Thread: Will Green Tea Help Me Enter the 130's?

Good for you. You are making better use of your gym membership than I am mine. About 1 & 1/2 hours travel time via the bus system. I can see good enough to drive most days but I kept forgeting what a green light meant. Green means Go just doesn't make sense when I am goofy from the TIAs.

It got kind funny just before I gave up driving I was with Jason waiting for the light to change and I smelled and said "French Fries!" and I pulled right on out and drove threw the red light. Luckily no one was hit so no accident. It kind of put some humor into a lousy situation. Jason still makes fun of me about that day. He often yells out french fries when we pass a hamburger joint in his car.

I hope you were able to put some time in on your wall. Sometimes we can make goals, sometimes it takes a while longer.

I am to the point where I am going to dive in and paint morning glories on the wall now. I ran to our local Hobby Lobby today to find painting technique books. I poured over a bunch of "regular" priced ones, made a couple of selections and then discovered a rack with all sorts of sale books. I planted myself on the ground and started going through them. I found SIX books I liked and put the three back that would have cost the same. So I got twice as many. One of them is on painting animals. I can't wait to do something with that!!!! I also kept in mind the garden theme I am going to be doing for the Adirondak chair...........so two birds with one stone!!!! I LOVE a bargain!!!!

Good thing no one got hurt when you smelled the fries!!!!! Hokey smokes!!!!!

I'm so lucky my Curves is only 5 mins away. I've even ridden my bike there. But the problem with that is when I get there, I'm worn out and don't feel like doing the workout.

But the problem with that is when I get there, I'm worn out and don't feel like doing the workout.

That's the reason when I mall walk for an hour i have to make sure I park as close as possible to the entrance. At least that's my excuse for circling the parking lot 6 times.

Good morning Barb!

I wrote a reply here last night but my DSL provider was down.

I could not remember what morning glories look like so I went out and found an example. http://www.wildtexas.com/gallery/sho....php/photo/861 They will make an excellent subject for painting on walls. Should be a lot of fun.

Barnes & Knoble and Borders tax deprecciate their chairs depending on how much time I have for them. Borders has the best selection of new books, but Barnes has more stuffed chairs available and wider sellection of bargain books they publish them selves. I like bargains too as I often buy books that I will not get around to reading for years. We have a local retailer of used and closeout books and software called Half Price Books, terrific place. When I recently bought 5 diet & exorcise books I purchased them at less than half price including shipping. This is becaus 3 were bought from Amazon closeout retailing merchants. And two were bought from eBay retailers, doing the same thing. I wouldn't minded if they were used or even if they had markings in the pages. I am rough with my books. They work for me, not the other way around. I do not smoke and so far non of the venders have sent my any books smelling of tobbaco, but I do go with venders with a lot of positive feedbacks if possible.

Have fun with your wall today!!

So Rob, when you mall walk, you walk OUTSIDE???? I NEVER thought of that!!!! The problem with walking INSIDE, you end up slowing down to look at stuff in the windows. LOLOLOLOL

OH STephen!!!! Those are FABULOUS pics of morning glories!!!! I searched online and didn't find anything close to that!! Thank you!!!! You are a PEACH. The books I got only have sidish views of the flowers, This one has straight-on views, awesome!!!!! These will give me some ideas for doing some interesting shading on them.

And the other pics are just as good for the other flowers I need to do on the chair. The one of the garden spider and ladybug will be usefull too!!!!! What a GEM of a site!!!! You're the BEST!!!!!

Your very welcome Barb. It did take a rather refined search to find those i'm glad you can use them. Past my bed time so off I go. Nite.

Dad nab it! I posted earlier and it looks like it got flushed after all. Anyhow I was wishing you good morning and hope you have fun with you paints today.

Catch you later.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn't get back to sleep right away. But I finally did and slept in pretty late this morning. Took a shower, then my DD came over and visited for awhile, then I went to the store for salad fixins and stuff, then I went to Curves to workout, came home and made dinner. SO, I didn't get ANY painting done. Life just gets in the way sometimes. But I plan to get some major painting done tomorrow. I'm going back to work on monday and would really like to have it almost done.

I'm keeping a log on Fitness 101 at www.lclmag.com. This is really nice tool that Andrea built. You can track your food, exercise, weight and have a blog. I counted up how many days I've exercised for Feb. so far and I've done 9 out of 11 days.............an all time record for me. I'm hoping it will show some results on the scale soon. I love the fact that I discovered that I have FitTV. There are aerobics workouts on it all the time and Blaine's LowCarb cooking too. It's my new favorite channel.

My DD came over today with ultrasound pics of her baby. You could see it very clearly. She's only 11 weeks, so there weren't any clear details, but they caught a couple of shots that showed the head and both arms and legs. Pretty cool. I guess I've pretty much come to accept that my baby is going to have a baby. I gave her the two books Sharron wrote and we talked about LCing. She's eating pretty healthy.

No news on the DS-S and daughter -in-law front. But that's not surprising.

The wall will get done soon enough although I know you would enjoy getting it done soon.

