Art by Ronda Juniper Ray

Paint Along Day 4: The wild, wild rose

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:57:00 +0000

Step 1: Slop in some basic values.

Step 2: Do it again.

Step 3: Do it again; add some detail, but do not add your lightest lights and darkest darks just yet! That will wait until the overall painting and the big roses at the top are nearer to done.

Step 4: Slop in the centers, step back and smell the roses. Remember, the lightest lights and darkest darks aren't on here yet. We'll save those until the big roses are done.

Step 5: Break time over! Turn the window over, thoroughly clean the glass, then slop glass medium all over it.

Once dry, slop in some background leaves that are about 50% lighter than your lettering color. You DID save your lettering color, did you not? In a nice glass dish in the fridge, covered tightly with plastic to keep it wet while you worked on the painting?

Ewww, not so pretty from the back!

Next up, painting the big girls.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel painting the big girl roses.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Paint Along Days 3 & 3-1/2: CAN THIS PAINTING BE SAVED??

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sun, 23 May 2010 17:37:00 +0000

When I went to bed last night, all I could here in my head was the sound of the scraper, scrape scrape scraping all that paint off and starting again.

I was so disappointed in the way the garden had turned out. The sky was awful, the lake was awfuller, the climbing porch roses looked like victims of rot, rust, black mildew, aphids and all manner of other things that afflict roses.

I had to be forcefully restrained from scraping it right then and there. However, I do not take the scraper lightly, and try always to sleep on it before wiping a painting off the face of the earth.

Here's what she looked like as I went sadly to bed.

Awakening to a fresh and beautiful Sunday morning, I took the first aid kit to her, beefing up the roses, picking some at the butterfly bushes and hydrangeas, adding visual texture to the sky and blending away and lightening the weirdness that was the lake. The beach wants to be brightened, and the lake probably still needs a bit of attention, but I'm going to let them lie there while I move on to the leaves and beach roses in the floral frame. I think for the time being, I'll let her live!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel and hiding my scraper from myself......
Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Today in the garden

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:53:00 +0000

I took a brief break from my painted garden to go out to the real garden. Amazing what you can see when you look super close up!

As bees buzzed by (and I tried to stay out of their line of fire....)

...these are some of the things I saw....

CLICK ON EACH PHOTO TO ENLARGE -- the detail on some of these flowers is utterly amazing!

Pink peonies

Even a dandelion is beautiful at this scale!

Columbine

Pink Bleeding Heart

Purple thingies -- these things are tiny! Each flower is no more than a quarter inch across. They grow in profusion throughout the yard so that you see vast swaths of purple as you look across the yard. I suppose these would give a lawn snob the vapors (pass the smelling salts, please), but I think they're gorgeous. And they look right nice spread around with the dandelions.

A pink single rose -- first rose of the season!

Yellow iris.

Even the bud is beautiful!

Purple iris and bud.

White flowering shrub thingie. Don't know what it is, but it has a lovely fragrance.

Close up of white flowering shrub thingie.

Sweet clover growing in the yard -- super close up!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Paint along with me-Days 1 and 2

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:40:00 +0000

As I was mucking out my studio at the end of the day the other evening, I turned around and got hit with a face full of THIS.

UGH! (there's a piece of poster board behind it - the back is not yet painted)

Can any good possibly come of this?

Paint along with me to find out! I get asked so many times “How do you do such and such”, I thought this might be a good one to document and comment upon as I work it out over the next few days.

Usually I plan my windows in great detail before picking up the brush. However, this one has been in my head for so long, I thought I could just go ahead and do it.

ha ha ha ha hahhahhahhh huh.

The first thing I did was establish the oval.

I used a turkey platter.

I placed the window right side down on top of the platter and traced the outline of the platter on the back of the glass with a china pencil. I assume this is a grease pencil. All I know for sure it that I was in Home Depot one day a long time ago and saw this package in the tile section called “China Pencil” for marking on ceramic tile before you cut it, and then the mark just wipes right off. HUZZAH! It has long since been my best friend for planning windows!

After establishing the basic shapes and text with the china pencil, it’s time to slop the glass medium. I use Plaid Folk Art Glass and Tile Medium with great success.

I have several pieces of “test” glass upon which I’ve painted with a number of different media, including several brands of glass medium, oil paint, and enamels, in lots of different combinations. I subject my test subjects to all sorts of terrible things, mostly leaving them outdoors year round for years. I have been most satisfied with the performance of glass medium, topped with an acrylic block in and basic definition, finished with oil glazes and varnish.

Just be careful to use ONLY brushes dedicated SOLELY to your glass medium when using it!! I cannot stress this enough. Even the smallest amount of paint in your brush will activate when it comes in contact with wet glass medium, and it will cause bubbling in your glass medium as it dries, and if it doesn’t cause it then, it will cause bubbling as you layer wet paint on top of the dried glass medium. Bubbling is bad. Bubbling can quickly lead to peeling of all your hard work. UGH!

So, on to the painting. First thing to do is paint it on with glass medium. Unfortunately, I didn’t decide to do this paint-along until the glass medium and block in were already on, so I don’t have a photo of it, but will post one the next time I start a window.

I let the medium cure for at least a day before taking paint to it.

Time to get the paint out!

I paint the lettering first whenever possible. There is a reason for that! Although most glass appears “clear”, very few pieces of window glass are actually, truly clear. Most have a bluish or greenish tint, ranging from very slight to near Coke-bottle intensity. Even the slightest tint affects the color you use for the lettering.

Most of the glass I get has a slight greenish tint. This is why you rarely see pink lettering on my windows. Because my lettering is reverse-painted on the back of the glass, the tint affects how the color is seen from the front.

Green is pink’s complement, which means when mixed, the colors are “grayed”, or dulled, in appearance. When you turn the window over and view the lettering from the front, the slightly green glass visually dulls the pink lettering in a most unattractive fashion. So I can only use pink lettering on truly clear glass. Which is harder to find than you might imagine!

As you can see in the photo above, I massed in the framing flowers and based the area of the scene in ivory. No particular reason for this except that that is what dear friend and mentor Connie Parkinson does. Since hers were the very first painting packets I bought as I was learning to paint, it just stuck. It works great, provides a “glow” under the painting in areas where you are painting thinly, and provides quick opacity beneath my painting.

I let that dry thoroughly.

Next day, it was time for the lettering, sky, cottage mass, and lake.

I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS measure and mark my horizon lines parallel to the bottom frame of the window. If you do not, if it is crooked from the window frame, it will drive you crazy every time you look at it! DO NOT USE THE GREASE PENCIL for this mark!!!!!!! I use a quilter’s pencil, a water-soluble marking pencil that writes blue. Once your paint is dry, simply brush water over the mark and it disappears like magic.

Blocking this one in was a bit of a challenge, as I had to create a mental “double exposure” of my two reference photos. I took my friend Helen’s darling Victorian cottage....

....and “hauled” it several miles east of Port Austin, Michigan (where it presently resides) to the shores of Eagle Bay, a lovely, natural and largely undeveloped area.

Such is the privilege of creating your own world with paint. You do not have to paint “truth” if you are not in the mood to do so!

Helen does not know yet that I have stolen her house for personal gain. She won’t know until she sees this post. Lettuce hope she does not mind!! I mean, in return, she gets a fully landscaped, lakefront cottage, even if only in paint! What’s to mind?

Almost immediately after the block in, it became clear that I have already managed to paint myself into a number of corners, giving myself lots of problems to solve.

Problem 1. My original intent was to include the distant shoreline trees that you can see in the photo of Eagle Bay. However, to do that, I would have needed to drop a distant shoreline below the horizon line at some point to the left of the left porch column.

If I add the trees in now, the painting will make no sense -- the trees will appear to be floating over the water, even if end I them before they extend left of the house.

If I try to plop the shoreline in now, the blue of the lake (all the blues in this painting are built from Liquitex Cerulean mixed with....whatever is appropriate, usually whatever medium-value green I have in hand, raw sienna, payne’s gray, and white), is too intense to paint over. By the time I plastered enough paint on to cover the lake, it would be vastly and uglily overpainted. So for the time being, I content myself with the hint of a couple trees behind the right side of the house.

