Hubby is building 2 more Tiny Houses

Tiny House by Don Marcille of Small Dog Handyman (Click Photo to Enlarge)

This is a photo of a "Tiny House" my husband, Don Marcille, built in Morgan, Vermont.  It measured 16 x 24 and had a loft and a screened in porch.

He is building another one in Guilford, this Spring and possibly one on Brattleboro this Summer. The owners of both plan to rent them out as an extra source of income.

After we move to the Westminster/Putney Vermont area we are considering building the shells onsite and taking orders for them.

Dug out 2 UFO's & Added Dragonflies and flowers

 

Fooled around with some dragonfly images yesterday.  The background on each of these was painted last year and set aside in my UFO pile (unfinished object pile).  I dug them out and added foreground images on yesterday. 

Gotta go clean house today because we are showing it on Saturday...wish us luck!

Blindly Sewing Into the Forest

Yesterday I dragged out my old Brother sewing machine to see if there was anyway I could get those dang feed dogs to go down but no such luck. So I proceeded to try and do some stitching on my small art quilt despite the fact that the presser foot was solid and I could not see what I was stitching at all. Well it didn't work out to well and I got a killer back ache but I loved the process of tracing around the drawing with stitch and it made me even more motivated to try to find a quilting machine with feed dogs that drop within my almost nonexistent budget.

The sloppiness of my lines is testimony to the fact that the pressure foot was completely blocking the view of where I was trying to go with my stitching. Still I just couldn't make myself stop because I was really loving it.

 I finally did give up because my back was killing me. I think in the future I may try stitching on my tall work table with my painters stool in an almost upright position.

This is the back side of the piece showing the tree outlines.

 I finally did give up because I truly could not see where I was going with the stitching. Perhaps I will play around with some hand stitching on this next.

Mixed Media Paintings Begging to be Stitched

I have been working on some mixed media paintings, actually the backgrounds were painted months ago and lately I have been adding more layers to them. Looking them over last night I feel like they are begging to be stitched. I have been dreaming lately about buying a sewing machine that will do free motion embroidery but finances are tight during this midwinter lull in sales.  Do to the economy I actually had the worst holiday sales season I have ever had, so buying an expensive sewing machine feels a bit like a dream. Perhaps I will explore doing some hand stitching on one to see how it goes. If you know someone that has a free motion embroidery machine they want to find a good home for at a very low price let me know.

Creating with CFS: Abstract Digital Paintings from Food

Digitally Manipulated Photo of Romaine Lettuce

Well this cleanse I am on has not made an impact on my chronic fatigue as quickly as I had hoped it would and I was starting to get pretty depressed about not being able to work in the studio. Creating during bouts of oppressive fatigue or pain flares seems impossible most of the time and this cleanse diet is taking so much of my time and energy each day just preparing the juices and raw foods that there is no energy left for the studio.

Yesterday as I was washing the 4 pounds of organic produce it takes to make our daily batch of juice and I was inspired by all the beautiful veggies lining my counter top. There was a rainbow of textures and colors and I had a little burst of inspiration. I grabbed my camera and took photos of the veggies and then digitally manipulated them on my computer. Even if I didn't create anything brilliant I really enjoyed getting deeply lost in the creative process. I have missed that so much over the last couple of months. It seemed like such an appropriate subject for me to play with since healing foods have become a bit of an obsession with us while we are on this cleanse.

Digitally Manipulated Photo of a Tomato and Cucumber

Digitally Manipulated Photo of Vanilla Extract on Almond Milk

Digitally Manipulated Photo of a Garlic Bulb

Digitally Manipulated Photo of Blueberries

Digitally Manipulated Photo of an Apple

Theif in the Night, Goodbye 2011

"Light Bearer" is a painting I did after seeing the Brazilian healer John of God

Happy New Year's Eve! Hard to believe that tomorrow will be 2012. A year of promise and new opportunities. 

Last night I had a dream that a thief came during the night. That's all I remember, all of the other details were lost in the deep folds of sleep. This morning I woke happier than I have felt in a very long time and I had the distinct sense that through all of this hard work I am doing with this cleansing way of eating something wonderful is occurring within me. I think my "thief in the night" was invited by me to steal away all the things that no longer serve me. In opening my heart, cleansing and detoxing my body and leaving the door to my deepest self ajar I invited this "thief' to steal away my illness, inflammation, pain, depression, anger, grief. Bit by bit he comes at night while my body rests and each morning I awaken with a little less pain, a little less inflammation and a lot less depression. 

