It’s official – I’m a Southern Californian. We moved here 5 and a half years ago, and the first couple of winters I was baffled by how befuddled the folks here get with a day or two of rain. The HEAT – now that is befuddling, but rain? Surely these people were insane!

Well, here it is a few years later, and you put a cold, gray, wet day on top of exhaustion from a 2 day show, end of semester stress, a huge to do list, and I got into a huge, downward spiraling funk yesterday! Now today, I still have a huge amount of stuff to do, but this is what I see when I look outside:

and it makes all the difference!

Photo from the University of Redlands website, I teach biology to non-science majors there and we’re powering through the last week of classes! Woot!

to say HI! I Miss you blog-o-sphere! There are 340 unread posts in Google Reader as we speak!

We had a crazy busy weekend, what with 2 whole days in the park, a birthday party for Logan on Friday afternoon, then family bday celebration with him Sunday night. I’ve officially decreed next weekend as Mother’s Day! Poof! I will have breakfast in bed next Saturday!

Until then, I’m in the throes of teaching – the 3rd of 4 weeks. I had format/edit the Redlands Art Association newsletter this evening, and there’s concerts to attend this week as well! AAAHHH!

Show report:

This year was much better than last year. My sales are still mostly small stuff – scarves and Going Green bags. I did sell one piece of actual art:

Sigh, my favorite little birds piece. LOVE that red! Must make more…soon…

Here’s some pix of my booth setup – although I was happy with it at the time, looking at it now, as well as with some input from dear hubby, I see it didn’t do a god job of drawing people in. We’re going to get more gridwall before the next show (not til next Fall, thank goodness) and try to do away with the tables…

The best part of this show is that I was surrounded by friends and acquaintances – and that makes all the difference! As I begin my 3rd year of doing business as an artist, I realize how much I’ve grown as a member of this community, as well as an artist! – Worth it’s weight in gold!

One of the reasons I love my hometown is the Inland Orange Conservancy: an organization dedicated to saving the old local groves that grow fantastic oranges that aren’t pretty enough for SunKist to buy. When you become a member, you receive 10 pounds of oranges every week during the season, and if you don’t eat them,they’re donated to local food banks. Every spring they have an event in an old grove that lets you taste all these amazing citrus varieties and just revel in the orange-blossom-ness of our town. When we went yesterday, a reporter caught a good picture of my older son Liam trying what looks like a blood orange – and his picture made the story! Pretty cool!