All That Jazz: Creative Day

This is a 2-part post. First I want to say how PROUD I am of Whiskey! Today while I was sitting on the living room floor I was petting her and our gray (more chilled out cat) came walking by to my other unoccupied hand. I had a duel purpose. Whiskey was giving Baby -Bell (the cat) the evil eye, so kept reassuring her, "Its OK, Its just kitty". While I was looking at Baby-Bell, Whiskey got up very nicely and walked over to Baby. They touched nose-to-nose and Whiskey gave a little lick! I was so proud of both of them. No growling or lunging from Whiskey and no hissing or swatting from the cat! After the lick the cat had enough and walked away. But that is a HUGE milestone in our household and I couldn't be happier. When Whiskey first came into this house she thought the cats were play toys, but the cats wanted nothing to do with her and would hiss and swat. Once they did that Whiskey would growl and go after them leaving many a tufts a fur around the house, and scratched to her nose. I have also been going through my pictures and taking a few extras for Kelly's Corgi Butts & Corgi Butts with blogs calendars. Hopefully I can narrow them down, I don't know how you do it, Kelly.

The other portion of this post. Some of you may know I love painting, and admiring other painters. I have been in love with Miami based painter Romero Britto for a long time, and done my own thing loosely based on his works. Well boyfriend and I went to bed bath, & beyond yesterday and low-and-behold was a section of Romero Britto stuff... place mats of all things! I instantly fell in love! My boyfriend questioned: "Are you really going to eat food off of these?"
Of course NOT. I was going to frame them! I wanted 4 different place mats to make into a square-ish piece, but I could not find 4 that melded well and that I liked enough (there were about 12 to choose from). I love his heart pieces, they are always my favorite. So I settled on 2. They were $7.99 each + my 20% off coupon = $6.70. Not to bad for a piece of art. After BB&B we went to Kohls. I found the perfect frame but left my coupon at home. So today a friend of mine wanted to go to Kohls and I couldn't pass that up. I got 2 framed that were marked at 40% off to begin with and my 30% coupon plus I bought one other frame to put a picture of the boyfriend and myself so 3 framed for $44.00. The frames I bought for the place mats had matting that I was planning on taking out, but I love how they look with the matte. My friend bought 2 nice button down dress shirts and a nice pair of leather (sketcher-like) shoes for $42.00 (with my 30% coupon also)- He saved $105.00. We walked and he very excitedly said "I'm never shopping without you again."
Well here are my framed art work pieces. If I hadn't told you they were place mats would you be able to tell?