We last left off with me rocking the 3 day fast that turned into an intended 10 day fast, that wound up being a 7 day fast. It broke not because I wanted to, I woke up to my husband texting me telling me he was in the hospital with a GI bleed. I had to pack up and make the 4 hour drive home (I was out of town). I had horror stories of people having upset if they just broke a fast and started eating real food quickly….. the warning was to have a toilet near-by. That wasn’t possible so I invested in a few store bough juices and made the trek home.

Long story short, he stayed in the hospital 5 days. I broke my fast during this time. I managed no GI upset by eating as clean as possible in a “take-out” situation. I succeeded thanks to Chinese restaurants. I ordered stir fried veggies, no sauce, and no rice along with soup and salad from an American chain that specializes in that kinda food. It worked. Fast broken with no upset and I ate as clean as possible. My body craved the fruits and veggies and I wasn’t tempted in the least to eat other non nutritionally beneficial food.

It was during his hospital stay that my husband noticed something. I had just finished my shower and had changed out of my baggy travel clothes to my comfy yoga pants when he exclaimed “YOUR ASS! You’ve lost weight!” Now we have no scale in the condo and I didn’t take any body measurements prior to starting this. Weight loss was not a goal just a happy unintended consequence. But when I got home from finishing up my business in Florida I hopped on the scale….. I had lost between 5-8 pounds. I’m not sure of the total because I’m not sure of my starting number, so going by the heaviest I weighed this summer and no weight loss attempt it is fair to say I lost 8 pounds! I do know that I lost girth for sure. Jeans I squeezed into just two weeks earlier aren’t as uncomfortable.

The darling husband left this morning for work. He will be gone 7 days. I am on my second juice of the day and planning my yummy dinner (told you I love to eat). But juicing while he is gone is too darn easy. Few dishes, easy clean up, and it just seems to fit for right now. One well planed meal a day with healthy snacks through out the day is the goal while he is gone. Juice for the rest of the time. It’s not a starvation plan…. my juice for lunch today has lettuce, tomato, carrots, summer squashes, celery and cucumber. My morning juice had orange, beet and an apple. My snack will be almonds and pecans. Dinner? Im thinking steak salad or maybe pork and beans (if I get the beans cooked fast enough) . I promise you I’m NOT hungry through out the day. And my juices are yummy.

Will I fast again? Probably, it really all depends if I fall back into old comfort food, crappy eating habits. But right now my body wants and craves the juice. Therefore, it will get the juice. But I also like to chew, I miss the chewing when fasting…. so yeah, This girl gotta chew, hence dinner tonight!

As a final thought, I have done TONS of reading here lately and I’m about to commence an experiment. I have had thyroid nodes for years. I have read countless stories of people shrinking them. I have my supplements ordered and will, until my next endocrinology appointment, take them and see if it has any effect on my thyroid. I will also be avoiding known foods that interfere with iodine uptake. I’ll be curious what will happen. So, stay tuned!

Hope everyone has a blessed day!

Day 6 of My 3 Day Juice Reboot and the Torturous Tuesday Night

I just finished my third trip to the grocery store since I have started this crazy juice thing. I have a fridge packed FULL of fresh veggies and fruit and I am okay with that. I totally survived Tuesday jazz night held at a local pub.  Oh my gosh… I had to pass along fried oysters, chicken wings, fries, ranch dressing, back and forth.  I felt the heat of the fresh fried yummy goodness that passed through my hands.  It all smelled devine and I am pretty sure at one point I could TASTE the ranch dressing, but I didn’t CRAVE any of it.  I had my salad through a straw green juice on the way to the party, I was set.  Besides, I have pretty much gotten through the first few days and didn’t want to put solid food on my stomach yet.  Wasn’t sure what to expect and I sure as heck didn’t want to make a mad dash to the ladies room!

