Tuesday Food and garden.

 Hi Everyone!

I have been taking photos of meals and forgetting to take photos of others.

First I've been making some outstanding kidney friendly meals. This first one in Chicken stir fry.

There is no oil used at all with no salt flavorings.

Then a few weeks later made Sweet n Sour chicken. I was amazed at what I learned.

Using a non stick pan turn your stove to high and let the pan get very hot. Add vegetables that take the longest to cook.

And brown them.

 

Take them out of the pan and set aside. Get the pan hot again and do the same with chicken that has been cut up. There is no oil at all and look at the browning.

I put all of the vegetables in with the chicken made my sauce and It was delish.

I did the same process with the Sweet n Sour chicken as well. I neglected to take a photo of it. 

I made some sweets too. Lemon cookies that I have shown before. Perfect for CKD.

Made with aquafaba and fake sugar. 

 

Also this whole wheat sweet bread made with butternut squash and sweet potato. Also used aquafaba for the eggs.

 

 

Look how moist this cake is.

 

I use canned no salt chickpeas for the aquafaba. I dried the chick peas and then cooked them into a seasoned crunchy treat.

I also made a stack of KF burritos to put into the freezer for when I don't want to cook. 

 

Cooking KF has turned out to be quite easy after doing all the research. Dose Mr. M. like it all? Helllll NO! But it keeps him alive and his kidney stable. Trying real hard to avoid dialysis. 
The sun was out today so I went to the garden to try and do a little winterizing. With the prolapse I have not been able to do much. I pulled some tomatoes off the tree to ripen in the window. I need to go buy a tomato from the store to put with these to help ripen them up.

I looked over at the end garden area and saw this.

Celery growing in heaps. The small pieces I will make celery soup out of. The larger pieces for whatever. They are so sweet. I can't believe it.

 

 

Well that's it for now.

I have to get some dinner on the table. Lean boneless pork ribs, with a green veggie and some KF mac n cheese. 

Sounds good to me.

Nicole 

 

 

 

Monster Monday

Hi Everyone!

It's Monster Monday! I have some good ones for today. The horse edition.

 

 

 OK so some of you don't have bad dreams I leave you with some pretties

 

Hope you enjoyed the show. If you want to create with NightCafe click on the name

 Nicole

Sunday in the Art Room

 Hi Everyone!

I am very pleased with all of the self portraits that were shown on FFO challenge. We will have to do this again.  I have received a ton of emails with a lot of remarks and questions. First I want to clear something up. Baili, commented on how good I look for 60. 

Uhhh that is my first S.P. 

The second one is of me now at 73. Eekkk.

Enough of that. 

Disclaimer..... I am in no way an expert on drawing portraits. However, if I have some knowledge to help others I always will. 

 

More than several people talked to me about proportions on drawing portraits. There are SOOOO many ways to accomplish this. My Nan taught me, when I was a kid, to draw an egg shape then from the top of the head to the hair line measure 1/3, measure features in thirds. Something like this. In addition she would say, "Draw what you see."

 

The space between the eyes, is one eye size.

the outer part of the nose should line up with the corner of the eyes. The ends of the lips should line up with the middle of the eyes. The cheek bones should line up with the outside of the eyes. Something like this.

You notice that this person measures by fourths until the bottom of the nose and chin. Like I said there are so many ways to draw proportions.

There is also the square up or grid method. This always kind of confused me, and I have heard this form other artist who are dyslexic. You draw what's in the squares.

 

I want to reiterate that tracing is a perfectly acceptable form of getting started. You can see my post on this here

If you look on google you will find a plethora of information on how to get started. You just have to use what works for you. 

The measurements are the same if you are drawing a side view, or tilted head view.

 

 

There is also the circle method. Draw a circle for the top of the head and then sketch in the jaw line.

It works for profile as well. I could never do this because my circles are never correct. LOL

  

Once you have found the starting point that works for you. I encourage you to look at the structure of faces. Check medical images, oh and don't forget skulls. LOL Both of these will help you lay out bone and muscle structure. It's not like a study unless your are going for hyper realism. But to get an idea of what a face is made of so you can add tension in the face you are drawing.

When I first started drawing faces, I tried to make everything even. If this eye was round the other one had to be exact. However, it's almost impossible to sustain this. So for years I look at peoples features. No one has a perfectly symmetrical face. Unless you have some deformity you want fixed, really who wants a face like that?

