The Muse of The Day

Breaking My Back And Breaking The Rules

Hi there. Did you think I have been having difficulty with the shade and that is why you haven't heard from me? Although I have encountered a few hiccups that made me do and undo parts of the shade, I finished the shade several days ago.

 

It took less time to finish the actual shade than it took to get the ladder out to put it up there. Do you ever get caught with a project whereby you have done the hardest part and yet one more little hiccup, like bringing the ladder up from the basement, stops the entire event from reaching it's culmination? You would think I would be so excited, once I finished it, to see it up and hanging, illuminated in all it's glory. Not so. It happens that way sometimes. I finish the bulk of a project and I am on to the next.

This time, the next project has been my garden ... well, "g-a-r-d-e-n" is kind of a big word for what I have so far. Two days ago I had this:

Pathetic as my planting bed may seem, this is the photo AFTER I spent several days on it.  I have been walking around like an old lady with severe hunchback because of it. The soil that is there is an amalgam of construction debris and poor quality fill. I have dug up all kinds of things that were probably tossed off the house from different vantage points, flung from scaffolding or the roof, during the construction process and now lay in this house-parts graveyard that I am calling my garden. I remember there were lots of delays around the time we installed the five toilets - most of them went in, but without seats so they would stay pristine until the build-out was complete. When, nearing the end of the project, we finally turned our attention to putting actual toilet seats on the toilets, only four of them could be located. One had gone MIA. I personally searched everywhere for the missing toilet seat. Now, as I dug up this bed with my maddock, I wondered every time I flung it into the soil and it was met by a hard surface, if I had actual finally made contact with toilet seat #5. No such luck.

One day ago, my husband and I went poking about Mary's Greenhouse. It is a very dangerous place to go when back home your planting bed is as sparse as mine. How dangerous, you may ask? Fifty greenhouses, yes 50 greenhouses dangerous. That kind of danger sparks double, and even triple, trips up and down the mountain with the back of the pick up truck totally maxed out.

Now, this garden bed has become my ball and chain. I have a long way to go to reach completion.

It exhausts me just to think about it, but I have been chipping away at it. When it is closer to looking like a real garden, I will rephotograph it and show you what madness 50 greenhouses can do to a person.

The meals around here have been ... mmm, lets say "sufficient". We had a Memorial Day weekend full of get-togethers with friends, and even had unexpected, but very welcomed, out of town guests come for dinner and stay last night. All this has made the progress on the second lampshade quite a bit less feverish than the first, but I have been working on it.

I had this beautiful blue batik in my stash that I could resist no longer.

But if I paired it with another batik, which would have looked cool, it would not have gone well next to the other lampshade in the dining room. The three shades are all in a line so they have to look good together. I have heard  a rule at the quilting store that I know makes sense - put batiks with other batiks, otherwise something about it looks "off". Granted I can see when that rule applies - and for good reason. It just wasn't enough reason for me not to do it in this next lampshade. Florals and batiks are a no-no according to some fantastic quilters I have met.

These are the fabrics in the next shade:

We are just going to have to pretend I never heard them. I can take breaking a rule once I fully understand the rule. My friend, Reed Arvin, says that "Expertise means that we know the rules of a domain so well they've become unconscious. Once we reach this point, we're free; the rules serve us." I fully agree, and I am continuously working towards this in all aspects of my life, and although I am not claiming that I have a full command of anything, especially what fabrics go with what other fabrics, I do know the MOST IMPORTANT rule. That one is simply stated like this:

 

FOLLOW YOUR GUT INSTINCT

 

That is what I am doing with this shade because when it comes to projects like this - ones loaded with twists and turns and a myriad of different options, one can get bogged down in the rules and you can end up quagmired without any F'n lampshade at all - and that is not my goal. I might fail. Sure. But that is the risk I am willing to take. The only real risk is TIME, you know, and I have coddled that long enough. I could sit here, in my studio picking this fabric and that fabric, changing my mind a million times over, believing that in just pinballing myself from one fabric to another and spending time in the studio I am actually being creative when in fact I am not actually creating anything, I could do that in hopes of ending up with the ultimate combination of fabrics for the world's most awesome shade, but I am not there yet. I am not at that point. I am at the point whereby I need to stay focused on more doing (not doing more, there is a distinct difference if you think about it). You can look at it another way: the NEXT shade, combination of fabrics, painting, etc. (insert your "next" here) is the best one because it still exists only as a possibility. In that frame of thinking, well, sweet cheeks, the world is your oyster ... obviously those things that sit in our imagination, only, are engulfed in absolute perfection. The ones that attempt an escape from imagination into our reality are the ones you really have to look up to - those are the ones you had the guts enough to bring to life. Those are the ones that are trying to out-run failure, those are the ones that are knee deep in problem solving shit (excuse my language), but those that are "THIS one" and not "the NEXT one", are the ones I am charging after. Those are the ones that are the steed, I am the knight, if you will, and the rule to follow my gut instinct is my jousting lance. Are you creating the right mental image? If I fail, my armour has to be tough enough to protect me so that I may live to try again.

For heaven's sake, you might be saying to your self, all this from a choice of fabric for a simple little lampshade? Well, it is what is in my head and this is where it chose to come out. Do with it what you will. Break the rules, follow the rules. Those are choices for all of us. The only thing I don't think we really have any choice in, if we are to have any chance of succeeding in our goals, is to follow your gut instinct. Are you with me on this?

 

Carolina

My Mistakes Are All Mine

Each of the members of our family had things to do today so I had the luxury of the house to myself for a bit. I spent it all in the studio. I can't remember the last time that happened, so I shoved my to-do list aside and made a sincere attempt at some progress on the shade I talked about yesterday.

Cutting the doily was scary ... all those loose threads... open and exposed. Yikes! Like my pouring my guts out on the blog; there is serious concern that the whole darn thing will become unraveled and one will permanently reside in the Land of No Return.

My mind was still happily full, from all the creativity that rushed in yesterday, as I tackled the knitty gritty of the project and got down to business. Getting down to business is always the difficult part. While I worked, I enjoyed hearing the "Ping!" of my computer with all of your emails coming in. I tried to answer most of them (I still owe you one Susan, a long one), it was good to have them coming in - they gave me food for thought while I worked on the project. Melissa had also posted about "process" and she and I volleyed the emails a bit this morning.

I had left her a comment regarding the process and how Charles Eames (of Ray & Charles Eames) viewed it. I am paraphrasing but essentially he said "that he spends 1% of his time coming up with a new, creative idea, and the other 99% of the time making sure the product stays true to that original idea. I think that is how it went, perhaps he said it more like he "spent the other 99% of the time chasing the idea and not letting it get away." He was talking about the non creative part of everything Ray and him made as being mostly responsible for the object coming before our eyes." Coming up with the idea is always the fun part.

I thought about this while I pinned my doily to the fabrics so I could sew it into place.

Things didn't go so well. The doily must not have been that "antique" because it had some give to it, almost like as if there was lycra in it. After a couple of hours work, I had a nice wobbly mess.

The mess was an obvious mistake. I had no intention of spending the better part of the day with my least favorite tool in my arsenal: the  bloody seam ripper.

