Victorian Homestead, Ballarat, Victoria, original oil painting, by Kathy Shell

Buninyong, Central Victoria, original oil. by Kathy Shell

Kathy Shell School of Painting

Kathy Shell can teach you how to paint, even if you have no drawing ability or prior painting skill, No talent required, it is your teacher who needs to have the talent, you simply need the desire to learn and make the commitment to enrol for quality art tuition. Kathy Shell will teach you step by easy step in private to very small group classes, in studio and on location.  You will learn to be able to paint anything you can see. All classes are small to allow for personalized tuition, everyone can advance at their own pace but everyone will start with the basics.  
I teach while on tour, thoughout winter, and my Northern Victoria, home studio sessions are not held during winter or during our short tour breaks.

Second block of ten weeks

Supply your own stretched canvas and painting equipment from now on.  Working from life, painting flowers, or on location landscape, explore more about oil painting, become expert at colour identification and mixing, composition, perspective, Classes include demonstrations, theory and hands on painting with constructive critique by your tutor.  

Health and safety. No dusty mediums, e.g. Pastels and no volatile chemicals, thinners, varnish or adhesives are allowed to be used in the studio. We request that you do not attend classes if you have a cold or flu.

Studio classes are conducted at Kathy Shell’s summer studio, Mooroopna, Victoria.

There are no classes during winter, your ten weeks may begin and end at differing times to other students, so if there is a vacancy, you may begin NOW.  Limited vacancies, waiting list may apply as class size is very small to allow for optimum tuition.
   
Phone 0417678501 in business hours or email through contact form

Begin NOW, Classes are PRIVATE
Fee 
$500. for 10 x three hour lessons not necessarily held in consecutive weeks, dates arranged at time of booking. or $50. per hour for casual booking private lesson.  Beginners Art materials Kit $200. covers all supplies for first ten weeks, includes timber easel box, paints, brushes, pallet knife, and canvas boards. 
Don't want to start at the beginning? Master class  $500.

Internet art classes with Kathy Shell Enquiries welcome. Email Kathy
International students accepted, learn art at home, via the artist’s private art tuition forum. $50. per private lesson, $10. per open group lesson.

For your home studio, discount classroom furniture 

My FREE, on line art lessons, have been delayed, due to a series of circumstances, they are still coming and will add to your on line or in studio experience and I intend to place them in my http://www.kathy-shell.com web site.

My active week continues today, on a high after spring cleaning and changing the function and furniture arrangement in two rooms.

The office is now a walk in wardrobe room with a large sewing table and the iron and Elna press set up, mirrors, original art work and grandchildren’s photos mounted and storage on one side and under the table.

The kitchen has had a complete sanitising, everything in every cupboard and the cupboards themselves is sparkling clean and those little pesky field mice who made their home in the cupboards while we wintered in the north of Australia, won’t find our home as habitable in future. 

I dug out my CSIRO healthy heart cook book and I bought everything they suggested that I did not have, in the basic pantry supplies and everything they suggested for the week one menus.  I spent $600. on supplies and $150. on vegetable seedlings, seeds and cow manure so  would not have to continue to buy fresh herbs and some of the cut and come again type vegetables through summer and autumn. 

 

It took me three days to complete the kitchen dining area set up and  pack the pantry shelves expertly, and  have never in my life had such fully stocked cupboards and I extended the range of foods and spices I cooked with.

The past three days while working in the kitchen I have been trying out the recipes in this book and preparing luscious sit down lunches, again, strait out of the CSIRO healthy heart program cook book. 

Breakfast for me today was a break from my normal rolled oats, and I followed the plan to the letter, weighing my portions.  40 grams of Uncle Toby’s healthy heart, breakfast cereal, it is one of the few breakfast cereals without iron added and suitable for people with hemochromatosis and I am using one of the new special formula, with plant steroids to help lower cholesterol, healthy heart, low fat milk.  I have not used this before; we usually use skim milk powder.  The CSIRO healthy heart program will cost a little more than my usual eating plan but if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect different results and at my last two checks this week, it appears my blood pressure has gone up and I’ve requested time to try to bring it down naturally using dietary changes, walking and swimming exercise and releasing more of my excess body fat.  I believe I can do thisJ.

 

Lunch today was 40 grams of roast beef for me, 60 grams for Reg, a delicious 8 vegetable mix salad, on third of an avocado as spread on a multi grain roll, very satisfying,  and tonight I am cooking 150 grams of gem fish for me 250 for Reg with low carbohydrate vegetables grilled skewers and serving them on a bed of salad with one glass of chilled chardonnay, mango, 100 grams of low fat, natural yogurt and 10 almonds as my snacks and two cups of express coffee, two cups of Dilmah tea, all with the low fat, heart health milk, and just checking over that, I will be taking two Blackmores calcium plus tablets (you can see our supplements,( used only when necessary),  in the pantry pictures) today to increase my calcium serves to four for the day. 

