Our Juicy Life

Let the countdown begin

I have been feeling antsy lately, restless. I am so ready for our adventure, but it's not until September. Bruce thought it might be good to get a big wall calendar so we can count down the weeks/days. I also was visiting Kim at her blog and noticed her countdown widget...what a great idea. Then every day I can see on my computer screen how many weeks/days I have left, that will be just what I need. So I put one on my blog...thanks Kim! Kim is leaving in July, so her days are 1/2 what ours are....lucky dog!

We only have 4 more weeks of regular after-school classes and then our summer program starts. It will be 12 weeks of 1/2 day summer camps. Our schedule will switch from having the morning & early afternoon free and not having to go to work until 3:00 pm to being at the studio at 8:00 am and working until 1:30, so our afternoons will be free. I prefer the morning free, but alas. We will work the same number of hours per week, a light load at 20, but instead of working Tuesday-Saturday, we'll work Tuesday-Friday. Once the camps start the weeks fly by....usually when we start them it goes like this "ugh, 12 weeks of camps", then the next thing we know it's "ah, only 6 more camps"....then "yeah, only 1 more camp". Camps are great fun, we do super cool projects with the kids have a wonderful time, but it's draining and exhausting (in a good way that doing art with kids brings).

It feels like I'm a kid again...."are we there yet?" We were big on road trips when I was younger, as most of the country was back in the 60's and 70's. We had a big green station wagon and all of us would pack in there at least 2 times a year and head to Florida. I think I have been to Florida maybe 25-30 times. My parents are from Florida and my oldest sister and brother we born there. My sister Anne and I were born in Michigan. My father was a golf professional and started out in Florida and then took a job at a private club in Michigan. But anytime we had vacation it would be back to Florida to see the grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and it would allow my dad to golf.

I recently saw my brother, he and his family came out to San Diego for a weeks vacation, so Bruce and I drove down to have dinner with them. We were talking about the hell we had on those car trips. Mom and Dad in the front and 4 kids in the back. I'm sure many of you had those trips. "This is the imaginary line, don't cross it". "Mom, Anne hit me". "Mom, Mark kicked me". We didn't have DVD players in the car or hand-held games or ipods. My Dad would pop in his 8-track and we'd listen to his music, Edie Gourmet, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc... We played the alphabet game with license plates. Yee Haa! My brother also reminded me that on the drive down to Florida we'd always stay the night in a Holiday Inn and every time we'd have to eat, we'd stop at a Holiday Inn. He is sick of Holiday Inn's. We'd also stop in the same city for the night...talk about creatures of habit. Florida was our vacation...my dad didn't want to go anywhere else. Sure, we'd stop at Rock City or Mammoth Caves on the way down, but that's it. It was always St. Petersburg Florida. Staying with my grandmother, swimming in her pool, going to Treasure Island beach, going to Disney World when there was no Epicot center. The sunshine state. All my grandparents have passed on and only my cousin and her husband live there now, so no more Florida trips for me.....ever again.

What was I talking about? Sorry, got side-tracked. Ah, yes....counting the days until France. It seems so far away, but I know that once the summer gets going it will come up fast. It's hard to be patient when the countryside is calling you. The picture above was taken in September when we visited the Aveyron region. This is very close to where our house is. The nice thing about that area is that it won't change from when we saw it in September to when we'll be back in September. It is patiently waiting for us.

OUR ANNUAL STUDENT ART EXHIBIT

Each year we have a student art exhibit. Each child that comes to classes at the studio get to pick their favorite piece of work that they created that year. We clean the studio, paint the walls, put the tables out back, get food, and hang all their work. It's a great evening for everyone (parents, grandparents, kids, friends, etc...). This year we have 100 children that take weekly art classes from us, all of our classes are full, so our turnout was amazing.

The friday before the show we spent the day taking off all the pieces we had hung on the wall, patching all the little holes (from the hundred of pushpins) and painting the walls. We also cleaned everything and painted and spiffed up the bathroom. On Saturday we hung all the pieces (well, Bruce hung the pieces). The show was on Sunday. We had about 300 people come through. The show was only for 2 hours.

