Close to the end..

I played with a couple ideas on what to write about tonight... and almost went into the end of the year/new year theme... but, then what would I write about tomorrow?! So instead, I googled today's date to see if there was anything more this day offers besides being close to the end. 

Well as you all know, today is December 30th. Since this year there was no leap year, that also makes today the 364th day of the year. According to Wikipedia, today is also the birthday for a few people you may know including: 

1. golf pro and professional cheater -Tiger Woods
2. pro boxer and daughter of Muhammad Ali -  Laila Ali
3. actor, singer, and just plain sexy - Tyrese
4. pro basketball player and big baby - LeBron James
5. professional skateboarder and playable character on multiple Tony Hawk games - Ryan Scheckler 

Another memorable event of the day is, in 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging. Go America.

On my hunt for fun facts about the day, Wikipedia wasn't doing it for me... so I was curious to see if there were any crazy holidays on the record for December 30th. Turns out...THERE IS!

Drum rolllllllll please.....

 

National Bicarbonate of Soda Day!!! (or Baking Soda Day!)

Naturally, I then needed to read up on Baking Soda. As most people know its most common uses, I will now share some others that were listed that I did not know:

• It is used in fire extinguishers for grease and oil fire
• It can be used as a meat tenderizer
• It can be added to water with beans to reduce flatulence from eating those beans
• It can be used to polish silverware
• It can be used to remove burnt food from pots and pans

Who knew?

Welp, that's all i got for now - I hope you all have taken advantage of this next to last day of 2010 and have a new appreciation for baking soda. Happy Baking Soda Day to all, and to all a goodnight.

 

Angel Art

As I mentioned in my first post, yesterday I started and finished an angel painting for my aunt. I would now like to share it with you:

The premise behind this painting, is that it is supposed to represent the angel Dina. Dina is said to be the Angel of Learning and is thought to have taught humans how to speak. She is also said to inspire us to culturally evolve and fill our hearts with love of learning (taken from multiple websites). My aunt just recently went back to school, and she has really loved being a student again, and seems to be quite good at it! So, for Christmas I gave her an IOU for an angel painting.

Here is the painting as it unfolds:

Starting with the full length sketch

  Then a close up of the detail. In the photos I found of Dina, she was portrayed carrying a book. This book is what is supposed to represent that she is the Angel of Learning, I presume.

The painting then began... her face did not, however, turn out exactly as planned...hmm I'll get back to that.

After some debate, I decided since it was my painting, I was going to give her a blue dress. In lots of photos angels are seen in white, but, I thought that was kind of boring... and not necessary for this smart angel. Besides, blue, in some religious beliefs is said to bring peace, and to keep bad spirits away. Also, darker blue is said to be a sign of intelligence. How perfect for our angel of learning.

Now after the entire painting was done, and I had cleaned all of my brushes, I was looking back on the photos I had taken, and took a photo of the whole painting. When I compared her face with the sketch it was completely off. I hated her face. So, after messing around with it for a little longer I finally became happy with it! Here is the NEW and IMPROVED close-up!

Spanning out.. (also fixed her dress ruffles...you can be more objective through a  photo!)

and finally, the entire shot. I feel like the new face gives her much more of a flow about her. Now, hopefully my aunt will like it :).

I have been doing a lot of painting/ art over the last few years, and I thought I might post some others I have done fairly recently in subsequent blogs. Maybe I'll make it a Wednesday thing. Yeah. That will be good.

It Starts

Well my friends, it seems that the blogging world has managed to rope another one of us in. After being an avid reader of my sister and her friends' blogs, I decided that perhaps I should have one of my own. This I decided yesterday. At around midnight. I am one of those people who, once a project is underway, I have a hard time leaving things unfinished. So, without prior knowledge of how long it can take to design your blog template, I began my blogging journey:

At first it seemed pretty easy since there is the new template design feature; but, I run mozilla on my computer and for some reason it does not like this nifty feature. I played around with the idea of then downloading google chrome on my laptop, but decided against it since, well, its just a little guy and I did not want to run the risk of something bad happening and all of my thesis work going kaput. So, I thought instead I would search for free templates elsewhere. 

After rummaging through what seemed to be thousands of "just okay" templates, I saw one that I could maybe use. Once I saved it, and tried to put in the html codes and all that good stuff, it just wasn't working right...and looked just plain stupid. So, I went on the hunt for another. This one said, "EASY TO USE!," "No codes needed to change the different features!" so I figured I'd giver a go. I saved it, and uploaded it, and BAM! hmmm... not really what I thought it would look like...let's try going back to the site and reading the hints! When I got to the site and tried to implement these so- called hints, things were not matching up. The tab I was supposed to go to does not exist. Now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that this was possibly a tab in the older version of blogger...but at this point, was not helpful to me. Feeling a little defeated, I thought I would maybe switch computers to see if this template design might work on my dad's computer...

...what do you know?! IT DID!! WOOT! A new surge of energy came over me, and I was off! After possibly 2 more hours of playing around with every feature and background and picture and font and- well, you get the point..I was finally FINISHED! It was now approximately 3:50AM...so, I decided my first blog was going to have to wait.

Now here I sit, at 2:50AM the following day writing my first blog. As I mentioned before, once I start a project, I cannot stop it. I chose to start on a painting for my Aunt's Christmas present, and after fiddling with it for the last couple hours, I am finally happy with it. You will get to see the process in tomorrows blog. I realized it was way late, but, I as determined to get my first blog done before sleep...

So, here it is! My first blog! I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.