Thank yous (current and belated)...

About a week ago, Deb Ward announced that I'd won her Holiday Giveaway, but she kept us all in suspense about my gift. Late on the afternoon of the 31st, Señor Terremoto thought to check our post office box and there was my mystery package from Deb!! I'm pleased to say that I received a set of notecards featuring six of Deb's beautiful paintings, including one of my all-time faves, the peony that graces Deb's blog banner (go check it out!!). Thank you, Deb!!

The second thank you is also to Deb, for bestowing a Kreativ Blogger award on me last October. I got so woefully behind in my blog reading while I was back in Wisconsin for my dad's memorial service that I gave up on trying to catch up and just started in where I was in late October. But that meant I completely missed Deb's award. So a very belated thank you, Deb, for your vote of support!!

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More loose ends...

Actually, I think the loose ends may be in my brain!! That's probably not exactly a newsflash to those who know me well, but then...

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd received additional Kreativ Blogger awards from Paul Kasmir and Angela Shogren. Paul was actually the *first* one to give me that award. In addition to Angela, Sandeep Khedkar also generously bestowed that award on Brush-Paper-Water. My apologies for omitting that in the previous post. Sandeep, a business consultant by day, also paints beautiful watercolors and writes short verses to accompany each painting he posts on his blog "Inspirations from Nature." Please pop over and take a peek.

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Kreativ Blogger Award for Brush-Paper-Water

Paul Kasmir has very generously bestowed the Kreativ Blogger Award on me for my watercolor showcase blog -- Brush-Paper-Water -- but because I restrict that blog to features on other artists, I am going to accept it over here. This has been a great week for that blog in other respects as well -- it's now had more than 11,000 visits and the number of subscribers increases each week. On top of that, I discovered that Technorati ranks it as one of the top 100 art blogs. So thanks, Paul, for your enthusiasm and your vote of confidence for my efforts.

One of the conditions of the award is to list seven things about yourself, and also pass the award along. I'm going to reveal those seven factoids in a second, but instead of limiting myself to only seven bloggers, I'm going to suggest you visit all the fabulous blogs on my blogroll. I have a great collection of incredible artists on that list and you won't be disappointed!!

Now, on to those little details you've all been waiting for...

1. I love the smell of Winsor-Newton's watercolor paint Rose Madder Genuine. Even during the years I wasn't painting, I kept an old tube of it around for an occasional sniff. Very benign!! No need to call the DEA, folks!!

2. I love the name and the color -- Chartreuse.

3. When I was a child, I used only red crayons for several years. I suppose mental health professionals would have their take on this, but I'm quite sure it was because I was so enamored of the intense red tulips in my Grandmother's garden.

4. Godzilla and the Michelin Man are engaged in a perennial face-off in my studio. Oh, Godzilla thinks he's tough, but the Michelin Man just puts his hands on his hips, puffs out his chest, and stares Godzilla down. HA!!

5. When I was at my parents' home a few weeks ago, I found the Christmas exchange gift I got in 4th grade!! I don't think we coined the word "packrat" but we certainly tried our best to live up to it!!

6. I went to the site of the Haunted House that we used to visit when I was a teenager -- a moonless night was guaranteed to be scary. It's now a county park and nothing of the house remains these days. Sigh.

7. But I did see lots of fairy rings at that park. Contrary to superstitions held worldwide in the past, fairy rings have no supernatural source -- unless you regard fungi as alien creatures!! Fairy rings are simply circles of mushrooms which grow ever larger as the center of the ring becomes unable to sustain them due to loss of nutrients or changes in the soil chemistry.

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