I've started painting again on Boxing Day!
I had found a painting from 2015 that was kinda finished, but not really. I didn't like the way it'd turned out. So it had been sitting somewhere upstairs for 9 years, I'd totally forgotten I had it!!

Finishing it properly did mean going back to oils as it was done in that. I haven't used oils in nearly 2 years, works entirely different.
So it's a bit of rediscovering it, haha.

***Colour differences (grass, sky etc.) between photos from 2015 and now are caused by different camera***

This is what it looked like before I started:




This is what it looks like now, I'm NOT finished yet.



This corner annoyed me the most. I just couldn't get the bit with greenery to come out right. The bushes ended up looking like a long stretched out green blob.
Now they have way more definition and much darker as they should be in that area.

THEN:



NOW:


You can see that I've also worked on the largest shed, AND the small one in the background is completely re-done as the perspective was all wrong.
The front shed will get rooftiles as well :)

Not done yet, but already happy with it!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Gia, sounds like a great dinner!
Happy Christmas!

If we would live from the heart instead of being driven by the (hurt and fearful) ego, an open relationship wouldn't mean sexercising as many as we could.
Not at all.
It only seems that way now because we're still expected to be monogamous, either by society or by ingrained norms & values or the partner.
Most are quite sexually oriented as opposed to 'love' oriented and then an open relationship automatically would mean 'lots of sex with different people'.

If we would live from the heart this would be different. I think many would choose to remain monogamous as they'd love their partner so much and their intimate life was good because of that. They wouldn't feel the need to stray.

It's human nature to want to go where we're told to not go. When we're being told "You can live in this house, but you're NOT allowed to go in the room with the blue door!! Not ever!"
Everyone wants to go there and find out what's in that room.
It's the same with not being allowed to have sex with others. It makes people curious what it'd be like.

Open relationship is only strange because we've been brainwashed by thousand of years of patriarchal society.
Our cell memory still holds pain and fear of what happened when you did't obey, especially women.
Men could stray, have mistresses and liaisons.
Women could not.
We would (and in still countries still get!!!) stoned for (allegedly) being intimate with another man...
Be dumped in the street, reputation ruined, forced into a nunnery, and so on and so forth.
While we had to live with the heartache of our husband straying whenever he wanted.

But that's all because we haven't lived in a society that was based on love.
Because of that our views & feelings concerning an open relationship and what that means are seriously skewed.

Thank you for bringing my thread up, JaanDoh!

I currently use acrylics, but have painted with oils for years. At first the turp version but I quickly switched to water-soluble oils.

This is the last one I have done this year, August, called "New Love"

That is a huge lump of money!! I would settle for a quartre of that, hihi.

Kitkat, hi!!
Sounds like you're preparing for a whole lot of people, hihi.
That is a lot to eat!
Do you make all that yourself or can you buy that over there?

Enjoy your Christmas, hope you have a lovely one!

Thank you so much, Jim!

Ace Ventura When Nature Calls was hilarious.

The Ugly Truth (rom com, but the absolute best out there!)

Nothing wrong with that. One year we did fries & snacks with the kids.
I'd decided I preferred spending time with my hubby & kids instead of being in the kitchen most of the day to prep things.
It turned out to be one of the best Christmases we ever had!

Merry Christmas, Cat!

Oh, that sounds grand! Enjoy it, Christi!
And Merry Christmas :)

You gotta treat yourself :)
Have a good Christmas, Motown!

Doesn't sound bad to me except for your starter, hihi.
Have a great Christmas Jim!

Hi Cathy

That sounds good and like a lot!
But I love the variety.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!

Thinking bout it... best would be a man you love, your own age...
And a younger man to satisfy you sexually.
That'd be brilliant!

Did you know that women need to have 9 orgasm in order to be fully satisfied?
All different ones, women get 9 different types of orgasms.
There are some men who can please a woman that way, usually when they've learnt how to hold their own horses so to speak with tantra and the like.
Then he can give a woman 9 different orgasms :)

As it is we have to make do with men of 40+ who can no longer properly get it up, and can barely give a woman 1 orgasm. And we need way more than 1 in order to be truly satisfied...

Sad but true.

In all honesty I prefer a man my age, maybe 4-5 years older.
But then the big but... many men of 40+ have problems when it comes to the intimate part.
That only gets worse as they age.

