Retrieval Project update 11-08-09

At this very moment in time, these are the original paintings still available in our

Retrieval Project etsy shop.

(this is jenny)

Yay! As Joe mentioned yesterday, our stuff is on the way!!! Our plan was to raise enough money for two of us (probably Brooklyn and I) to fly to Minnesota, rent a u-haul truck, load up our stuff and drive it back. That would cost us somewhere around $4,000. A long time friend of the Swanson family (and our sister-in-law's dad) is a trucker in Minnesota, and he contacted us to let us know that he could haul our things for about half the price. He and some friends loaded everything from our storage unit into his truck yesterday and he should be here by next weekend!!!!! We've been back in California for a little over nine months, so it will be very exciting for us to finally feel settled in with our things and make our house feel more homey and cozy for the chilly autumn days ahead.

We've been just fine without our stuff and realize that it is just "stuff". We have borrowed couches, beds and dressers and have survived nicely these last several months. It's the little things we're most looking forward to. Well, ok, big things too... I can't wait to snuggle under cozy blankets on our couch and look at our photos framed on the walls. But the things the kids are most looking forward to surprised me a little. When I asked them, the first things they thought of were Little People toys (this from 12 year old Brooklyn! they've always been her favorite!), our ottoman (Zeke wants to see if he still fits under it), and Mercy's scooter. When they thought about it more, they were looking forward to their own beds and the Wii, but those things weren't even at the top of their lists.

We will keep this site up, so that you can still scroll down to see all of the paintings that were a part of the Retrieval Project. I've decided to change the links. I will still do a bold red "SOLD" when a painting sells, but instead of linking directly to individual paintings and prints, I will link original paintings to the Retrieval Project etsy site, and prints to Joe's etsy shop and mine. It's very time consuming to continually update links when things are sold, so this way you can link to the Retrieval Project shop and see what is available, and also through our individual shops, you can see what else we've been working on.

You can also keep up with us through our separate blogs: mine is a mixed media life, and Joe's is thisistattoo. We're on twitter, too. @joeswansontat2 and @jennyswanson707.

We'd like to thank you all again for following us, directing people to our site, buying our art, praying for us, offering support and encouragement. It feels good to have come up with this project and produced the daily paintings. It was a really great experience for both of us, and we so appreciated the sense of community we felt from all of our friends, family and supporters. We didn't quite reach our goal, but we did raise enough, thanks to all of you, to have our stuff brought to us. All money that we make now from this project will go to our general budget. Work has been slow and we're burning candles at every point possible to make ends meet right now.