Ultra sounds are so much fun. Is the father any good? So many men are useless or worse.

My grandparents so enjoyed theirs. This is much easier than for grandparents that end up raising their grandchildren. I see that sometimes here in Tacoma. Drug abuse makes the parent of no use at all.

I wish I could of provided my mother with at least one grandchild, but she knew I was getting pretty nutty before she passed. And with both my parents being MD (both grandmothers as well) it would of been the WRONG thing to do to a child, so I have no children. Besides I like the Christmas cards Trojan sends me every year, I am one of their preferred customers.

No regrets. Just a differant path, NO better NO worse, just a differant set of oppurtunities and shortcomings. Donna and I can enjoy each other almost everytime we get together or talk on the phone. As we do not have any children to fight over. This does simplify things. True our marriage was short. But having ma so long often very ill, I had her until I was 27 right up until her last breath, she was 52. Glad I did it all, but at almost 41, i still crave isolation more than anything. Being a bachalor has its advantages. The tunes playing are always what I want to hear and nothing else, even if it is all nine Beethoven symphonies in a row. (A bimonthly thing with me, 1954-1964 Bernstein & NYPO.)

Glad you are making use of Andeas tool to keep track of your exorcise and diet. Most importantly when life gets in the way of getting to the gym often enough. The Diet Pro application I bought recently will do these things in its new release due out soon. Free upgrade of course.

The jury is still out on the father. If he follows through on his plans to provide for her, treats her well and is a good father.............I suppose I can learn to accept him. But he has a lot of "proving" to do. We'll see..........at least he hasn't abandoned her. So I suppose that should count in his favor. His father beats his mother and has a drinking problem, so that kind of scares me that he will do like his dad. If I EVER get wind that he's abusing her, I will do my best to get him the he!! out of her life, and I won't feel one bit guilty about it either. But my daughter isn't the type to put up with that either. She'll kick him to the curb so fast his head will spin. So he must be treating her fine right now. Time will tell.

Hello Barb.

I've been good and useful today as I detailed over inside my journal. Still hope to get a bit more done before bed. But determined to spend a couple hours tonight watching a GOOD film or maybe rereading a favorite book. I have a feeling you have made some headway today too.

I also invested about 40 minutes today in re-engineering one end of my long sofa. It is still the most comfortable thing to sleep on even with the newER mattresses i recently acquired. But just not quite long enough to completely stretch out on. So I peeled back the cushioning on one of the arm rest and removed and replaced some of the support structure. Now all I have to do is plop the cushions over the end of the sofa each night and there is plenty of room for my 5' 10." I look forward to a more consistent nights sleep in the near future.

Are you using acrylics or latex paints or perhaps something else. One of my favorite memories is of playing with finger paints in elementary school, very messy and very fun.

Barb - Most of my walking I do at the lake but in very bad weather I go to a mall that's close by. Boring but sometimes necessary. Congratulations on the great expectation!

I painted morning glory leaves on the wall yesterday. It's such a slow process, having to let things dry before moving on.

Yes, I use acrylics. They do dry fast, so that's a good thing. But each little shading line has to dry thoroughly before adding another coat. I "float" the shading by dipping half the brush in paint and then drawing the brush on a paper palette. That "floats" the paint across the brush and makes for a nice gradual blend of color. So the darker, thicker paint side of the brush gets applied right next to the object that's being shaded and then the other side blends to a faint edge. It's a great technique for shading and highlighting. And with this trompe l'oille techinique, shading is imperitive, to give it dimension and to make it look "real" and like the leaves and flowers are popping off the wall. It's just such a slow process.

Good Morning Barb.

Do you remember if it was a particular book that you learned this "trompe l'oille" technique? I do not think Donna knows of this technique. And I am sure she would love to give it a go. I had to read over what you said a few times until I finally could visualise what you are doing. I hope the pictures you take of the wall, once it is done turn out well. Perhaps you could take a close up of a section where you have used this shading technique. Acrylics do dry so fast. A useful aspect big time. But I can see what you mean about it needing to dry more completely before the next layer. What looks dry will bleed and make a mess sometimes.

I have studied the painting techniques of the kit builders but haven't alloted any of my equipment and supplies budget to the required compressor and such as yet. Acrylics are used as well as other types of paint often on the same kit, but it is in such thin layers and sprayed on with a small air brush that when using acrylics it drys very quickly.

Barb, if you can't get what you want done of the wall before going back to work; perhaps it would be good to setup a simultaneous time frame for clearing out your craft room so it isn't overwhelming to think about while getting used to working again. Little chunks of time like 30 minutes a day will whittle away a large project over a months time. You could even alternate days between finishing the wall and clearing space, or consolitating in the craft room. Just an idea.

Little chunks of time like 30 minutes a day will whittle away a large project over a months time. You could even alternate days between finishing the wall and clearing space, or consolitating in the craft room. Just an idea.

That is a GREAT idea. I might just take you up on that!!!!


I did not learn the trompe l'oille technique from a book, although I think there are some books available. I just haven't found any yet, I wish I could. I've learned the technique just be seeing people do it on crafting shows, like HGTV.