Harry Potter Shoes

I painted these shoes for my Dad for Christmas (at his request, otherwise it never would have occurred to me to give him such a random gift).

I know I took some before pictures of the shoes as well, but I couldn't find them, here are a few during pictures and all angles of the finished product.

Delicate Arch

For my birthday this year my niece gave me some canvases and art supplies so I decided that I would use them to make her a present for her birthday. I must admit that there are a lot of things I don't like about the way this turned out, but some of the issues with the picture below I'm going to blame on my camera.  I feel like the real piece isn't quite so red and the sky is a much prettier blue and not so grey.

I chose this particular subject for the painting because a few years ago we went on a super fun arches camping trip together and went to delicate arch for the first time.  Hopefully what this lacks in correctness will be made up for with the great memories it triggers.

"Places We've Been: Delicate Arch"
16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

Happy 22 Birthday Catherine!!!!  I love you!

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!

This year for Christmas I got a new job at the School District (actually I started back in September, but whatever)!  One of the fun things they do is have a holiday door decorating contest for everyone in the building.  My office is one of the smaller ones (only 4 people) and our department has a long history of doing very bad with this particular contest.  Apparently they've been putting up the same snowman and Santa window clings for years!  Good thing I'm here now :).  Here is the first official entry of the Superintendent's Office EVER!

This is all made from cut paper that I layered and glued together. That is my new desk in the center.

One of the special features of our door is that it is double sided so we can enjoy it from the inside too.  Once I got everything up my co-workers got into the spirit of things and embellished with some lyrics that are only visible from inside the office...

Here is one final, although misleading view. This is with the main doors shut so the characters that appear in the hallway are duplicated in the center and looking at each other, but if you can ignore that, I think it creates a fun visual to see an uninterrupted line up of Peanuts carolers.  With the door shut you can also see what I hope will catch on as a new holiday greeting :).

HOLIPY CHARLIE BROWN!!!

12/18/14 UPDATE:

Today the internal voting ended for door decorating contest and the winners were announced.

The grand prize went to...

<insert drum roll here>

ASSESSMENT!!!!!  Wait, what?

That's right, we didn't win, but we did come in second place, which I don't think is half bad considering this is the first year that my office even tried to be in the running.  Here are some shots of the winning door.

This is a corner office and the way the hallway bends makes it impossible to get a shot of the full door at once, plus so much of their effort was in the little detail that is hard to read from an overview shot.

Ya gotta love Luke's attempt at the intergalactic ugly sweater contest :).

I think in the end, the contest results came down to one simple question.  Does our building have more Star Wars fans or more Peanuts fans?  The fans have spoken.  It's all good though.  I'm happy with our door and our office has already come up with a theme idea for next year sure to claim first place...  "The Superintendent's Office Strikes Back."