Almost finished!

I've been busy painting this morning, and have almost finished the painting. I've just got to add the glow around MegaMan, then the flash of light at the top of his hand, then I'll be ready to do the outlining :)

Here it is:

Yes, still no camera! If anyone feels like donating one, let me know!!

I should have this finished by Friday, then I'll be posting it off to its very patient owner!

Link started

Here's some more done - I've started Link and I'll be painting the rest of Mario next, then Megaman. 

This is a fun picture to paint :)

I know, I'm still using my iPad, haven't found the camera yet!

Live Below The Line

No, this isn't a picture of the painting I'm doing, I'm posting to let you know about something I do each year with my family.

We are raising money for Oxfam - so relevant right now with what has happened in Nepal and India.

The idea is to live on £1 a day for 5 days, donating what you would have spent on food to charity (for me, Oxfam), donating extra, and encouraging others to do the same.

Here's where you can donate:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Procter


So, why are we doing it?

Many, many people in this world don't have enough to eat. We do. Even when we were very poor, we had just about enough to eat, and we always had clean, fresh, cold drinking water. So many people don't. Even if reading this makes one more person think about their neighbour (whether that's the person next door, the person begging at the ATM, the person who has just lost everything in Nepal) and they then do something good, its worth it.

We will be hungry this week. We will have a very restricted diet, with no fruit, as I couldn't afford to buy the fruit after I'd bought the veggies and carbs. Kev will find it harder than me, as he needs more calories than I do. We will go to bed hungry. We won't have the foods we normally do.

But, we have a choice. If we can't do it, we can go out and buy some food, or we can raid the cupboards or freezer for something. As one friend said; we have a freezer, we have cupboards, a fridge, a cooker. We don't have to worry about keeping food fresh.

There was a time in our lives when we were poor - I remember scouring the shelves in the supermarket for reduced items to try to stretch my budget. I remember the shame of having to take stuff back at the checkout as I had overspent and didn't have enough in my purse to pay for the food I'd bought for my children. I remember not paying the gas bill so I could buy shoes for my children. That's a long time ago, though, and this will be a good discipline.

Here's our week's food:

Here's half the potatoes, carrots and onions chopped to make soup for the week:

Here's the split peas soaking to add to the veggies for soup:

Here's the finished soup. I'll be bagging and freezing it into individual portions for the week when it has cooled down:

I've never asked this before; I'd really appreciate it if anyone would repost/tweet/FB/whatever the link to this page, so that as many people as possible can read about what we're doing. Thank you.

Pikachu, Kirby, Donkey Kong and Mario started.

I'm off work again, boring problems with my left shoulder, arm and hand, and have been started on Gabapentin by my GP. 

I can't drive as I'm a bit dopey, but I can paint. I've had fun this afternoon painting more characters. It looks a bit odd still, as I'm not doing the outlining until last - learnt the hard way by having colours bleed into the black. 

The last part I'll paint will be all the black bits, then I'll do the outlining. 

Here's where I'm up to:

Yes, I'm still using my iPad :( We've unpacked all our boxes from the house move, but there's still a few things missing, one of which is my camera. Hopefully it's been put in a cupboard somewhere!