Now that is LIVING, not dieting, I feel so satisfied after my luscious lunch and as I have been very active all week I should have no problem coming in with a fat loss this week. J.
 

That is the bare kitchen end, BEFORE we laid the new floating timber floors throughout the entire home.  The second picture is one I love to show, of Reg laying the floor in our dining area. 
I turned that little dark room at the end of the kitchen into a light, (using mirrors to enhance the natural light from the side windows), walk in wardrobe room and sewing ironing, plus storage centre.
My kitchen looks more homely now, with my personal possessions on the benches and the small dining area and recline chair, TV set so the cook can listen to the news as I prepare evening meal, all set up, opposite this view, and I've planted a pretty and functional, flowers and vegetable garden down the side, plus shade trees and climbing ornamental grape vine and ivory rose, all to be views through the windows.

I’ll never forget the thrill Reg and I felt when we discovered we were to become parents for the first time just before Christmas in 1968 the same year we married in the May. 

Our joy was abruptly shaken when doctors told me when only a week pregnant that I could not carry her and I had to terminate for health reasons.  The baby was perfect, I wasn’t.  I refused. We both mother and baby, survived the pregnancy though towards August with Leanne due in early September, things were getting a little risky for both of us.   Our Doctor judged the early inducement perfectly, our beautiful daughter was born alive though severely jaundiced, and it did take a full week to wake her up then three months to get her to feed properly,  J, after that, she has been on the go, go. go J.

 

My beautiful daughter Leanne went from a sleepy baby, then hyperactive child to an accomplished, talented woman.  I don’t know how she keeps up with all she does, I’ll not even attempt to list her talents and skills and she is a mum herself now and doing a wonderful job at this. 

Leanne turned forty recently,  but can’t believe it is possible because after the special cream sponge, birthday cake, cake she was presented with at work to celebrate the special milestone, not helped by my sending here a package of  ‘Old fart’ lollies, she was asking about the best acne treatments. J as her skin reacted more like that of a teenager to the birthday indulgence but I know she loved the treats sent to mark her special day.

Well the pimples didn’t last long and Leanne is as beautiful as ever, and is currently rehearsing for a role in the musical ‘Dust’.

Happy fortieth birthday year to our beautiful talented, daughter, Leanne, from Reg and myself. xxx

 

133 days to my three year downsizing goal date and I have had a very busy day.  It’s only three days since I felt I was getting over the bout of food poisoning I had last week and I’ve been working hard at the active jobs, trying to catch up on lost time.  This will sure rev my metabolism up.  They say being active all day, does more for fat burning than 30 minutes of gym.  I hope that’s so because what with moving furniture to clean out everywhere that pesky field mice went, in our home, while we were away and gardening today, planting out my vegetable garden, I have not felt the need to attend gym, I’ve been giving myself a huge nonstop work out in the home and garden and gym on top of this would have been overload.

Yesterday I completed a total clean, rearrange of furniture and room purpose, renovation of the smallest room in the house.  I took the small office that extended off the kitchen and turned it into a wardrobe dressing room plus sewing ironing room with storage and I increased the light by fixing five mirror tiles to the wardrobe doors and one larger mirror to hide a storage area and positioned it to reflect light from the small side window. I have high cupboards that can become grand children, picture gallery wall. I’m delighted with the result; it’s a great, practical use of a tiny area.

If I can keep working at this pace, I doubt that I will need best weight loss supplement, but I think I’m petering out tonight and it’s going to be hard to find the energy to achieve today’s gaol of a clean tidy, fully restocked kitchen and a dining area set up where I previously had the ironing and sewing.  I did make the delicious dinner goal with Reg’s help.  I can always depend on Reg to cook a great lamb roast with all the trimmings. J  I already have the leftovers carved and packed away with vegetables in the freezer, marked as two lamb and vegetable lunches for two.  Mr Nobody doesn’t come into my kitchen late at night any more to snack on the left over roast and surprise ,surprise, I no longer gain weight.

I’m not a housekeeper’s bootlace, LOL, but when I get enthused about something, I want to complete it.  If I ‘play a mind game’ and break the kitchen, dining room which is one long room, into a kitchen and a dining room, (two separate identities), in my mind, I can tackle the easier end, tonight then go to bed feeling very pleased that I am right on target, and have 2 rooms done and 5 to go, plus of course the outside deck.  I should have the home and garden clean, re set and functional and ready to live in, before the end of the month.

 

'Sicky', time off turned into money in the post for me.
Would you like some money for rest time, too? 

I started out well, the week and weekend before, I had joined my gym in great enthusiasm and attended five consecutive days eating well and highly motivated to complete my slimming journey.

