Essential travel

 A Perfect day
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Barbara Muir © 
SOLD ♥ 

As much as I love our home, and our neighbourhood, I love travelling
and finding a new neighbourhood to enjoy.  Wherever we go we
find places to love.  In the Maritimes it's hard not to love everything 
-- so many beautiful views that have inspired so many of my 
landscape paintings.  We absolutely marvel at the beauty on the
entire drive from Toronto to our little school house in Nova
Scotia.  Canada is a beautiful country.

If you haven't gone exploring in Canada yet, I hope you do so
soon (before winter).  

Have a loving your life day!

The message from the past

Neighbours
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 

This small painting was one of many I did back when I started 
blogging.  It makes sense to show it to you today, because
a former blog said that the problem with positive thinking is that
you don't get to whine.  It feels like there are some things
to whine about -- one of which is needing a new, second
hand car.  But this image, of a car that looks a lot like the one
we need to replace, brought the message of being positive home.
It's a view of our street, and I love our street.

We're having a yard sale this weekend, neighbours on either
side of us offering to help. Help for hours today from one of my
helpful friends. Yes!  I do feel grateful for the bounty of the universe,

Have a loving your life day!

Dreaming of Paris again

Wonderful coffee in Paris
Photo
 Barbara Muir © 

A neighbour down the street was talking about a wonderful trip he took
with his wife and children to every major city in Europe, ending the
trip with a visit to a Greek island for five days. Of course this got me
thinking about where I would like to go in the next six months or so.
That’s right you guessed it – Paris!

This photo came up in my feed of a perfect coffee I had with Steven
in Paris as we were looking over the river Seine. We love Paris, and
that love just gets stronger. I’m reading a wonderful book called
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. It’s reminding me of our first
visit to France when my brother was renting a house in the south of
France, and I’m loving every minute of the book. I hope you had a
great weekend.

Have a loving your life day!

 

Another happy painting goes home

 

Summer leaves
Acrylic on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Barbara Muir © 2025

I know I showed this painting to you a couple of days ago, but the 
story has become more exciting. Today this beautiful painting of
a park on "Lake Ontario," currently coveted by the head of our
southern neighbour (the lake not the painting), went home.

The painting is happy to be part of the wonderful collector's
collection of my work.  He says he could start a gallery.
Not a bad idea. 

It was an absolutely beautiful day and now it's movie night.
I hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

Have a loving your life day!

The Cake House goes home

 

The Cake House

Acrylic on canvas

14 x 18 inches

 Barbara Muir © Revised 2023

This morning started off very happily with delivering The Cake House,
one of my favourite paintings, to a new collector. It was so exciting
to see how delighted he was with the piece.  

His dog was really happy about it too.  A Corgi and very sweet, I think
the dog appreciated the colour scheme.  What a super way to start a 
pretty awesome day.

Have a loving your life day!

Let's not believe corrupt leaders, and let's work on stopping climate change

Our school house near

Wallace, Nova Scotia 

Photo: Greg Smiley © 2022

Out premier in Ontario, Doug Ford, is pretending he cares about 
protecting Canada, and not co-operating with Americans.
But a few weeks ago he would have happily destroyed

Toronto's waterfront to build a completely unnecessary 

airport along the lake funded by an American bank.

This past week he suggested that Staples, an American
office supply chain provide the paper products for Ontario schools,

and there is still a factory in Ontario building tank-like
vehicles for ICE, (United States Immigration and Customs
Enforcement), the group randomly arresting ordinary
American citizens, and putting them in detention centers. 

I love the United States, but not this administration.  I 

love New York, and California and have friends and
family there. But the corrupt leadership there is 
adding massively to rapidly horrific climate change.
And more wars, more racism, more choosing to ignore
what's happening is only making things worse for the
whole world.

Four years ago I posted the image above of our Nova Scotia
school house, which was hit by a tree in a hurricane

four years ago. My husband Steven, and I are grateful to
everyone who worked to save the school house.

What used to be 3 acres of forest 
behind our school house.
All gone.
Photo
Barbara Muir © 2023

We were deeply saddened when we went to the school house
three years ago to see what had happened to the huge trees in
the acres of forest behind our school house. They were slammed

down by the hurricane. My heart is definitely partly in Nova
Scotia, a province that cares about the environment.  But
my heart also cares about the planet. And all of us have to
return our focus to that.

Have a caring for this place we call home -- earth -- day!

Happy International Dog Day Sally

Sally our dog

Photo
Barbara Muir ©

Happy International Dog Day to our sweet dog Sally, who will be 14 this fall.

When we got her as a rescue she was one years old, so we have had almost
13 wonderful years with her.  

I hope that if you have a dog, you sang to the dog -- Happy International Dog
Day to the tune of Happy Birthday.  We did quietly because Sally loves 
singing (barking) to Happy Birthday, and she barked for part of the song.

It's been a busy day -- a fantastic model in the studio, then my sweet friend 
helping me figure things out for our upcoming lawn sale, and meeting
the young girl I'm painting at IKEA tonight, and getting some more
reference shots.  That was completely the luck of the universe, because
I knew I needed more reference photos, and hadn't had time to contact her
father about it.  So that was amazing!

Here's to dogs, and joyous coincidences.

Have a loving your life day!