Weekend in Kansas City

It’s wild to say but our kiddo turned 12 last week. It’s hard to believe that time has gone this quickly, but here we are. As his birthday approached, we were struggling trying to figure out what to do to celebrate him big. He doesn’t really need anything (other than some summer clothes) and he’s not the kind of kid who asks for things. He makes you get creative every Christmas and on his birthday. 😂

We landed on taking him away for a surprise birthday weekend. We decided on Kansas City and off we went.

Our first surprise was stopping at Yaya’s Alpaca Farm outside of Kansas City. What an absolute perfect way to start the weekend! Our animal-loving kiddo was so excited to get to spend some time with these gentle beauties. We learned about Alpacas, we got to spend some time feeding and petting about 50 of them and then we learned how to weave their fiber into textiles. If you’re going to Kansas City, I would highly recommend the farm! We loved our time there.

The next day, we went skydiving! Well, kind of.

We went to iFly in Overland Park, Kansas and did indoor skydiving. I was a little worried this might be too intense for the nugget, or that he might be a little scared. I was wrong. 😂 He took the training class super serious and, when his turn came, he dove into the flight tunnel. He was a natural.

By the time his flights were over, he had decided that he wanted to get certified as an instructor.

Later that night, we were in REI buying the kiddo some summer clothes. Out of the blue, he said “4 hours in the car is worth it for some air time”. He’s already planning his next trip to the flight tunnel (luckily there’s an iFly in OKC, which is just a couple hours away from us).

Throughout the trip, we had delicious meals all over KC as we explored and saw the sights. These are just a few pics of the food we enjoyed.

We spent our last full day in Kansas City at Worlds of Fun amusement park. This was the kiddo’s first time in a real amusement park where he was old enough (and tall enough) to start riding the bigger rides. Again, I was worried that he might be scared of the rollercoasters.

And he proved me wrong again. We immediately hopped on a coaster and I could see that he was overwhelmed and not sure what to make of it. He was definitely afraid. But the second the coaster came to a stop, he yelled “THAT WAS AMAZING!” and got back in line to go again.

We spent 6 hours at the park, walked over 7 miles and he rode every. single. ride he could — most of them 2-3 times. I was so proud of him. He was fearless and made the most of every experience we planned for him,

“I’m not sleepy.”

- The Nugget, 5 minutes before falling asleep in a restaurant

When we headed home after 4 days of fun, we were all beat. Kansas City treated us right. Our hotel, Hotel Kansas City, was super nice and the location was amazing. It was in the middle of the Power and Light District and was an easy walk to bunches of delicious restaurants, grocery stores and other activities.

Creative Space

We’re doing some work around the house and shuffling rooms so that my creative space can grow a bit. I’m going through and organizing all of my supplies, editing things that are old or I don’t use and identifying things I still need to pick up.

I grabbed my trusty Fuji and snapped some pics of my most-used supplies for fun.

We have a local friend who is building the frame for a standing height table for the my studio now. Once that’s done, we’ll drop a piece of marble on top of it and call it good. I can’t wait to have it finished and home so I can get it messy! 😂 More pics soon!

I'm back!

Hi friends! I’ve resurrected the site after a few months away and, MAN, am I glad to see y’all.

Why the time away and new domain? Life, man. Life.

Over the past year, I’ve been through some big changes and life has been a wild ride. I reached a point where I had too many irons in the fire, so I made a choice to slow my roll on the illustration and blogging front. I was bummed about it, but it was the right choice at the time. And, even better, I’m back now and I feel refreshed and energized and jazzed to the max.

WORK IN PROGRESS - CHECK IN

The last time we spoke (in January, y’all…sheesh) I gave you an update on the fitness journey I started last fall. Let’s start there.

I’m happy to report that I’m still on the grind. I’ll post a more thorough update later, but I’m currently weighing in at 212 pounds, which is a total loss of 53 pounds from where I started in the fall. More than that, I am in the best shape of my life and the strongest I’ve ever been.

There have been a lot of milestone over the past few months, but I’m gonna pause here and just share a few pics from my hiatus to document the journey.

These couple snaps are from today and, man, do I need a haircut.

And here are a few comparisons I’ve posted to social media, showing a current pic versus an older photo.

The left collage is from February 2020 and the one on right is a progress picture from March 2020.