Problem 2. Because of the failure to plan that resulted in Problem 1, the bargeboards on the gable ends of both the porch roof and the second-story gable get lost against the sky.

Lost edges are usually a good thing; they create depth and can be useful in directing the eye around a painting. However, a lost edge in the forefront of a painting is a bad, bad thing!

How to solve this problem?

I once bought a house that was completely encased in ivy. It literally looked like a giant ivy-covered box sitting on a lawn! The previous owner had kept the doors and some of the first floor windows somewhat free of ivy, but otherwise, every wall and roof surface was completely covered and, on the third floor, the ivy had actually pushed through and broken diamond-paned leaded glass windows and was growing INSIDE the house!!

So, I figured I could cover my painted cottage with ivy and then it would stand out against the sky.

And would look incredibly stupid!

I haven’t solved this problem yet.

At this point, I think I’m going to have to glaze the sky into a slightly deeper hue, which, if you look again at the photo of Eagle Bay on a bright sunny day, should be believable, so long as I am very careful that the mix of blue I use is indeed a “sunny day blue”, not an “incoming storm” blue, which would render senseless my sun-drenched cottage!

I have to add in here that as I was discussing this particular problem with my husband just now, he walked in to the studio, took one look at the painting and hollered back to the computer room, well you haven’t painted the front edges of the shingles on the left side of those two roofs.

It’s always so simple, isn’t it? And I failed to see it!

Well, he’s right, but once I do that, it will probably make the bargeboards look “transparent” and I probably will still have to revisit the sky.

We will revisit this problem as the painting draws nearer completion.

Problem 3: I have too many green leaves against a green lawn, and no matter what I do to the leaves, it’s going to be too big of a green blob at the bottom of the painting.

This one is actually fairly easy to solve. I will plop some flowers in the foreground of the painting, “behind” the leaves. I think I’ll plop in some heavily flowering blue hydrangeas in the center and some sort of spiky flower to the right of those.

I will need to size them carefully -- they have to be small enough to be believable in the context of the scene, big enough to be closer to the front of the painting than the flowers around the cottage, but not so big as to look absurd against the beach roses in the bottom of the flowering frame that encircles the scene.

We’ll see how it turns out.

Problem 4. The lawn ends abruptly at the beach. I suppose there are some anal-retentive types who maintain a perfect lawn edge between their yard and the beach, but no one I know has such a perfect edge.

Of course, you can count on one hand the number of people I know who own beach houses. Happily, none of them are anal-retentive.

Sea oats comes to mind as a nice transition (lake oats??), but I want to paint flowers, not oats. I recall a trip to Cape Cod in July, 1990 and remember wild, romantic, tumbling hedges of beach roses delineating the lawn from the beach in front of all those glorious shingle cottages.

Beach roses it is!

Problem 5. All the flowers in the front yard are a figment of my imagination. In this midsummer photo of the side of Helen's house ---

--- I note that Helen has hollyhocks of light and deep pink, and purple coneflowers in her side garden. I decide to use those on the side, altho I replant them in a slightly different order.

She also has pink roses, white roses, periwinkles and blue hydrangeas in her back yard. I decide to transplant those to the front yard.

So I begin merrily scribbling my foliage in.

It occurs to me that what I have planned -- pink roses climbing around the porch columns, a hedge of pink fairy roses below the front windows, light and deep pink hollyhocks, and purple coneflowers (which are really more mauve, you know), is.....something I thought I would never say.....TOO MUCH PINK!

The easiest thing to change is the hedge below the windows. But what should it be?

I pick up my (pink) netbook and google images for “flowering shrubs”. Flowering quince looks lovely, but the color is too intense and too corally for this painting.

My eye lights upon a purple butterfly bush -- PROBLEM SOLVED!

Helen will kill me -- butterfly bush can grow five to fifteen feet tall, and she’ll have to prune it hard every year to keep it from overtaking her windows. And the last thing she needs right now is more work!

Oh, not a problem -- it’s only a painting, and in my painted world, the butterfly bush will always be the perfect height. You’re welcome, Helen.

Problem 6. While preparing the photos for this posting, I notice I failed to paint the gutter along the right side of the roof.

Too bad, so sad, sorry about my luck.

I suppose I could plop paint at the front of the fascia board and make it be the gutter, but I think I’ll be “green” and let the rain water cascade down onto the flowers below.

Of course, all that rain water pouring off the roof will also rot Helen’s basement out, but it’s not my house, so I’m not too overly concerned about it.

Problem 7. When I got up this morning and looked at the painting with fresh eyes, I decided the underside of the eaves, as well as a few other places, while they are indeed in shade, should show “reflected” light. So I plopped long swaths of a blue/green/white mix onto them, a lovely sort of pale aqua color.

Nice idea.

Beautiful color.

Great concept, particularly if I was painting a Key West cottage.

But I’m not, and the color fails miserably in the context of this painting. Not sure yet what the solution will be, but I pretty much only get one more chance to change it, else it will look over-painted, so I will revisit this one later after more of the painting is done.

I might add here that another challenge on this painting was keeping the white cottage just short enough of white that when I blobbed in titanium white to indicate the fish scale siding on the second story and lap siding below, the siding would stand out! But I think I mostly managed to do so. The final evaluation of this particular issue will have to wait until the painting is “done”.

And so here is where I leave the painting this evening after two days of painting. Much of the foliage is done (yes, the small ornamental tree to the left of the cottage is too small in comparison to the real one, but I’m going to leave it as is).

Tomorrow I will add the foliage for the line of beach roses along the sand, the hydrangeas, and whatever spikey flower I decide on for the forefront of the painting. Then the fun part -- slip-slapping and scribbling in all those wee flowers! After that, I’ll tackle the big beach roses on the bottom of the floral frame. Stay tuned!

REMEMBER! These paintings are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ugly before they're beautiful. It will all work out in the end!

I HOPE!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel solving problems!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Shabbiest arch EVER - done!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:05:00 +0000

I scream up and down every time I paint on one of these chippy old pieces that I will never ever EVER do one again!

Ever!

NEVER. Not even if I find the greatest, chippiest piece ever.

Then, I find the greatest, chippiest piece EVER and there goes my resolve right out the window.

Such was the case when I found these fabulous old partial arch at a flea market.

I just love the way this one turned out!

As always, available in Our Cottage Garden! Be sure and stroll around the garden while you’re there -- Denise lists new things almost every night!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

The world's ugliest office chair

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sun, 16 May 2010 15:56:00 +0000

My sole goal when I set out for the flea market this weekend was to find the world's ugliest office chair.

Why, you may ask, do I want to possess the world's ugliest office chair?

Because I keep finding these great cottage chairs, and then someone will email and ask if I have a chair I can paint for them. Off goes my office chair!

I succeeded in my quest for ugliness when there, at the very first booth after we entered the gate, was a vintage Stylaire kitchen stool spray painted (very badly spray painted!) a very, shall we say, CHIPPER yellow. The price was right -- five bucks. It came home with me!

I daresay there isn't too much chance anyone will want roses painted on THIS one! And anyway, I prefer stools for sitting at the computer so my arm isn't resting on the desk while working. So now I have a beautiful, white, antique serpentine Queen Anne desk at which sits this vintage 1950's Stylaire stool. Well, it works for me (no photos of the desk and chair until I clean off my desk!!)

Other finds....an exquisite chippy soft robin's egg blue trunk (on WHEELS! I love just about ANYTHING on wheels!) from the lovely ladies at Collectiques, located in Mahla Antiques at 17th and Smallman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (check out some of their other beauties in the background -- I COVET that robin's egg blue armoire in the background, but didn't have the truck with me - wah!). And a stack of rusty wire baskets (what is that is so appealing about those? But they just grab you!).

The baskets will be used to organize my china choppings, which are presently housed in plastic shoe boxes - GASP! Sorry; I'm not Martha. Or Rachel! But I'll be a step closer once I reorganize into those beautiful baskets. Before and after photos after I have time to do the changeover!

