trying not to fall behind..

Even though im happy to be not posting everyday anymore, i still need to try and post at least once a week. Hopefully in the near future the house will be recieving some long over due high speed internet and wireless router. then i can put together nice posts from home on my days off :)

but until then this is what ya get i suppse :)



this last saturday was my first offical 'snow day' working 50 ish miles from my home, and more or less being my own boss being able to call 'snow day' is a definit perk.

the weather man said 'maybe some flurries' that translated into roughly 10 inches of snow and 30 plus mph winds. it was outstanding! ive seen alot of snow, for example last xmas when it snowed nearly 27 inches in under two days, but ive never seen it drift like this.

down town had drifts five feet tall blocking entire side streets off. it was awesome, i wish i had a snow mobile haha.



so what to do with an off day? my mom also ended up with the day off so we headed to the grocery store for baking supplies and of course fried chicken supplies.




charles was there stocking his meat dept. later on he came by in a 4x4 truck and we drove around town threw all the snow. it was so bad that trying to move it before it ended was pointless. the city plowed 4 blocks of one street. stoped to look back and it looked like they hadnt even done it! needless to say it was a challenge even finding the road! we crossed some areas that had 3 feet of snow on the road!



any how, when we got all we needed we headed back to the house and this is how much snow had accumulated on the hood of my car in the 25 minutes we were inside!



once home EYE didnt have any idea were to start!



my dad said " EYE might have an idea..."



mom replied "EYE know! banana bread!



i started in on mixing it all up. im used to cooking not baking so all the measureing was kinda weird to me but alas i forged forward.



minced up some walnuts and decided to actualy make muffins, banana nut muffins. sooo tasty :)



then onto these sorta sugar cookies. they turned out nice and soft not all crunchy, and we put a ton of orange rind into them so they taste like citrus/sugar cookies. so so good :)



had to make peanut butter, chocolate star cookies. my personal favorite winter time treat :)



ohhhh yeeeaah :)

any how we actualy made another couple dozen cookies that are a craisen/ orange cookie. but they needed to sit in the fridge for 3 hours before segmenting them out and baking so i spaced out on taking a pic of them. sorry :P



of course a day kicking around the house my dad found about 30 more 'lost' match box and hot wheels cars. thinking its time to move the track we set up previously to a bigger/warmer spot of the house and see how these new ones run the circut.



and heres a sneak peak of two 3/4 sleeves im working on. im working on roughly 4-6 big tattoos that id realy like to show off, but instead of my habit of tons of progress photos im attempting to wait until they are done and finished to show. but i promise theyll be workth the wait... hopefully lol.

The road is long and the light is still far

Been a good day. Some cooking, some video games, and lots of reading.  For sure a day were I learned just enough to realize I've got a lot more to learn.

Sorry, lifes been busy

yeah i know, thats no excuse. but honestly its just been nuts and when i do get a chance to sit down i want to do just that. sit down.

non the less i had a minute and thought id through up a new post for ya'll.

first off some tattoo stuff.



started this giant koi/ cover up project on tyson.



and did this flash based bulldog on a 65 year old that bench presses 450 lbs and has 3 purple hearts! would have liked to do some more line sculpting, but its still 65 year old skin no matter how strong he is. maybe later down the road...

on a process note, here is a tattoo i started the other day on my freind kate. i was trying to keep track of time spent on the prep for the tattoo as alot of great tattoo artist talk about having spent nearly as much prep time as tattooing time on some of their pieces.

this is a great example of that! all in all this tattoo took 3 1/2 hours to draw and the exact same amount of time to tattoo what we've gotten so far!



now this didnt take that whole amount of time. it did take a while though, i took the positioning of over the traps from shoulder blade to chest. along with the large amount of text as a challange so i did spend alot of time trying to find a way to have it look the best it could. in that photo you can see that the lettering actualy reads backwards and upside down for a portion.

my thinking was as it drapes over the person they are only going to be able to read one side at a time, and the back side they will have to walk around to read so when applied to the person it reads correctly front to back, as wall as from the proper angle.



a couple lettering style changes,change in images, and a change in position later we have hit out 3 1/2 hour mark with something we could both live with.



and 3 1/2 hours of tattooing this is what we have! im going to go back in and add some black and grey background later on i think. but overall we both liked the piece.



a long drive home in the dark i decided to grill some brats as the oven is still on our 'to be replaced with a working item' list. im a little new to grilling brats, and i did these in the dark to top it! but they turned out perfect! life goal met!



these fish tacos however made me super ill :P and not in a good way :(

after all of this was labor day weekend!



you know what that means!



watching fireworks while listening to neil diamond!



making grilled cheese with bacon and my mom!



with chipotle cheese!



and smoking bbq with my dad!



with fruit!



yumm, smoke



parade time!



with mom and sarah!



and firetrucks!

haha, was a good time :)

ive got some cool tattoos that ive been taking process photos for to post after a few more sittings, and a few fun painting projects as well. im just waiting to have more progress made before posting... well and some time :)

hope your last week or so have been rad as well :)



oh, and i totaly got a new job at a rad tattoo studio! ill post more about that in the next post as well! talk about a cliff hanger! haha