fleece navidad

Here's a cartoon I had fun drawing.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas. Now it's time to start writing out some resolutions.

good deed of the day

This is for everyone who keeps finding my blog looking for "micropets instructions." If you are unfortunate enough to lose your micropet's instructions, you won't know how to communicate with your micropet. So here they are, for Tug and Chop:


click to enlarge

stuff

Last night I went Christmas shopping, but the only Christmas gift I bought was for myself! I had to have this ornament.




Also yesterday, I got a call from a card company that I sent samples to ages ago. They were interested in my cartoons some two years ago, and then I never heard from them again until yesterday. They wanted one cartoon and wanted to know if it was sold yet. I already sold that one to another company. That is the only one they wanted. Bummer!

Another thing I finished... the one and only
My Life Is A Cartoon 2007 Calendar.

happy monday

Thought of the day: Those inflatable Christmas lawn decorations should be outlawed. Every neighborhood in town is littered with half-deflated or completely deflated grinches, snowmen, santa riding a Harley...etc,etc... I need to draw a cartoon about this. I was thinking of a cartoon where Santa comes in for his landing and gets tangled up in all that garbage lit up on the rooftop.

In other news, Skippy made a new acquaintance today. He really does like her, and wants to smell her. Except she won't stand still, and he got whapped in the face by her wagging tail when he tried to sniff her butt.



This is our friends' dog, a recent shelter rescue, and she is lovely. Her eyes are not really pink and yellow. They are blue and green.

in other news...

Here's more doodles.




The line at the post office becomes very very long when this particular sweater-vested guy is working. I was in line when I doodled him.

I'm taking a day off today. I'm going to try and catch up on everyone's blogs the best I can.

Oh, and hey, I just noticed, today is my one year blogoversary.

one of the things i've been doing

Here's one of the reasons I've been an absentee blogger lately. Yesterday I was working on this for about 10 hours. It's supposed to look like the Renaissance. It's one of the backdrops for our church's Christmas program.

There are a zillion things I would change about this, but I ran out of time, so it is done.

Sleigh Security

I had a lot of fun drawing this over a year ago. Since it never sold as a card, now I've got it up on some products at Jenn's Doodle World.

odd neighbors

Notice that object in the front lawn? It's not a leftover halloween decoration. It's a real tombstone.

new treats

Yesterday we got some new kukuruznye palochky from Emma Sometimes. She had some connections!

We have a Russian cartoon on VHS with that guy who's floating there on the right. His name is Carlson and he is Swedish. I suppose he speaks Russian with a Swedish accent.

thanks emma (sometimes)!

getting extra endorphins today

Here's some notes from Oct. 31. I was drinking a Christmas blend coffee at Starbucks. They had Christmas blend in place of the house blend. How can they NOT have the house blend available? Doesn't that go against all the rules? I think so.



Note these pointers for getting more endorphins into your brain. You'll notice in the things to avoid list, "sad cartoons." This is because I bought a DVD of some very old cartoons, Max Fleischer's Color Classics. And I have never seen so much tragedy in cartoons before. Kids those days must have had a lot of nightmares after watching these. The characters tend to be poor orphans, or cute baby animals that end up dying somehow. There are happy endings, but not without a whole lot of crying first.

Today I decided to scrap a bunch of house cleaning plans, and took Skippy to the park. We finally got some sunlight today. A perfect opportunity to get some more endorphins into my brain.
happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy
happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy
YAWN

what i've been up to

I know I'm long overdue for an update here.

I've been busy with a number of things. Benji and Misty (the two dogs) were here for a visit while my parents were on vacation. Here's a picture of them with Skippy. All with glowing eyes.





I've also been busy adding more stuff to my cafepress shop. I've added a small section called "Jenn's Doodle World," a place for a bunch of cartoons that are set apart from the dog shop. If they start selling well, then I will give this section its own store.

some pics

We have this cool place here, that's both a farm and a park. Since today was an unusually nice day, I had lunch with George over there, and then took Skippy for a nice long walk. This time of year you can't take nice weather for granted!







"There are so many trees to pee on here. Where to even begin?!"

Who's going to feed Tina?



Maybe it's weird, but I'm fascinated with tree bark.



This little guy does a great job mowing the lawn. We should get one of these and sell our mower, but I guess then we'd need a giant pooper-scooper.

night sledding with Rudolph... now for sale

I had mentioned before that I sold this cartoon as a greeting card, but it never was printed. Since it won't be printed by a card company, I have it for sale now on my cafepress shop.

I can almost guarantee from experience that the colors on cards will be lighter than it shows online. Other things print better, but any paper products come out light.

There is actually a 25% off sale on greeting cards right now.

I added this Rudolph design to some T-shirts and sweatshirts also. The title originally said "Night Sledding With Rudolph," but I changed it because the card company had wanted something different... I decided to go ahead and keep the new "winter games" title.

hi

Do you ever feel like you don't have anything new to say?