The trunk will house my wool yarn, which presently fills a giant plastic trash bag sitting in the bottom of my studio closet. Bad, bad way to store wool!

So, packed and ready to go on an incredibly beautiful, warm sunny day, we mosied home from the Springfield, Ohio flea market via the back roads, letting the sun and wind blow the cobwebs from our brains.

Oh, and my eleventh wedding anniversary just passed. My husband came home with a lovely anniversary surprise! We had both admired this unusually-proportioned cabinet at a flea market in Powell, Ohio a couple weeks ago. We love things that are different, and being as our wedding china (Old Country Roses) has been packed in the basement for over a year and a half, a china cabinet would be welcome.

But we didn't have the truck with us, and the cupboard was priced so low we didn't figure it would still be there by the time we could get home, get the truck and get back.

On a whim, he went up last week, and it was still there! It has glass shelves and lights up, too! It came from Bloomsbury Loft in Powell. Do visit if you are ever in the area. They have a wonderfully fresh and appealing mix of vintage and modern accessories and fabrics.

Until next time, I'll be reorganizing my china to be chopped and unpacking my wedding china (NOT to be chopped)!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Pretty pretty and Pretty Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:45:00 +0000

A fine day -- dewy and overcast, yet bright, for photographing in the garden this morning! One of my favorite things -- a shabby old panel painting! Lilacs, hydrangeas, and a big fat pink rose complete the painting. Available in Our Cottage Garden.

Next, a fine find at, of all places, the local big box retail store! I don't inhabit those places much, but this particular one happens to have some of the best fresh produce in town in their grocery section, and I needed some fresh strawberries.

As I walked in the door, there, in the "impulse buy" aisle, was a big pile of Laura Ashley goods! I impulsively bought the hatbox. Hat Box. Whatever! Hat Containment Unit? And of course, painted roses right on it.

*********

Those are pretty things. Now for something Pretty Ugly, or at least until it gets its magic makeover. A fab boudoir chair found at the flea market! Well, it will be fab in due time, with liberal application of stripper and sandpaper! And immediate removal of faded black barkcloth! Oh, and anyone who wants that piece of black tropical barkcloth can have it -- just leave a comment and we'll communicate. Free from me to you.

And I found this GLORIOUS vintage Cyrus Clark roses chintz on eBay to recover the seat. It will be ruffled with some scrumptious, very deep, very vintage and very fine crocheted edging I have in my stash. Ooooo, can't wait to get started on this chair!

EDITORIAL NOTE! I find it quite distressing that a 1987 fabric is formally considered "vintage", as it is older than twenty years of age. In my life, there ain't NUTTIN' vintage about 1987! Why, I was just a small child! (uh, well, behaving like one anyway, at that time)

Until next time, I'll be at the easel! (or crawling around sanding that chair!)

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

What is wrong with this painting?

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:46:00 +0000

I absolutely cannot see the mistakes in my paintings until I photograph them and examine the photographs. Then I fix my goobers and get on with my life.

Case in point......the dotted n.......

I did not notice this until I was outside photographing the chair for the customer. I said HUH!?!

Well, "huh" is not exactly what I said. But I cannot repeat what I said in a public space (such as a blog!) where my mother might see it. She would wash my mouth out with soap.

Well, all's well that ends well -- here she is, all corrected and done.

*******

PS Keep your mailman (or mailwoman....) in mind today, and do your bit to help, too! It's Help Stamp Out Hunger Day. Leave non-perishable, non-breakable food by your mail box and your mail carrier will pick it up for donation to local food pantries.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel and practicing my spelling architecture.

Rondawww.antiquecottagerose.com

Pansies, Plates, Fresh Pink Roses, and The F Word

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:58:00 +0000

Fresh from the easel and available for picking in Our Cottage Garden.....

Fresh pink roses x 2

Pansies on a metal palette

Presently on the easel.....foxgloves...a cottage on Eagle Bay....a yard long roses panel.....a vintage footstool with unbelievably AWESOME chippy white and aqua paint......a yard long roses on leaded glass.......an adorable small 4-pane cottage window with roses........a leaded glass “sweet dreams” window.........a cupboard door with mosaic center and big painted roses topper..........a gift shop sign for Whispering Pines Bed and Breakfast...........a small window with mosaic frame............a giant, and I mean HUGE, lazy susan..............and you thought I just sat around all day and ate bon bons!

Well, aside from the fact I don’t eat bon bons any more (the diet, remember?), there just isn’t TIME to sit around gazing at my bon bon-free navel!

*******

And for you china choppers out there, ohhh! The flea market was very, very good to me this week! (I'm just showing you one of each, but several of these came in multiples. OOO LA LA!)

*******

And now, about the F word.....

Vintage Finds! Flea market FINDS! What did you THINK I meant??!

A curved footboard, methinks to be a firescreen/fender? The posts are for legs, since obviously the thing won’t stand on its own. Which didn't occur to me until AFTER I had wangled it into my trunk..... (the vendor threw the cobwebs and filth in for free.)

Will this one be another firescreen? That would be for one tall fireplace!! Or a nice sign in front of someone’s shop? Which means I have to go makin’ sales calls. UGH! Firescreen it will be.
:-D

(Commander Pablo on patrol. Kitties love new stuff!)

Maybe I’ll get these done in time for fall fireplace season? Or maybe not. Maybe NEXT year’s fall fireplace season? They's a whole lotta strippin' that's gotta go on before I can paint these beauties, and stripping is so NOT my favorite chore. Well, not furniture stripping anyway.....
(ewwwwwww.......tmi??)

Normally not a fan of gold, but this pillow-sized square of vintage barkcloth with its foxgloves, calla lilies and hollyhocks grabbed on to me with sharp snarly teeth and wouldn’t let go! It happened to be lying atop that 3 yard piece of creamy vintage upholstery linen that will make a perfect pillow back, so now both sit in my heaping project basket.....

Absolutely SCRUMPTIOUS bit of vintage fabric, but with such modern flair! Hadda have it. Don’t know what it will be. Probably several things, as there is about three yards of it. Yum! Would make a great quilt backing......which would mean I have to go out and buy “go with” fabrics for the quilt TOP. Which will all then be added to my now-overflowing project basket.

Oh, and a delish spring sweater/shrug I just finished crocheting of a sagey-gray boucle..... (yes, I still have to weave in the yarns ends on the sleeves. Oops.

It also still needs a great button or shawl pin, hence the current paint brush closure.

Only thing I wish I’d done differently is added a single crochet band at the bottom of the sleeve before beginning the “bell”. It otherwise just sort of looks like over-sized flutter sleeves, and I’m SO not about flutter sleeves! Bells, yes. Flutters, NOT SO MUCH! In fact, NOT AT ALL. But it’s still cute and comfy, just enough for chill spring evenings.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel. Didn't you see that HUGE list of current on-the-easel projects above?? Of COURSE I'll be at the easel!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Joy of Springtime Roses Painting -- Eighth annual!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:26:00 +0000

Mmmmmm.....is there anything more luscious, more decadent and delightful than a warm, rainy, spring weekend morning? Burrow under the deliciously crisp white sheet for a few more minutes of dreaminess....perhaps the next window inspiration....a bit of snuggling......

Even the cats love to laze on a rainy day.

Alas, between now and a show I am doing in June, there will be positively NO lazing and NO lollygagging, no matter the day of the week, no matter the time on the clock!

No ducklings yet. I googled “mallard gestation” today and learned, much to my surprise, that she will be sitting on those eggs for 28 to 30 days.

My heart cannot take it for another two weeks!! I leap out of bed every morning (except lazy, rainy weekend mornings....) and race outside, robe flapping in the breeze, to make sure the raccoons didn’t get the eggs over night. If she quacks during the night, I race out to chase away any varmints that might be thinking of eggs for a midnight snack. I worry like a, well, an old Mother Hen!

And we’ve got NINE eggs now! There were seven when she first nested. An eighth appeared early last week, and the ninth last night!

