Playing catch-up

Sorry I’ve not posted as often as usual this month.  This has to be the longest gap I’ve had from post to post.  It has been quite a hectic month with lots of change, stress and time commitments.

First off was finding a new aide for mom.  The great one we hired in September to replace Amy had to quit due to medical reasons without notice, so there was a scramble to find a new full-time aide.  Luckily we found one and she is great!  She started on the 13th.  Our casual aide stepped in to cover some days and extra time while we got that all sorted out.

Secondly, my last day the old day-job was October 30th (the owner died in August and the heirs decided to shut down and turn over the property management to a management company) and I had to find another as, unfortunately, my market isn’t big enough to support my make-up business full-time and we have developed a fondness for groceries and heat.  I hadn’t secured a job as of the end of October so I was, as they say, “between jobs” for two weeks.  I’ve been  sending out resumes since we first found out about the company closing in early October.  I’ve had half a dozen interviews from about 35 resumes sent out.  And… only two of the places I interviewed at (to-date) have bothered to contact me post interview – one to say they chose someone else, the other to offer me a job…

I have several different skill sets and will work where there is work so… I am at Wal-Mart in Household Chemicals (that is paper towels, laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, etc.)  I was hired as part-time but will be working full-time hours starting next week.  Talk about busy!  Whew.  The Zellers here closed permanently on November 12th, and Target won’t be open until next Spring, so all those shoppers are now at Wal-Mart.

Thirdly, I’ve had lots of gigs this month.  I taught a full-day workshop for cosmetology teachers for their professional development day on November 12th.  It was a demonstration of theatrical, sfx and face painting and based on the returned class survey forms they all really enjoyed it.  I was also hired to paint “auction girls” for the local Festival of Trees gala.  There was a company Christmas party last Saturday with a crew of three painters which went very well, and the usual collection of birthday parties interspersed.  And a make-up test for CATS.

I took photos at the rehearsal of CATS – I painted one with face paint and one with cream make-up.  The cream make-up won the sweat test (which was expected) and the face paint failed big time.  There may be SOME cast that we can use face paint but I am not inclined to use it as it will look different and I want to have consistency to the look of the make-up.  Here are some shots of the rehearsal – you can see the make-up on two of the cast (face paint on the big guy and cream on the gal).

Fourthly, trying to get my Christmas baking done and get gifts packed up and shipped out!  I’m in some gift exchanges as well as the usual family stuff so have to get things out.  OMG… I just realized I missed the international deadline… D*MN.  The US deadline is December 10th which is what I was worrying about… but I completely forgot about the UK deadline.  [sigh] Well, it isn’t like the parcels get there by Christmas anyway… one year it didn’t get there until March 16th.

When I got in the car on Sunday to head out to a birthday I noticed a milestone on the odometer… I don’t often notice when I hit round numbers!  LOL  Oh and this was still in my HEATED garage… outside was more along the lines of MINUS 14C.

I painted myself up for the corporate Christmas party last weekend.  I used Grimas as the base and Wolfe white… the yellow wasn’t so obvious in person!

This snake I did really fast, maybe two minutes?  It was at the Christmas party and the boy had one of the other painters do a dragon on his other arm and wanted “something” that could fight the dragon… he was naming creatures from Harry Potter so I thought of big snakes… so I did this.  He was very happy.

One of the birthday parties I worked had a Madagascar 3 theme – only two of the girls asked for characters.  I had printed off some images to take for reference as I haven’t seen any of the movies, so I did have something to refer to – although the characters all had extreme expressions in the pictures I printed and I had to try to figure out things a bit.  I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

I was also very impressed with the cake – the mom had made cupcake “hamburgers” and sugar cookie “fries” which were absolutely perfect!  I took a couple of photos before I started painting… they really are the cutest and most realistic I’ve seen!

And here is the birthday lion with her burgers!

So that was my November.  I’ll try to stay on top of things in December… things should be a bit more normal and routine now that things have settled down.