Day 6 and Day 7 - almost a week, but 3 more to go!

Just when I think I reach my breaking point, I find something else to do.  I can't stop myself from thinking about and playing with food.  It really actually calms me.  I feel more tortured when I'm not around food - even smelling it makes me feel better!  So last night I made a Broccoli Lasagna that went so fast!  The secret ingredient?  Hot pepper sauce!  Who knew?  And, to my credit, I cooked it while shlepping a 3.5 liter bag of TPN on my shoulders!!!

 The sauce is just milk, flour, dry mustard, hot pepper sauce, and salt and pepper.  You just layer the sauce, cheddar cheese, broccoli carrots and noodles three times.

Bake at 350F for 35 minutes...

WOW did it smell good!  Cheesy and rich, but no butter!

I made everyone blueberry pancakes for dessert.

Frantic for something else to do, I buried myself in my studio and just started to paint...anything.

I painted this bright backdrop...

And made these two dancing trees!  The flower is playing the guitar.

Sometimes my best ideas come when I have no idea when I'm going to do and am open to anything.

With that purple textured background I made the other day, I made a girl only out of tissues.

The girl is reaching to her reflection in the water - the "mirror" is one of my mom's old jewelry pieces from the 80's!

Then I created this other textured background from magazines and tissues.

I wanted to do inchies, but different, so I bought a circular cutter from the stamp store and made circle inchies!

I wanted to keep them simple - which is never easy for me!

 These trees are in the corners of the inchies canvas.

My last work of the day?  Some therapeutic swirling colors to just get out of my head and PAINT.

It looked tot "clean" for me, so I blotted it with a napkin, smeared it a bit, and added some crackle paste on top.  That's more like it!

At the stamp store, I found this little "window" pendant, so I made a little tree scene for it.

 I got really hungry after all that painting, so I cooked for everyone else to live through them vicariously!  We were all out of eggs so I got creative: for the crepes I mixed cornstarch with water, and for the muffins I mashed up a banana - hey, you gotta improvise!

I made my mom smoked salmon buckwheat crepes....

And Corn Muffins for my brothers.

Yesterday was ridiculously hard for me - I couldn't get my mind of food - so the art room really became my refuge.  I spent a total of SIX HOURS down there!  I can tell this will be a really creative period in my life, however challenging it may be.  A message to my blog followers out there - never take food for granted!  Because it SUCKS when you can't eat or drink!!!!!