As I worked, I remembered something I had read in the book Art & Fear. It said: "... vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue." I think I have got the "vision" part and the "uncertainty" part figured out (although the uncertainty part always fools me, perhaps I'll talk about this next time we meet here). What is for sure, and written in stone, is that I have a ways to go on the "knowledge of materials" part, no matter the medium. The mistakes are all mine, if I had found the answers as to what to do and what not to do in this situation, well of course I would have attempted to avoid my blunders. But where do you look for answers to solve mistakes when you haven't even an inkling that you are going to make them in the first place? Mistakes are a given when your knowledge of your materials is flimsy, at best.

I worked through the problem, trying out several options to find one that worked.

So I made mistakes. Big ones. Lots of them. But had I not made them I wouldn't have what I have today. I worked on the process and now I have progress. Or rather, Progress, with a capital "P".

I will continue on this quest for knowledge and realize that my path to succeeding in the realization of my visions is paved with mistakes. My mistakes. For that is where my growth will come from.

Carolina

From Warped To Right

Life has been so warped lately, it is time to get back to normal. School is FINALLY done with and so is my wacko driving schedule. Did you hear me hootin' & hollerin'?

Today I set about making things right again. I want to get back to being me again and doing my creative stuff. It was either that or have a total meltdown. Last night, just before falling asleep, I promised myself that today I would get back to my art. I started off, today, like the good little procrastinator that I am, and cleaned the house top to bottom. Just to vacuum and wash the floor takes me about 4 hours. Mental note to self : "next house, make it small, really small." ... "and make the studio big, REALLY BIG." By the time I was done with the cleaning, the Ellis family needed a feeding, of course. I "threw" down a meal and made a bee line to the studio. If there was even the slightest delay, something might have gotten in my way and I would never be here, in the studio. Let me show you what I have been doing:

I walked around and around the studio in circles. Not quite sure where to begin. I figure I may as well begin by fixing problems.

Remember this?

As I tested different bulbs, going up in wattage, it started to warp.

At first it wasn't too bad, but when I got to 100 watts, the shape of the shade seemed to have a life of it's own. When the light was off it would harden nicely, but as soon as you turned on the heat, well sugar, it was a sad sight indeed. I thought my eyes were tricking me - I would turn around for just a minute or so and when I looked back up at it I could swear it was a different shape.

The entire history of this shade seems to mirror my own life. Well ... all of it needs attention. This amount of warpage, whether in my shade or in my life, simply won't do.

This is were we are at now:

I just gave the shade a major bath. I am cleaning up my act as well. I want to get back to my projects, and I figure that the worst lampshade I can make is the one that never gets done and sits there in a pathetic heap of fabrics. The ugliest painting I can paint is the blank canvas. The worst sketchbook I can work out my drawings on is the one that never gets cracked open. Right? I will discuss this topic, of doing vs. not doing art work, as I putter along on my projects in the upcoming weeks.

Back to fixing problems.

Enter Meliisa P., I won a giveaway on her blog. She has a new website to go with all the fame that is coming her way now that she is hanging with the big dogs of the fabric and quilting world. A note to you - she has loads of free patterns and project how-to's on her website.

This is what I won:

Crazy awesomeness or what? Thank you Melissa!!!

So what am I waiting for I thought? Lets fix that lighting problem. While the old one was drying I pulled out a few of my fabrics that always seem too precious to cut into.

I found a beautiful antique crocheted doily that I can't bare to get rid of just because it has a hole in it.

Added it to a few fabrics I thought might go with Melissa's gifted ones:

And while the old shade is drip drying in the sink, I have started to work on an all new shade.

That is as far as I got today. I figured I would spend the rest of my studio time, while I still had the energy, writing this quick post. Let me add here, that even the simplest of little posts, like this one, takes a long time to do. It is no small feat and I am high fiving myself for still HAVING a blog and still hanging in there, writing to you. I hope you liked what I shared with you today. I will be back sooner rather than later because I am going to try a new blogging tactic. I have had this feeling that I needed to show you only my finished projects. Ridiculous. I had to go back to the beginning, when I wrote my "ABOUT page" and see what my "mission statement" was. If I wait to show you only the finished products, then it is like Kindergarten "Show & Tell" time. This makes it longer between posts. Since I don't make money from my blog, I need to be clear what I use it for. I am here to share my process of how I go about progressing as a creative person and get closer to that mission statement. I need to focus on process, not the products I make, for the "product" is me, the creative me. Staying focused on showing you the process will take me "from warped to right."

I want to be a "Creative". EVERYDAY. That is all. This, this blog, is where you can see the steps I take along that never ending path.

See you soon. Real soon.

Carolina

 

PS. my husband, who can screen share our computers, just called me from the other room saying his "stomach is warping and it needs to go from "warped to right" and he is wondering if my mission statement has any mention of what is for dinner." That is my life, ladies!

Three Paintings From The Past

We have had a patch of rough weather - tornadoes, driving rain, and the unit that heats my studio and the rest of the bottom floor has gone on the blink. I had done everything in my power to insure that Sunday would be a sewing day. I had cleaned the house, top to bottom, on Thursday, I had gotten all the food shopping and errands done on Friday, I had a cooking marathon all day Saturday so that there would be plenty of leftovers, and all in all I was ready for my sewing jaunt on Sunday. Now I am sitting in my studio writing this, I am dressed like I belong inside Dr. Zhivago's house. I am waiting for the little portable heater to heat up the room, every possible light bulb is on, and we have put in a call to the heating people. I thought I would share some color with you today since I so enjoyed my Sunday morning spent perusing your blogs. Below you see three paintings I have in my "stash". 

This is one of my daughter, Nica May, the egg shaped rock above her head was a recurrent them in a series I once did. The theme was based on issues of being born, or rather reborn, into who you will become. The painting (30" by 40") sits on one of the shelves now of my studio. I like to see it every time I leave the studio.

 

 

Next up is a three piece painting ( it is about 8 feet tall) on motherhood. I often feel that as a mother and artist, if I may be so bold to call myself that, you are split, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but you must still walk forward towards the light. You feel like your creative self (represented by the bowl) never gets filled and is in a permanent state of being empty. 

 

FInally I am showing you a painting of the tea accoutrement and my pencil box that I used to keep in my studio when my studio was not located in my home. I loved this little painting (24" by 20" if I remember right.) Somebody bought it and gave it as a gift to a friend who was dying of cancer. The friend died a month later and I wondered if the painting ended up in a garage sale some where. I take solace in the fact the painting was most probably one of the last gifts they got to open in their lives, hopefully it brought a little smile to them.

 

All this cooking and driving I have been doing makes me miss painting. Of course, I can't just blame it on the cooking and driving. Maybe one of these days I will burst and go back to painting. For now there is a sewing project waiting to be tackled. I am going to go sew.

Have a good Sunday.

Carolina

Believing In The Difference A Day Makes

Below is a photo of the Christmas ornaments that do NOT go on our family tree. Every time I see them all together, like this, I get this magical feeling of anticipation inside of me.

These ornaments go on my pink Christmas tree in the studio. In the studio I have total say so of what I want, so I have a very pink, and very different, Christmas tree for this space.

I have lots of favorite ornaments that hang along the white "feathery" rings. 

