6 Hours

All these pictures were taken on my iphone and processed with instagram. You can follow me if you want too! My user name is redherringjeff.

I love my kids, and I love being home with them. As any stay at home parent can tell you though, the hardest part of that job is that you never get a day off. For me, nap time is spent working or cleaning and there is very little time left for personal projects. I talked to Mrs Handmade about this the other day, and we hatched a plan for some time set aside for those things that I don't have time for, and also time to just be alone. On the Design Mom blog last week, Gabrielle Blair talked about being alone and included this wonderful little video about it.





So I've managed to get out to Bread Co, or the library and get some work done on the blogs, or in my sketch book. and it's been really great. My wife is pretty rad.
Speaking of rad, this past weekend Mrs Handmade had another idea...trade a day of babysitting each week with one of our friends. My head exploded. What a perfect, simple idea that would be great for everybody. Why hadn't we thought about it sooner? Six hours home alone. Six hours to get some work done...during the day. This week was my first "day off" and while it felt a little indulgent at times, I made an actual dent in my work load. And then we went to see "Brave" after picking up the girls. And it was great.
Here's a little peek at my six hours...

 

9:30. After dropping Amy off at work, and the kids off at the sitters I sat down to frame some calendar prints for the shop and watch the "new" Conan movie. The movie had just the right amount of fluff to make actually paying attention to what I was doing possible. Also, in case the R rating didn't warn you, this is not like the older Conan movies, and I wouldn't watch it with kids. There's a lot of boobs and blood.

11:00.  I spent 20 minutes in my super messy studio looking for picture hanging hardware that I'm sure I have. I briefly considered both cleaning up the studio and going out to buy the hardware. Ultimately I decided to just let it go and work on sketches for the fairy tale book and calendar...

 Eating lunch while listening to Neil Gaiman read "Stardust" and sketching ideas for "The Emperors New Clothes".  I'm thinking that instead of going with the traditional Rococo inspired designs that I'll do Napoleonic empire clothes with 20th century Arts and Crafts sets.

1:30. After lunch, back down to the studio to rework some drawings for a barbecue competition team shirt I'm working on. One of my instagram followers said I need to post more of this type of stuff. What do you all think? More artwork? Is there anyghing in particular you'd like to see here on the blog?

 3:00. I caved and went to buy hardware on my way to pick up the girls. I just know that in the next couple of days I'll find the stuff I already had...it's not like I wont use it all or anything, just frustrating that I wasted so much time looking for it. Ha-ha-ha!

 

4:00. I picked up the girls at the sitter. They were glad to see me, but sad that they had to leave their friends. Ha-ha-ha! Life's so hard when you're a kid. We went and picked up Mom, and then went and saw Brave. The movie was great, and I think it's unfortunate that Disney did such a terrible job marketing it, because it wasn't the movie they made it out to be. 

And that was my "day off". Over all, a pretty good and productive day, and I hope you enjoyed spending it with me. Is this something you'd like to see as a regular feature? Are there things that you'd like to read about that I'm just not thinking of? Would you like to see more tutorials, reviews and shows? Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Things I'm into right now:

Thundercats. I finally got to see some of the new Thundercats cartoon, and it's pretty cool. One thing that's interesting to me is that this is the second cartoon that I've seen recently that borrows a lot of it's themes from the A-team. 

Neil Gaiman Books on tape:
I'm listening to "Stardust" right now, and have "Coraline" to listen to while I work next. One of the cool things is that Neil reads his own books, and he has such a wonderful, English voice.

Daily Life 100 Themes: 11 Memory

I have a great memory. Honestly, I do. Which is pretty awesome when I play trivial pursuit or Scene It. It's great when I'm gabbing with my friends. My memory comes in handy when I'm looking for some obscure thing I saw at the library, in my basement, or on the internet. There is one place that it always betrays me, though. Names. Not names of things, characters or people in general. I'm talking about the names of people I've just met. After meeting a bunch of people in a group "Hi Jeffrey, this is Danny, Amy, Ryan, Susie and Bob." I'll field the question about whether I go by Jeff or Jeffrey (incidentally, I wouldn't introduce myself as Jeffrey if that wasn't what I go by) and then promptly forget everybody's names.

Is there a cure for this? It's not like I mean to forget, I just Do!

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Photo Roundup For The Third Week Of May

I can't believe that I forgot to post these on Monday!  This seems to just be one of those weeks :) So here's this weeks photo roundup, all these pictures were taken on my iphone and processed with instagram. You can follow me if you want too! My user name is redherringjeff.

 

Sitting outside on the swing, I was checking mail while the kids played and Abby asked me to take her picture. This is her pose...with her eyes closed. Ha-ha-ha! This is actually intentional, and just cracks me up!

Abby's god mother got this book for her for her first birthday, and it's probably one of my favorites. It's hard to beat a combination like Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess in the first place, but the poem is just fantastic, and speaks about the things fathers want for their daughters. I don't want them to be perfect, but do want them to be happy, healthy and responsible. It often frustrates me how little good literature there is out there for little girls, but it IS there.

 

Working on some new peg people. I've seen several on pinterest that are pretty nice, but not really what I'm looking for...This is what happens when someone with art training and several years as a serious miniature hobbyist/gamer  becomes a crafter. I hope that this first set of Doctor Who peg people are well received. If not, then I had fun making them!

