Art For Christmas

I am officially going to start selling my artwork. As of now. I figure Christmastime is as good a time as any!

SO! Here are some samples of what I can do for you!

I can do Custom Colored Silhouette Collages of a treasured photograph!  We can decide together which of your pictures will make wonderful Collages!

$40.00 for an 8x10

I can also do Traditional Black Silhouettes of your loved ones

$10.00

I can also do lovely, detailed Black and White Portraits of you or a loved one! $25.00 base price for an 8x10 b&w plus $10/hour (click the picture to enlarge it!)

Or, you can have a beautiful Color portrait of yourself, or a loved one! $45.00 base price for an 8x10 plus $10.00/hour

Other things I can custom make for you include Hand-drawn Paper Dolls to look like your child, (on magnetic paper, thick cardstock, or book board) and Lovely building blocks for your toddler, personalized with a theme you choose!

If you're interested you can contact me at kendraluogzewalla@gmail.com

Backward, Glass Looking The Through (teaser)

Holding tight to her teapot, The White Queen looked around. The looking glass, that fickle contraption, was nowhere to be seen. Where was she? What was this mysterious place on the other side of the mirror?

dearest blog followers, i have abandoned you again, and i am sorry. life is life and things continue to be complicated and busy and satisfying. i have made a big decision. i am not going back to school this fall because i want more time with the kids. i don't know if i even mentioned my plans to go back to school, but i had them. i was going to study social work, and become a play therapist (one of a few options i've been considering). i've thought about it, and prayed about it, and i've decided that even though they're not my kids, they need me in their lives right now. and even if they didn't, i need them. so school will have to wait. i may have to find another way of supporting myself and my foster babies when my five years are up, but i will do it, because i KNOW that they need me. i also know that being in my nieces and nephew's lives now is more important than any psychology class that i could take.

so. maybe when i have my foster babies, i could run a daycare. then i could stay home with them. or maybe my business (when i get it up and running) will be enough to take care of us. i realize that i have a lot of options, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it. right? plenty of people with just a bachelor's degree (which is what i could have in five years, if i go back to school next year instead of this) support and raise children. right? and plenty of people support and raise children WHILE going to school. it can be done. it won't be easy, but i am motivated. my future children need me.

i have plans.

I'm not sure what this blog post will say, but I did promise (myself and you) that I would write more regularly, so here I am.
This week has been insane. An exceedingly intense metaphorical rollercoaster. Some really wonderful moments have happened this week, also a major devastating one that made just about everything else feel inconsequential. The majority of it I can't blog about, but sufficed to say, things is crazy up in here y'all.
What do you do when the worst thing you can possibly imagine, happens? Not to you, but to someone you love more than anything in the world. How do you deal with the emotions that come with that? How do you react?
I tell you what we do.
We stand up, and we fight.
We say no.
I can tell you what people have done for me. They have stood next to me on the battlements and cried the war-cry right alongside me, even when I have insisted that this is not their fight. They have lain in the mud with me when I've been beaten, and bloodied, promising me that if I want to get up again, they will help lift me. And they have lifted me to my feet each and every time I've fallen.
Now it's my turn. I've been beaten down, I've been lifted, and I've been carried to this place so that I can be. Here. Now.
You're not alone in this. Not for a moment.

It has been a very, very long time since I have been posting regularly on my blog. I am sorry to all of you lovely people that ever bothered to read it. I have a desire to start writing again, but most of what I could write about seems either, inconsequential, or a smidge too private to share with the world-at-large. However, I am going to put aside my insecurities and start anew. It is, after all, that time of year.

So, Today.

My life consists almost entirely of taking care of my brother's kids. That, and therapy. Almost everything else that I once cared about seems to have fallen along the wayside. Art, writing, friends, church. However, my schedule may be about to open up, at least for the duration of the summer. I am looking for ways to make my life fuller, my interactions more meaningful, my time spent with the children more memorable.

I am making art again, and encouraging others to do so, including the kids. I am spending my spare time working on "assignments" from my therapist, which I adore (most of the time). Maybe I will start posting some pictures of my therapy art journal on here. I am taking more pictures of the kids, especially cadence, as she seems to have grown an inch every time i see her!

Here are some of the recent favorites, to keep you going until (hopefully) tomorrow.

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The Loves of My Life

Dear Future Husband

Something that you should probably know about me is that I need medicine to make me into a real person. Mood stabilizers, and anti-depressants, and stimulants, among others. If you like me well enough to want to marry me, then you know this already. Something that may not have occurred to you, (it didn't occur to me until quite recently) is that in order to have biological children, I'll have to go off of these medications for a significant chunk of time before I can safely get pregnant. Not to mention the nine-ish months of pregnancy, and however long it takes to breastfeed. (I know a woman that had seven children so close together that she was breast-feeding at least one child for almost eleven years straight.) I've always wanted to be that wife for you, future husband. The one who is barefoot and pregnant. My question is this: what if you marry the woman you think I am, and then we want to have a baby, and so I go off of my meds, and you meet this other woman, the one who is sad, and emotional, and angry and mean, and you don't love her the way you love the medicated me? And what if you want to have seven children, and I have to breastfeed for eleven years and you forget why you ever loved me in the first place?

Future husband, will you still love me if we have to adopt our seven children, and they don't look like you?

10 Things I Wish I Could Tell 10 People: Redacted

1. They may have pretty faces, but you are beautiful. The more I know you, the more beautiful you are to me.

2. I know you try your best, but that isn't good enough anymore. Can't you just try a little harder?

3. She's a dog, she doesn't speak English! And not only is she a dog, she is a good dog, and she is my dog. (If you had someone you loved as much as I love her, I would at least pretend to like them.)

4. Why don't you talk to her? Stupid boy.

5. I'm afraid you'll give up on me, just like everyone else who has tried. Please don't?

6. Why not this? Why not something good?

7. Call your mother, she worries.

8. The most painful thing I will ever have to experience, I have already experienced, and you are behind me now.

9. I can't afford this.

10. Suck it up. You're capable of this.