In between mallard peeks, I’ve managed to get a few things done. Come for a refreshing stroll in Our Cottage Garden if you’re interested in any of these yummies, and, as always, Denise has fresh vintage treasures in the Garden every single day!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel with the right hand and choppin' china with the left!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Buzzard Breath

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:03:00 +0000

When talented Australian artist Kerryanne English commented on the ducks in my last post, I realized I had forgotten to post photos of my April Fool's Day surprise. Or rather, April Fool's Day disgust, at what greeted us that fine Thursday morning.

There were 28 of them all together, skulking and hulking and lurking around the back yard and in the trees. EWWWWWWWWW. They are nasty, and they are HUGE! These photos were taking from the dining room. In the photos where you see the wing projecting from the roof? That thing is sticking out close to THREE FEET! They were clunking around on the garage roof so hard, I thought they were surely trying to come in and carry me away!

When I sent the photos to my Mom, I asked her if I should paint a buzzard on one of my windows.

Her response? Only if you don't want to sell it.

And a sneak peek into the mosaic studio....

Until next time, I'll be at the easel or.....dodging buzzards.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:35:00 +0000

The Lord doth work in mysterious ways! As you know from my last post, my dad passed away in March. Not content to leave us alone, the Grim Reaper visited himself upon us once again, and my father-in-law passed two weeks after my dad. It was therefore with no regrets whatsoever that I utterly wiped the month of March off my calendar, in perpetuity. No more March for this family!

Sad as it was, the Good Lord works His magic reassuring us that life does, indeed, go on. He chose to bless us with a pair of nesting mallards! Now, we are about a quarter mile up from the river, and there are a half dozen or so back yards and a cross street between us and the river, but for some reason, the ducks chose us, and we are so glad!

The pair has been in the yard for several days. Yesterday, we watched Mama Duck waddle across the yard and cozy up next to our back steps. She stayed there all day. It seemed obvious that she must be nesting, but it seemed equally obvious that there are a whole lot better places to nest closer to the river!

Nonetheless, we discovered today that we are indeed about to become the proud foster parents of seven ducklings, so long as we can keep them safe from the raccoons and the hawks between now and egg-crackin’ time. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I’m getting back up to par with the painting, and have my EIGHTH annual Joy of Springtime window on the easel. EIGHT! Hard to believe, but there it is. It will be done by week's end.

Here are a few other things I’ve finished in all my new free time. (all are sold)

Until next time, I'll be at the easel!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

R.I.P. Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:19:00 +0000

Ronald A. Juniper
1937 - 2010

The best things I learned from my dad:
Love of nature
Practical, down-to-earth approach to life
Wise money management
Nutritional wisdom
Making people laugh

What I will miss the most:
That annual birthday telephone call, "X years ago today, you were a pain in your mother's ass, and you're STILL a pain in the ass."

He was an ornery ol' cuss, and I'll miss him.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Washin’ my drawers down’t’ the washeteria, and other pleasant ways to pass the time

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:24:00 +0000

Thought it time to break radio silence. Three things I’ve been doing instead of blogging:

1. Painting windows! Not finishing them as quickly as I’d like to given patient care and family obligations, but they’re coming along.

2. Spring cleaning and organizing! Spring cleaning always hits me earlier in the year than most. Every single January, I am possessed of a passion to begin the year clean and fresh. Since we “simplified” several years ago, it’s not so much organizing as a really deep down, floor-to-ceiling clean that I covet.

3. Hookin’ and needlin’! When time is too short to allow for the spreading out of paints and brushes and the concentration-intense painting of roses, it’s always easy to pick up a hook or a pair of knitting needles.

Below is my latest window, a southern-inspired confection in pink and white, roses and daisies. I went to college in the deepest deep antebellum South. My dorm was even an old Civil War hospital complete with the ghosts of Confederate soldiers in the attic!

Back in those college days (which, I feel compelled to add, were not THAT long ago), the grownups thought it perfectly acceptable to require our precious darling selves to cart our laundry, on foot, two or three blocks to the local coin-op laundromat (uphill both directions in 3 feet of snow year round. In the deep South....) and do it ourselves. And so we did. But of course, as Southerners so often do, they have delightful word for such a mundane place. They call it the washeteria.

And so, every Saturday morning, my sweet southern roomies and I would haul our dirty drawers down t' the washeteria to do the washin'. I loved that word then, and still do to this very day!

I'm not sure we, in our exuberant youth, so eager to do FUN stuff, not chores, got our laundry "fresh as a daisy and fragrant as a rose", but we survived!

******

I’ve also been teaching myself to knit, which will inevitably become the subject of some hilarious blog posts before all is said and done. I’ve finally caved in and signed up for a class at a local yarn store. It starts February 1, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m a great believer in learning things yourself. So, one Sunday afternoon I headed into the yarn shop to pick up some yarn to finish a scarf I was crocheting for Jack. In its original conception, it was to be a nice, normal scarf.

However, as I began, the yarn (Rowan Pure Life British Sheep Breeds) was so yummy to work with, the scarf quickly took on Dr. Who-like proportions and it has evolved into a 2’ wide by 16’ long (so far) dramatic fashion statement. So much so that it may never grace Jack’s neck, because I may never part with it!

Dr. Who and his scarf, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Tom Baker we sci-fi geeks adore (ya didn’t know that about me, didja?):

Anyway, I went in to the Knitter’s Mercantile to pick up some more yarn for The Scarf. I proudly took with me my latest knitted sample. Now, I’ve already made and sold several knitted pieces, so I was pretty confident in what I was doing. I knew my knit stitches didn’t look quite right, but I figured it was simply a matter of getting better control of my tension.

I whipped it out of my bag and proudly demonstrated my latest pink competence:

The ladies looked at it, looked at each other, then burst out laughing. Those of you who knit will look at the bobbly-headed stitches in this photo and know immediately what I’d been doing wrong. For those of you who don’t, I don’t care to confess my sins. Do YOU ‘fess up to YOUR sins? Suffice to say I’ve been retraining my muscle memory to knit in the proper fashion.

***SIGH***

******

Anyway, as for Jack’s scarf, here’s a photo of what’s done so far. The yarn is undyed - those colors are native to the sheep, and they’re just so rich and wonderful. I’m working with the Black Welsh, Mid-Brown Jacob and Steel Grey Suffolk in a simple sc/dc stich pattern, which makes it nice and thermal and not at all “froofy” - it's manly crochet! I hope to have it done before the sultry heat of summer settles upon us.

And another floral tea cozy -- I’m having a grand time building these beauties!

And another cowl that I created from that incredibly luscious and soft, super bulky, hand-dyed, hand-spun wool from fuzzyfibers1960 on Etsy. Her fibers and her eye for color are so amazingly delectable! I WANT THEM ALL! Knitting and crocheting with the thick/thin yarn is much like giving birth -- the pain is immediately forgotten once your project is completed!

******

We were gifted with time last weekend so we could get away from our patient care duties for a couple nights. Not only did the door not hit us in the ass as we ran out the door, I think we made it twenty miles outside Columbus before that door began its return trip to the frame.

In our younger days, we’d throw some trail mix and a change of undergarments in our back pocket and head out, light-hearted and carefree.

HA! No more......

Piles of chargers and communication devices (including that fabulous PINK netbook gifted to me by Santa Father-In-Law at Christmas) notwithstanding, we had a wonderful, peaceful and blissfully QUIET weekend in a cottage at the White Oak Inn in Danville, Ohio. Located VERY out in the country, it was a much-needed and much appreciated respite! Innkeepers Ian and Yvonne are wonderful hosts and chefs who have been featured in numerous publications and on PBS television.

Here is the living room in our cottage. That's a real wood-burning fireplace and there's a HUGE jacuzzi behind me. There was snow on the ground, and it was just so romantic and blissful.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

My husband's idea of a healthy breakfast.....

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:47:00 +0000

Fudge-n-Butter Cookie sandwich.....

Yes, he really did eat it, and yes, dagnabbitty, he's SKINNY!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel. How many calories does one burn lifting a paint brush??

