Remember last year when I went to the MTV Movie Awards celebrity gift lounge? Right. Well, it was sort of a last-minute thing, meaning, I didn’t have a a budget to you know, get there and back and feed myself and transport art and stay at a fancy L.A. hotel and everything. But I really wanted to go. So I tweeted a little and posted a little and before you know it, people were ordering art right and left to fund my trip. My sister’s mother-in-law even traded in some of her airline miles to buy my ticket which was over the top nice. In return, and because she’s family, I told her I’d paint her grandchildren. It’s taken me nearly a year to paint four of her six grandkids (two of which are my niece and nephew) but she’s been patient, which I appreciate just as much as those plane tickets.

Four down, two to go.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m 30-szmmfrpha years old. According to my calculations, that means my life could be nearly half over…depending on if I take after the long-living Coburns on my mom’s side, or the Wehrlies and their poor vasculature on my dad’s side.

So here I am, 36. Two kids. A day job that pays the bills but does not feed my soul. A growing art career that – let’s be real – sometimes takes a backseat to those kids and the bill-paying. I love being a visual artist, but there are a lot of other things I would have liked to do in creative fields; and other jobs that just seemed fun, or interesting, or that I thought I’d be good at.

Is this a problem that plagues a lot of creative-types? Too much energy, but not a big enough harness?  Too many ideas, and not enough time to get them all down on paper, or on the stage, or whatever the medium?

Unless there is something I don’t know about the space-time continuum, I can’t fit all my dream jobs, large or small, into one lifetime. 

Maybe to truly live creatively, we all need to be a little hungry for that next project, whatever form it comes in.

I have a full-time job. And I don’t mean the one that includes pouring milk, doing laundry and feeding Webkinz. I mean a full-time, grown-up, wearing-suits-to-work kind of job. It’s not very often that I take vacation of any significant length, but I do try to when my kids are out of school. This year, I took vacation from Christmas Eve to January 4 and I have to say, it just wasn’t long enough. 

Tomorrow it’s back to work, the suits and the commute. I started to panic yesterday because how could it be over already? And what did I accomplish, really? So here’s what I did do, didn’t do and meant to do.

ART

I worked on a few paintings, even a couple that were Christmas gifts – one that I completed, one that I didn’t. (Sorry, babe!) Then there were three name paintings and two more horsey-type just for fun.

FOOD

I cooked a a delicious Christmas dinner at my parents’ house, if I do say so myself. Grilled salmon, crab cakes, crab mousse, tuna-pasta salad and shrimp. We’re from the coast, after all. I love cooking at my parents’ house because they have every gadget imaginable and my dad washes the dishes AS I GO. 

I also made good use of my sourdough starter, making sourdough-applesauce cake and doughnuts (and gaining five pounds.)

This sourdough-applesauce cake will make you give up chocolate cake forever.

Crabcakes, I adore thee.

A happy sight - bread dough rising in the pantry.

They might not be much to look at, but they are tasty.

FUN

The after-Christmas unpacking extravaganza (how did we get all that stuff in our car?) was followed by an entire day cleaning the kitchen from stem to stern so I could film a cooking segment for the Rachael Ray Show with my 6-year-old as sous chef and my 8-year-old as cameraman. (Stay tuned. It may never see the light of day, but it was fun to do!) 

We made mac and cheese. I cannot make this stuff up.

WHAT I MEANT TO DO, BUT DIDN”T

• Clean the kids’ rooms
• Organize the garage and plug in the new freezer
• Clean the carpet
• Relax

Maybe next year.

When there's none of THIS going on, the house is pretty quiet.

The kids are off school all next week so I sent them down to grandma’s house for a visit. I had many visions about what I would do with all the Free Time in the next few days – clean the house without new messes being made, go grocery shopping with time to linger, sip a mocha while planning my Thanksgiving menu. Fun stuff like that. But my first task turned out to be something wholly unexpected and a little embarrassing for me – as a self-respecting 30-something – to admit.

I sat down on the couch, unmoving, for six hours. And read Twilight.

Now I know that there are some hardcore Twilight fans out there and don’t get me wrong. It was a pretty entertaining read, but if I want smoldering, dark and brooding I need only look across the dinner table.

So there’s that.

Now that I’ve marked that little task off my to-do list, I can not only confidently join in on watercooler conversations about Team Edward and Team That Other Guy, I can also set my mind to some creative use. Such as getting myself in gear and finishing up one painting that has been languishing, painting a dog portrait for The Daily Grommet and getting to work on the SIX name painting orders that came up this weekend as a result of a review by Swistle. Thanks, Swistle!

Because if there’s anything scarier than vampires, it’s a deadline.

Serenity now.

I have a couple of paintings in the queue right now, but I’m just not feeling it yet. That is to say,  my studio is a mess and I can’t concentrate on anything until I get rid of the kids artwork (sorry kids!) and the dust bunnies and everything else (old printer) that gets shoved into that room because “studio” is also code for “dumping ground.”

So today I set about cleaning and organizing and mostly throwing out a bunch of art detritus. And as the horizontal surfaces started to re-emerge I remembered why I like this room so much and why it makes me happy to have my own little creative space. I also made a new commitment to direct the kids’ – uhh, creative energy – to other parts of the house.

You can imagine what the pedals were for.

To call my studio a studio is really just to make me feel more official-like as an artist. The truth is, it is formerly the formal living room (what my grandma calls The Front Room) and a couple of years ago I realized that my idea of having a pristine room “for company” didn’t really jive with the way we live. Firstly, I have two kids and I’m not one of those parents who is successful at getting their kids to play “in their rooms.” My kids want to be ON ME at all times, which is mildly annoying, but also pretty cute. Secondly, we never have company.

So when I decided to claim the front room for myself we sold the second couch on Craigslist, I bought an old oak teacher’s desk from a garage sale across the street and moved in. I love watching those HGTV shows when someone goes to The Container Store and spends thousands of dollars on workstations and organization. But since my style is more eclectic and I have the budget to match, I’ve had to be a little more creative. There’s the teacher’s desk, of course, which is solid oak

Vintage is just a nice way of saying "old."

and weighs about a million pounds. The same neighbor had another garage sale about a year later and I bought an antique high boy dresser to use as flat storage. Someday I’ll refinish it, but in the meantime, I like the dings and scratches. I was visiting my grandma many years ago and found an art deco armoire at a yard sale for $40 and hauled it all the way back from Washington; now it holds canvases, inks and candles for the fireplace mantle.  An old beer crock is great for holding rolled paper and mailing tubes. One of my favorites is my drafting table, which spent time in my room as a kid and also in my dad’s den; it’s made from an antique embalming table.

No kidding.

The studio is a work in progress. It doesn’t have good lighting, matching furniture or attractive shelving. Or curtains. But it does have an iPod dock, usually a cat or two curled up on my chair, my kids working on their “projects” in the corner – and potential.