Meaning if you want to be certain you're going to get great passionate sex the way it should be, you need a younger man.
Someone in his 30s.
Problem is that I do not generally feel romantically attracted when there's such an age gap. Sex is one thing, falling in love, having a healthy decent love relationship is another.
Phases of life you're in etc. are too far apart.

What's for dinner on Christmas & Boxing Day?

I'm celebrating Christmas with my mum this year and food for dinner is slowly coming together.
We're going to have...

entree; salmon carpaccio

Main:
lambs rack
Hasselback potatoes
green asparagus with slice of bacon around it

Desert:
a sorbet, I think closest is a sundae (?): ice-cream with lots of fruit and lot of whipped cream on top.
I may get some strawberry sauce to add to it.

Can't wait!! Hihi.

Most Dutch people have raclette dinner. Lot of fun with a somewhat larger group. But because we'd done that for years on end I got fed up with it.
Plus all the greasy stuff indoors with my crystals and paintings...

What are you having?
Please don't tell me everyone is having turkey? Hihi.

If you want an answer to that you have to dig a bit deeper into the "how & why" of the matter.

In general women tend to have abandonment fear and men fear of commitment.
This is not per say based on personal experience, but goes all the way back to the point where we were split into a masculine & feminine half.
Men felt a sense of freedom, eager to roam the world, women felt a sense of loss.
In that sense you can call it the gender's collective wound.

Then there is the collective wound based on history, caused by thousands of years of patriarchal society.
Men were forced out of their hearts, had to be tough, manly, macho and whatnot.
Women were forced out of their sense of self as they had no say, no control over their lives, were married off as if they were cattle, raped, abused and so on. We weren't allowed to have an opinion nor to develop ourselves.

This created co-dependence in many women in general which easily becomes fear of abandonment. A woman alone wasn't safe and wasn't entitled to anything.
We were nothing so we have been shaped by society to be co-dependent and reared with the need for a man in order to be kind of safe.

Men on the other hand lost touch with their feelings more and more as they had to achieve, perform, undertake, make decisions, carry the weight, had to make the world go round and so on.
Men could remain single, or get married and (still) play the field.
But... a certain group of men (richer men often) were forced to marry and produce offspring to keep the family line going. So they were forced to give up their freedom and freedom of choice. These men had little to no choice of whom they'd marry, just as their women had no choice.
Think of the impact of all that!


All this went on for thousands of years.
So when you approach a bloke with the marriage thing he can A) get an overwhelming sense/fear of "I'm going to lose my freedom!" and run for the hills. B) be confronted with too many feelings -either from himself or the woman- that he isn't used to and run for the hills.

What you should do is go for a much softer approach.
First get clear why you want to get married so that you can convey this to a man. But NOT in a way that he feels trapped. Don't make it a demand. No one likes demands and feeling trapped, regardless of gender. Make it more of an open message as to why it matters so much to you. Then he knows what you need and what he can do to make you happy.
On the other hand side, look for love as opposed to a piece of paper. Oftentimes men who say they'll never marry again come to love their new woman so much that they propose without being encouraged.

What that does is A) leave him the option, doesn't corner him. Gives him the time to process it and to step up to the plate to give his girl what she needs.
And B) gives him time and the freedom to choose. Men do better when they think it's their own idea, hihi. That is of course related to them having freedom of choice and not feeling as if they're losing their freedom.

Thank you, Atheera, and happy to hear that it moves and inspires you!

Like Kristie I'm also way more careful now to give up my home, a rental, but still my home.
It is incredibly hard these days to get another rental, waiting for years has become quite normal, and I do not want to end up in a situation where I'm suffering because the relationship went awry.
Been there, done that.
That time it was his house so he could have thrown me out whenever he had wanted to. Then I'd have been in the street with my two kids.
NEVER again!

Thing is, men seem to always assume that the woman will move house for love. Few state they're willing to do so.

It'd get easier if he lives in an apartment, and many do. No freaking way will I move into an apartment, yuk.

And if I were to move in with a man again, I want mutual protection in case one makes their transition.
Otherwise you can still end up in the streets when the other passes away and his kids want their inheritance.

I used to always think of moving in with a man, probably as they seem to think and project that's normal.
Nowadays I'm thinking of him moving in with me.
I've got a house in a rural area, big garden, driveway etc.

I guess become more confident and clear on what I want and what not is a factor.