Hello there!
I was so busy doing things today that I almost forgot to share my news of the days with you. My husband's volleyball varsity team is going to a tournament tomorrow. He just accepted a very talented girl from a junior varsity team to a varsity one and we had another girl go away from the team so she left her jersey with her last name. I was going to help my husband to put the name of the new girl instead of the old one, so we went to buy the fabric to cover it up and I was going to paint the new name on the piece of it and sew it to the jersey. My hubby wrote the name "Nunes" on the paper and went to practice with girls. I spend a few hours to go what I planned and it came out almost perfectly. When my husband came back he was really impressed by my work and praised me but then.... he noticed that I wrote "Nunes" and realized it should be "Nunez" instead. ))) He was trying to scratch it off, suggested to cover it again.... poor guy! What is hilarious about it is that he is a very educated and attentive man, but it's his second time in his coaching career that he misspells words. The first time was when he made an amazing caricature of the team in the end of previous season and he put "volleball" on it. We only noticed it when he gave about thirty copies of it to the girls and they told us that the word is wrong!

Well, at least he is talented! )))

Today we went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery! I was looking forward to it for a lot time and was very excited. My husband and I visited it before but today we went there to sketch and paint. I cannot really explain my love to cemeteries. There is something very emotional, very mysterious about the place where so many people of different eras and lives are buried.
I loved going to the cemeteries since childhood. My parents took me to the Russian cemetery where my great grandmother and my grandfather from my mom's side are buried. We would meet there with my far relatives to fix the lawn around the graves and basically have a picnic with each other and past generations. It wouldn't really be any rituals except when my grandmother would pray a little and talk with the graves, but it was not creepy, it seemed to be perfectly normal.
Today I searched for the place to set up for a painting and I found this beautiful big family grave stone with the last name "Laffer-Spencer" on it. It was a main object on my painting and so I wondered who these people were and what they were like. These questions along with how they died visit me often when I walk between graves. I believe my walk and curiosity is reviving these people, some very old, some just babies. Thanks to us who come to cemeteries to remember our relatives, to visit celebrity graves or just to look at strangers' graves the memory and the honor of these people keep on living. That's why it's one of my artistic dreams to learn how to make gravestones. It's such an emotional kind of art that connects an artistic expression with the grief, pain, sadness, love, desperation - the strongest emotions that a person can have. There is also a story behind each memorial statue or a gravestone and I love when a stranger can tell who the person was just by looking at their grave.
I don't know when I will die but I know that no matter how I will die I want my grave to be able to speak with strangers and tell them who I was.

Today I took time to get it over with this week's homework for my two online classes I take. Tomorrow - only painting and spending time with the family! I guess tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish "New Year", according to http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday2.htm so my husband has a short practice with the team in the morning and then he is mine.
I finished reading a very nice book for my anthropology class - the First Fieldwork by Barbara Gallatin Anderson. It's a first person story about the author's yearlong journey to a little island village Taarnby, Denmark, to study the local culture. This journey reminded me of mine, when in 2005 I went to the USA for the first time as an exchange program participant. It changed my life - sounds corny but it is true. I became more independent and strong. It gave me opportunity to compare my culture with another cultures and for short three months I was a part of a new culture. I have travelled to Europe before and it gave me grandiose impressions but I never felt so closely involved in a foreign culture before. It was a very interesting experience.
"Anyways" as the main hero from "Nacho Libre" movie says, I am going to make myself and my husband a nice Nutella sandwich and go to watch "The Happening" on our DVD. I liked most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies and I am sure I will like this one. Have a good evening as well!

I spend first part of the day painting like I promised to myself. It was partially frustrating because when I compare my painting with the ones from the books it is still a long way to me to compete with them! ))) But I know I am getting there. In an hour I will go to my watercolor class and find out what everybody thinks about them but I want to show you first.

This weird thing is some kind of seed from a palm tree.

This one is painted on a mat board which proved to be pretty interesting.

The idea is to paint the details of an object from nature.

These are miniature roses that dried out and were very poetic.

The more I look for examples of the work in the books the more I improve. It didn't really help me when I was painting in acrylics but now it's very useful for some reason.
Good luck to me! )))

Very inspired today!

It's a new week and as it usually happens I am making great plans for the next several days. I have so much to do and by the end of week I always feel so exhausted to do anything extra that I give myself a break! But not this week! I promise! 

First of all, I feel that it's time to start losing that weight I gained in the end of last semester. So inspired by my husband who lost LOTS of weight during this summer by just skipping on one thing, I will stop eating sugar. I believe this is the video that changed his mind about sugar - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. Of course, I will give myself a couple of easy days by eating honey instead, but this time I am really serious - I want to be healthy.

Another thing I want to start is to paint again. Not just intensively painting for my watercolor class like I did before. I want to paint my orders, paint for myself, paint for my portfolio. Watercolor is so difficult for me. I never had such problems with any other media, even the airbrush. I feel a little frustrated but I am trying to get some books and learn what other artist do to make it look right.

Oh yeah, and I finally have to get my dog washed and trimmed. My poor "puppy" (who is an almost 4-year old Cocker Spaniel girl) is looking so sad these days - she only sleeps and, well, goes out for a couple of minutes to the back and front yard. I can tell her itching and scratching is annoying her as much as us and her ears bug her a lot, so we have to take care of it.

Nice and useful weekend it was! Yesterday I guess it was nice part of it - my husband's team and us went to a Korean BBQ restaurant. It was my first time and it was delicious. You pretty much cook your meat yourself on the grill that it situated in the center of the table. It is very unusual!
Today we did a useful part of the weekend and went to the art store to buy the silk screens for printing volleyball team's T-shirts! I cannot wait to do it! They are going to be awesome!

It's evening here and I am planning to call my grandmothers now. They both live in Russia and it's 13 hours difference between us so they are probably going to wake up now. I always feel a little nervous before calling them, I didn't hear them for so long... When I was a little girl I spent a lot of time with them and never thought some day it's going to be ok for me not to see or hear them for a while. I am afraid of it a lot. They are, in the same time, are wonderfully positive and so strong-spirited I admire them! They both went through the WWII, hunger, poverty, and after the war stood on their feet and created such a great place for my parents to grow up in that it sounds like a fairytale. 

My grandma from the father side, Zinaida, was working as a cook and she still loves cooking. She is the one who taught me how to make her famous pastries with poppy seeds and be creative. The stories she told to my brother and me when we were little are amazing and she still remembers them better that me. My grandma from my mom side, Valentina, was teaching in the primary school, and teaching my mom, and teaching me and my brother how to be good and proper... well, she still teaches us and everyone else how to do things right. She has this very strong need for justice which I inherited from her. Her husband, my grandfather Petr, was a judge, so it was in the family. Valentina is still fighting with some local social program representatives to make their neighborhood nicer. 

My respect and great love goes to both of them. Well, I guess now is a good time to call! See you later!