The colors are scrumptious and bright. Some of the ornaments remind me of events, like this one with the tree being transported on the top of the car like we bring our tree home:

But most of the ornaments on the studio tree are about the magic that is all around us on a regular basis.

 There is only one ornament with a word on it.

And "BELIEVE" is what I want to talk about today.

Day before yesterday, in the afternoon, we had our first "real" snowfall of the season.

It struck me just how different things appeared in the very same places I see every day. From one day to the next, a change had occurred - a real, palpable, obvious-to-everyone kind of change. It was almost as if winter just "suddenly" showed up, when actually I know that isn't so. I have been watching the light of day get shorter and shorter since the day after summer solstice, and have commented many times on daily changes, shifting position of the sun, and speed of the impending winter. Yesterday I had to go for a hike in the snow.

As I hiked I thought about how to share what is on my mind in regards to your comments a couple of posts back. To be fair to all of you, I had to get to the core of figuring out what it is that motivates me and why it seems like I am hopping from one path to another. I have come to realize that I am not motivated by money, and even less so by fame. These two things don't get me to move on anything. So what is it that actually makes me get up and take action?

In one word : Knowledge. If I could do two words, then it would be Knowledge & Curiosity. I am as curious as to why only one side of the Mekong eats with chopsticks as I am about how a sleeve goes on a dress, or how to paint a spoon or a face. Have you ever stopped to think about what really motivates you to do stuff? I'm not talking about handling your responsibilities, here, we all take care of our responsibilities because they are just that: ours. The question we need to ask ourselves, and be brutally honest about, is what motivates us? Once I figured that out, I could see why I was hopping all over the place. Had it been money, I would have stuck to one thing until the money started rolling in.

Back in June, I did a post on food & the Mekong River. I didn't get a whole lot of response to that post, but it struck a deep cord with me. I  have been wanting to delve into other people's kitchens. Not just your kitchen, but kitchens around the world. Hence why I started the  I'll Take The Scenic Route blog - to get into shape enough to be able to travel in remote locations and find out what people are eating where and how they prepare their food. My ankle misbehaved badly and put a serious dent in my progress.

How does this all tie into the word "Believe?" Well, I have 4 and a half more years to go before my youngest is done with school. Most of the time I feel like the day will never come when I can get to go on those adventures. I have a hard time "believing" it is actually going to happen, but that is exactly what I must do. Believe. After uncovering what motivates me, and reviewing my ridiculously busy schedule, I have created a plan. I am going to go on an all-out-learn-everything-I-can mode so that I am ready for my adventure when the day arrives. Although you still will see me knitting & sewing, I am going to let my focus be on learning about food. Many of you, who actually have been to my home, think I already know how to cook, but I am going to dive in deeper and really learn the what & why behind the magic of cooking. I need to be able to really know my stuff, so that when I am "out there" in areas where I don't speak the specific language of the country I am in, I will at least understand the language of cooking, and understand it well. I want to also keep learning how to paint. I enjoy it immensly, but have decades to go on it. I would like to see if I can focus the painting and drawing on the food I am learning to prepare. Having two different blogs gets tricky for me. I am not sure which one I should write on so that we "keep it all together". Any input on how to do that would be helpful. My main focus then, at the moment, is to learn everything I can about the kitchen and keep working towards that change. Every single day needs to nod towards that change. My biggest hurdle to overcome is to learn to BELIEVE that little by little, one daily layer upon the next, that change will come and not only will it be obvious and palpable to everyone, but it will be also obvious to me. I will don on my backpack and set foot on my adventure one day. I want to look back on today and think "that was my solstice day", the day I started to BELIEVE in the difference a day makes.

Until next time,

Carolina

 

Dear Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

I got your message on Facebook. You are so thoughtful. I am sure you aren't the only one who has been wondering where I have been this past month. I must say it has been a challenging month.

The colors around me have been spectacular, but it has not been the autumn I hoped for. I have had little time for anything remotely related to this blog. There have been times where I have considered dropping it all together.

I have been putting my fair share of miles on my poor old car and have more than exceeded my carbon footprint this month. My oldest daughter has been quite sick. An ultrasound revealed concerns for her kidneys. The long version: we have been driving back and forth between school & hospitals in Nashville. Several CAT scans, ultrasounds, blood tests, etc. later, we are all still here. The short version: She is going to be OK.

All this driving from place to place has, in a way, been very therapeutic for me. It has been an incubation period of sorts. I got this blog to narrow down a direction for myself. There are times I feel like I have made zero headway with the whole thing, but I can see three possible roads to take. With the little time I actually have to dedicate to my "path", I feel I need to narrow it down NOW. I can stay on the sewing & knitting route, I can paint, or I can cook. You have seen me do all three paths. All I need to do now is pick one to focus on. Got any input?

Melissa P. thinks that things will work themselves out, my husband thinks I just need to focus on getting healthy and losing the weight, my good friend Melisse, from Michigan, feels I ought to get back on the Ill Take The Scenic Route blog, I am certain that my friend, Alicia, has been swallowed up by her new employer and hasn't been able to participate in this dilemma, and to make matters really bad ... my mother just keeps telling me I am doing too much as it is. Ahhhhh. It all just drives me crazy. How can it be that at 47, I am not bright enough to figure this out? I am serious, here. How can that be?

Every day I drive by this house. We have had a few days of wind and rain since I took this picture. This morning I noticed that all the leaves were on the lawn. Nothing was left on the branches. Winter is here. Autumn, my favorite season, passed me by because I was too busy wrapped up in my life.

I obviously am not making progress, here, today on the blog with my decision. I will end it here. Frustrated.

Frustrated until next time,

Carolina

PS - the only question I have to contend with right this very moment is  -  do I just send this to you, Elizabeth? Or do I go ahead and press the "publish now" button and publish my guts out on the blog, on the internet, for everyone else to see as well?

I Had Oranges For Breakfast

Yes I had oranges for breakfast.

I have started a new on-line course in hopes of learning how to find my groove and sketch daily in a journal. The course is Sketchbook Delight, and it is being taught by Alisa Burke. I am taking the virtual class with a virtual friend, Melissa P. of the blog 100 Billion Stars. Although Melissa says she doesn't draw or paint, she does absolute wonders with fabric and I think that will carry over to her sketchbook.

Here are the results from this morning's first attempts:

It is a very dark, rainy day outside, otherwise I would have photographed this with daylight. Even though it was dreary and depressing outside, I was glad I could start my day out with something colorful instead.

The Year The Easter Bunny Couldn't Get In

Although some may think that it is Santa Claus that is the "big dog" in our year, the Easter Bunny has always held equal favor. Ever since the girls were little, preparations and festivities abounded to welcome our soft spoken, furry, little token of Spring. There were lavish teas, pink of course, spread out. All the girl's special tea china was set just so. Every available tea pot filled with different colored "tea" that instantly brought back memories of Mary Poppins and how she helped the medicine go down. Each tea pot holding delicious, sweet concoctions that tasted like a child's dream elixir. Our grand chocolate bunny always held steadfast his position at center stage. In one serving dish, perhaps heavenly Mexican wedding cookies, another real fruit jellies, of course there were petit fours, and pastel colored Jordan Almonds strewn about. The last touch was the golden swan which was delicately passed around the table so that everyone could reach for a pink rock sugar stick to stir their tea with.

