Anne Leuck 5/2/08 Anne Leuck 5/2/08

May 1st

Our 112 year old frame house finally has insulation! They actually blew it into the walls from outside...only took one day.That hose is pretty wild, you could see as the fibers shot through it and all the pictures on the wall shook as the walls filled up. It's already quieter in here and now we won't freeze from all the drafts in the winter and hopefully avoid sizzling in the summer. Better conditions for making art!

Anne Leuck 4/28/08 Anne Leuck 4/28/08

Red + Pink

I had to get a picture of Kate in her pink and red outfit with Dot (the handmade/hand stitched character I made that one day you will see in a book!)...they match pefectly! Art work on the left ...kitty cat "Yoda" by outsider artist Cher Shaffer and a piece from art girl pal Mimi Damrauer's Bulls Eye series.

Anne Leuck 4/13/08 Anne Leuck 4/13/08

My Gardener Hard at Work...

I may have mentioned before that I had hopes of my thumbs turning green. My Mother is amazing with plants and flowers, I was hoping that gene would show itself by now...nope. Lucky for me my wonderful husband has suddenly turned into an urban farmer. Rich started all these plants from seed weeks ago and today started his garden in our yard. He had to move all my 'garden art' ...some rebar sculptures I made in college and that's one of my clay figures from the 90's - she looks very excited about the chives...I do get credit for those, they came from Mom's garden last year. They sat in a bag for 2 weeks before I put them in the ground...hearty little greens aren't they? This bird was hanging out with Rich, anyone know what kind he is? Hope these plants don't get to chilly tonight! It's supposed to be in the 70's mid week...

Anne Leuck 4/9/08 Anne Leuck 4/9/08

Playing tourist in my own town...

Three of my high school girl friends from Sparta came to visit over the weekend...it was fun catching up and hearing about life back home. We spent Saturday as tourists doing the Chicago Trolley Double Decker Bus Tour...a pretty good deal: For $25, you get a narrated historical tour of downtown with many optional stops at all the tourist spots. It was a gorgeous day and we were all enjoying the sunshine on our faces after such a long winter! I got some good photos that I hope to use in upcoming cityscape paintings...Chicago is such a beautiful city and I don't get down to the loop very often. Hard to believe I used to do it every day for work. You can see more of my Chicago shots on my Flickr page.

Anne Leuck 4/2/08 Anne Leuck 4/2/08

Sunday...back track

I'm backtracking a bit with this post. On Sunday I had lunch with my friend
Johanna in China Town (dim sum!), got to see her ubercool new loft, then
stopped by her fiancee's studio (master furniture maker Mark Cwik) to get
some reclaimed lumber...if I can call it that? perhaps recycled, re-used?
They were scrap pieces he could not use. I can't wait to paint on them.
Here is a photo of one of his beautiful Bubinga Tables (no this is not the
kind of wood I'm painting on):

After picking up my boards I delivered my print (top image): "Dreaming
Uphill" to Woman Made Gallery for their April 12th Art Auction. Then
came home and got creative in the kitchen with a new recipe. I did a
Butternut Squash / Hazelnut Lasagne. The recipe was passed on to me
from my art pal & jeweler, Sara Lenart. You can find the recipe at
epicurious.com It was pretty tasty,I felt guilty not inviting anyone over
to share it with us!

Anne Leuck 3/24/08 Anne Leuck 3/24/08

My Candy Colored World...

Inspired by Kathy Frey's blog: "Taming the Tangle", I recently revamped my categories. She has one called "Personal Glimpse" I edited mine to "My Candy Colored World" it's just more of a focused peek at the everyday here. I also thought that made for a good name for my blog since I've always said my hues are candy colored, and as you can see here in these photos, so is my life!

In honor of the everyday..things that happened around here last week:

Home Improvement...we had the wonderful guys from Samanco working here this week, the jobs not huge, but closing the walls and ceiling back up made for a 4 day event. We now have insulation in our laundry room (the pipes froze last winter) and we have fabulous pendants hanging over the kitchen island....this will add so much ambiance to our dinner hour...not too mention dramatic lighting for our high stakes Scrabble games! Also replaced the very froofy brass fixtures that were hanging in the living rooms that join the kitchen. They are very simple schoolroom style period fixtures that echo the age of this old house. I love them...!! And a plug for Angie's List, this is how I found Samanco, they also did our bathroom rehab in our old house on Oakley....sadly that bathroom no longer exists as the house was torn down.

I hung my fun Birthday gifts from my dear pal Erica by my desk..shrinky dinks! She did a portrait of me and one of each of our hands...they are precious little talismans. She also presented me with this sweet hand sewn birthday cake! Perfect...I can take it with me on my annual sojourn.

I went to the Art Girls Pot Luck for the first time since December! We met at printmaker, Judy Zeddie's house. My big tip for the night was to get the business book "The E Myth Revisited". I went with the unabridged audio version...I have too many books stacked on my bedside table and I want to get right into this one...I can listen while I paint!

We hosted an easter brunch here for some of Rich's family, it was a fun day...my nephew Dexter made this great drawing of me and him:

My next assignment: Create a Blog Banner with art on it....I should have done that first!

Anne Leuck 3/13/08 Anne Leuck 3/13/08

41...Asleep in the Cascades

I had a wonderful trip out to the Seattle area last weekend for my 41st birthday. I visited my brother and his wife in Sammamish. On Friday we drove up to Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains, it was so beautiful! Every morning when I woke up I ran for my camera because the view with the sun coming up was so breathtaking. We had a great time cross country skiing and ate lots of good food. If you go, rent your skis at Plain Hardware, yes the name of the town is Plain! Photos are of my one and only most favorite brother, Carl & I and my 4 legged nephew Willie.

Prior Birthdays:

2008 41 = Lake Wenatchee, WA

2007 40 = Venice, Italy

2006 39 = Saugatuck, MI

2005 38 = Bedford, PA...enroute home from a show in Virginia

2004 37 = Punta Cana, The Dominican Replubic

If you can swing it, I highly recommend this traveling birthday idea...premise: Go to sleep or wake up somewhere you have never been before. I started in 04, you know what they say about all work and no play...this guarantees an extra little get away every year!

Anne Leuck 2/12/08 Anne Leuck 2/12/08

5 Degrees & a Snow Day...

This first photo was from yesterday, Alice will go out and sit on the deck when it is a mere 5 degrees acting as if it is a balmy 75 degree summer afternoon...she has also been known to sit there in the rain and in the snow. She is pining away for the neighbor cats who have opted to stay in for the winter. The words that set her off and we must whisper around here are: cat, kitty cat, chatty kathy (as we often call her since she is quite the talker) she gets so excited...ironically to get her to come in from those freezing temps I just say "here kitty, kitty" and she comes running..it's hilarious. The only other magic word is 'treats'!

The girls (well, Alice) had fun in today's snow storm...Izzy doesn't like to spend much time in the cold, she prefers to lay on her bed next to the old radiator snoozing away. She is such a sweetie, we went to the vet today for a blood test, she is on a new drug called Rimadyl which has really helped with her arthritis but it can do some funky this to an old gal like her so we had to make sure all was well...and it is! : ) While waiting for our results we met a 15 year old Beagle named Gus...he looked like a very wise old dog. Okay..time to go out and shovel some more snow!