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

My Eighth Annual Christmas Window, and in which I pretend that Christmas is NOT TO-FREAKING-MORROW!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:43:00 +0000

It’s my annual Christmas window!! Did you think I wouldn’t do one? I think the goddess of painted windows might have forgiven me for not having one this year in light of the perpetual sh*t storm, but EYE would not have forgiven myself!

So in the wee hours of the morning, and in 90 second increments whenever I could find them over the past four months, I got her painted!

This poor window began life in Michigan, one of many in the McKee Mansion in Broken Rocks, Port Austin, Michigan. Then her house was torn out from under her - and I was the lucky gal who got quite a few of the windows and cupboard doors and chippy old oddments from that house! From then, she moved to Ohio with us in 2008, then traveled back to Michigan twice with me last summer while I worked on her, and now, at last, she’s done!

She’ll be available in Our Cottage Garden later tonight.

This is the McKee Mansion, once located on the shores of Lake Huron in Michigan, from whence the window itself came:

**************

Otherwise, I’ve been a speed hooker, as it’s much easier to carry fiber and needles and hooks around from crisis to crisis than, uh, well, windows and paint.

T’is the year of the cozy! Tea cozies and neck cozies....

**************

The diet, the diet!! Yes, I'm still "dieting" tho not as obsessively as I was. Having lost over 60 pounds so far (!!!), I've slowed down to a more manageable (and enjoyable!!) number of daily calories and just keep keeping on. As I like to say, it's a "live-it", not a diet, and I love it!

**************

Mercedes Rule

Somehow I ended up on the mailing list of one of the local Mercedes dealers. That is so hilarious on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.

How many windows would I have to paint to afford a Mercedes? Actually, I think the question is -- how many would I have to SELL to afford a Mercedes? It boggles the mind!

Anyway, I got a bright, shiny big booklet in the mail this week with the 2010 models in it. Wheweeeee! Nice stuff! But it was a vintage one inside the front cover that won my heart.

I taped it to the tree in hopes that the Marital Santa will GET A CLUE and leave one in the driveway for me. Big bow optional, but would be a very nice touch. Or, I guess he could just pop up those gull wing doors -- they look kind of like a big bow.

**************

Froggy went a’courtin’

Each year, my husband and I choose a blown glass ornament to add to our collection. Sometimes they’re new, sometimes they’re vintage. Always they are beautiful. Well, until THIS year....

Dear husband Jack lost his heart to this goofy thing, and his eyes lit up so much when he saw it, I just didn’t have the heart to roll my own and say, EWWWWW. And anyway, it’s kinda growing on me. It was like three bucks on sale at the Cracker Barrel gift shop last week, so no complaints about the price!!

Next time, I'll show you my buzz cut. Yep, whacked off EVERY SINGLE INCH!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Crumby Goodness!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:32:00 +0000

My father-in-law, who his grandkids and kids-in-law refer to as BaPaw (rhymes with paw-paw), loves bananas. Because he loves them borderline green and doesn’t eat too much, I’m finding myself with bananas piling up.

Last night, I made this INCREDIBLE Banana Crumb Muffin recipe (below). SUPERB! Very moist and rich, super tasty, and, for those who can’t eat - or don’t like - nuts in their foods, no nuts! But you could toss in a half cup of your favorite nutty deliciousness if you'd like.

I made half without the crumb topping so my dad, who doesn’t have a big sweet tooth, could also enjoy them. He’s presently in an in-patient physical rehabilitation center, for the past three weeks with one week to go, and he is MIGHTILY tired of hospital food!

These are very fast to make. Serve them warm with chunks of ice cold butter at your next gathering and you will RULE THE WORLD!

Enjoy!

Banana Crumb Muffins (no nuts)
(makes 12)

1-1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 bananas, mashed
3/4 Cup white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 Cup butter, melted
Optional: 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg

TOPPING:
1/2 C packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Lightly grease 12 muffin cups or line with muffin papers.

In a large bowl, mix together 1-1/2 C flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt (and optional cinnamon and nutmeg if desired).

In a medium bowl, beat together bananas, white sugar, egg and melted butter. Add banana mixture to flour mixture and stir just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.

In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 Tbsp flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 Tbsp butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.

Bake in preheated oven for 18-20 minutes until toothpick inserted into center of muffin comes out clean and very lightly brown on top.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel or.....gobbling banana crumb muffins! They DO count as a fruit on a diet, right? And fruit content overrides carb content, right? RIGHT?!?

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

The Diet: Day 73; & The World's Laziest, Fastest Slipcover How-To

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Hi! You’re here! Well, far be it from me to keep you from this splendidly gorgeous fall day we’re having, but since you’re here, I’m gonna brag. Yep, I’m still on that infernal diet, but IT’S WORKING! 48 pounds down the drain! Feeling fit and fabulous!

Things have been quite calamitous around here, what with both of us experiencing very serious unexpected health issues in both of our families, one right after another in a very short amount of time. To the point that we’ve taken to calling it a Sh*t Storm. No better description for it!

But we’re coping well. We solved one issue by moving my father-in-law in with us last week. He's adjusting well, very happy to be in such a pretty setting and having people around all the time to tend to his meals and other needs. I was worried he’d have a hard time adjusting from independent living, but he seems as contented as can be.

Father-in-law settled in, everyone else relatively stable, and not needing to putter around in the yard so much this time of year, I returned my attention to trying to perk up the decor around here. My chair and ottoman needed SERIOUS attention! They are EEWWWWWWWWWW. You can tell where the cats like to lay!

We’ve had it about ten years now and I love that chair like an armchair quarterback loves his recliner. It’s SOOO comfortable, and I love the taupey damask. But you can only clean them so many times before they get too overly tatty, and this one passed the tatty stage and went into tattered a long time ago.

I have a collection of sheets and quilts with which I was going to make a slipcover for it, but tending to BaPaw (father-in-law) doesn’t really leave a lot of time for the detailed measuring and fitting and cutting of tissue paper blahblahblah. So I bought a Sure Fit cotton duck in sage for the chair. I mean, it was $40 on ebay with shipping, and brand new, so I simply couldn’t pass it up. I figured I’d use some of those collected sheets and quilts for a custom ottoman cover.

I first drew up a really nice reversible affair, pretty pink and white lip cord around the seams marking the top and bottom of the top cushion and triple ruffles for the bottom half.

As I figured out my cutting measurements and got a good grasp on how much work I was letting myself in for, I dropped the reversible part. Then dropped to two tiers of ruffles, then one tier.

Then I decided to drop the whole “ruffle” concept and just put pleats at the corners of the skirt and leave the rest straight.

Well, if there’s a really super fast, easy and relatively cheap way to do something, I’m gonna find it. Lip cord ain’t cheap, at least not the one I loved - $14.99 a yard, and I needed 7 yards!!! Wasn’t gonna happen.

So I drew an even simpler version that would require half as much lip cord and one less seam. I pulled my collection of sheets and quilts out to make a final determination of what color of lip cord I wanted.

As I spread them out on the floor to ponder, I had a light bulb moment. Why on earth was I making this so difficult on myself?

I grabbed up the smallest quilt, tossed it over the ottoman and VOILA! Almost perfect! I ripped four 4” strips from a divine vintage mini-rose motif duvet cover, stitched them together, folded the strip in half, stitched the ends and the long side seam, turned, starched, pressed, and tied! Arranged the corners of the quilt.

DONE!

Time spent: 25 minutes of toss, rip, sew, turn, press, place, and tie.

Yes, you DO see wrinkles on the slipcover. Why on earth would I iron it? People are just gonna sit on it and leave wrinkles. Have you forgotten how much I hate to iron?

Pillows by the irrepressible Connie at Living Beautifully.

This makeover has earned Pablo's Cat Seal of Approval.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel or....hiding from calamity!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Adventures in Modern Road Construction, Road Warrioring, and Life on the Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:47:00 +0000

The trip home was bad. Verrrrry, ver-r-r-r-r-ry bad. Apparently asleep at the wheel or daydreaming or singing at the top of my lungs and just not paying attention, I missed my veer off to Route 23, a gentle, mostly bucolic, easy-on-the-eyes excursion, a pleasant way to travel the road home transitioning back to “real” life from life at the beach.