So why Day 6 of a THREE day reboot?  Well, from all read accounts, if you can get through the first 3 days you have pretty much gotten through the worst (that is of course, depending on how bad your nutrition was entering the reboot. Mine wasn’t horrible for a super long time.  I hadn’t quiet yet lost all taste for veggies but had fallen back into some pretty bad habits the month leading up to it. )  So I got through the ‘worst’ of it and realized that I was craving my veggies again.  My husband works away from home for a week at a time, when it is just me at the house my nutrition isn’t the best.  I tend not to eat and when I do its not a wide range of veggies or its a high volume of fruit.  None of it is proper.  But for the last 6 days I have gone through POUNDS of veggies.  It’s quick and easy.  I see this as a vehicle to help me maintain proper nutrition when He is gone. (None of this was a problem as long the kids were home and I have people to feed… it became an issue once the baby went off to college and it was just me every other week.)  I’m not sure what my nutrition will look like once I get back home.  At this point in time he is ‘home’ and I am at the beach recovering from my knee surgery.  I have a little over a week before I am home again.  

I plan on spending the begining of next week transitioning back to solid food as my primary source of fuel for my body.  I will without a doubt still juice. This is part of my always improving lifestyle. I’m not a big breakfast eater but a juice first thing in the morning… now THAT I can do!  

Today must have been my day to walk on the wild side.  I added mint to my green juice, upped the celery and backed off some of the lettuce.  I am finding my green juice zone.  I also totally winged a juice today that included my first tomato and zucchini!  It tasted full bodied and contained 100% veggies (also a first).  It contained:

• 1/8th yellow pepper
• 1 tomato
• 1 cucumber
• 1 zucchini
• 1 carrot
• Onion power
• Garlic powder 
• Celery (I’m not sure on this one, but I am fairly certain I added it for the salty taste)

I did add a dash of smoked Tabasco to it.  Very V-8ish or Bloody Mary mix.  Would drink again… 

In the next few days I will be posting about how things are.  I have definitely been having positive changes, just want to wait to see what else happens by the time I finish this (On Sunday for sure, I have gala I am attending at the end of the week and food is a thing and I want to be all up in it!!!!  Cut me some slack!!! I am human and we are designed to EAT!) 😋

Thanks for taggin’ along this crazy journey of mine… 

Be blessed! 

End of Day Three…. I’m still going! But do your research !

Here I sit ENJOYING this:

Pineapple Ginger Juice!

The past three days have been filled with some very interesting developments.  I have been drinking from a firehose learning so much!  I almost have to take a break from the volume of what I have learned thus far.  

Turns out that there are a group of veggies that can inhibit the uptake of iodine.  In people with perfectly functioning thyroids this isn’t a major problem.  For me, however, we have a tiny problem.  I have a fractious thyroid.  It’s not ‘broken’ but it’s not always on its best behavior.  So eating this group of veggies ( giotrogens) is not the best idea, especially in the volume I had planned on eating them.  Very glad I found this out in the first few days instead of years down the road.  I can combat this by consuming the juice of fruits and veggies that are high in iodine and low in goitrogens. (Trust me I have a grip on what is happening to MY body and how my thyroid got where it is today… my research helped a great deal)

Just like the saying “There is an app for everything.”  Welp, there is a juice too!  Google it!  It’s CRAZY!  But, a word of warning, I have spent the better part of the last 3 days researching nutrition for several conditions… the adage Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true  applies greatly in this arena! So, fact check EVERYTHING!  Learn what you need to know about foods that may or may not be beneficial.  I saw MANY conflicting entries about the food I should avoid (or at least not consume in great quantity).  

Now on to my favorite juice from today.  That would be Pineapple Ginger. It’s sweet, and spicy thanks to the ginger.

• 1/2 pineapple
• 1 lemon 
• 1 inch piece of ginger

It’s so yummy!  

In all honesty though, I haven’t really had a juice that I hated.  The first sip of every new juice is indeed an adventure!  They never taste quite like I expect them to.  However, by the end of every juice I’m usually thinking I can drink that again.  It sure as heck beats liver and onions! 

Oh!  I know I said I would only do this fast for only 3 days….. Think I’m gonna stretch it out to 10 days.  I’m feeling great and was actually in a better mood today than I have been since my knee decided it was gonna wig-out the end of September and we put our dog down 4 days ago.  So, why not?!  Let’s see what happens. 