My heart is so filled with gratitude this morning. Through this very limited way of eating I really think I have finally found the key to beating this inflammatory-autoimmune disease. 11 years ago I was bitten by a tick and my life descended into a living hell for the next 6 years with no diagnosis. Finally I was diagnosed with Advanced Neurological Lyme Disease and Ankylosing Spondylitis. For the next 5 years I tried every possible means to get well and some things brought improvement others did not. Last winter I was using a combination of a wheelchair, walker and cane to get around. I was paralyzed by fatigue and suffered constant pain. To say I was depressed is an understatement. I was told by my Neurologist to "Go home, get cable TV and a comfy recliner and to make myself comfortable". I looked her in the eye and said "I can't do that, I'm not done yet"

I went to see the Brazilian healer John of God in September and began doing some deep spiritual work. I continued to work with an intuitive healer using biological medicines and I began to make small changes in my diet. Once I felt comfortable with these small changes I cut everything out of my diet except for large amounts of organic vegetables and limited amounts of beans, tofu, nuts, seeds and very limited low sugar fruit. I began making fresh juice and continued drinking my VitaMix green smoothies. The change in my condition since I changed my way of eating has been remarkable in a very short time.

"Radiance" is another painting I did after seeing the Brazilian healer John of God

I am over the moon excited about what 2012 is going to bring. I can't wait to build up enough energy to get back in the studio so that I can explore this new passion I have for creating Art Cloth and making Art Quilts. I feel so energized at the thought of this new creative path and doing some work that is more geared towards abstract, intuitive work than my silk painting, which is more realism based. I am more stirred up creativity than I have been in years. Maybe all that pent up creative energy from all those years of illness keeping me out of the studio is ready to burst forth.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wishing you an abundance of peace, joy and health in 2012

Green Gold, The Art of Healing via Juicing

In my never ending journey to kick this autoimmune diseases butt I have radically changed my diet. Don and are are on what could best be described as a combination of vegan/raw/grain-free/juice cleanse diet. We have survived our first week and are settling into this way of eating quite nicely. I have lost 6 pounds in 5 days which is a nice bonus.

This diet is not for the faint of heart because I spend most of my day buying, washing, chopping, juicing and preparing veggies for meals. It is a lot of work, but from what we have read and seen in documentaries it is a sure fire cure for inflammatory-autoimmune diseases among a holy host of other conditions as well.

The inspiration for this way of eating came from many sources in our lives but two documentries had a very strong influance on us. The first one was "Forks over Knives", you can see trailer here: Forks Over Knives Preview and the other was "Fat Sick & Nearly Dead", you can see that trailer here: Fat Sick & Nearly Dead preview. Both of these films are incredibly inspiring and after watching them I had to try this way of eating for myself. It all just made too much sense not to.  Don and I were also intrigued by The Gerson Therapy diet. You can see a movie preview about that here: The beautiful Truth

I bought the book "Juicing, Fasting, and Detoxing for Life" by Cherie Calbom MS and with our Doctors guidance we are following a modified version of her cleanse. For the first few weeks we are eating 50% to 75% raw organic veggie, green smoothies and fresh veggie juices. The remaining 50% to 25% is cooked veggies, beans, nuts, seeds and tofu. Our goal is to move to as high a percent raw veggie diet as possible cutting back on the nuts, tofu and beans. Then we will start her colon cleanse program. We are adding the fiber drink included in her program 1x a day starting tomorrow.

So that is the plan of attack. I will keep you posted on our healing through cleansing journey! Here are some photos of our juicing process.

Getting all the veggies out of the fridge and onto the counter and starting to wash them. I will end up using about 4 lbs of organic produce.

 

Washing the veggies with "Veggie Wash" and then rinsing them with  filtered water.

 Setting up the juicer and gathering up the washed veggies

 All that work and 4 lbs of organic produce for a bit of this liquid, green gold! 

 Putting the surplus washed veggies in containers for easy storage in the fridge until the whole process starts over tomorrow