Back! Christmas happenings, personal thoughts, a bit of artwork, and more...

Hi everyone! How was your Christmas? Hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the Holidays!

The last post I made was ten days ago; I hadn't planned on being gone for that long but my household was hectic. I had family visit from out of town, the kids have been on winter break, and I've been dealing with my recovery from my tooth extraction and bone graph. But here I am, back, and ready to recap some highlights from the past week or so.

First off, I had a wonderful Christmas with hubby, my kiddos, and my father and stepmother. As several of you know, I have three kiddos (which I never show their faces online due to protection and privacy.) As much as I would love to share the joy of my Christmas photos that radiate from them, I don't because I'm first and foremost a mother and want to protect them. That being said, I will share some photos that I took during my Christmas Eve walk with the family. The photos feel empty without the joy of the kiddos, but believe me, it was a beautiful and joyful night. We went to a local community park that had a huge light display. I especially loved each tree having their own color of lights.

We also ate my famous 'Buche de Noel' (French Christmas Log cake.) I made a post about these cakes in my blog a few weeks ago. If you haven't read it, I'll just briefly mention that I make them every holiday season. Traditionally, I like to serve them for our family on Christmas Eve, but sometimes we do it Christmas day. This year, we ate it after our Christmas Eve meal before we went and saw the lights. I also decorated my cake a little different than the norm - I added a little bird. It turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself!

As far as my tooth extraction and bone graph, I finally had the stitches removed yesterday. Unfortunately, I think I caught a cold from the office yesterday, because today I woke up with a sore throat. Thankfully it's not Covid (took a test) and just your run-of-the-mill December crud. It sucks because with the unexpected tooth extraction, bone graph, the family in town, and now a sore throat...it set my writing back a bit. I had to take a break because there was no way I could get any work done during family visiting, kids at home, and not feeling the best at times. However, I did manage to get more finished on an art piece that I have been slowly working on.

I don't know if anyone follows me on Reddit or Twitter, but I have been posting progress pics of this piece. It's titled 'Underworld' and related to two of my book characters. I don't want to talk about it too much due to spoilers; but I will say that this piece is loosely inspired by the story of 'Hades and Persephone.' That myth is somewhat incorporated it into my current novel that I am writing (Fragments of the Heart.) When FotH is finally published, I will include it in the back of the book. I have a tradition to insert an original artwork by yours truly in the back of each of my books that pertain to the story.

A side note. I have always been inspired by Greek mythology and sculptures that pertain to that part of history. I think the 'beauty' of the 'Old World' and the art that captures that essence appeals to me far more than today's artwork. I think we have lost the sense of traditional beauty with the introduction of 'beauty filters' on today's women who want to look like plastic aliens. Don't get me started on lip injections and cat-eye 'lifts' (canthoplasty.) It's hard for some people to differentiate between what is real and fake due to the subtle 'training' of the beauty filters. It cracks me up that people praise others for 'their beauty' when it's blatantly obvious they filter their facial features, tweak their eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and then slap a makeup filter over their fake face. I avoid this as much as possible in my photos. Sure, every so often I will erase a weird wrinkle on my face, a strange bulge on my hip, etc. I'm not innocent - I clean up my photo shoot images to perfection. But I don't distort my face or body either. I want to represent what I truly look like in real life; and if anyone meets me in real life, I want the images to reflect me so there is no confusion. One of the reasons why I started taking my own photos is that almost every photographer would modify my nose, eye shape, eye color, body, etc...it got frustrating. I am who I am and am happy that I am different than the rest. Also, I do want to say that I don't mind plastic surgery for enhancing one's look or fixing due to an accident, etc. What gets me is when people start looking like a blowup doll and not like a human being. That's a whole different story.

Moving on...for fun, here's a pair of earrings I also made over the break. It took me literally a minute to make; I found the string of beads on sale for three dollars. I just divided up the chain, added the earring post, and called it a day! The beads reminded me of my character 'Queen Emerald.'

Over the next couple of days, my goal is to do more updates in my cosplay section of my site and try and finish the Underworld piece. Also, I wanted to say thank you to all that have subbed to my site, or have bookmarked it. I love interacting with you all! It means so much to me! Oh! One last thing - I plan on posting more unreleased book art! Stay tuned! -Beth