Little girls here, there, and everywhere. All festooned in ethereal pink tulle.

All this to send a message to our Easter bunny that we were ready. We were waiting. Our baskets had been carefully adorned with fresh sweetheart roses. I only had ONE very important job - to remember to leave the door unlocked so that the Easter bunny could leave us a few treasures in our baskets. Oops!

A big Oops! I fell asleep. I didn't forget, I just fell asleep. There was no way the Easter bunny could get inside and make the delivery we had been praying for. The doors had remained locked throughout the night. I just fell asleep just like you do...

Panic ran through our house early the next morning. "Mom, Mom, wake up." In between breathless panting I heard my precious little ones, their voices full of disappointment ... "The Easter bunny didn't come". It was obvious - their baskets were empty, only the drying little roses were there. When suddenly, just by chance, one of the little ones spotted something out by the pool. An egg? Could it be? In our nightshirts we flung the doors open and ran to investigate. Once there other colors caught our attention. "Where?" "Out there ...Look" Where?"

 "In The Trees." The Easter bunny HAD come after all. Upon realizing there was no door left unlocked, the Easter bunny waisted no time and put all the treats for the little ones in the garden.

Sun-drenched colored dresses hung from every branch, vintage purses wedged in every crook. Chocolate eggs and jellybeans in pastel egg shaped containers lay in and amongst the bushes. Bejeweled crowns sparkled as they caught the first rays of sun. Where tulips were popping up there were also lollipops in their midst standing just as proud greeting the early morning sunshine.

All I can say is that the Easter bunny new that moms get tired sometimes. Perhaps the Easter bunny was a mother herself.

Wishing you and your loved ones a magical Easter,

Carolina

Just So You Know

Just so you know, it is not like I have forgotten to blog or that I haven't been working on anything. Life gets a bit full and I think that I have to have the project "done" before I post - this is the reason for any delay you have in getting a new post. I bought this jar of Chilean honey for my Dad. My intent was to put up a post titled "Honey, You Know I Love You" for Valentine's day. I was going to make something in the shape of a honeycomb and send it to my parents along with the honey. Obviously that didn't materialize, Valentine's day is long gone. 

Here I am now, the hexagons are now circles, and I have only had a few minutes to work on this project. I, too, like some of you, have debated about not blogging any more since the tug away from blogging gets downright depressing. The frustration I feel from not getting enough of my own time to do my creative work is my biggest personal challenge at this time.

This has brought me to face my issue straight on and find the answer to the question "Why do I blog?"

I blog because I notice things and I want to share them with someone whom might also feel they are worth noticing. This is why I love to read your comments so much. I get caught up in how the sun makes the tea in my cup glow from within, it makes me want to paint it. I love to see pattern in nature and bask in the beauty it offers me. My craft tastes ebb and flow like the ocean tides as the waves lap onto the shore on a lazy summer afternoon. Only you can I share this with. My children seem to be on "speed" and think it odd that I so often stop to notice things, and even worse that I want to talk about it. They try their best when I attempt to force the topic, but they are more interested in other things. My husband, bless his heart, focuses most of his time on making it possible for me to put food on the table.

 

So, my blog, then, is more of a conversation that I am having with you. Perhaps, once the education of my children is not as pressing, my blog will be a space for me to showcase my "wares", but for now, it must remain a place for sharing the things that catch my interest. I, then, need to work on my conversation skills a bit. I need to worry less about the "final product", and simply share with you whatever I am into a bit more often. Until next time,   Carolina.

 

Growing Younger - the plan for 2011

I was going to title this post "Expansion, Contraction & Completion", but it deserves to be known for what it truly is - the key to the fountain of youth. So I renamed it. This entire post is about my plan on how I am going to end up younger by the time 2011 is done with, and even younger if I live to be 80. I have floated many thoughts out into the universe regarding the process of aging, and I think I have a plan. I am sending it to you via this infobahn so that you get it lickety-split and can grow younger too. Aren't I thoughtful?

Get your coffee or nice cup of tea and let's begin. There are 3 keys to the process - all fairly painless, give or take a bit on key #2.

Key #1 - EXPANSION

The quickest way to get old is to do nothing and wait for it to happen. It will happen in the blink of an eye if you are not proactive. The opposite of nothing is something. It is in that "something", though,  that therein lies the key. You have to EXPAND. There are many ways to go about this, one fun way is to go traveling. Nothing will expand what is in your brain like travel. I back-packed through Europe by myself when I was twenty, honeymooned on a three and a half month walk the length of Chile when I was 25, traveled through Asia adopting kids, and lived and traveled on a boat with them and my husband for two years while I learned the ropes of homeschooling.

Unfortunately traveling can be time consuming and costly, two things that seem to be in permanent short supply for all of us these days. The closest I am coming to traveling this year is going to be a trip to the post office. I will be sending a copy of The Ultra-Metabolism Cookbook to Natasha, who lives in the southern part of Australia. She affectionately goes by the name of ChaCha, and I will be calling her that from here on out. She left a great comment on the last post. I am very excited that she ponied up to help me and I will let you know more about her as I get to know her better.

So, what to do if you can't travel? You have to EXPAND your brain. All of our days are hectic, but what are you doing to expand on what you know already? The point here, is to not only get better at something you already have knowledge on or are good at. For example, this year I am taking a class on The String Quartets of Beethoven. I know nothing about classical music other than when I was younger I had a minor education on opera thanks to my father. He used to drive me to school in the morning with the opera BLARING. It was so loud he couldn't even here me yelling telling at him to turn it down. My Dad was ahead of his time - that old car was ROCKIN! So much so that even with the windows of the cars next to ours at stop lights would vibrate. The drivers would always look over at us as my Dad, practically conducting the entire orchestra and singers, would wave an imaginary conductor's baton while I shrunk meekly in the passenger seat beside him. So this year, for me, I will learn about this Ludwig guy and see if I can learn a thing or to beyond my pea sized knowledge of the man. I have no grandiose thoughts of picking up a violin or anything like that. I just want to do "something" that will help with the EXPANSION.

Next on my list of brain expanding actions will be to learn how to draw. If you don't want to be privy to all of my results from my practice sessions, I suggest you take a long break from The Muse of the Day. Without some special tricks up my sleeve, I am afraid I am always in stick-figure mode. The course below is from Art Academy. The tools are a pencil, an eraser, paper, a marker, and a piece of Plexiglas. We will see how I do. This should be quite the brain squeeze.

I know the crafty ones who read this are always learning something new in quilting or sewing. In order to give Maggie her due, I will be learning the art of Draping from this book (below), if you are interested you can go to the sewing link when you click here. 

That is where key #2 comes in - CONTRACTION. In order to fit into what Maggie does I have to make my health a priority. I have done a week of phase 1 in that new cookbook and I have lost six pounds already. Today I added on the exercise - yuck. In order to grow younger you have to baby your body. There is no other way. Age will trump your health unless you fight back with all you have. That is all I need to say, right now, about contraction.