I took some pictures of some of the pieces that were in the show....they are all amazing and I can't put all of them on, so here are just a few for your viewing pleasure. The kids that did these range from 5-15.

Don't they do great work! It helps when you have a great teacher and Bruce is the best - his lessons are amazing and the kids no only learn the fundamentals of drawing & painting but are able to be creative and expressive too. We will miss the kids when we go, but know they'll continue to do amazing work with Travis.

Moi!

Our great friends K&E came for dinner last Sunday and they brought their lovely daughter Kellen.  She's 8 and takes art classes at our studio.  I made duck, chez lou lou's onion and roquefort tart, a bow tie, broccoli salad (for kellen) and individual chocolate souffle's for dessert.  It was a great night.  They also brought their 8 month old black lab named "Stella".  The guys took the dogs to the park while I got dinner ready.  Kellen wanted to draw.  OK...my husband is an artist and we own an art studio and we don't have any drawing paper around the house, can't find any colored pencils (we found a few)...so we gave her wrapping paper and a sharpie and she was good to go.  Her first picture was this one above.  It's me. 

This was her 2nd picture, it's on the back of the first picture.  I just love this one (note the words).  Queen Alisa.  It's on our fridge and I turn it over every couple days.  I just had to share them with you. 

A Warm Welcome

                   

This is Bruce when we were in France in 2006.  We went to Provence (stayed in Lourmarin for 10 days) and then went over to the Dordogne (stayed in a 200 year old restored bread oven for another 10 days) just north of Riberac.  It was an amazing trip.  This is Bruce in Perigoux, with our daily baguette.

Travis, who is taking over teaching our classes for us when we leave in September has been in over to the studio the last couple weeks to meet all the kids and parents.  He's been welcomed with open arms and it just makes me smile.  Our customers are great!  They know that we love France and that we really want to take this sabbatical and have been nothing but supportive and positive.  The kids are amazing...they are so open and flexible and have been great, they love Travis already.  Travis looks like Bruce's brother, which helps, but he's also a great teacher, artist and is very personable and friendly with everyone.  We need that...we want to make sure that everyone is taken care of when we are gone.

               

This is a view from our bread oven in the Dordogne.  We fell in love with that area...also called the Perigord.  There are 4 regions (the black, purple, white and green).  We probably would have moved there, but it gets really really cold during the winter.  It's more west and north from where we are renting the house, but hopefully we'll take a weekend trip to see the owners of our bread oven Chris & Mike.

                  

Our first 10 days were spent in Provence...in the village of Lourmarin.  Where Peter Mayle wrote "A year in provence".  It was so beautiful.  We biked everywhere and had a wonderful time.  The only bummer was that is was in March and "les mistrals" were blowing.  These are the spring winds...not warm santa ana winds like we get in Southern California, these were cold, strong blowing winds.  There were some days I thought I was going to get blown off my bike. 

We had our appointment with the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles to get our long stay visa, but had to cancel it because Bruce noticed that his Visa expired in November - oops!  He went to the post office to get it renewed and he should get it in 4 weeks.  Then we'll reschedule our appointment with the Consulate.  We had to get tons of paperwork ready for our appointment.  Marriage license, 3 copies of passport, 3 copies of application, letter stating we have health insurance, copies of our bank statements, copies of our tax return (since we own our own business), letter from us stating that we will not work in France, etc...According to the person I spoke with if all our paperwork is in order we'll get our long stay visa that day.  I hope it goes smoothly.  Will keep you posted.

The dogs have a vet appointment tomorrow for their rabies blood test - titer test.  It must be done 30 days after the rabies shot and it has to be sent to an approved university (university of Kansas) to be processes and then the results need to be sent back and I need to send these over to Cunard Cruise line by May 1st.  I need to send them paperwork to show the dogs are micro chipped, then rabies shots and then the titer blood test (needs to be negative).  All this has to be done in order and at certain times or we won't be able to get them into England.

