Paint Party Friday - Hearts Pattern

Happy Valentine's Day!

For Paint Party Friday, I am showing a Hearts pattern piece I did on Instagram for @alexandrasillos #patternedthingsbyalex.  It was a pattern theme for the month of January.  I was inspired by the spiral stars of a galaxy, so my hearts in red, pink and white on textured purple cardstock (6" x 6") are forming a simple spiral pattern across the 'galaxy'.

Rain's Thursday Art Date - Love

Welcome to Rain's Thursday Art Date, the theme is 'Love'. I made a heart tessellation pattern designed on graph paper. I chose 3 colours that seemed to work well together (red, pink and purple)  and am so proud of the result. I have never done anything like this before, very math-like. Art and Math geometry have a lot in common as I have come to learn. Tessellation patterns are like tile patterns in the way shapes fit together, very much like a puzzle. So I made upright rows of hearts alternating with upside down hearts with no spaces in between the pattern.

This was also shared on Instagram for @alexandrasillos #patternedthingsbyalex.

Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow!

A love story

I thought this joke above was quite funny and wanted to share.

Girl to Boy: 'What is your idea of a perfect date?'

Boy replies: 'DD/MM/YYYY other formats can be really confusing.'

Girl: 'You will die single.'

And as we approach Valentine's Day, I recently heard that  the legendary Tina Turner's 2nd husband donated a kidney to her in 2018. You can read about her transplant love story here.  She had an abusive first husband and found her second husband late in life.  He is 16 years her junior.  She is 80 years old now.

Luxury soaps

I picked up some Luxury soaps by Castelbel from Portugal, in Almond + Wild Honey, Goat's Milk, Almond Oil fragrances as pictured above. I like that they are large 10.5 ounce bars.

Do you have small items that you will treat yourself to?  

Rubber jar openers

I bought these inexpensive rubber jar openers from Bed Bath and Beyond.  One is a bright green circular shape of a 5 inch diameter.  Another is a blue square shape.  These would be for opening large jars. Then there is a 3/ 1/2" red cone shaped one for opening smaller bottles and jars.  There was an old rectangular one I used that eventually tore.

Cocoa Brownies

One of my sisters passed along this Smitten Kitchen brownie recipe, it is easy and so delicious as you can picture from the photo above. It uses a half a cup of butter along with cocoa powder instead of chocolate.

Here is what I did:

pre-heat the oven 325F (I did 300F in my hot oven)

Ingredients:

1/2 c butter

 1 c sugar

3/4 c plus 2 tbs cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1/2 c flour

I microwaved the butter, sugar, cocoa powder and salt in a heat proof bowl for 1 minute 20 seconds.  Then I mixed in the vanilla and eggs.  Then I beat in the flour.  

I baked the mixture in a 9 inch pan lined with parchment paper for 20 min at 300F.  The recipe said 20-2 mins at 325F.  It makes 16 small squares.

Jungle cats and perfume

This article says that a zoo in London was asking for donations of perfume and aftershave for their jungle cats. Leopards, cheetahs, ocelots, jaguars and tigers love the scent of certain perfumes.  Calvin Klein's 'Obsession for Men' is particularly popular. It seems that many perfumes contain a chemical called civetone, now artificially made, but is secreted naturally by civets from their anal glands. It has a musky scent.  The article has a video showing the animal's reaction to the scent. They will paw at trees and rub their faces into logs.