This brings us to key #3 - COMPLETION

The only thing that makes me feel like I am not making progress is seeing unfinished projects laying about. To actually complete something makes me feel good ... not only good... it makes me feel like I have finally accomplished something that would otherwise have remained in it's unfinished state forever. I will be dedicating a great portion of my personal time in  2011 to the completion of projects I once thought I just HAD to do. I, CAROLINA, WILL NOT BE PURCHASING ANY NEW SUPPLIES IN THE YEAR 2011. gulp, let's make that a double... gulp, gulp. Breath in, breath out Carolina. I will add one exception to that - if I need a zipper, thread, or other item to complete the project which otherwise without that must-have piece it would remain unfinished forever, I can purchase that piece. (let's not get crazy here). I can see my husband entering a total state of shock if he ever read this declaration - he would probably faint.

One of these completion projects is figuring out how to quilt on my machine so that I can finally finish that quilt that I started a ways back . Below are my first efforts at learning how to do that.

Aside from craft projects and house projects, I intend to get to the end of Tolstoy's 816 page book that I started when we took the girls to that marine science class in Georgia back in November. If you want a little more than a little romance in your reading, Anna Karenina is a must read. I listed it under the category "other" here.

It is important to emulate "the greats" of this world. Anna Maria Horner had a fantastic post regarding everything she completed this year. I plan to do my best, in the same way, next December after the holidays. I truly believe that acknowledging what you have done and completed in the past year is a ticket to staying young - it proves to you what you are capable of even if when you started you felt too tired and exhausted to do anything, let alone "something".

So 2011 will be a year for kicking some major butt on the process of aging. How to do I do that? Well I needed major-butt-kicking boots to do that with. Here they are. I am going to put my boots on and start kicking butt on all my "somethings". Wish me luck.  Carolina

 

Location, Location, Location

Location, location, location ... is that not what I learned was THE key ingredient to making a business successful? 

When one of my daughters was very little, the entrepreneur in her began to come through. We were visiting Martha's Vineyard Island and she thought she would make some money selling shells. Her shells were special, for she had painted them. She told me they would bring in "good money". She set up her "booth" at the end of the driveway. Just like most moms when they see their kids selling lemonade out there, I thought she was the cutest thing ever.

An hour went by and she had yet to see any action.

She is a smart cookie, it didn't take her long to realize her problem : location. In the van we loaded all her stuff and the whole family, grandparents too, and we drove into town. We parked the van across the street from her desired business location and watched her from across the street. In no time she was reeling it in.

It wasn't long before we couldn't control ourselves in the van any longer and we burst out of it and booked it across the street to ask her how she was doing.

She made a hefty chunk of change in no time flat. $40 in under a half an hour compared to the nickel she had earned after a long, hot, paltry morning at the end of the driveway. That day we all learned the lesson of location, location, location.

That was then, this is now. What is now? The INTERNET is now. The internet is your new location and if your web presence "bites the dust" so will your business in no time flat. I am sure that my blog says "Stay At Home Mommy" all over it, but that won't be forever. As my girls grow up I hope to go into business someday. When that day comes (meaning when I finally decide on a product to sell), I want to have a polished presence. I saw this bit on the web about advertising and I didn't want to forget it when that all important day arrives - this is why you are seeing it here on my blog. I am killing three birds with one stone. #1) I am sharing it with you #2) I am archiving it #3) I am recreating my blog to showcase everything that goes into my head that I find relative to my 5 year goal of someday having my own creative job. This way, when my girls go off I can easily scroll through the past 5 years and get to the information I need rather than searching page by page through my sketch books and odd scraps of paper with notes jotted down on them.

So  ... below you will see a screen shot from an American Express Open Forum session on refreshing your brand.

If you press on the link ,Project RE:Brand, it will take you right to it. I HIGHLY recommend watching ALL 3 episodes if you are at all interested in this topic. They follow a specific company in all three episodes of the link I am sharing with you. The company is Art Yarns , they dye yarns that are positively dreamy. The company that takes them through the process that is nothing short of a rebirth is called OFFICELAB, or rather the Office of Language and Beauty, an advertising firm in New York. These people are AMAZING. If I can afford it I will have them on my team when I am ready. I honestly don't think I could afford NOT to have them. Look at what they did for Art Yarns and you will see what I am talking about. Here is a peek at what they came up with for their advertising layouts ... totally captures the essence of what I want to be enticed with when I am shopping for yarn and projects to make with that yarn.

Don't you agree?

Can you say "D-R-E-A-M-Y" ?

Or how about this one?

Money well spent. It hints at the magic I can create with their yarns rather than confining me to a specific preordained project that may or may not suit my tastes and needs. Thumbs up to Art Yarn. The beauty of this is that Art Yarns has the quality product to back it with. 

If location, location, location, is where it is at ... then that location better be ready to go because on the net, there is another business that IS ready and to get there is effortless. All you have to do is "click". I learned the location lesson already, I don't want to forget it even if now it is under it's new name, "Branding".

 

While Nobody Is Looking

Here is a quick run down ... I am supposed to be homeschooling the girls. I was waiting on one of them to finish their math work so that I could correct it and I saw that my computer had a few more emails to check. I couldn't resist seeing what they said. Emily of Ravenhill had sent me a quick note. While no one was looking I had to, HAD to, get a quick glimpse of her blog. My parents have been visiting for a week and I have been completely blog deficient. If Emily's blog wasn't so darn PERFECT, I probably would have been able to wait. She had this post about making paper dolls with her kids while they were home from school for a quick vacation. It brought back memories of projects unfinished. I immediately started to dig for that project to share with Emily.  The girls are busy, busy homeschooling so shhh. I figure I may as well show you that unfinished project while the girls take a test. I took it out to the wood pile we have been working on expanding in preparation for winter with my husband's new toy, a log splitter.

It is kind of a yucky day for shooting blog photos ... but the girls are busy and I am scurrying around like a little mouse trying to get this post in for you.

So, anyways, a LONG time ago when my nephew was a little boy he drew a drawing of his "new" cousin, my daughter Nica.

Like all kids' drawings, it was precious. Here I am fourteen years later and I still have that drawing kicking around together with copious others my own kids made. I am getting off track. The point is I copied the drawing and colored it in.

And then I cut each "piece" out of fabric and appliquéd them on to the backing fabric.

That is it. That is as far as I got.

But I actually have a point here. My point is that "while nobody is looking", our children, the world's children, are making beautiful art all around us and it is our responsibility to "be looking". I love it how Emily shares how much she loves her children, and I absolutely admire her for the fact that she always IS looking.

Lots of love and hugs to you, Emily.

Bottle Project Homework #2

Progress on my homework project has been slow to materialize due to my time constraints. I have been thinking about it, however, and what you see below is phase two. I colored one of the bottle inspirations from last week.

 

I have had Christmas on the brain quite a bit lately. I am not quite sure if coloring the above drawing made me think of Christmas, if the cooler weather did it to me, or if I can blame Melissa P. for sending me into a state of shock by letting me know that Christmas is less than thirteen weeks away. However it came to be ... I have Christmas on the brain and have been eyeing my stash of Christmas music. I am still holding out on the music, but the bottle bottoms made me think of snowflakes. Here is my first card

 and that led me to this

 

In a way, the last one is a true reflection of how I feel about Christmas. It is a quite, gentle time that blends both my love for the magic of Christmas and my latina roots. I think I "kinda" like it.
 