But I missed it. I was about 20 miles into my mistake before I realized it. I suddenly spied a mileage sign that said: Detroit 31. DETROIT?!! Holy Mapquest, Batman! I should have been nearing Ann Arbor, NOT DETROIT! I knew immediately what I’d done, and how I’d done it.

You see, I am a right lane hugger. My husband is a left lane hog. Generally, I would be in the right lane, happily cruise-controlled behind a semi doing 68 miles an hour, and would seamlessly and effortlessly and without any thought glide onto Route 23.

But since I took this trip by myself and had had the car to myself for over a week, I had quickly adopted the maniacal road warrior tendencies of the motorists around me. I had no passenger about whom my concern would force more polite driving manners, and I had no navigator to shout VEER! VEER! YOU’RE ABOUT TO MISS YOUR EXIT, MORON!

So anyway, I was in the left lane doing my Xena, Road Warrior Princess bit and missed the veer. There I was, stuck on the Horror Highway to Hell of the North, Interstate 75.

At 31 miles from Detroit, I had a couple miles til the next exit to decide whether or not to turn around and go back to Route 23. But I really really REALLY hate to backtrack and redo ANYTHING. Be it in life, painting, cooking, gardening, whatever, and yes, driving, I HATE DO-OVERS. Of ANYTHING. So I decided to tough it out. I said to myself, Self, just gut it out, it will be an exercise in character-building, and you will NEVER EVER EVER make this navigational error again!

So of course, I-75 goes right through the hearts of both Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. A real armpit of a trip. Well over a hundred miles of urban and industrial wasteland. (They don’t build freeways through the nice parts of town.) Hot (no a/c in the car -- it’s been broken for six years and they want wa-a-a-ay too much money to recharge it with some fancy, environmentally friendly substitute for good old-fashioned, ozone-eating freon, which the car can’t use), sweaty, horrendous mid-day sun glare, a hideous experience.

Lots of opportunities to fine-tune your most intricate driving skills, as in, HOLY CRAP, if I don’t dash over six lanes of traffic RIGHT THIS INSTANT I will be on the bridge to Canada and I do not have my passport with me and they will throw me in jail as a suspected terrorist!!!

There were also lots of opportunities to fine-tune the expressions of one’s road rage. Like, pretty much at every on-ramp to the freeway, where it seemed every single motorist was moseying onto the 80 mph freeway doing 32 mph. I’m guessing they were all heading out to exercise their Cash for Clunkers trade-ins.

Which is probably where I should have been, except I HATE CAR PAYMENTS. At nine years of age and nearing 150,000 miles, my sweet, topless chick-mobile is the equivalent of a 49 year old woman. She was shiny and beautiful in her youth, but now her looks are starting to fade, she’s a bit creaky and jiggly, and various parts of her need jacked up here and there from time to time. Trust me; I know whereof I speak. Although duct tape works far better on car parts than body parts.......

So anyway, I finally made it to Findlay, Ohio, where I was able to get back on my beloved and beautiful Route 23 for the last two and a half hours home. All in all, it could have been far worse -- although there was lots of road construction, I never hit any major backups or slow downs, and I learned that very valuable object lesson about paying attention while driving so as to avoid nasty navigational errors.

The worst part, really, was the long stretch between, uhhhh, bathroom breaks. You see, I had gassed up and "refreshed" in Marlette, Michigan, and had stopped at the local McDonald’s and got my third large iced tea of the day. From there, I passed only one roadside rest area, and that was very early in my navigational error, when I didn’t have to “go”. By the time I had to “go”, I was well onto I-75, and there was not one, NOT ONE, roadside rest area until Bowling Green, Ohio. That is a distance of 180 miles, half of the entire trip. I usually stop THREE TIMES during my trips between Port Austin and home (49 year old bladders being much like 49 year old cars.....). Between three large iced teas and the teeth-gritting stress of traveling through Detroit and Toledo, well, you know....

But I was NOT GETTING OFF THAT FREEWAY! For one thing, a woman traveling alone chooses her stops carefully, and Detroit, well, with apologies to the many fine citizens of Detroit, I wasn’t stopping in Detroit.

The first time I traveled I-75 alone three years ago, I was traveling to St. Clair, Michigan to meet up with my friend Pam. My parents were terrified, first because I was traveling to meet someone I knew only through eBay and email, and second because I had to travel through Detroit to get there. My Dad had sternly warned me, “Do not stop in Detroit for ANYTHING. Even if you have a flat tire, YOU KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU GET OUT OF DETROIT!”

So with Dad’s stern voice still echoing in my head three years later, I held my knees together tightly and just kept moving. By the time I hit Toledo, I just wanted to get off I-75 and back to Route 23, and I truly didn’t care if I, ummm, well, watered the seat of the car. So I toughed it out until I made it safely (and dryly) to the rest area in Bowling Green.

*********
Speaking of road construction, I arrived at my motel in Port Austin, Michigan, to be greeted by - AHHHHHHHH - my favorite sight in the world, Lake Huron at the end of Larned Road:

But, uhhhhhhh, what is THIS?

Uh oh, spaghetti-o.

There were FIVE pieces of big, heavy road construction equipment. Now, the Port Austin Motel is located on a dead end, heavily wooded, one-lane road that isn’t much more than a couple of hundred feet long. Couple of houses, the motel, no traffic to speak of, a bit of paradise.

Remember, I lived right there until last fall -- few come this way because few really pay attention to what a jewel and a treasure it is. It’s an unmarked spit of public beach with no parking area; even people who live there generally pass it by for the bigger public beaches in the area. (Their loss.) What on earth could all this equipment be doing on this tiny bit of road in the middle of No-Freaking-Where, Michigan??!

Turns out they were enclosing a ditch, putting piping and catch basins in to carry storm runoff to the lake. The job was originally supposed to be completed before Memorial Day so as to avoid the noise and dust and inconvenience of road work during tourist season. But, of course, you know how the government works..... So here it was, the end of July, and the work was just gearing into full swing.

Well, I hitched up my Big Girl Panties and bravely said to myself, Self, you can just go to another beach for the eight hours a day they’re working, right? Right-o. My old neighbors assured me they didn’t start working until 7 in the morning, and my friends that owned the motel said they didn’t start working until 7:30 in the morning. I am an early riser. Plenty of time to get up, exercise, shower, load up my painting supplies, and go beach-hopping.

They started working at 6:05 Monday morning, and were still at work at 6:05 Monday evening.......

Ten feet from my room, clanking and digging and roaring, spewing diesel and dust. Lots and lots of gritty, sandy dust. Being blown all over paradise by those beautiful lake breezes. My pretty white car soon looked like it had been painted tan.

Couple days of that, and my Big Girl Panties were in a serious wad. I called my husband, all sniffy and sobby, and said, My Big Girl Panties are in a serious wad and I’m coming home.

But Fate sometimes smiles beneficently upon you. I packed up the car and headed into town to say my goodbyes. My friends Helen and Angie, interior decorators and owners of the finest and sweetest cottage shop on the planet, The Haven Antiques, said, “Oh, one of our clients has a cottage behind their house on the lake. We’ll call and see if it’s available.” It WAS! HURRAY!

So I headed 20 miles west, past Caseville, to a gorgeous, breezy, light-filled two-bedroom cottage owned by one of the nicest, wonderful couples you could ever hope to meet. Lots of flowers and trees, a truly restful and lovely place.

This is the back of the cottage. I seem stupidly to have not take a photo of the front, which was a completely enclosed, enormous patio with lots of glass looking out. Very private, so restful.

In that area, the houses are perched about 25’ above the beach. You had to go down some steep stairs, climb down a small dune and walk across a boardwalk over wetlands to get to their private beach, but once you were there, oh, HEAVEN! You could hear nothing but the waves and the wind and the seagulls.

Looking back towards the cottage from the beach:
The beach from the end of the boardwalk. Oh how I wish I could have slapped some pink roses on that shabby old white paint on that boat! This view will most likely turn up in a painting on one of my windows one day soon!

