Buddies

Like many of us, the Christmas season really wears me down; namely in financial regards. To try and remedy this I've made it a point to come up with creative gift ideas that won't break my fragile checking account; something I enjoy to do like painting, and I began giving gifts like that to my daughter several years ago. I bought a few pre-painted statues of horses, stripped and re painted them, and after painting horses for her as gifts two years in a row I decided on a different creative gift: a drawing.

Knowing that my daughter is an animal lover to the core, I again focused on that. I've taken hundreds of photos of her showing animals at a local 4-H competition over recent years. Last summer I took quite a few that turned out really nicely. I found one that just sung to me. This particular photo I liked so much because of the ambiguous expression on her face. I couldn't quite figure out what she might be thinking of. Without a doubt she was in full showmanship mode, but there was much more than thoughts of victory going on in there.

Drawing is a skill I've not nurtured more than twice in the last ten years, so I was nervous about how my sketch would turn out. But I brought it to finish, framed it and gave to her on Christmas Eve, and the look on her face... " It's Buddy ! ", she exclaimed. She was so Happy...


...and so was I... :)