 
 

 

You Missed The Big Party

Yup ... you missed the big party. What? You didn't get an invitation? Don't feel bad, the music kind of bit the dust, the food was tasteless, and I actually was the only one that showed up. You see it was my party, my very own pity party. I throw myself this pity party every year at the end of the summer. It is standard procedure for the first few weeks of homeschooling. It was what has kept me away from sharing with you, here, on the blog.

It all started when I was zooming along on my quilt project and hit a couple of stumbling blocks. One of them required a purchase of this

 

They are feet - feet for my sewing machine. How was I supposed to know that whatever came with my inherited sewing machine couldn't do the job? The whole thing got me kind of deflated. I procrastinated in a couple of different directions, but everything pointed to one word - RESPONSIBILITY.

No matter which way I turned, I faced that nagging feeling of wanting to escape the major task I have taken on, that of educating my children.

 

I would love to spend my days ONLY working on my creative projects and blogging. You see, if I don't put the information into their heads - it isn't going in there by way of any another teacher. There is no other teacher. My studio has terms like "negative numbers", "Circumference = 2 π r" "Photosynthesis", "the nitrogen cycle" "Multiplicative something or other", "the 10 Amendments to the Constitution" and so on being bounced around on a daily basis now ... all very uncreative. Their experiments take over my kitchen counter too.

By now, a few weeks into it, we are once again finding our groove. I have finally jerked my priorities back into place. Priorities? In this blogging world, which I am so enthralled by, I have to keep reminding myself exactly just what my priorities are - they are my girls. I have to keep reminding myself that my priorities are just that - MINE.  

Like a teenager, I would love to focus on me, Me, ME, but it is their turn right now.

 
The BIGGEST creative project I have going right now IS my girls. I get jerked around a bit by listening to what others say. It all just gets me into an emotional quagmire. What others, you ask? It is THEY ... the ones you hear yourself quoting ... "THEY say mothers need their own time". "THEY say it is best if the children go to school", "THEY say a woman should make her career stand on equal footing with the other demands of life". The only problem is that THEY don't know me. THEY don't know that when I am on my death bed I want to be there without any regrets about how I raised my two girls that I went halfway around the world to get. THEY, the ones who say the thoughts that linger in my mind, say the things they do because it works for THEM. I don't know them, and they don't know me. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life is stayed true to myself. I have always been an independent sort, not a loner, just very self assured. Some who know me would say I am an out-of-the-box type of thinker. At 46, I know myself, and yet it is still a difficult thing to do to follow my own path. Sure, I would love to have my creative thoughts turned into something that got more than monetary reward - the biggest payoff would be acknowledgment. But the stars are aligned differently right now. Soooo, in a nutshell, the pity party is over with. 

I folded up my quilt, ordered the new "feet", dove head first into our new homeschooling year, and picked a different project. I picked a project that required less of everything - brain cells, cussing, and table surface area. I made my oldest, the musician in the family, a new dress, a red one. I worked on it at night while the rest of the United States kept up on the episodes of Big Brother. 

 

It is an Amy Butler pattern. I guess a part of me felt like making replacements for the dresses that I had cut up for the quilt. Dad wanted it longer. She wanted it shorter. I ended up making it the way way I felt it looked best. She must have approved because she actually wore it to church on Sunday. She is a teenager, and as she takes these last few steps while she is still under my wing ...

 

 I don't want to miss any of it.

  
  
 
 
 
 

Procrastination In Action

 

Welcome to a peek at how I procrastinate. I am the QUEEN of procrastination. As you know, I am supposed to be making the back of that quilt. Do you see a quilt here? No, of course not, that would be out of character. I am in the midst of doing what I do best - pushing aside what I am supposed to be working on. My friend, Alicia, sent me this wonderful book, A Forest Of Stories . In our facebooking back & forth I filled her in on a quest of mine to see ten trees that I have on my "bucket list" before I die. She saw this book and thought of me. 

 

Both the story & the illustrations are captivating and magical. Even the borders are beautiful. So beautiful in fact ...
  

 

that I had to copy them. I folded up the quilt and carefully placed it on my husband's pool table - I knew it would be safe there. I pushed aside my quilting supplies and made room for my paints. I haven't painted in a LONG, LONG time. I had to reacquaint my self with my supplies. No worries, though. When one is procrastinating any extra work is no work at all, as long as it doesn't have anything to do with the project I am avoiding.
  

   

I had so much fun. I kept right on going. I expanded a bit on the border and ended up with this:
 

Which then, of course, made me do this: 

 

Can't you just imagine an ultra thick polar fleece green poncho with an embroidered 3" ribbon down the front? And while we are at it why not get those boots and legs like the ones I drew on her?

As my fellow procrastinators in this world know, it never ends there. It is like a bacteria that keeps on growing.

  
 
 
 
 

 

For Brandy

Brandy wanted to see the finished white desk. Here it is, Brandy, and I can't properly describe how happy I am to have this much desk space. All I can say is - what took me so long? The fix was cheap & quick so I don't have an excuse for not getting it done sooner. It is kind of like cleaning the house - I gripe about it for days, when I finally get around to cleaning it I feel so content with myself. But, like a patient that has suffered memory loss, I completely forget that feeling when the house gets dirty again and I go right back into the pattern of complaining & procrastinating. Having this much desk area gives me enough space for the IMPORTANT things in life - like this bug I caught outside the other day.

 

Although it was dead, I had visions of it coming back to life in the middle of the night and crawling into my craft supplies so I made sure to put it in a jar with a tight fitting lid. I unscrewed the lid off the other day to show the bug to my kids and I just about was blown away to the other side of the studio. The stench was putrid ... & POTENT. Apparently it has been decaying - YUCK - but I can't bear to throw it out, you see ...I love the bug.

My desk area also affords me the space to keep other things that don't belong here like these peppers.

 

They too are in a state of decay at the moment. They are Habañero peppers. The old man at the dump, Ron, gave them to me. I guess he figured by way of association with my Latina background I would use these. These peppers are so hot it would make it impossible for me to speak after ingesting them. Do you think, Brandy, that he is trying to tell me something?

I like how my studio is coming along. I keep Alicia's painting in amongst my brushes as a reminder that she is painting just about a painting a day. (Alicia- YOU GO GIRL !!!). I have been starting to paint a bit myself. Most of it is the kind of stuff only my mother would compliment.

 

I thought, Brandy, you might want to see this too (below). Although I have an embarrassing 72 linear feet of shelf space ... somehow it was not enough. I took these super colorful bags that are being sold in all the bookstores now, and hung them up from hooks on the wall. They are holding everything from embroidery hoops to popsicle sticks ... you know ... stuff that never sits on a shelf well.

 

And so here I am, finally doing my work & homeschooling the girls in an organized environment. It almost feels surreal. I like having all my things around me. I have finished piecing the quilt top, but I will have to wait to reveal it. I am hoping to get the backing done before I take pictures of it all. I can say with a great degree of certainty, though, that you will have to wait until NEXT YEAR before you see it actually quilted. Lord knows what I was thinking when I decided to make the size it is turning out to be. Hope you enjoyed the tour, Brandy. If you are ever in Tennessee, do stop by. I promise not to serve you anything made with Habañero peppers & I will do my best to sweep the porch free of bugs before you arrive.  Carolina

Could I Have Gone To The Mall?

