Christmas in January

My sister, and her boyfriend, Graham, have both been away from home for almost a year. They left on the first of February of last year, and moved to Las Vegas for work (temporarily) then my sister had another job on the road, which she just returned from earlier this week.

Because of this, they were both away on Christmas. Our immediate family decided to wait until they got home for the 6 of us to celebrate Christmas together. My parents even kept up their Christmas tree, and all of their decorations (inside and out) just for them! (my parents are usually sticklers to putting all the Christmas decorations away before the first of the year, so this was a pretty big deal for them! You can be that they'll start putting it all away tomorrow!)

So, we finally had our family Christmas together this afternoon. :)


Chow Christmas in January!

After we opened all of the gifts, we went out for the traditional Christmas-in-January meal: Baja Cactus on Main Street, Milpitas! Yum!


Dinner at Baja Cactus!

My main present to my sister and Graham was a painting that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. They just moved into a new home late last year, and are finally having a chance to really live there and settle in. I've been promising a painting to my sister for years (yes, years....) and really wanted to be able to give her one for her new place.


My latest painting

It's a fairly large painting. I forgot to measure it, but I'd say it's around 48" long, and probably about 30" high. It's 3 panels - my first triptic. :)

The two birds in the painting are meant to be her two cockatiels - Crissy and Bonsai. Crissy will turn 30(!) years old next month - we've had her since she was 6 weeks old! Dick and I took care of the birds at our house for the past year while my sister was away. It was nice bonding with them again.

I haven't painted in so long. I'm always amazed once I start a new project, just how much I love the process of painting! Now that I've got my studio set up in our backyard, I'm determined to get out there and paint more often! It feels so great to be painting again!