What a busy month October was.
 
It took weeks and weeks, months really, to get ready for the farm auction sale.  My farmer came home exhausted every evening not to mention dirty and sore. Decades of "save that, we may need it one day" were stacked and sorted and laid out in the pole shed on pallets.  There were 148 pallets full of good junk and a whole yard full of farm equipment, some really new and some pulled out of the tree row where it has sat since Pearson was Prime Minister.

While he was busy doing all that work I was preparing the food for the canteen.  I turned 300 pounds of ground beef into hamburger patties, made dozens and dozens of oatmeal raisin cookies and shopped for coffee, cups, creamer and all the other things that were needed to keep the shoppers fed and watered.   Then, with some great helpers, we turned the workshop into a lunch counter. Near as I can tell we fed over 600 people in 7 hours.

Oh, and because all that wasn't enough work I decided this would be a wonderful time to set out all my old paintings and mosaics and have a silent auction.  I hauled my artwork to the workshop and laid it all out nice and neat with a bid sheet beside it.  Because Cancer has been such a prominent part of my families lives, I picked the Canadian Cancer Society as the benefactor of any proceeds and when all was over I sent them $360.00.  Then sold a few more paintings the next day for $75.00  making the total $435.00.  It's a drop in the bucket but every bit helps, right.

Today, the 31st while the rest of you are preparing for trick or treaters or picking up the pieces that Hurricane Sandy left you I will be putting the final boxes into the moving trailers, wiping down the baseboards and turning off the power and water. We have finally reached the end of this chapter of our lives and are excited to start the next one.

First thing we are going to do is haul our stuff up to our old cabin and try to find somewhere to put it all.  I hear there is over 6 inches of snow up there already so there will be no running water in the old shack.  Kettles on the wood stove for washing up and an outhouse will be a just fine for a little while.  We will try to get some rest but there are lots of things to do up there too.  When the weather gets too cold and we are ready we will start our migration south.  This Snowbird is going to spend the winter in Brownsville, Texas.

I am booked into an Art show and sale on South Padre Island at the Art Space on November 24th so guess we will be in Texas by then.
http://spiartspace.com/

How to get rid of 200 paintings FAST

At the end of October, my farmer and I are going to start our Next Chapter.  He is retiring from farming and we are moving to a piece of paradise we bought a couple of years ago and now finally get to make our home.

This means one massive farm auction sale, emptying the house, barn, old school house, shop and of course my Stu Dee O.  That is a ton of packing, sorting and deciding what to take and what to leave.  

A lot of our stuff will have to be stored while we build our new house and we will be living in our old cabin while we build.  It is really little so there is no room for extras.

I have so many paintings, over 200 actually,  mostly acrylic on canvas but also some mosaics and watercolors.  

They take up so much room and I don't want to have store them while we build.  The risk of them being damaged is just too great so I would rather give them away....almost!

I have decided to have a silent auction during the farm auction and donate the proceeds to the Canadian Cancer Society in honor of my family and friends that are fighting cancer or have lost their lives to this disease.     

I hope to get new homes for a lot of paintings, make room for new work and make a nice donation all at the same time.