 

Ah... the dress is done. I can sit back and admire it. I will wear it tomorrow to the farmer's market. It's the kind of dress I could wear wherever and whenever I wanted to. It fits me perfectly, and making the dress, instead of buying it, suits me just fine. Sure I had to work hard at making every detail perfect, and perfectly finished, so that no matter what I choose to do when I am wearing the dress, if it gets dirty, I can just toss it in the washer and dryer and know that it is going to hold up. This is the kind of dress that I can multitask in, literally. While wearing it, I can simultaneously breath, sit, and eat. It doesn't pinch or pull me anywhere. These are inherent bonuses in sewing your own clothing, but I could have just as well gone to the mall and bought myself a dress. So why didn't I? 

 

As you already know, I followed Kay Whitt's advice and made the muslin first. By doing that, I was able to make the necessary adjustments to the pattern before cutting my nice, colorful fabric. I increased the length of the arm bands at the edge of the sleeves and I also lengthened the dress by an entire 6" (that is almost 15 cm., for my foreign readers). Making the muslin first was like driving into the downtown area of a city I had never before been to; I was a bit unsure of myself. When I finally got to the fun fabrics, though, I felt like I knew the roads and the signs already. I had "been there before". I did encounter the equivalent of road construction detours with one of the sleeves, I had to make a U-turn and do a redo. If I happen to grow that third arm I have been praying for, I am ready with an extra third sleeve.

 So why didn't I just go to the mall and buy myself a dress? It was a tough week, and as a mother of kids on summer vacation, the week was a busy one. I felt torn between what I had to do and what I wanted to do.  I really wanted to spend the entire week sewing, but life has it's demands that can't be pushed aside. So I did the best I could. When I wasn't working on the project, I was thinking about the project. I thought about it while I was weed whacking the yard, while I was making toasted ground cumin seed butter to drizzle on the fresh squash & potato buttermilk soup, while I was driving to pick up the frozen equivalent of half a cow that had spent it's life grazing on the beautiful green pastures of the Tennessee countryside. I thought about the project while hiking around the lake, while I was on my way driving to a homeschooling conference; I thought about it a lot. I wondered what you thought too. I imagine you have thought about making yourself something and decided against it because it would just be easier to drive to the nearest mall, buy it, and be done with it. I could have done the same, but I would have missed out on so many things that have occurred in these past two weeks that have serendipitously made my life richer, let alone having the dress fit me to a "T". Before I share with you those things let me begin with the word, serendipity, since after all it is in the title of the book, Sew Serendipity, that I followed for the past couple of weeks. I got this off the internet:

Serendipity

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
3. An instance of making such a discovery. 

Once upon a time there was a fairy tale named The Three Princes of Serendip. Serendip was the old Arab name for Sri Lanka. As their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity of things which they were not in quest of.

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity, and I am grateful to him for it. Examples of inventions made because of serendipity include cornflakes, Post-it notes, the Slinky, the microwave oven, and one of my favorites - the chocolate chip cookie. To find out how they came about look under "inventions" here. In the past couple of weeks I have been living the word. Here are a few serendipitous things that happened to me while I was trying to learn how to sew a dress:

1. Margaret became a new follower of my blog at my last post, by visiting her blog I learned about the beautiful Watts Towers by Simon Rodia in L.A., California. His work is worth exploring in depth. If you click on the highlighted words (above) you can see a short movie about him and his project.
   
2. I went to buy fabric at a quilt shop that had lots of fabric by Kaffe Fassett. I was so impressed with his fabrics, they seem to ooze color out of every weft and warp, that I went home and researched him. On his website I found a short movie about him and his thoughts about living with lots of color. After seeing it, I can tell you with a certain degree of certainty, that I can feel a learning-how-to-quilt project coming on. His explanations of why he is happy living with lots of riotous colors, vs. decorating with a more monochromatic, minimalistic decorating scheme, is a part of an ongoing internal dialog I have been having with myself for years. I was shocked when typing back and forth with Alicia, on an unrelated subject, she brought it up to me on her own. It is a subject I plan to explore in depth and you will be reading about, I hope, on your subsequent visits to my space, here on my blog.
3. I practically wore out my keyboard typing back and forth to my new friend, Alicia. The constant messaging back and forth with her has resulted in a deepening of our friendship beyond what I could have hoped for. I received, via snail mail, a beautiful watercolor painted by Alicia (see below). She has been sewing the same project and blogging about it on her blog, Possibilities. It wasn't until my dress was all done, and I was composing this post, that I realized my dress has the same colors that are in her painting. If the vast expanse of land between her home and mine were fabric, I would sew a running stitch through it and pull on the thread as hard as I could until, like the fabric in the dress, we were gathered together.

But that is not all that happened this week. Louis Pasteur, the French scientist who invented pasteurization and the vaccine for rabies, said "In the fields of observation, chance favors only the well prepared mind". This week I realized why I sewed the dress myself instead of going to the store to buy one. It is not because it is cheaper to sew it myself. It is because when I go through the process of making, I grow. I grow in a way that cannot be forgotten tomorrow, and in a weak moment the dress will remind me of that growth. I need that inner growth because it sustains me through all my busy, multitasking days.

Doodle 'til I Drop

We all doodle. We doodle while we are on the phone, when we are bored, when we are frustrated, when we are waiting ... we doodle. We throw away most of these doodles, at least I do. But what if I did a doodle to keep?

 

So what would happen if you took doodling a step further? ... and doodled on different paper...

 

or on something like a paper bag ...
 

 

or with a different tool on something else entirely ... something more ... permanent...

 

Something you could actually sit on and doodle some more ...
 
  

Would you doodle 'til you dropped?

I did.
 

 
 
 

 

The Ugly Journal Revisited

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
This exercise, whereby I prepped a journal in advance of writing in it, was actually jammed packed with lessons for me. I started off wobbly, and then had to face the music and make something out of what I normally would have thrown in the trash bin.

• It forced me to face the page & do something with it.
• I learned that my best post is only as good as my last post.
• I now know that I prefer to look back at my journal when there is color in it. I need a colorful place for my ideas because I remember by color where I have previously put something.
• I realized that I am on a path "to" a creativity filled life and that this is an exercise towards that life that can put things into perspective for me, just like blogging does.
• And last, but certainly not least, I learned that embarrassment gets me to do something about what I am ashamed of; so in advance, please forgive me if you see me walking around in nothing but a bathing suit in the supermarket. I am hoping that the embarrassment might keep my shopping cart free of sugar. 

Until next time, Carolina

What if I goof ?

Let me begin at the end

P.S. Before hitting the "Publish" button on my blog I went back to Genine's sight. Oh my goodness is her journal beautiful. I have debated, and debated, and debated whether or not I should make another journal, a prettier one. Last night, at 1 a.m. the battery in one of the smoke detectors decided to die. It triggered all the smoke alarms in the house to go off. Your heart rate really gets going when you have to jump out of bed in a total fog to retrieve the tall ladder from storage in the basement. We went from one detector to the next removing the batteries from them, all the while having a continuous piercing noise trying to crack my head open. You can't imagine how many times up and down, up and down that ladder that you actually debate the brilliance of having chosen to build a house with high ceilings. When the final detector was sans it's battery the house was finally still. Dead still. The only "sound" I could detect was the mile-a-minute pounding of my heart. We left the ladder where it was and climbed back into bed. That is the point when The Great Debate began; to post the ugly journal or not to post.

