Perpetual Calendar Paintings

Today is my husband's birthday. He's a very young 72 year old. Yes, he's a few years older then me and has white hair - he's had greyish-white hair since he was in his late 20's but now it's just a beautiful white. But, in spite of his hair colour, most people don't think he's in his 70's yet - like I said, he's a young 72. When I first started dating him over 25 years ago, my friends saw a picture of him and said, "Oh an older man. Do you have a sugar-daddy?". To which I replied, "No, he's not that much older then me (8 years) and definitely isn't rich enough to be a sugar-daddy. He's more like a NutraSweet-daddy". That got some laughs.

I did sing Happy Birthday to him but it wasn't as funny as last year. For anyone new to my post I should explain. First of all, I can't sing at all! Secondly, when my brain disorders attack it affects my speech and I repeat words or syllables, re-arrange some words, add extra syllables to the ends of words, etc. Very odd. The doctors have no clue why, can't fix it, and I was told to "learn to live with it". OK. So, last year on his birthday I happened to be in the middle of a very bad week of attacks and I thought to myself, "I wonder if I can sing?" ..you know, like people who stutter sing without stuttering (we had a friend like that and if he was trying to tell us something and we were in a hurry we would say "sing it us" and he would). Anyway, I was up early last year and when Joe came down the stairs I sang Happy Birthday. Conclusion - didn't help my speech. In fact, it was worse, and it was so funny he was doubled over laughing with tears running down his cheeks. He said it was the funniest thing he'd heard in 71 years. I wasn't as funny singing to him this year - only mildly amusing.  I told him next time I'm having a bad day I'm going to have him video tape me singing and post it on You Tube - he doesn't think this is a good idea (was actually horrified) - but I do! Stay tuned.

Anyway, back to the post. I have one of those perpetual wooden calendars one of my daughter's father-in-law made for me. You are suppose to paint a picture on the top part but I didn't want the same picture up month after month, year after year. Boring. So I bought some thin wood, cut out pieces to fit on the top and painted pictures I change every month. I forgot to post the one last month so I'll do two today.

November is hard to find something to paint - boring, dead trees and landscape, no snow, no holiday, no nothing. Blah month. Hubby also hates November because he means winter coming and he really hates that but he loves lighthouses so I combined the two and made a dark and gloomy November day by the sea.

December was easy to find something to paint. The hard part was narrowing the choices. I love Christmas and all the decorations but I also love teddy bears so I combined the two. This is this month's calendar.

These were all painted years ago when I first took up tole painting. I could do a better job now but its nice to look back and early pieces and realize that I've actually improved some.