hey, it's 2012!

My husband and I spent most of December driving around California, visiting family and the occasional tourist attraction. It was an amazing month, but we're both glad to be back and getting back into the routine of normal life. James recently received the good news that he passed all of the CPA exams (which had consumed his life for the latter half of 2011) and we're both stoked about the new year.

My holiday cards were a hit with our friends and family, and I also turned out this watercolor painting for my grandma, who wanted something with jellyfish. It's completely different from what I usually do, but it was a fun experiment:

Then later in the month, I got to see these guys at the Monterey Bay Aquarium!

When we were in Monterey, we had some downtime in the motel that we spent watching The Next Great Baker on TLC (we're Cake Boss fans). One of the challenges was to create a wedding cake that embodied one of the three themes offered: vintage, princess fantasy or Hollywood glamor. Naturally, that led to me drawing the lineart for this, which I later painted with watercolor:

There's so much I want to do this year and though the year may have started out with hitting up a bar for brunch in my pajamas (hey, there was a special) I'm feeling very optimistic about getting things done this year. I'm definitely going to keep writing and continuing to submit short stories for publication—and hopefully, with the support of my writing group, I can find it in me to finally finish the second draft of the novel I started in 2008. On the 4th, I'm going to be launching a tumblr blog with all original content to keep up with my sketches and smaller projects.

I'm also going to be making a more serious effort to use my twitter account. We'll see how that last one goes.