This “after” pic is from this week. I went through my closet and dresser this past week to get rid of the clothes that are too big for me now as I was approach summer. I found this Level 3 tee from the 2010 Day of Caring in the back of a drawer. I had no idea I still had it. I remember that, at the time, I was super embarrassed because I couldn’t fit in the tee, even though it was a size Large. I had to run to Target the night before to find an XXL shirt that coordinated with the official event t-shirts. It fits now though - a decade later!

COVID-19 & LIFE

Obviously life has been different here lately. Before the Tulsa-area went on shutdown, my partner and I had already decided to practice social distancing to the max. By the time Tulsa tightened restrictions, we were already working remote and staying close to home.

We’ve had a lot of pajama days around these parts and lots of puzzles, board games, card games, chess and video games to pass the time.

I’m lucky enough to work remotely full time, so there wasn’t much of a transition for me.

The kiddo is homeschooled through a local charter school, so this was also a pretty smooth transition for him, other than school was put on hold for a few weeks.

My guy has had the biggest adjustment professionally but has sailed through it like the pro he is.

This has been an incredibly stressful time for everyone. I feel fortunate that I’m surrounded by people who have been focused on supporting each other and making the most out of everything. Like I mentioned, we’ve had lots of family time and game nights.

But, when our respective gyms both closed, my partner and I needed to figure out how to adjust so that we didn’t derail our progress while we still maintained our safety and level of activity.

Enter: our new bikes.

In addition to taking longer walks as often as we can, we’ve been putting these babies to work, cycling all over town and the metro.

Between sensible eating, staying active with walking, jogging and biking, we’ve both managed to continue shaving off body fat during this epidemic, which is miraculous to me considering we haven’t been to the gym in 6 weeks and we’re home all day surrounded by food. That time outdoors, and burning off energy, has also helped us manage the feeling of confinement we’re all dealing with.

We can’t wait for life to get back to normal, but we’ve enjoyed the time slowing down and being together too. We are staying safe and taking care of each other. I hope you are too.

I’ll be back soon with a recipe that’s become a family fav through this quarantine; it’s so easy and so good!

Work in Progress

Letting you in on what’s happening on the non-illustration front, I seemed to have gotten myself in pretty deep on a home improvement project here recently. Waist deep. In 16 tons of gravel.

What started as a simple plan - put in a pool - quickly snowballed into a full yard reno. The pool was installed and went smoothly. Now I’m in the middle of moving tons and tons of gravel around my house - by hand - to make a large patio, a fire pit area and a path around the perimeter of my house.

Once that’s done, we are building an outdoor kitchen and deck onto the side of the pool.

Isn’t it fun how one project quickly turns into about a hundred? HAHASENDHELPPLS. :)

Thought I’d share a few progress shots of where we are now. I’ve moved about 6 tons of gravel so far; only 10 more to go. On the upside, these guns are getting TONED as heck.

Off Planet Has Launched!

The day is finally here! Off Planet is out in the wild and you should absolutely, 100% grab a copy today. If you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read it fo free as of right now!

To celebrate the launch, here’s all 4 of the promo animations I made for Aileen.

This was such a cool project to be part of. And, more than that, Off Planet is such a good book guys! If you love awesome things, you will enjoy every moment of this book.

I Did a Thing!

On my march towards opening my Etsy store (coming soon - hopefully), I’ve been in total prep mode. My main focus has been on making sure I have quality content and products for the store. But, to do that, I also needed some tools to aid in making inventory.

I know that part of what I want to do it offer prints, stickers and maybe even vinyl decals. I could order them from a manufacturer directly, but after researching that option, it seemed to be cost prohibitive. I’m just starting out - I can’t (and don’t want to) charge people $10 for a sheet of stickers.

Enter this guy:

Through the beauty of the Facebook Market, I was able to snag a Martha Stewart edition Cricut Express Air 2 for dirt cheap. Someone was given it as a gift, tried it a couple times and realized it wasn’t something they’d use on a regular basis, so they decided to part with it and make a little money back.

I’m still in the very early stages of learning how to use this baby but I’m excited. Thankful for videos like this one from Catherine Kay (aka Katnipp) that soften the learning curve.

How gorg are those golden Martha Stewart edition Cricut tools? Way gorg.

So, I did a thing - that thing specifically. And hopefully it’ll help me bring quality items to customers while keeping prices reasonable.