OK, so there are a lot of people who do. I guess that's why plastic surgery is multi billion dollar industry. LOL 

For art though, a little normal off balance makes a drawing more interesting. 

Like this. ha ha ha

One of my practice pieces with colored pencil. 

Back when I first started drawing faces, an art teacher friend of mine, told me to draw at least one face a day for 100 days. The improvement was amazing. 

What I'm saying is draw with joy, make it fun, laugh at yourself when you make a mistake or you will give up drawing. 

If you are that person who can just free  draw, do it! Find your style. What is so wonderful about any art is that we are all individual. If I put 5 people in a room to draw the same face I will have 5 different drawings of that same face. I think that is the beauty of art. No matter what level of artist we are, there is a gift we give ourselves in every stroke we make.

I hope this has helped in some way.

Nicole 

 

FFO Self Portrait 11/28/25

 Welcome To Friday Face OFF (FFO)

This is the place to show off your face art.

You know, ANY type of face, nature, the face of a flower, Photography, drawings, paintings. There just needs to be a face in your blog post.

 

This is it! FFO first Self Portrait Challenge. I will admit this was difficult for me. Mainly because I look in the mirror and wonder who this old lady is? 

The first S.P. is a drawing from this photo. I think I was in my early 60's here.  

 

I missed the mark on likeness but wanted to show this just to let you know that likeness may not be everything if you capture the life of the sitter, or photo.

This second one is from a selfie. I told you I do not like getting my photo taken. I am just not photogenic at all. If a good photo of me appears, it is strictly luck. In this photo you can see how bad my left eye is. A gift from lupus, called ptosis and my constantly red cheeks, also lupus.

 

It started like this.

Then this 

and finally. I should have made my hair darker. I do have very dark hair with one stripe of gray in the front, and that doesn't show much.  

 

I can't wait to see who joined in for the challenge and I hope you had fun with this. 

Now for a bit of AI from my NightCafe Gallery. I thought I would do pretties today and all faces.

It's time for some features.

Violetta. Go on wonderful trips and see fabulous outfits. 

Mia, has the most beautiful art and always has a challenge going on.

Arnoldo always creative and clever art.

 

It's the end of this post and time to show me your face art.

Nicole

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

 Hi Everyone!

I can't make it to everyone's blog today, so for those of you in the US a very happy Thanksgiving. 

 

For all of my non US readers, wishing you the best day ever. 

Nicole
 

Wednesday A Little of Everything

 Hi Everyone!

It's been a busy week, with everyday having to take care of some sort of business. I have the next 6 days free and then it begins again. 

Today another reminder that this Friday the 28th is FFO Self Portrait challenge. 

Ha ha this is not me, I'm certainly not this well preserved. 

However, the challenge is optional, you may still join in FFO with any type of face. I always look forward to seeing the diversity and wonderful art that all of you present.

One of the things Mr. M. and I had to do yesterday was change our insurance. We met with a very nice woman that got both Mr. M. and I the best policy ever. When I first spoke to her on the phone she informed me that insurance company's are no longer paying the agents and that it would be $25.00 each. However, after we speaking with her she informed us that "There is no charge. Insurance companies want people on an advantage plans and they will pay the agents for that." So, we didn't have to pay anything. 

We got home early and I decided that we should have our turkey dinner. Seriously, for us, what's the difference?  It's not like we have family to share it with. My kids are on the East cost, and my brothers are spread all over the country. I did forget to take a photo though. Here is one from google.

Haa haa haa no this is NOT my table. We had a very kidney friendly dinner with turkey breast, roasted sweet potatoes, fresh string beans, and my whole cranberries I canned last year. Now we get left over turkey sandwiches. YUM!

 

I guess that's it for now. Today I'm going to finish up a colored pencil, abstract face and just take it easy today.

What are  your plans?

Make them good what ever they are.

Nicole 
 

Monster Monday

  Today is Monster Monday. AI art that I have created using NightCafe It's fun, it's free and it allows some interesting creative time.

Before the monsters, just a reminder. 

FFO self portrait is this Friday. It is optional, I expect to see all my regulars. 😅

Now for some monsters.

 

Here are two that I got credit for in some challenges. 

 

Now for some pretties.

 

  

Hope you enjoyed Monster Monday and have a good week 

Nicole