First things first - I am making good on my birthday wishes. Special b-day shout-outs go to k8nkane, penny_sieve, starnightmuse, truesalcove, uponadream, and damoyre! Wishing you all a great year ahead! :)

And onto the musings!

Recently, I alluded on Facebook to a list of prenatal observations I've been keeping these last several months, which prompted my cousin to ask for the rest. Now that I'm halfway through this pregnancy thing (only 4 and a half months left to go... Holy crap...), I figured I'd satisfy my cousin's curiosity and list a bunch of them, not only for my own entertainment, but to see if anyone else out there has had experiences that resonate with some of this stuff.

( All these food comparisons are making me nauseous. )

That's all for this installment, albeit there are many more observations to note. :) Honestly, despite all the hormone-amplified irritants on this list, we are, of course, beyond happy about being pregnant. Which brings me to the latest bit of news:

We're having a boy! :D (This major event produced at least 3 prenatal observations by itself, mind you.)

Mum's the word on the name for now, but it goes without saying we look forward to when we can announce it to the world. In the meantime, thanks for indulging my brain dump, and to all the mamas and mamas-to-be out there, Happy Mother's Day!

PS: starnightmuse made an awesome rec for a pregnancy/art blog by fanartist, Deisi. Upon perusing her entries, I laughed till I was red in the face at her hilariously honest comics. Enjoy her work at http://www.keepersoftheorb.blogspot.com.

First off, a resounding "Happy Birthday!" to my fellow Taureans (or is that Tauruses? Tauri?) celebrating another year of existence on the earthly shore. While travel, work, and other happenings have kept me off of the LJ for a while, I've updated my LJ account to send me email to my hotmail account... which means my yahoo account, which has been theoretically defunct for quite some time, is now... officially defunct. But the moral of the story is, I will finally be able to see when people's birthdays are before they happen! Just one of many things I'm doing these days to declutter.

( The Big News )

And because I'm feeling particularly procreative, I did something I haven't done in AGES and drew a picture. :D Finding myself somewhat unsatisfied with the "Hunger Games" representation of District 12!Katniss (and coming up dry upon doing a Google image search for a fanart representation), I sketched out a scene. And yeah, there will probably be more from HG, simply because I cannot help but obsessively draw stuff based on books I love! MUHAHAHAHAHAAA! *wrings hands*

I'm happy to report this Katniss is wearing a hunting jacket that actually looks like it belonged to her dad.

Title: "And May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor!"
Medium: Graphite
Characters: Katniss and Gale
Scene: From The Hunger Games, when Katniss and Gale go out hunting together on the day of the Reaping and enjoy a small meal as they make morbid fun of Effie Trinket.



( Happy Hunger Games! )

PS: Where can I find a good Hunger Games LJ art community?

It's been so long since I've written here, it hardly needs saying that a lot has happened. I miss this community of thinkers, artists, writers, and above all, friends. On this LiveJournal, with your supportive input, I've peeled back my personal onion to find something true, expressive, and strong tucked within accumulated layers of self doubt, hurt, and naivety. While work and real life prevent me from giving to this community as much as I used to, I've returned to my LJ tonight because I believe in sharing that which is spiritually profound to each of us in any form it manifests: love.

This is the true story of a passionate love. I hope you'll brave its difficult beginning, because it will have a happy ending.

( Are not all these things the varied hues of true love? )

*Touches wand to her temple, draws out a silvery strand, and watches it fall into the glowing basin*

There's no truly effective way to say "I know it's been ages since I've updated and all, but I randomly have drawbles and you're the only people I want to share it with because I love you and miss you and wish I was on here all the time instead of having a job". So I'm just going to post these and hope that a) everyone in the LJ world is doing well and enjoying HP7.2/all other wonderful pursuits of happiness and b) you all enjoy the impromptu results of a work trip to San Antonio where I met up with the brilliant and beautiful pennswoods!

We basically conspired to meet up for lunch while I was in Texas for a conference, and pennswoods was able to quickly ask her flist for prompts in the event she and I could get in some artses. Luckily, we were able to get it in before I left for DC and she left for China!

I have to say, that meet-up encapsulates everything I love about the LJ fandom community. pennswoods and I had not even had a chance to speak in over a year, yet we were able to pick back up our super awesome friendship like no time had passed at all. What a truly magnificent thing.

On to the drawbles:

Title: "Flight from Gringotts" for major_dallas
Medium: Pen on paper
Notes: The anatomy's all wrong, of course. I foolishly started drawing humans before I realized I might not have enough paper to draw the dragon. But as a drawble, it's fun. And major_dallas, I hope to do a legit one of these for you soon!



( Loved the way they captured this scene in the movie... )

Title: "Molly's Remorse" for dragonsinger954
Medium: Pen on paper
Notes: Intrigued by the backstory potential here. dragonsinger954's prompt stated: "Molly... when she realized she had actually killed someone? Even if it was to protect her family?" So I played a bit with the dark expression on Molly's face for a while... and Bellatrix sort of became a comedic afterthought. :)



( Not my daughter, you bitch! )

And that's about all for now. I'm working on implementing a few changes in my life that may help me get on LiveJournal a little more in the months ahead. I miss writing and sharing and drawing and all those things that qualify as self-expression, and considering how long I've gone without doing any of the above... I'm surprised my head is remotely screwed on straight right now.

So until I've got the particulars sorted out on the time management front, I wish you all a wonderful end of summer. Cheers!

... to usher in my return to LJ.