We have started to clean out our closets and get rid of stuff.  We are not pack rats by any means, but man there are things I don't even remember that I have.  How sad!  I packed up 2 bags full of clothes and shoes and gave them to a woman who lives down the block, she's a single mother, her daughter is 11 and her mom lives with her, they have garage sales a lot and I know that money is tight, so I hope that she can either use the stuff that I gave her or sell them.  I makes me feel good to help her out, she's a good lady just trying to survive in Los Angeles, not easy.

We only have April & May left for our after-school classes and then June-July-August for our 1/2 day camps.  Then we'll spend the first 2 weeks of September with Travis and then we'll take off for our cross country road trip and then leave NYC for England on October 4th.  It will be here before we know it and we are so excited.  I can't tell you how excited we are.

We are lucky we have such great customers, who are supportive of our sabbatical and will still continue to send their kids to our studio.  I know they will be pleased with Travis and his passion for art and kids.  It's the most important thing, to make sure that our customers are taken care of.  We wouldn't be able to leave if we thought that  the studio would suffer...we know it's in good hands.

We're done!

Our summer camps are done!  Yesterday we finished camp #12.  In June I remember saying to Bruce, 12 camps, oh my.  Then in July we said only 6 more camps and then in mid-August only 3 and then last Tuesday only 4 more days...it went quite fast.  We had a great summer with all the kids that came to our camps.  144 kids came through the studio this summer, regulars who come to classes, regulars who come to camps every year and some new kids.  I enjoy camps, but it sure puts a wrench in my other life.  I haven't thrown any pottery since June.  I haven't road as many mile on my bike and I come home so tired.  I really like our fall-spring schedule of after-school classes.  I am a morning person, but would prefer to focus that energy on my passions (pottery & biking).  During our fall/spring schedule we don't have to be at work until 3:00 and only work until 5:30 - 6:00.  We do work all Saturday but then have Sunday & Monday off.  I'm ready to get back to that schedule.  BUT...enough about work.  Because I am officially on vacation!  So why am I up at 7:30 am working on the computer? 

Yesterday I ran about 8 million errands and realized that I hate running errands.  Traffic here in Los Angeles is horrible.  I tried to take side streets from here to there and although I didn't sit in traffic (this isn't on a highway...it's just on a street) it was still a pain.  We leave tomorrow for France.  3 glorious weeks in France.  ah....I'm feeling relaxed just thinking about it.  We just bought a new camera a couple days ago.  It's a Canon powershot SD850.  I LOVE IT.  Took the picture above while walking Dashell.  I just love this door it so reminds me of Europe, not Los Angeles.   

I took this one on the walk too.  It has an image stabilizer and takes really great pictures and it's easy to use.  It's also super tiny, great for throwing in the pocket of my bike jersey.

On my errands today I stopped by to see our friend Andrea and her dogs Burdock and Woof.  The are also golden retrievers and Burdock and Dashell are great friends.  Andrea is a very talented designer.  She makes a line of handbags (I have 2) and now she's making ceramic jewelry.  Her work is very unique and so cool.  She gave me this lovely pendant necklace.

Check out her website at Bite Down Bags, she makes amazing things:  bags (all animal free), earrings, cuff links, rings, necklaces.  All one-of-a-kind and so beautiful.  She is so talented it makes my head spin!

I also received this in the mail last week, it's a beautiful anklet from one of my best friends Laurey.  I was so surprised and touched it made me cry.  This anklet has a little boston terrier on it (for our little Daisy that we just lost) and she told me that she made it into an anklet because she was small and down by my feet.  I have worn it everyday since I got it and I just love it.  It's probably the most touching gift I have ever received...but that's Laurey, she's a beautiful person.