"I heart Caseville" scrawled in the sand by a previous guest of the cottage. I thought about scrawling "I heart Port Austin" next to it, but that seemed highly ungracious, especially in light of the fact that my host and hostess took me in on 45 minutes notice, not knowing whether or not I might be a marauding thief or worse!

I spent two wonderful days there painting happily on the beach and enjoying the spectacular sunsets, then went back to the Port Austin Motel for the weekend (government contracts are not executed during weekends). So while I ended up cutting a couple days off my trip, it was wonderful nonetheless!

Last gasp before dropping below the horizon....

There was no wifi at the cottage as there was at the motel (and I am too cheap to invest in a mifi card just yet), so I was unconnected while I was there, but who really cares? Blissful beaching with no nagging thoughts of “I really oughta check my email”. Fabulous!

And I got some lovely painting done. Two half yard panels (below) completed on the beaches of Port Austin and Caseville, a yard long roses painting on a shabby ol’ cupboard door nearly done, and a joyful cherubs window under way. There might be a bit of sand in those paintings, but they were completed in utter and complete happiness. You can see the panels in Our Cottage Garden, and the others will be posted here as soon as they’re done.

********

There was one small price to pay on the home front for my extended absence. The deer and fawns in our woods at home know that if the feed bins are empty, they can walk up to the screened porch and make their “whuffing” noises, and I will come out and feed them.

Of course, for the past week and a half, there’s been no one home during the day to answer their whuffing, so they exacted their revenge on my hostas. Once I was home and filled the feeders and was back at the easel painting, Little Doe made a point of walking over to my studio window and taking once last swipe at the hostas outside my studio window. I wish I’d have had the video running, because after she took this bite, she looked up at me, stuck out her tongue, then strolled over to the feeders.

********
All in all, navigational errors and road construction notwithstanding, the trip was a delightful and healing respite from the usual daily life. I can hardly wait until next year!

********

On the shopping front, I didn’t do much as I’m not much of a shopper, although I did find myself at one point in need of doing laundry. PFFFFT! Summer stuff is on sale, so I found a cute new sundress and very fashionable pink and black tiered skirt for the combined sum total of $18. This is in keeping with Ronda’s Theorem One: One’s interest in fashion increases in direct proportion to each pound of excess weight lost! Which has a direct corollary to Ronda's Theorem Two: The odds of whether or not a piece of clothing gets purchased rise in direct proportion to each dollar that the sale price drops.

And I brought home an amazing Bird Mansion, crafted of architectural salvage bits by my afore-mentioned and incredibly creative friends Helen and Angie. Old wood, funky table knees, and the ornate top of a cast iron stove to crown it off.

It is HUGE! When next you see it, it will be mosaiced with lots of my old china collection, and smothered in big fat juicy pink roses!

********

I might add here, with regard to The Diet, I GAINED NO WEIGHT while I was gone!!! That is a huge victory, because I ate pretty badly, but I exercised obsessively. Five miles a day pounding the pavement (half in the morning and half in the evening), and at least one hour a day of aerobics, usually 1-1/2 to 2 hours. I knew I was eating poorly, and I knew if I didn’t want to gain any of my weight back I had to pay the price. The price was exercise. I happily paid it, and it was well worth every drop of sweat!

Until next time, I'll be at the easel and counting the days until my next trip Up North!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Roses, Cherubs, and THE DIET, Day 26!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:40:00 +0000

As of last week’s weigh-in, I have managed to lose 24 pounds already! The fat's just melting off like butter!

As well it should, since much of it IS butter.......

Much of it due in large part, I suspect, to the fact that I have added lots of walking and mini-tramping to my daily Wii.

Note to self:

IT’S THE EXERCISE, STUPID.

Well, that and the fact that I’m not stuffing potato chips in my face every five seconds. Three seconds.......two..... ZERO TO SIXTY CHIPS IN NINE SECONDS!

Jack’s been doing the program with me and he’s lost 18 pounds! We put on our tee-shirts from our honeymoon resort this morning.

At this point, he looks far better in his, what with it hanging loosely on him, than I look in mine. AT LEAST I GOT IT ON THIS TIME! The last time I tried it on a couple months ago it was so tight I couldn't even get it over my fat arms. Ick. Blech. Disgust.

Yesterday morning, I put on my jeans, then promptly pulled them right back off, then put them back on -- without unbuttoning and unzipping them! What a feeling!

In lieu of stuffing potato chips, I’ve been stuffing a paint brush in my hand. Here are some of the pretties I’ve finished recently.

Now, in about five minutes, I’m off to Michigan for ten days of fun, fishing, sun, sand, and, well, work. Yes, I’m taking work with me, and have work to do once I get up there, too. This one’s without The Husband, so I can gossip and giggle with the gal pals til the cows come home. Uh, after I’ve finished the day’s work, natch.

I hope to lose six more pounds while I’m up there so I can top the thirty pound mark. WOO HOO!

Until next time, I'll have my fishing pole in the beautiful blue waters of Lake Huron, after which, yes, I will indulge in beer-battered walleye. In exchange for an extra two miles on the daily walk, of course.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Diet, Day 7: Nestles makes the very best.....

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:32:00 +0000

....cho-o-o-o-o-o-o-colate.

Have I mentioned that this medically supervised 420 calorie/day liquid program I am on, Optifast, is made by Nestle????

HOLY BUTTERFINGER BAR HAAGEN DAZS ICE CREAM, Batman!

That is just SO WRONG! I mean, good strategic product acquisition on Nestle’s part (they acquired the product from Novartis), but for CRYIN’ IN A BUCKET! They getcha goin’ up and they getcha comin’ down.

(and just HOW MANY Butterfinger Bars and Haagen Dazs ice creams have I eaten, you may ask? Let me count the dimples on my thighs.....)

I was gonna post over the weekend, truly I was. But when I woke up Saturday morning, I thought, as I do each morning, DAY 4! I CAN DO THIS! YES I CAN!

And then I thought.....oh.....uh oh......today is the Fourth of July. My favorite holiday. Family, friends, grilling franks and burgers on the barbie....

Well THAT was poor planning on my part!

And then the voices in my head started singing, "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener..." over and over and over. And over. And over. All. Day. Long. The voices in my head...

Of course, I didn't really want to BE an Oscar Meyer Wiener. I wanted to EAT an Oscar Meyer Wiener. Or ANY wiener. And cheeseburger. And potato chips. And strawberry shortcake. With real whipped cream. And ice-cold beer to wash it all down.

But I was good. I didn't eat (or drink) any "bad" stuff. I DID make one wee substitution. I ate one boiled egg (70 calories, negligible carbs) for one of my 80 calorie shakes. Let me tell you, no thirty dollar filet mignon ever tasted as good as that egg!

On the plus side, I probably burned several thousand calories reaching up thousands of times to wipe the drool off my face as I smelled those tasty favorites grillin' all day.

*****

Baby love! I captured these photos yesterday afternoon. That is Little Doe and two sweet babies. The larger fawn belongs to Big Doe, who was lounging in the shade about a half acre away.

I guess it was Little Doe's day to watch the kids.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel chanting: I CAN DO THIS! YES I CAN! Just loud enough to drown out the voices in my head.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Diet, Day 3: Things that make me go Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:21:00 +0000

I got thru Days 1 and 2 of the medically supervised 420 calorie/day liquid diet with only a modicum of shouting, pouting, kicking and throwing things. Now might be a good time to give up my daily addiction to Gordon Ramsey shows on BBC.....

Medically Supervised 420 calorie/day Liquid Diet - if I were texting or tweeting, I suppose I would have to write MS4CDLD. Sounds kind of Star Warish. As well it should. This IS war! The War on Weight.

Our local paper, the Columbus Dispatch, reported yesterday that Ohio is the tenth fattest state in the Union. HOLY POTATO CHIPS! Well, I’m doing my part. By the time I’m done, the Buckeye State should drop to fifteenth or twentieth......

My husband gave me a Wii for my birthday last week in anticipation of my weight loss program. Dr. Misogyny doesn’t want you doing anything too heavy during the first couple weeks of the 420 calories-a-day plan, but I have to do SOMETHING in the morning.