Thanks for making it to the end! You’re a real trooper! 

Just Test Driving the “Crazy” Part of My Life…

Before you roll your eyes just hear me out first… THEN you can roll your eyes and call me crazy in comments. 

This is a post I never saw coming, but here I am, about to talk about my ‘juice fast’.  No, this isn’t some diet fad I thought I would try.  It’s so much more than that.   I have slowly progressed to shopping the perimeter at the grocery store for the last 10 years. I don’t eat a whole lot of processed foods, but that doesn’t mean my nutrition is always good.  I fall back into very bad habits when I am in the need of ‘comfort food’.  Those lovely high sodium, high fat, high sugar treats…. corn chips and queso, anything covered in gravy, homemade cookies, hot chocolate, anything covered in melted cheese…. You see where this is going don’t you?  

This past year I have been denied the pleasure of working out due to a back injury (which I had JUST recovered from when…) I blew out my knee.  Hello surgery. UGH! So needless to say I turned to HORRIBLE nutrition, bathed in those comfort foods. Wallowed in chocolate chip cookies, Jello with Cool Whip, chips and cheese, potato chips and dip….. FRIES dipped in RANCH DRESSING.  I was a nutritional train wreck, which got me to today.   I was  FEELING like crap. I knew I had to make a change because I really like the way an active lifestyle, and good nutrition me feel like, and she had left the building. 

I’ve toyed with the idea before but never followed through.  I often thought that juicing was a diet fad and I want nothing to do with those! I wanted something that would be part of the lifestyle change I had made years ago when I really started to focus on clean eating. (Y’all, I can put away a steak so please don’t picture someone who is suffering with clean eating.  I do love my veggies and fruit next to my big ol’ steak). I don’t eat steak often, I actually prefer seafood if I had to choose.  So then, what finally made me do this?   A friend of mine showed me a Netflix movie about a  FAT guy juicing for 60 days to help heal his SICK body that didn’t want to end up DEAD (I’ve given you enough clues to figure out the movie).  I watched the story unfold.  I knew straight away that he would lose weight,  restrict calories = weight loss. It’s elementary science.  But I paid attention to other things like: his completion, his hair, his attitude and mental clarity.  All of it improved! Not only with him, but another fella he guided along his journey.  They both lost weight But MORE IMPORTANTLY they were able to be free from the pile of pills they took each day, they LOOKED healthier and felt healthier.  NOW THAT is what I was after.  I had that not too long ago in the height of my clean eating and workout lifestyle. I want it back TODAY!  Enter juicing stage left…. 

There is no faster way to flood your body with pure, RAW (which any nutritional expert will tell you is the best) nutrients.  For example, my afternoon snack has 3 huge carrots, 2 apples and an inch long piece of ginger.  Under no circumstances would I eat that as a snack.  First off that is a meal to me.  And I could never just chew ginger.  I like both apples and carrots, but I don’t LOVE them.  I know they are super healthy for me, but still…. and ginger… not really a fan.  Here’s the funny thing.  I blend those ingredients into a juicer and I LIKE this juice.  I have had juices at juice bars and I am not a fan.  But my snack today… I can drink that all day long.  Matter of fact I drank beets yesterday and  liked it.  My loved ones know how much I HATE beets.  So if I can gain the nutritional properties of these RAW fruits and veggies that under normal circumstances I won’t eat…. Juice away Baby!

I have NO DESIRE to to this ‘juice fast’ for 30 days, there really is no need.  I will, however, be doing the juice only fast for 3 days to re-wire my taste buds. (Oh geeze, I craved bacon day one…. Pecans this morning) Starting day 4 I will be juicing for breakfast and lunch and eating a healthy salad for dinner.  With a nice piece of grilled grouper or maybe some shrimp on top.  I am too much of a foodie to let go of the bounty that God and nature intended me to nourish my body with. I may do that for an additional 10 days and then juice only one meal after that. Our bodies were designed, after all, to chew and digest fiber and food. So the bottom line is I am adding juicing as part of my normal nutritional practices and I KNOW I will be healthier for it. 

