Alllmooost there...

If my head has been stuck in the proverbial sand (or in a tree as this poor horse found himself - I think the story ended well for him), it's because I'm waist deep in quicksand ..er.. homework. Just finished up the last of my 8 midterms yesterday and now I have one more push to get ready for the 3 finals. I will be so happy to finish Calculus - that's what I'll be working on today. Next up (over the holiday break), editing the next batch of DVDs (that I wanted to have released last spring - yikes!) and some repairs and commissions (one for a friend and the other that was a trade I simply couldn't pass up!). If those all go well, I hope to finish up the Arab from the NAN 2008 auction so that he can go home with someone and a surprise sales piece I've been itching to do for a few years now (where does the time go?). Stay tuned...

Visions of DaVinci

DaVinci's Horse (note Audrey underneath!)

Last school year, Audrey brought home a book about this amazing sculpture and we discovered that one of the two existing sculptures resides in Grand Rapids, MI...

So, this past weekend our trip to Battle Creek to see family and Ann Arbor for a football game was slightly diverted to the Fred Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. We arrived with only 30 minutes until closing, so we made a quick lap around a section of the sculpture garden after stopping to admire The American Horse.

DaVinci was never able to cast the sculpture himself during his time and the original clay version was destroyed. 500 years later, many artists and individuals came together to recreate DaVinci's dream horse. Il Cavallo resides in Milan, Italy and this one is right here in Grand Rapids, MI.

Right across the way was this sculpture by another artist.

I believe there may be a horse sculpture by Degas somewhere on the premises, so we'll be back someday...

Harvest Time & Rainbow Chili

A few weeks ago the kids and I got carried away picking ripe tomatoes in my father's garden. The biggest, mutant looking tomatoes were ones that we had actually grown from seed (our first attempt). I really didn't think we'd see any tomatoes, especially after Andrew found the seed tray and was flinging the dirt out of it. We still ended up with more than a dozen plants, which we took to Papa's house to plant. What to do with so many tomatoes? I tried freezing them. It was actually very therapeutic to peel tomatoes after lots of studying. It was a bit messy, but not too hard to do. Now I have 2 big freezer bags full of skinned tomatoes, and 2 big bags of whole Roma tomotoes - way too many of them to peel them all!

I even made my own chili from scratch the other day. Once I convinced the kids to try it, everyone loved it! I call it Rainbow Chili (yes, I'm a bit cheesey!):

Rainbow Chili

1 lb. ground turkey, browned
2 small or 1 large green pepper, chopped
1 banana pepper (or another green pepper), chopped
2 heaping spoonfuls of dried onions (or chop up a fresh one - I can't bear to!)

-add the last 3 to the turkey while it's about half way done browning

3 tomatoes, chopped
2 cans black beans, drained
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 tbsp. chili powder (more if you like it hot!, this is mild)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 cans tomato soup
1 can diced tomatoes (1 lb. 12 oz. size) - or chop more fresh tomatoes

Mix everything together in a large crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Yields enough to serve a family of four all week long. Next time, I think I'll freeze half of it. Though it was good on hot dogs and fries, too...

Enjoy!