I Am Art

create bake laugh

For the last few months- ok, for the last year- we've been making lists of things we mean to do when we have time. The list includes predictable items like answer mail, pay bills, sleep, sleep more.

And then there were some less expected things that we finally got to do last week.
1. Watch a full episode of Grey's Anatomy. It was the first time ever to be seen in my house. Hmmm...I might like the first few seasons of ER better. Luca is dreamy, too.
2. Try some Betty Crocker Warm Delights. The molten chocolate one is good, but be warned, the lemon one tastes like vomit. Blech.
3. Start making prints of some of my artwork. I have started! Prints are available in my etsy shop.
4. Design new shirts for the birth of the Revolution...and more! Every event in life needs a SHIRT!
Of course, we made a Rise Up and Create! shirt...
and a Rise Up and Create! ART CHANGE PEACE (because you CAN make a difference)

and a Rise Up and Bake! Cookies  Cakes  Pies (come on, it is us. Food matters)and a Rise Up and Laugh! (because everything is better when you're laughing):

The even better news is that CafePress now has a wide variety of colors and styles to choose from, even v-neck tees! Our newly designed tees are available in our cafepress store where you can still get our I AM ART shirts as well as the pink Peace Compassion Love shirt (our proceeds from this rose-y shirt go to the For All Kids Foundation).

self portrait

I had big plans to get caught up on mail and email and work stuff today but my husband is home sick. I can't get anything done when my husband is home because, well, he is a man. There was a lot of going up the stairs then down the stairs then up again with water and orange juice and brownies (brownies cure everything, right?). Who needs a treadmill when you live in a two story house with a sick husband? I decided to just give up on the idea of getting work done. I felt like some of my art goodies were getting jealous of the other arty bits I use all the time so I decided to play with the ones who hadn't been picked for any reindeer games in the last 15 minutes.  This self portrait was created with a cool rubber stamp from Paperbag Studios and my favorite  Tintz from FiberScraps.

the fun goes on

Every celebration needs cake. And tonight we are celebrating~it's the one year anniversary of the release of our first book! Like many things we celebrated together in the last year, we are doing it in different houses in different cities because despite popular belief, we don't really live together. It's ok, more cake for each of us! It has been a good year. We traveled from West to East, we met so many people (YOU!) who were delightful and fun (and some people who weren't), we made art with strangers who became friends, we  made art with Rosie who became our champion, we came into your computers and your TV's and your book shelves, we got great flippy hair advice and were pointed in the right direction for good local cuisine, we had a combined total of 12 sinus infections, Karen almost died from kidney failure, I almost died from laughter that time Karen fell in the pool, we spent so much time together that our periods are now in sync within seconds, and we loved every second of it.
When we think about our lives and what happened to get us where we are, it is funny for us to remember how we got started. When I was 17  (um, yeah, 2 weeks ago) and we seesters lived in a tiny one room apartment where we manic panic-ed our hair purple while Karen studied law and I studied design, one night I wrote in my journal I AM ART over and over again. We still believe our mantra and if manic panic were as good as it was in the 80's, I'd be coloring my hair right now.
And the fun is just getting started, again. THANK YOU for sharing in our adventure. We appreciate YOU.
Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing. Our book has been on a bestseller list longer than any book written by either of our brothers. Life is good. Lee's Monk books might be catching up to us....
maybe our fourth book should be Obsessive. Compulsive. Artist.  Hmmmmmm.

you're doing great!

Today We're FEELIN' GROOVY about:
~Knitta, Please. This is just too funny to not laugh at. We love this, it's cool! Too bad we don't knit.
~Cover Girl Lash Exact Mascara. Allure magazine was right, no clumps!
~Finally pretty much being done with a big project...a revolution! wink, wink
~LOST is back on tonight
~Lots of love and support in response to this. Thank you. And just for the record, in real talking reality, I do swear a lot. I just try not to here in case you are reading this with a kid who can read sitting on your lap.