Then on Tuesday last week, ironically after writing a blog post about colon health, LOL, sweet justice was dished out for being a ‘KIA’, LOL J,  I came down with a bout of food poisoning.  That threw me right off course for the rest of the week.  I ate to try to gain energy and I did little exercise aside from one enjoyable day in the garden tidying up and planting lilies.

I did strive to use the quiet recovery time productively, and I worked on my web sites and looked into further ways to supplement my income on line.  After I had exhausted all the avenues that required concentration, on my to do list, I settled down to watch a TV movie on both Saturday and Sunday night and during the advertisement intervals and the short breaks when Reg switched channels to watch the footy, I began writing short reviews giving the pros and cons and general summery of products I own.  Initially it was just a way to pass time and give an opinion of things I liked or did not like and why, and see what others thought of the same products and then I realized, it actually could supplement my housekeeping money if I did this in the mornings when I was ‘waking up’ over coffee and later at night, in all the add breaks, I realized it actually will make a difference to our budget and I have set myself a target to earn $60. This week, part time, and at the same time ensure that this does not interfere with my being as active as I can be, throughout the day.

I know I would not have bothered to try out this on line, income source venue, if I had not had this week of sick and needed a lot of quiet time recovery.   The first few reviews were very poorly paid as I spell checked, proof read and re read and dotted every T (oops I mean i) and being dyslectic, that took ages.  So I probably spent half an hour earning my first $1.    Then I got wise to what was required.  They were simply asking for my opinion of things, not an essay LOL, J and after that, the cash was adding up fast.

Would you like Gift Vouchers to use at Myer, Target, Kmart, Coles, BI-LO, Office Works and more?
If you are interested in a way to earn money in spare moments at your computer, no outlay, please email me your name and email address so I can send you an invite to earn Coles Myer GIFT Vouchers, for reviewing products you use.
I have tried it, earned  $20. In morning tea and evening TV add breaks in one weekend. 

Discovering this was a great use of my ‘sicky’ time off J, I am happy to share it and it’s something I plan to make use of from now on. 

 

It was the first beautiful sunny day I’ve had to spend time in my garden since I returned to my country home in northern Victoria a week ago.  

I had a lovely day, I began by blogging about Tesselaar in the Dandenong Ranges in my Gray-Nomad  blog, then I began weeding between the clumps of pansies and spring flowering bulbs that have emerged and digging last summer’s mulch into he top soil to add organic matter and lighten the fairly heavy mostly clay content soil I started out with. 

I moved a Margarite that had grown rather large through winter, out into my back courtyard garden, planted tomatoes in the courtyard and then set about planting my summer flowering liliums. 

I planted 25 Lilium Triumphator which is described by Tesselaar as haing ‘voluptuous white flowers with a beetroot red throat.  An O.T. Lily hybrid with glamour and fragrance.  Hardy and wonderful.

OT Hybrids are the latest in Lilium breeding from Europe. A cross between an oriental and a longiflorum, OT's have been bred for a long vase life and floral arranging. Ideal for cut flowers and gardens, tall strong stems topped with multiple flowers and a soft scent. Grows 110cm tall. Flower during the summer months.

In front of these, still well to the back of the garden i planted clumps of three to five White Christmas Lilies then in small groups wherever I could find room, just back from the front border, and between my roses, I planted the bright colourful, oriental liliums.

A general tidy up, and the garden early spring clean up was complete.  Tomorrow I am planting herbs, and vegetables down the side of the house and in the courtyard, between the roses and perennials and I plan to plant mushrooms to grow on my outside deck.

Because I bought these liliums direct at the plant farm the Lilium Triumphor was marked down to ¼ price and all the other lilliums were all well below the cost of mail order or nursery purchased plants and much healthier, straight from the grower to the gardener and back into the ground without any set back.  Liliums do not have a dormant period, it’s important to plant them quickly.

My other concession to economy was to not buy any of the gorgeous, fragrant but more expensive Asiatic liliums.

I will be paying a visit to the zucchini growers in the Goulburn valley soon, they grow the plants in coconut core and once they harvest, they put the coconut core aside for people like myself to collect for free to use as garden mulch.

I'll need to clean out a few unwanted items from the garden shed to sell on EBay, my house keeping allowance doesn't stretch to lilium buys but lilium buys do so much for the inner me, not to mention the joy I experience when gazing at flowers in my garden, there needs to be a balance between budgeting and being too frugal, life needs to be lived and enjoyed and I thing a few hours next week selling some over stock will be rewarded for weeks of beauty during summer for many years and the anticipation of watching the liliums grow.   

This is the smallest garden I've ever had, in some ways I'm grateful for that, it's my retirement garden, great exercise when i want it, but I'll never need to be a slave to it.

It was a very satisfying day. J 

Lilium delphinium and paeony. art fridge magnet by Kathy Shell.
The flowers in my cottage garden supply subjects for me to paint and enjoy.