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Kittens, kittens and even MORE kittens!! [01 Jul 2008|05:35am] nenethomas [ mood | overwhelmed ]      Well it looks as though Deuce had siblings, six, six of them to be exact! I guess we should have named Tsk “fertile myrtle”. Seven kittens, she was feeding. No wonder she was always at our back porch looking so skeletally thin, and would pounce on any food we put out like she was starving--she practically was!  So now we have loads and loads of cats at our back porch, and they are all wild, except LBC, of course. We tried to capture both Tsk and Graylordling last week to get them fixed. Epic Fail!! And now they don’t trust us, greeeeaaat!   When I think about all the cats I really get overwhelmed, and I need to calm myself down and remember to take it 'one day at a time'. All we can do, is work with them and wait until they tame down enough to capture and then get them fixed, and get them their shots, one by one. We’ve got some time, the kittens are about 9 weeks old now, and the females won’t be old enough to go into heat for four months or so.  They are taming down a little already. I was able to get close enough to photograph one of them that we named “Taffy” a couple of days ago. Another one of the outdoor kittens looks exactly like Taffy, except the fur is short, and we named that one “Butterscotch”. The names of the others are, Tskette, Triskette, (Both are short haired torties, like their mom.) and Cocoa 1 and Cocoa 2, which are both short haired black cats, and are very, very shy. Here is a picture of "Taffy". This photo was taken through my very dirty, as you can surely tell, back door. Inside the house, we have even more kittens! I am fostering one of the strays that Jan-Annette was feeding named Ragnald, and she had two kittens, a boy and a girl. They are both black and look like they will be short haired just like their Mom. They are about 4 weeks old, and sooooooo cute! Their names are Davide, upper left, and Magali. Little Davide has an upper respiratory ailment and had to go to the vet today. He is doing much, much better, though after being seperated from his mother for several hours, when he came home he was starving!

Preview of a Work in Progress [28 Jun 2008|11:36pm] nenethomas [ mood | creative ] [ music | I Am Legend OST by James Newton Howard ]   For a couple of years I have REALLY wanted to do a painting with the Snowball flower as one of the major elements. (I don’t know the actual name of the plant, that’s just what we always called it growing up. Mom had a beautiful  white snowball plant on the East side of the house.)  My opportunity to paint those beautiful flowers came when I decided to do a romantic painting of Princess Lyrahe, the girl in blue, and Prince Valeriad, with the long white hair. They are two of the major characters in The Zarryiostrom. This is for Chapter 22 “Watchers”, and rather than depicting a specific scene from the book, instead I was really trying to capture a feeling of absolute, unabashed romance, which very much describes these two characters. They fall very, very deeply in love, literally at first sight! I think it’s very sweet, and I wanted to show that in the piece. I’m about two weeks in on this piece, and I am to the stage where I am starting to finish off elements one by one, but obviously many things are still incomplete, most notably the sky and the characters! (And I’ve GOT to do something about Valeriad’s hair!!)  I estimate I have a week at the very least, but perhaps much longer before I complete it. I will be a little behind in my painting schedule for the Zarryiostrom illustrations, but it’s nothing I can’t make up on the next Zarryiostrom piece which is about halfway done already, and much, much simpler!     *Note. I few entries ago, I said that the painting of Astranaithes I showed was for Chapter 19 “Remedy”. That is incorrect. Remedy is actually Chapter 24. Oops! I have since corrected that entry. Edit: Thanks to Rhiamon, I now know that the "snowball flowers" are actually Hydrangea!

New Products! [24 Jun 2008|04:05am] nenethomas [ mood | ecstatic ]     We just received our shipments of my 2009 Calendar, and I am very, very pleased with them. They are now available for sale on my website. The images for the months are as follows: The cover is a detail of Wind Moon  (That's my cat Cassira-Boodles when she was a teeny kitten sitting on the moon with the Faery.) January—Winter Wings February—Blue Dream March—Whispers April—Innocence May—Lavender Serenade June—Chorus (image is below) July –Euphoria August –Wind Moon September—Earth Moon October—Flamenco November—Gothic Princesse (detail)  And December is Lost Melody (image is below) I thought I would show the two new pieces I did for the calendar. They are Chorus and Lost Melody. As usual for me I griped quite a lot on my LJ while I was painting those pieces.                                              Chorus                                     (model is Tori M.)                                           Lost Melody                                        (model is Yvette) I also have a new figurine that will be available soon. This is based off my very first Dragon Witch painting called Dragon Moon which I painted over a decade ago. How time flies! It’s great to see her in 3-D. We don’t have our stock yet, but we should get them any day.  And here is a link to the original watercolor painting.

Family Dinner [21 Jun 2008|11:51pm] nenethomas [ mood | hungry ] Tomorrow I am hosting a family dinner while my little brother and his family are in town. On the menu is: Chicken Fricassee for the entre Four side dishes: Baby Carrots in a Ginger Ale Glaze Parsley Potatoes Ham and Cheese Stuffed Rolls Stuffed Mushrooms Two Salads, a Watermelon Fruit Salad served in a watermelon and our regular Garden Greek Salad. For dessert I have made Pineapple Upside Down cake. I thought I have made that too often for family dinners, but my husband requested it, so I made it again. We are having eight adults and nine children for dinner, so I tried to choose dishes that I knew kids would eat. There is a recipe for an avocado soup that I would like to try, but I don’t think a family dinner is the time to be trying new recipes! Everything is done except for the entre, and the baby carrots which Steve, Jan-Annette’s husband, will come over and make. And I am getting ready to get started on the stuffed mushrooms right now. I want everything to be ready to go in the oven at approximately the same time. Ann-Juliette came over this afternoon and made both salads. We’ll put dressing on them right before the start of the meal.

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