First off, thank you major_dallas for giving me the nudge to participate in this most awesome LJ community, help_japan - a huge LJ initiative in which users auction off items in return for donations to benefit the Japanese recovery effort.

That said, I am auctioning off my R/HR Deathly Hallows kiss picture - the original stuff. Click on the thumbnail to view the full piece:



In my view, it's such a small sacrifice to make in the interest of contributing to such a serious a cause. I plan to auction off some additional stuff on this community as soon as I make an inventory of what I've got, but my fingers are crossed that this one will generate some much-needed donation money for Japan.

To make a bid, please visit my auction comment HERE

Thank you in advance (as always) for your support and for all the ways you show the world that fandom really is love.

*throws arms around entire flist*

Am rushing to put this up before I have to gather my crap together for another work trip, but CLICK!

ARTSES!! :D

(In which I break my art hiatus with the wonderful help of Pennswoods)

NOTE: Thank you to all who submitted prompts for this - if only we could have tackled them all. I truly wish pennswoods and I had more time to draw together, as it made me so incredibly happy to finally get back to the drawing paper. Anyway, ENJOY!

( '24 Dresses' has taught me to pay attention to his face... )

*Touches wand to her temple, draws out a silvery strand, and watches it fall into the glowing basin*

[Note: I'm about to get on a plane, but those who are interested to see some of the preliminary wedding photos can go to Susan Solo's wonderful photography blog entry here: Mike & Venessa: 7/24/10]

50 days to the wedding. Holy !@#%.

So yeah, it's been a little busy. :) In these last few months, I've learned a whole heap about correspondence etiquette, wedding gown underthingies, and the endless number of little details that go into planning a wedding. Rings? Check. Wedding Shower? Check. Family drama under control? Double check. Children adequately bribed into performing ring bearer/flower girl duties? Triple check.

However, I am proud of none of these achievements more than I am proud of the invitations.

Over the course of several months, I have handmade ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY of these babies. But none of them would have been possible without the unbelievable generosity of myrafur and her husband, who insisted on helping me print these out on a professional quality printer. They had me just send over the designs, and voila!

For those who are curious about the logo I created for the invitations, Mike and I play lots of board games, which comes from his being a game collector/officianado; hence, Mike is represented on paper as the red knight chess piece. Thus, I am the little blue butterfly that has alighted on his head. Yeah, it didn't sound as dumb when I was making it up.

Cue the poor-quality photographs:

The Outside w/ Envelope

The Inside w/blurriness

Anyone wondering where I've been and what I've been doing... well, now you know. :) I realize I probably could have left this project up to, I dunno, Hallmark? But although this whole thing took me forever to complete, I gotta say, it was a lot of fun. Special thanks to my mom and my bridesmaids for helping me make it to the finish line with these!

More updates on the way. These posts are hopefully going to get more frequent the closer I get to the wedding, but my ability to comment will likely be even more impaired the closer we get to "I do." But I'll do my best!

Hoping you're all doing well and following your bliss! -V-

Good LORD it's been a long time since I've touched this LJ.

Note to anyone contemplating a series of major life changes in a short span of time: You will wake up one morning to discover that your free time is now categorized in the "fantasy" section.

The wedding is four months out by now and I've been a homeowner for all of four months. I'm also six months into the busiest job I've ever had. The unexpected byproduct of all this is that St. Patrick's day is this coming Monday, and I've been subversively contemplating the wicked joys to be had from drinking Guiness on a worknight.

It's not that I'm in a bad place or anything - I'm living the dream, really - but I'm realizing now that there is a mental cost for putting too many tasks in your head at one time. For a good three weeks, I was wondering if I might be suffering from early onset Alzheimer's since my short term memory was failing to capture the simplest of sentences from beginning to end in nearly every conversation I was having. I'd stand there, convinced I was listening with rapt attention, only to arrive at an unexpected pause and say, "Yeah, I got it. ...What?" Either I had become a sucky listener, or there simply wasn't brain power left to collect information and actually store it.

Case in point. A snapshot of my week:
- Briefed a two-star general on everything I've done since October
- Translated a website into Spanish
- Arranged for web developers to meet with our Public Affairs folks
- Hunted down stock photography and footage for a DVD production
- Tapped 10 U.S. states for focus groups to test program slogans
- Researched/booked hotel, flights, and rental car for honeymoon
- Reserved hotel block for long-distance relatives to stay at for the wedding
- Finalized wedding invitation design
- Caulked one bathroom, decorated the other
- Cooked dinner, did laundry

And finally:
- Drank wine. Bought shoes.

( Snowmageddon/ClusterFlake 2010 FTL. )

Despite everything that's cropped up to complicate things, survival seems likely. Spring approacheth, and I couldn't be happier about it. Here's hoping you are all brilliantly weathering changes as the weather changes!

There is a tremendous charitable outpouring for Haiti happening on LiveJournal that reallycorking told me about earlier today. Please go to help_haiti to see what the fandom communities of LiveJournal are doing to raise money to provide relief from one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. RC and I are auctioning off our two collabs from house_elf_prjct in order to contribute to the cause.

Bid on them here:

Half-Blood Prince Art: http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/822.html?thread=935734#t935734
Philosopher's Stone Art: http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/822.html?thread=966966#t966966

Our utmost thanks in advance for supporting the effort. And even if you don't want to bid on stuff, I encourage you to donate to any of the many participating relief organizations sending help to the region. A little goes a long way, and the time to act is NOW. Hundreds of thousands of people have precious little time left to be saved from debris and rubble, and there simply aren't any resources available to get to them unless help comes from abroad.

Remember - we are all agents of hope!

Love to all,
Venessa