 

Speaking of art, I do graphic design and illustration as my day job. (In case you didn't know, ha-ha-ha!) These are a couple of character drawings I did last week. I'm thinking if I don't have time to get the new Daily Life finished this week I might throw some color on them for Friday's post. 

 

The girls and a little Crafternoon Delite.  I forget sometimes just how capable Olive is, because she doesn't really talk yet...That kid is smart. A lot of construction paper, foam stickers and cutting going on here.  It's cool seeing how into making things they are.  Speaking of Crafternoon Delite, Tonite (Wednesday, May 23) we are hosting a crafting event at Fusion in chesterfield mall from 6:00 to 9:00. Grab some of your handwork and come on down and hang out with us!

 

We found these costume glasses the other day at Deals, for a dollar. Olivia thought they were really cool, and looked SO cute in them...unfortunately, they broke the next day. It kills me that even something that only cost a dollar has no real longevity.

Well, that's it for this week! Until next time then, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Photo Roundup For the Second Week Of May

 All these pictures were taken on my iphone and processed with instagram. You can follow me if you want too! My user name is redherringjeff.

 

This is the most hilarious side effect of owning a Mr Potato Head.  I think at one point or other, all kids try on the glasses, don't they? Olive will put them on and then come and tell me either "glasses" or "eyes" depending on her mood. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I went and did a presentation about being a freelance Graphic Designer and Illustrator to a high school graphic design class. Remembering my speech classes in college, I was worried that I'd talk for about 5 minutes and then run out of things to say. What I forgot is that I really like to talk about what I do. I think blogging for the last 10 years or so has really made that easier, because I know what it is that I WANT to say now, ha-ha-ha! The other day I got this thank you note from the class. I think my favorite is "Thanks Jeff, you're pretty legit. props"  Ha-ha-ha! how awesome is that?

 

The other day, Abby came out of her room wearing one of the super hero masks that Mrs Handmade made for her...and a GIANT sombrero.  "Who is this masked amiga?" said Amy as she took a picture. 

 

A second later, Olive comes out wearing princess shoes and this smaller, straw sombrero. Ha-ha-ha! The perfect sidekick for her Quixotic sister!

 

The view from my chair at this weekend's farmers market down at Tower Groves in Saint Louis.  We couldn't have asked for a better day, 74 degrees and sunny. There was a good crowd, and we had great neighbors. 

 

Speaking of our great neighbors, here's Beqi and Lauren B. Both do awesome work, and are fun, funny and just generally pretty great. All day, Lauren was just GUSHING about corgis. I think Beqi was getting a little tired of it by the end of the show, but of course it didn't stop. Ha-ha-ha!

Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

She Never Lets Me Get My Heart-Rate Up Enough To Call It Excersise

Abby tells me she's a really good trash hunter...and she's right, she is! Most days when it's not raining, we go for walk on the just over a mile circuit of our neighborhood. We have a sit and stand stroller, which means that Olive gets a seat with a view in the front, and Abby can either sit or stand in the back. It also means that she can get in and out pretty easily.

I don't know how many of you ever go on walks with a 4-year-old, but it can fall apart pretty quickly if they actually have to...you know, walk. Ha-ha-ha! So this set up works really nicely for me as it gives them some fresh air and sunshine and I get to do more moving around than laundry and vacuuming allow. I've learned though, that I need to take a bag with me. My neighbor made a joke that it was for picking up poo if the girls had an accident, which got us talking for a minute about Abby's obsession with picking up trash. She says our neighbors are being naughty throwing all this trash on the ground, and I thank her for being a good citizen.

The pace of our walks is terrible. We (Olive and I) do a lot of standing and waiting, starting and stopping. Sometimes we find some kind of gross stuff. Often we have to walk past the soggy, shredded advertisement "newspapers" that are all over the fronts of driveways and yards. Sometimes we have to carry back pocket fulls of junk because we forgot a bag...But it's so nice to spend the time in the sun, teaching good citizenship to my industrious little girls. Being a stay-at-home dad with them is pretty awesome.

Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,
Jeffrey

Daily Life 100 Themes: 9 Drive

 

It's amazing to me how often this car-jacking scenario plays out in the backyard. One kid walks away from the car, and another gets in. Then the screaming begins...Ha-ha-ha! I'm a firm believer in the idea that if you walk away from it, you are done playing and it's somebody else's turn. I won't defend toys that have been walked away from except in special situations. The really funny thing about this though, is that I have two cars, and I still get to hear this. 

As usual, the rest of the Daily Life illustrations have been archived on the Red Herring Illustration facebook page. Thanks for stopping in! Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,
Jeffrey

Daily Life, 100 Themes: 8 Innocence

Amy is usually the one who gives the girls a bath. Sometimes I read, sometimes I catch up on facebook, and sometimes I'm down in the basement lining up my work schedule for the night. One thing that I can pretty much count on though, is Olive running to see me as soon as she gets out of the tub, with her towel hanging by it's hood on her head...butt naked. Those little visits, and the joy on her face always crack me up, ha-ha-ha!

As usual, the rest of the Daily Life illustrations have been archived on the Red Herring Illustration facebook page. Thanks for stopping in! Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey