baby Jasmin - 5 weeks old

My favorite media for drawing is probably ink. I use the Sakura Micron pens. You can get them for like 2.99 at Michaels (and lots of other places, too). They seem to last the longest and come in a variety of colors and sizes. I use black and my favorite size is 02. This drawing was done with the smallest pen size they make 005. I have found that these pens (because the tip is so tiny) actually don't last very long, which I am disappointed with. But I am hard on my drawing pens and that's just the way it is. I do love the fine, fine line you can get with these. Today, wanting to draw - and taking a break from making waffles, I happened to find one that still had a tip on it, which is definitely rare! So I drew this picture of baby Jasmin as she was sleeping. She is sleeping in her bouncy seat and looks so cuddly wrapped up in her super soft pink blankie. She is still in her jammies because after everyone left, I laid on the bed to nurse her and we both dozed off till about 10:30. Actually I woke up at 10:30, she is still sleeping! She takes a really long nap in the morning. I guess it's good. I could be getting lots done around here - if I wasn't taking advantage of napping time. I figure I have a little over 3 weeks left till I go back to work, I am going to take advantage of nap time, since I will probably rarely get to nap after I start working again! Anyway, I am finding that infants are so hard to draw in pen and ink. It probably would have been a better drawing if I would have used pencil. They have no lines on their face and when you try to shade with crosshatching it is super easy to overwork the face...you have to know when to stop and leave it...and how to put just the right amount of lines in to suggest the depth and shadow. Maybe I will master it some day, but I am afraid today is not that day! Well, I am done being creative for now, and back to my duties as a housekeeper! I have a huge batch of waffles to cook up. Months ago, Sam bought a package of waffle mix from a Waffle House restaurant. He mixed it up last night, so I made waffles for everyone this morning. They are so much better than any store mix we have ever tried! (thanks to the two quarts of half and half we added to the mix) So Sam's dream is to have a freezer stocked full of Waffle House waffles that we can pull out and toast in our toaster. So I am spending today trying to cook up a restaurant size batch of Waffle House waffle mix. That, and doing laundry, packing up clothes, hopefully cleaning out my closet...you know, having a family of 6, clothes are the hardest thing to keep under control! Changing them out for the season, getting rid of clothes that don't fit, cleaning them, folding them and putting them away! It's totally overwhelming to me most of the time. I don't think I will ever get it under control. Yesterday I tried on 5 pairs of pants before I found 1 that I thought I could live in for the day. My pre-pregnancy weight was 237 (! - I know), after losing 20 pounds in the first week after Jasmin was born, the last 8 have taken a little longer to shed. (I weighed 228 at the end of my pregnancy) I am very excited about losing so much weight, but most of my clothes look huge on me, shirts included. I have very few form fitting shirts, and anything else looks really bad. I am tired of wearing droopy drawers...have to wear belts all the time now. I did buy a pair of 18 jeans with my birthday money, but I didn't try them on - and while I really do love them - by the end of the day, once they've stretched out a little - they are starting to feel saggy too. I wish I had a bunch of money to go out and get new clothes, but that will have to wait because we have a lot of other priorities right now, as you can imagine. It's ok - as long as I do my laundry often enough! Gotta go, Jasmin is hungry!