family weekend

Here are some photos of this past weekend with my brother Adam and his lady Miranda and her sister Laurel. In addition to many fun times that I neglected to photograph, we had a lovely brunch at Saving Grace and an afternoon BBQ (pizzas!) in my backyard with our cousin Steve and his wife Lisa and their perfect baby boy (Max, of the owl hat). Yay for family!

...waiting for a table...

mmm... fried trout tacos

Cousin Steve and Adam barbecuing pizza.

Laurel, Miranda, Lisa and Max.

Max and Lisa

What a handsome little dude.

I highly recommend barbecuing pizza. It was sooooo good. Definitely the best pizza I've ever made at home.

And watermelon for dessert.

summery goodness

I have been too busy to post much lately, partly with work and partly with summer fun. Now I have a bit of a backlog of stuff I want to share - most of which happened this past weekend, which was full of good things. I will start, though, with these photos from a couple of weeks ago of a wonderful visit with my dear friend Kerri. We had a lovely lunch of garden goodies and lots of girl talk. I took the photo of her with my camera and she took the photo of me with hers. I love the long/tall proportioned images her camera makes.

eggplant and pyrite

I'm excited to be having some success with my eggplants this year. Last year was a total bust for them because of the crummy weather. They are doing much better with this summer's heat. Me? Not so much. I feel wilted. At least there's a bit of a wind today, but I still think I'll have to wait until the sun gets low before I can get some much needed maintenance done in the garden. Until then I will camp out at my desk beside an open window with a big glass of homemade iced tea and work on my painting of this little guy as I am serenaded by the sensual sounds of the Lambada ice cream truck (seriously).

new amethyst painting

Here is a new painting. I was going to wait, but this one is already up on the Narwhal website (main page, at the bottom), so why not now here too? This one is actually my favourite of my new pieces. This amethyst is a specimen I bought in Thunder Bay from a shop run by one of the amethyst mines there. A lot of the amethyst from that area has this neat red colouring (hematite) on the surface.

new website!

I FINALLY got my portfolio site online. I've had it almost finished for ages, and kept avoiding it because I was having frustrating issues getting it online. So here it is: www.carlywaito.com. Right now it only has paintings you've probably seen before, but there will be new stuff soon. I have some new pieces done now (and a few still in progress) for a group show at Narwhal Art Projects that is happening later in the summer. I'll wait until closer to show time to post/upload the new work.

*PLEASE let me know if you notice any problems with the site or if you have trouble loading it or something. I am no expert with this stuff and it is very likely that there will be technical issues. It *should* be working fine, but I don't trust it, or rather I don't trust my website building skills.

carrot tops

pretty accidents

I've been photographing mineral specimens this weekend, and got a few reject shots that I really like. One is just overexposed in such a pretty way and the green one is, I think, a result of light reflecting off the metal casing of one of the lights into the lens.