Here is the beginning.

To say I am nervous about this post is an understatement. I am going to do a "before & after" project. I don't mind showing you the "before" AND the "after" AFTER it has worked out, but this time I am going to show the "before" only first. What if I goof on the "after"? What if you never come back? Then what? I'm hoping a lesson will be learned either way. So here is the project : I went on Genine's Art Blog on Monday. Her Monday the 24th post didn't disappoint, it never does, actually. Her vibrant use of watercolor paints always leaves me awe struck and inspired. On her Monday post she showed her journal that she had prepped for writing into for the next two weeks. It was GORGEOUS. Just thinking of her beautiful images makes me want to hit the delete button and be done with it.

But no, I am going to give it a go and try out her method. I always have several "journals" going, but unlike more prolific artists' journals, the pages of mine can go months without seeing the light of day. These are my art journals I am talking about. The "other" journals, the ones that were destined to be a New-York-Best-Seller-List-Fixture-and-get-me--on-Oprah type of journal of recorded weight loss and all the inherent emotional roller coaster rides to achieve that weight loss went bye-bye, unfinished, to the dump a long time ago. Needless to say, the weight ones did nothing for my weight loss. The only ones I seem to manage to actually write in more regularly are these little ones.

I rarely sketch in them, but I do put my ideas in them. I like how they fit into my purse. I don't like how they start out all clean 

  

and end up a scribbled mess.

What to do? Genine's idea to the rescue. 

I have made a "real" cover for my wimpy-no-more journal. I also have prepped the pages inside.

  

 

       

I have to say my lips are pursed and they are traveling  from one side of my face to the other, still pursed. I don't really like my journal. It is not pretty, and I like pretty. The "after" part you will get to see in a couple of weeks. I would feel better about this blog post if you too were doing one and we could see what we both come up with in the end. Maybe then we could share a good laugh and a cup of tea, all the while consoling ourselves about Genine's seemingly unattainable skills. Pretty or not you will have to come back and see what happened. Pray for me.

Turning Over A New Leaf

As you probably could see by my last post, I have been in a pensive way lately. I have done quite a bit of thinking about time. My time left, to be more precise. As a kid, time was something I loved. It had an endless, lingering quality to it. I didn't think anything of how long things might take to accomplish, I just did them. On a hot summer day my friend, Laurie, and I would pump up our tractor tire inner tubes and roll them all the way across town to the lake at Wellesley College. Once there, in the water, we would close our eyes, feel the warmth of the sun and simply float in our inner tubes all afternoon long. We had to be careful not to drift too far from each other. This would happen if the state of relaxation had reached the critical mass level - a.k.a. a quick snooze. In order to stay within talking distance of each other, we had to be paddle with our hands towards each other every so often otherwise we drifted too far off and that meant working hard to get back closer together. It was far easier to scan the horizon with one eye open every once in a while. When it was time for dinner we just rolled the inner tubes back across town all the way home, our clothes damp from our wet bathing suits underneath. I didn't have a watch, we just knew it was time to go home. A ride would have been nice, but our parents worked and we didn't have a license to drive. Even if we had had a license neither one of us could have afforded a car back then. The walk was long, maybe it took us an hour or so, but I thought nothing of it.  

As a young child I may not have given time much thought, time was my friend. These days time seems to be a thing, totally separate from me. It fights me, it steals itself from me. Time seems to have become my enemy. I don't want to live that way anymore. I don't think anybody does. Aren't you always running out of time? What stress. Even the phrase "running out of time" sounds unforgiving, unbending, and completely filled with disregard towards the things that matter most to me. What to do? This question has filled my thoughts lately. During my walk the other day I think I found the answer.

I will share it with you, here, in hopes that you too can ponder what has been consuming my thoughts. I like hiking in the woods, walking on a beach; anything outdoors where my thoughts can wander. When I want to go for a walk, and don't go for whatever reason, it is usually because something else from my to-do list has gained priority. This is understandable. We all have responsibilities that we can't avoid. When I finally do push myself and go for the actual walk, I feel free, relieved, and re-juiced. But the feeling does not last. Before long I am sucked back in to the "running-out-of-time" stress mode. This blog, however, has brought about a change in that by allowing me to catalogue what I do with my free time. To walk and notice things as I walk by them is something I have always done. What have I done with what I have noticed? Nothing. Until now. 

Now I take it one step further. I stop to take a picture, I don't leave it in my camera. I use it in someway and follow through with the process until I have proof of the time I spent. If I see something I like in a blog or a book, or at a fair or a gallery, I don't just admire it. I now write it down in an idea book. Later I go back to my idea book, gather my inspirational thoughts and follow through by making something. When I am rushing around tending to my to-do list, I have this "finished" object as a reminder of what I am spending my non-stress time on. I am not just admiring something and saying to myself, "Oh, I could do that." and copying exactly what has already been created by someone else. No, this is something else entirely. I am stopping to notice and carrying it all a step further to a finished product that is a complete reflection of who I am and where I am at in my life at the moment of creating it. This is about me and reclaiming my good relationship with time. Although it is in snippets, time is once again becoming my friend.

This brings me to the title of this post, Turning Over A New Leaf . This is what my blog is doing for me, it is helping me turn over a new leaf. In celebration, I have added a new feature to my blog. This feature is called "My Favorite Books" listed under the category "Just For You" on the right hand column. This is a list, not just any list, mind you, but rather a list of books that I have tried out, loved, and now depend on. I am hoping it can be a resource for you when you have taken the time, yourself, to notice and are ready for the next step - doing something about it. I added my favorite cookbooks as well because I know many of you have sent me emails or called on the phone asking me for tips & recipes regarding meals you have had in my home. The cookbooks I listed are one's you can't go wrong with. I only included my favorites. I have a lot of cookbooks as you can see.

 

Many of you are younger than me and are in full blown "sippy-cup" mode with your kids, so I am including the best of all the children's books from when the girls were little. 

 

We have books everywhere, stacked up in all those places I hope you won't check out too closely when you stop by for a visit.

  Although they have moved on and are reading more grownup books, I have kept the ones we can't part with.

 

 Little by little I will get them all loaded into the list. I will try to put them in order from younger readers to older readers so you can scroll through them according to the age that your kids are at. We have a lot of books so it will take me some time to get them all written in. My mother-in-law would have loved to have had access to a list like this every time she went shopping for all her grandchildren. Some are classics and others are just so loved by my girls that it would be a crime to get rid of.

 

I know this post has been lengthy, but I have some business to tend to before I go. The winner of the hand stitched tank top from my 05/06/2010 post is ...

 

It is actually her mother, Danielle, but I couldn't bear the thought of Little Riley not getting something "girly" to open. I couldn't leave well enough alone with the sign so I added a little trim so Riley could hang it somewhere. It will take a little more growing for the shirt to fit, but I can just imagine her wearing it. I hope you like the sign and the shirt, Riley, but don't grow too quickly... your Mom will regret it if you do.