I will follow up this post with progress of how I am feeling and what juices I prefer.  (Call it a journal if you will).  I want to chart this course and see what happens… 

Take care kind folks who suffered through this entry to the end!  I love ya for it! 

Shop the latest photo from TasteOfMyCrazyLife on Etsy

The start of my Redemption: Beauty in Brokenness ‘series’. I’m looking forward to sharing with you why I use broken shells and the personal story behind it. Just a sneak peek…. a few more shells to go!
Have a wonderful week!

Taking steps out of my comfort zone! I present to you ‘My Bathroom Door’

Remember in my last post I mentioned a project that I made/designed that I was super proud of? One was a barn door for our beach condo. Thought I’d share it with ya tonight. 

Ya see, I done up and told people on my Facebook that I was gonna start sharing my creations with the world. So why not start with something I am very comfortable sharing… I LOVE this door. I can not take credit for actually putting it together. My tools and such were 300 miles away so my friend made all the cuts and actually constructed it. I, however, did pick the wood, designed the door, and treated the wood. It was burned and stained. (I was really going for a castaway feel) I had so much fun creating this project and thrilled with the results.   Dare I say “proud” of it! 
I will eventually put my face and name to this blog 😱. That scares the crap outta me! So sharing my bathroom door is a baby step. I have to start somewhere…. Right?! 
Today I went out and invested in some supplies for my Etsy shop. Just a few knick knacks to get me started. I am still dreaming up designs. I guess the other thing I really need to do is ‘reintroduce’ myself. You all have access to the ‘I love to travel and foodie’ side of me (the original intent of this blog). You haven’t met the “art studio basement dweller” side of me! (ALthough, I have been showing that side here lately) Both actually go hand in hand, but that is another story! Baby steps y’all.  I am out of comfort zone! 

It Really is Insane

I am not sure what it is in my personality that drives my particular brand of insanity. It is quite nerve wrecking actually. I am either all in, or not at all. For the last two years I have been struggling with what to do. I didn’t waste those two years. I just wasn’t productive much at all. I did finish an interior renovation, but that was it (a 6 week job at the most). I did A LOT of exhaling. Then I got bored. That is never good. 
About 2 weeks ago I entered my basement studio. A place I have neglected and essentially abandoned, for no real reason. I made a barrette, a simple hair clip. What has followed has been overwhelming! My creative brain has turned on (I am literally dreaming projects) and now everywhere I look I see things that need to be done (household purge) and projects that need to be created! Three weeks ago I was overwhelmed by boredom and today I have so many thing to do and create that my laser focus is suffering from ADHD! I have 4 projects laying out and at least 3 more in the queue. My lists have lists!   
But I did manage to squeeze out a project for my home (usually I make things as gifts) but THIS, is for me! Last year my hubs and I went to Mardi Gras in both NOLA and Panama City Beach , Florida. We came home with more beads that I knew what to do with. After taking down Christmas I was wanting color and decorations…. It’s Mardi Gras season! Why not put out the beads? As I was stringing bead necklaces up around the house inspiration hit! Ask the hubs if he would mind if I cut up some of our beads for a project. He said sure! 

This is what my project looks like currently.  It’s not finished yet.  Still have to frame it and add a few more beads, but I am thrilled with the way it has turned out as of right now.  I struggle with finding fault in all that I do.  Last summer was the first time I ever made anything that I stood back and was 100% proud of what I had made (thats another post for another time).  I am learning to give myself grace.  This piece is not perfect I see room for improvement but even in all its flaws I LOVE IT! Much to my surprise my hubs wants to display it year round.  He wouldn’t do that if he really didn’t like it. 

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the weekend. Looking forward to spending it with one of my gal pals!  

My current project

2016 Beads

Last year my darlin’ and I went to NOLA and celebrated Madri Gras.  We ended up with over ten pounds of beads.   After looking at them for almost a year wondering what I earth I was gonna do with them the above project came to me!  So far I’m pretty happy with the results.  Can’t wait to see the final product!