We have to take the furry kids up to their vacation ranch today.  The place we take them is amazing, it's called Alpha Pet Lodging.  Last year when we went to France we took Dashell their and he loved it.  Antje is the owner and she is a trainer and a vet tech and a dog lover!  Her place is small, she has a guest house that has 4 rooms inside and by rooms I mean rooms, not kennels.  Dashell stayed in the spongebob squarepants room (so fitting for him).  They have their own bed (not on the floor...a real bed), their own dog door that goes out to their private run and the front of the room has floor to ceiling bars, so all the dogs can look into the "living room" and see each other.  She only takes 4 families of dogs at a time, so there is tons of individual attention.  The dogs also have playtime 2 times a day in a very large arena.  Dashell loved it last year and I felt very comfortable leaving him there.  This time we are taking Dashell, Stella and Augie.  We normally would have someone stay at our house with Augie and Daisy.  But since we don't have Daisy anymore we thought that all the dogs would rather be together and having someone watch 3 dogs is asking A LOT!  I'm not worried about Stella or Dashell, but I must say I'm a bit worried about Augie.  He's 14, deaf and have never stayed any place besides our home.  I'm sure he'll be fine...the other 2 dogs look after him and he'll have new smells to investigate and Antje will take great care of him.  She doesn't take dogs on a Sunday, so we have to take them up today.  It will be very strange having a dog free house until we leave tomorrow.

I won't be blogging while I'm in France.  We are not taking the computer.  I need to free myself from this thing, it just sucks you in.  I don't want to think about work or be tempted to do any work.  But we will take loads of pictures and I know I'll have many stories to share with you.  I also can't wait to speak french everyday for 3 weeks!

A bientot

Summer Camp

I didn't go to camp during the summer when I was a kid.  I just spent my days riding my bike and playing around the neighborhood.  Times were different back then.  Now kids are booked all summer, at least out here in Los Angeles they are.  That's good for us, since we own a children's art studio.  We are booked all year with after-school art classes and booked all summer for our 1/2 day fine art camps (camps were full by May).  Each camp runs 4 days (Tuesday-Friday) from 9:00 - 1:00 pm.  We only take 12 kids, we like to keep it small and give them tons of attention.  It's a great gig.  We are done at 1:00 and have Saturday-Monday off.  This is the first time in 8 years of having the business that we are not having afternoon classes.  It's just too draining...working with kids is exhausting.  So we decided that this year we'd only have camps and it's working our great.

We are on our 5th week.  We can't believe how fast the summer is going.  We only have 7 more to go.  Our camps are very project oriented, we do some painting and drawing projects, but we also do a lot of mixed media projects like clay, paper mache, plaster, wire, printmaking, and other super cool projects.  I can honestly say that the projects we do are awesome.  Yesterday we did plaster frescos.  The kids had to mix their own plaster and put it on a piece of burlap.  Then they had to sketch out a design (something very simple always works best) and draw it onto the dried plaster.  Then they painted it with acrylics.  Once that was dry they did 2 layers of brown (watered down) acrylic on top of their piece to make it look a bit old and once that was dry they cracked it and covered it with white glue.  We then mounted them on black matboard.  They were so beautiful.

Today we did clay.  Kids love clay.  We try to make our projects fun and interesting and also allow the kids to be creative and expressive.  We don't tell them what to make, we want everyone to go home with a unique piece.  Bruce is such a wonderful teacher...so wonderful that when we tried to bring in another teacher to help with classes people complained and moved out of the class with the new teacher.  He is so enthusiastic and patient with the kids, it really makes kids love coming to the studio.  Today we did clay relief tiles - they were 6x6 and the kids could make anything on the tile that they wanted to, they just had to build it up (instead of carving into it).  They'll paint them on Friday.  Here is Bruce demonstrating the process (rolling coils, making things, scoring, adding water to make a slip so things don't fall off, which is a bummer, etc...)

The kids did some super cool tiles.  They are all so creative.  It's really great because the kids that come to us LOVE art.  We have some kids that return each year just for camp.

After clay, we set up 2 still-lifes and did a drawing project.  The kids chose a color of chalk pastel and first toned their paper.  Then with charcoal they had to draw what object was in front of them, then they added shadow and then white conte for highlight.  These pieces turned out great! 

Stella came with us today, we road our bikes so she was in the carrier.  I counted the smiles on the way to and from the studio - total 16.   

We are really enjoying our summer, although we are counting down the weeks until we go back to France.  We'll have 144 kids pass through the studio this summer, all of them making amazing art.  Life's good.