Work in Progress: Last Flowers of the Season {Bountiful Observations Series}

{on the easel}

Last week before the flurry of preparing for Thanksgiving began, I went out into the garden to salvage the last flowers of the season, to my good fortune I was able to gather a few bachelor buttons, snapdragons, and alyssum.

The painting is far from complete, but I was lucky to get the flowers mostly in before I had to quit working on it. As a whole, I try to always work from life and avoid working from photos when painting flowers because it seems to me that the colors are so much more nuanced and accurate when working from the real thing. When I began this painting I knew it would not be complete before I had to stop, so I left the nonperishable items for later…

I believe finding large chunks of time to paint this December will be a bit difficult because I am now in full holiday mode, baking like a maniac and crafting to my hearts delight. I am especially inspired with the holiday spirit this year because this is Naomi’s first season where she can really engage and interact with all that is going on.

{Naomi helping me bake}

Naomi’s engagement is both a blessing and a challenge because she also has some very severe food allergies, which is difficult to keep her from eating foods that could cause problems. As a result, I have been scrambling this season to alter and come up with recipes that are free of dairy, soy, and tree nuts. Which means no butter, cream, milk, margarine, or nuts can be present in the foods traditionally found in abundance during this yummy season…

Here is my first attempt at making a pie for Thanksgiving… I still need to work on the crust as the special soy and dairy free shortening does not quite work like regular butter or shortening would… luckily it was still a hit, and Naomi couldn’t help herself from grabbing a bit of crust when I was trying to snap a photo of it.

{caught in the act of grabbing for some pie crust...}

I hope your Thanksgiving holiday was wonderful and a good kick off for the rest to come. In this spirit of the holiday season, this month I am going to be trying something new on the blog by sharing some of the baking and craft projects that Naomi and I work on.

So please stay tuned as I interweave some of these posts alongside those featuring my artwork.

Have a good start of the week, and thanks for reading,
Liz