I can’t just sit around on my arse. That seems counter-intuitive to a weight loss plan, does it not? I don't even sit to paint! I stand in front of the easel all day. In the morning, I usually do a nice step workout on my garage steps, which are quite tall, followed by a quick “run” on the mini-rebounder. And I love to boogie around to 70s disco music and work up a good sweat. But for now, I’ll content myself with the Wii.

If you’ve not tried it, let me assure you the boxing game is a SUPERB way to work out one’s high dudgeon over being denied the pleasure of incessantly stuff food in one’s face. BAM. BOOM. KAPOW. Just make sure the only person you’re punching is your VIRTUAL boxing partner!!!

This is mii. You get to design your own self. Note the PINK shorts. Alas, they don't let you choose your boxing glove color, else they'd be pink, too.

BAM BOOM KAPOW! I always win. ALWAYS. And by the way, Wii boxing burns an impressive 125 calories per half hour of play!

On the home front, Baby Love continues in full blossom. These were taken at our feeders yesterday morning.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel or pounding the Wii.

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Diet: Day 1; new babies, and some done!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:45:00 +0000

So, I packed on a few pounds last fall. I call it my "sad weight", not because it's sad that I put it on, altho it is, but because I was sad leaving Michigan, so I drowned my sorrow in food. (Now you know why the person who updated her blog photo every month stopped doing so in November!!)

OK, Self Pity Button OFF. It's time to be gone with the weight! So I decided to do a medically supervised liquid diet, Optifast.

I get to the physician's office last night, and he suggests that I try the very low calorie plan. The standard plan is 800 calories a day, not too bad. The very low calorie plan is a whopping FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY, yes, that's 420, calories a day. The difference between the two is that the low plan has far fewer carbs, and he doesn't believe women need the carbs. OH JOY! I have duly renamed him Dr. Misogyny.

Anyway, today is Day 1, and I dutifully mixed my tasty shake up at 8:00 this morning. Really, it's not too bad, and it thickens up like a real milk shake. I can do this, yes I can! Altho I suspect that once I'm done with this plan, I will never ever ever EVER again in my whole life want a chocolate or vanilla shake....

Next shake at 11:00 (a mere 10,800 seconds after the first). In the meantime, I've gotten two emails so far this morning, and I really could not make this stuff up:

1. from amazon.com: Martha Stewart's new cupcake book!

2. from bd's Mongolian BBQ (our favorite restaurant): price rollback this weekend!

How many seconds til my next shake?

Oh, and the kitties are demonstrating the proper way to exercise on my mini-rebounder, exercise being an important component of any diet......

*****

To further remove myself from kitchen and fridge, and to more fully enjoy our beautiful outdoors here, I've moved the studio out to the screened porch for the summer. Beauteous! Is it as marvy as painting on the beach in Michigan? Well, probably not, but I figure if I put a sandbox in front of the easel to stand in while I'm painting, I can probably convince myself it's even BETTER than painting on the beach because I don't have to contend with sun and insects! (I am very good at deceiving myself. Self-deception is good! This is an excellent coping skill.)

*****
By means of further self-deception, I generally do not like to use the word DIEt. I prefer to use the word LIVE-it. Whatever works!

*****

When one is not stuffing food in one's face every five seconds, one suddenly has even MORE time to paint! So I suspect I'll get lots of the UFO's sitting around the studio finished at last. Here are two I finished last week.

Both are Royal Albert, from my personal collection. The first is Camille, and the second, Old English Roses. I go through teacup phases from time to time, and I'm certainly on a tea tear right now!

*****

As you've seen from previous photos on the blog, we have lots of deer around us. We were blessed this spring with a new arrival! Two, actually. There are two does in our woods, creatively named Little Doe and Big Doe, and each has their own sweet little Bambi! This is Little Doe and her sweet baby. Big Doe is much more skittish than Little Doe, so I don't have any photos of she and her baby yet.

It is HILARIOUS to watch them romp around the yard! You know how if you have a house that has circulation clear around the core of the house, toddlers will race endlessly around the circle? The baby deer do the same thing, running through our yard, into the woods, out into the neighbors' yard, back through the woods and into our yard, just scampering their fool heads off! Unfortunately, I've not yet been able to capture them in one photo, but it is a real joy to watch.

*****

Until next time, I'll be at the easel working on my pink patriotic window, feverishly counting the seconds until my next yummy diet, er, live-it, shake..................

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

An art show, a birthday, an anniversary and LOTS DONE!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:13:00 +0000

Today is the day that my parents fall down on their knees and give passionate thanks to the Good Lord Above for the joyful circumstance of my birth.

My Dad will call later today and in his annual bellicose way, holler, “X number of years ago, you were a pain in your mother’s a$s, and you’ve been nothing but a pain in the a$s ever since!” As you might well imagine, I treasure those annual calls.

For those of you who adore algebra, x = 29. Well, umm, OK, so yes, I’ve been 29 for awhile now, but you can still count the number of decades that I have been 29 on one hand, so at least that’s something.

Well under half a hand, actually.

Just sayin’.

The art show and artist studio tour in Port Austin, Michigan this past weekend were a BLAST! Gorgeous weather, meeting up with old friends and neighbors, and new ones, too, a perfect weekend.

My first sale of the weekend was actually to a GUY! I've had male customers over the years, but it always surprises me. I guess that's kinda sexist -- men can love roses, too, and if you think about it a bit, some of the most famous rosarians have been men!

Just WAIT til you see the shop, The Haven Antiques and Gifts, and summer house where the show was. Just so gorgeous, cottage charming, romantic, divine, sublime, wonderful! Owners Helen and Angie are two of the most amazingly creative and energetic women you'll ever meet. I’ll be posting photos in a bit.

As well, Jack and I had a wonderful, romantic 10th wedding anniversary weekend away in May to our favorite bed & breakfast, Whispering Pines in Dellroy, Ohio. Just WAIT til I post the photos! AND! They let me raid their barn, from which I hauled away quite a stash of amazing arch windows from their beautiful Victorian home. Not to mention the gothic arch church window I found at an antique shop in New Philadelphia! Photos soon!

In the meantime, these goodies are done and eagerly awaiting new homes. They're posed prettily in Our Cottage Garden - stop by for a visit!

This one is a shelf built of upcycled salvage materials.

This next one's a Royal Halsey tea cup from my personal collection.

I love doing these illustration-style windows! Entirely reverse-painted, they're a bit of a challenge, but I love the look.

This next one is the center section of a 3-part gothic arch salvaged from a historic home in Bexley, Ohio.

This leaded glass window is from a stunning 1927 brick four-square in Upper Arlington, Ohio. It had one cracked pane. Replacing panes in a leaded glass window is expensive, so we don't. Especially since we have a double closet filled stem to stern and top to bottom with boxes of chippy old rose china! Problem solved.

I found this long plank clad in chippy old green paint in the top of my garage when we moved in last fall! The house is a mid-century ranch that has been thoroughly modernized, so no clue remains as to what it might have once been a part of.

OK, I can't stand it -- here's a sneak peek at that gothic church window!! Of course, I'm having the glass replaced -- each pane in this one is a different kind and color and print and texture of glass, so I had clear glass put in it.

Until next time, I'll be at the easel! Two gorgeous cherub windows are in the works, more plinths, a darling little canvas -- the creative well overfloweth!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com

Cast Iron Arch Eyebrow Window - Done!

noreply@blogger.com (Art by Ronda Juniper Ray) — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:09:00 +0000

This is one fabulous wee window! At 31" x 9-1/2", it's that wonderful yard long style so perfect for the romantic cottage home.

A sweet spray of vintage pink roses, bug bites, dew drops and thorns, and it's a bit of pinky pink heaven!

This one's a shelf or mantle sitter and lean it against the wall, or sit it on a pair of wall-mounted corbels -- there was just no good way to attach hanging apparatus to rusty, crusty, shabby old cast iron.

This one is available on eBay!

Until next time, I'll still be at the easel painting my fingers off!

Ronda
www.antiquecottagerose.com