The Search for the Perfect Kukuruznye Palochky

For YEARS George has been looking for this snack from his childhood, Kukuruznye Palochky. According to him it is the most tasty snack in existence.

He has purchased bag after bag of impostors over the years.

And time after time, it's just not right.

This Japanese stuff looked kind of like kukuruznye palochky, but was not even close:



Finally, at a Russian store in Brooklyn, George found these Magic Sticks! They are almost as good as he remembers, but he is still convinced that the greatest ones are out there somewhere.



George's mom insists that these other ones are the best kukuruznye palochky. He thinks these are not crunchy enough.



I think that those magic sticks taste like Kix cereal. And the other ones taste like Kix cereal with lots of extra sugar. I just noticed those last ones show them in a bowl of milk. They aren't really like cereal, more like cheese puffs with sweet sugar coating instead of cheese.

trick or treat

We never get trick or treaters where we live. I always get some candy just in case though, because we could get an unexpected visitor. Wouldn't that kid be disappointed if we tossed a can of George's anchovies into his bag?

So I only buy candy that I like. If we keep the porch lights off, hopefully we can just hide out in here and watch the "Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" on DVD and have all the candy to ourselves. hwahahaha...

the daily doodle

Tonight we went to a church potluck dinner. Your typical buffet of mystery casseroles. A feast of macaroni noodles, chopped up potatoes, something mushy, something that looks like chicken is in there, or maybe tuna (?).

But I can't complain. All I brought was apple cider.

After the meal, I had a perfect opportunity for doodling. A great view from the back of the room, and so much interesting doodle subject matter.

A small audience of little children quickly formed behind me, so I changed my doodling from real people to cartoony animals and stuff. I learned long ago that an audience can lead to the sketchbook being passed around, which leads to someone seeing their likeness, not realizing that they do have that many wrinkles, etc... that person not thinking that's very funny... (One reason I can't imagine that drawing caricatures for a living would be very fun.)

notes

There are so many books that I have started reading and not finished. I picked up "What A Great Idea!" again, and took some notes while I was in the coffee shop on Wednesday.



I have had a creative block for a long long time, but I think I may be slowly returning to normal again. These books help.

Coffee helps too.

out of the basement, back into the world

Today I did something I've been putting off for a long time. I went into our local coffee shop and gave a couple of greeting card catalogues and card samples to the guy who took my order. I asked him to show them to the owner... maybe she'd be interested.

While I was waiting for my caramel infusion, which was very tasty by the way, the manager came out to talk to me. She was very enthusiastic about buying my cards. She called up the owner. The owner wanted them. And she wants to put up some kind of a bio about me over the cards for sale.

She got on the phone and bought every one of my designs while I was sitting there. (Now I wish I hadn't waited so long! ...I've just never wanted to feel like a salesperson).



This is my newest Christmas card, and it is available for sale at www.allport.com.

quote of the day

"A child of five could understand this;
send someone to fetch a child of five."

-Groucho Marx

we give up

We have done all we can for our basement carpet. It is time to say goodbye.

The pad underneath was soaking wet from one end to the other, and impossible to clean.

Plan B was to rip out the pad, and get the carpet treated for mold. The carpet cleaning guy said there is no guarantee that mold will not grow back on our carpet after a $600 treatment, so out it goes!

home again

Crazy weather we're having around here! Here's some pictures from Friday morning.






There are disadvantages to having a finished basement... we've been cleaning the water out of our carpet for hours since our power came back on. Now we know that owning a back-up sump pump does not necessarily mean that it will work. >:I

Skippy looks so funny standing in front of this carpet dryer that we rented. He likes sitting in front of it, but moves if I try to take his picture...


This is better...

We also learned there are advantages to not having many big old trees in your yard. All our little baby trees survived. The old neighborhoods are a disaster.

the october snowstorm of 2006

I was going to post a picture of the snow in our yard from the extremely unexpected snowstorm we had last night, but our power is out and may be out until Monday, or even longer!

We left our house tonight,with its failed sump pump and flooded basement, and are at my parents' house now, where there is no snow and plenty of electricity.

This was not in my plans for this weekend, but I am glad we were more fortunate than some people, who ended up with a giant tree branch crushing their house or car.

10 years

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary. Here we are back when we were still dating, George looking very skinny, and me with my doonka haircut.


This is a card I made for George, some time ago. These doodles are highlights of when we were dating and getting to know each other.

a couple of things

Here's Skippy enjoying his new window seat. He had a nice view so he could bark at the garbage man this morning.











We went to a fall festival last weekend. It was actually hot, and I should have worn shorts and a t-shirt. I went into a coffee shop to get myself a cold drink, and came out to find George holding Skippy, surrounded by three little girls all petting and adoring our cutesy little dog. It was a funny picture. He was like the traveling petting zoo.

Here's some doodles that have nothing to do with anything.