Our Bêtes Noires:
~A sick (and contagious) husband
~People who think they will be diminished by praising others. People, the more love you give, the more you get. It's the law of life. It may not always seem like it, but praise and good things do come back to you, especially when you don't expect it to. We promise you, your value will not become less if you tell someone they are doing a good job.
~Mercury is about to be in retrograde again...back up your computers and get your tires and brakes checked!
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I have new art for sale in my etsy shop.

peace compassion love

At the end of this month we're going to be making our first donation (from the sale of the rose-y I AM ART: Peace Compassion Love shirts) to the For All Kids foundation. We are so happy and thankful that we can do this. It makes us feel good to think we might be able to help two young sisters or brothers who are now in the same situation we were in.
When we were kids, we had to work in the school cafeteria so that we could eat lunch. Our deadbeat dad was off with his new family and our single mother could not afford to feed her four kids. Back then, the plan  in place to help single moms and disadvantaged kids was that the kids would be pulled out of class early (and in front of all the other students), they'd put on aprons and gloves and then they'd serve HOT lunches to all the other kids (would you let your 6 year old get food out of a huge oven or even handle hot trays?). When everyone had been fed, the disadvantaged student could pay a dime and eat what was leftover. If we had a dime and a nickle, we could have milk, too.  Way to make kids feel good about themselves! Those idiots! It's scary to think that more than one person thought that making 8 year-olds work for food instead of being in class  was a good idea. As if kids with absent parents didn't suffer enough.  But, we were hungry so we did what we had to.
The one thing that made our cafeteria jobs bearable was that 2 of us kids attended the same school for most of our elementary school days. We got to work together. And we got to eat together when the other kids were playing or going back to class. We could give each other the look at just the right times. We always had each other in good times and bad and we can't imagine how awful and sad it must've been for kids who were alone.  At least each of us had an older sibling to scare away the bullies, and there are always bullies. We do not want any child to go through what we did.
The good thing is that now there is the For All Kids foundation. They really do help kids. ALL KIDS.

Every child is a gift, strengthening our community, our humanity, and our hope for the future. Every child deserves a safe environment, with responsive, loving care and enriching opportunities that build self-sufficiency and self-worth. Believing it is essential to provide for the fundamental needs of all children, Rosie's For All Kids Foundation supports the intellectual, social, and cultural development of disadvantaged children throughout the United States.

On the right side of this blog is our charity badge so you can make a donation (if you can, we know money is tight for a lot of people right now)  to For All Kids through a partnership between  SixDegrees and Network for Good.  Superstar actor Kevin Bacon will add an additional $10k to the six badges that have the most number of donations between January 18th and March 31st. How cool of him!

breakfast of champions

This morning I sat down to my breakfast of champions and the Sunday paper. WOW! There's Keith Partridge in a brothel holding Visual Chronicles! Wait! No, that is me. Oh my  Buddha! People, no  need to call the style police, that hair style is 2 weeks old. I am better now. And I must give love to the photographer and my treadmill because my double chin is hardly noticeable.  If you look really hard, turn your head sideways and squint, you can see a some of the art in Journal Revolution.

art for sale

I put some new art in my etsy shop.   Go look!

our forgetfulness

Oh my goodness! We totally forgot to say we saw  the adorable and super talented beyond words Christine Adolph at CHA.  We didn't forget that we saw her because we always hope we will see her at these events, we just forgot to say we saw her. She made these really cute teapots with candy inside. We love her. We want to be neighbors with her. Her husband is really nice and artsy and would play nicely with our husbands.
We also forgot to say we saw the girls from Fontwerks who are very funny and nice and make cool stuff. I can't believe I forgot to mention them because we spent a long time laughing and discussing life in Northern California.
Our forgetfulness is so embarrassing and I know we are forgetting to say we saw lots of somebody elses, too. 
One thing we did not forget to notice is that the most popular names of people we met this time were Maria and Mary! Everyone except Christine Adolph was named Maria or Mary. =)