Hug More

With all the craziness going on in the world and with an uncertain future looming in America with a President Elect who is woefully unprepared and unable to govern himself, let alone a country, I have painted. We need love. We need diversity. We need understanding and empathy.

We need hugs.

Please hug someone today and bring a smile, a spark of hope, or a moment of peace and understanding. It is a small world after all and love makes it go around.

Brown Paper Packages

Every year for many, many years now, my husband and I wrap our Christmas gifts in plain brown paper. We started with using green string as the only decoration with a simple gift tag. It has evolved into a fun Christmas tradition of drawing on the packages, at first with simple pen, then some color marker and then full blown art with color pencils. At some point in this process, I started to pick a theme for each holiday. One year was all about snowmen, another Santa and his elves, another reindeer.... And a new tradition was born.

This was something I did for fun and for the enjoyment of the receivers. I didn't take pictures most of the years, because I didn't really care, and as an artist of many years, I'm not that attached to every piece of art I do, so I let it go out into the world to suffer the fate of being ripped open, or whatever. Not until later when it became more of a thing that people always mentioned and loved about getting gifts from us, that my husband decided to start photographing the packages. I've shared a few of those with you. Enjoy!

 

I love creating these packages. Besides helping get into the festive mood, it's non-stress artwork, where I can draw whatever I want without any expectations of having to be perfect.

What are your favorite holiday traditions? Feel free to share in the comments what family traditions you enjoy.

Happy holidays!