One Little Word - Blog Hop

My word for 2012 is Abundance.  Every month, as part of an online class with Ali Edwards, I receive a prompt -- that month's assignment.  For January, we are exploring our word:  "Name it. Claim it. Invite it. Define it." 

 

My finished page

 There are 5 cards with specific prompts and 4 cards to use as we are called.
Where one puts each card in the holder is also up to individual choice.

 Some of the other participants have specific colour schemes.  I'm not sure if I do, tho I like how everything looks so nice with the Japanese origami paper.  I have a feeling next month other colours will call to me and the album will end up a rainbow, or perhaps I should say an abundance of colours!

The cards in the next 2 photos were my favorite to make.  On both cards, the printed words were done on my computer.  I had to figure out how to fit the words on the cards and how to get the right color so they can be read but also act as a background for the stamped images.  I'm not the daughter of an engineer for nothing.  I liked the challenge!

I typed two sentences over & over again on this card.  The first talks about how the superlatives of Love fill all space.  The second sentence is "That is enough."  One of the concepts I am exploring is "what is enough?"   So this seemed a perfect background for my 2012 word.

I typed up all the synonyms of the words on my thesaurus card and ended with the sentence I used on the gray abundance card.  I stamped the sunflower on white cardstock, added gold embossing powder, then cut it out and attached it to the card with a mounting square to give dimensionality.
 

 Title Page attached to January prompts.

I was pretty obsessive about this month's assignment.  It's funny cuz I didn't think it had to be perfect.  It just had to look "right."  So, I started out doing all the prompts in my own handwriting.  It didn't look bad and generally I like my handwriting.  But it didn't look spectacular and I really wanted this to shine.

I know better than to compare myself to other artists.  Now knowing better and actually not comparing are of course two different things!  Still I know my competitive side and work really hard not to be held hostage by her!  So at least I finished version 1 before going to the class gallery to see what others had done.  I saw how some people had used typefaces instead of handwriting and I thought this looked really good.  So version 2  had all the prompts typed.  Again, it didn't look bad, but it seemed a little too much the same (which is just a nice way of saying bor-ring).  Version 3, which is what you see here is a combination of handwritten cards and typed cards.  I also changed the card stock from stark white to a softer white, slightly thicker & textured paper.  You should have heard my poor printer -- it did not like the soft white card stock -- and it sounded like an injured animal from Jurrasic Park.  Version 3 also included re-writing one of the prompts.  As I said, obsessive.  But now, DONE! And I'm pleased.  It is a nice beginning to my album.

Margie of Nihao, Cupcake is sponsoring this OLW blog hop.  So you may have come here from Carmen's blog.  I'm going to send you on to Kristina.  Click here to see her word.  Then she'll send you on to the next blog.  I'll be out of town when this post appears and I don't know what sort of internet connection I will have.  Which means I may not be able to get the list of participants added to this post ( it wasn't available when I left home)  Please click here: Nihao, Cupcake.to see everyone.  Bye and thanks for hopping by!

Marilee

Snow Day at My House -- A Photo Essay

Doesn't look like the snow will melt today!

Reaching as high as the peak of our three-story house,

I've been told these are two of the tallest Holly Trees on Cape Cod!

 

The lady Holly with her lovely red berries.

Her mate stands behind her and a little to the east.

 

 The barn where my shop & studio reside on the first floor.
The upstairs neighbor lives on the second floor.

Snow in the Garden

It snowed last night and before it has all melted away I wanted to share how pretty it looks.

 My front garden.

A labor of love and fellowship for me & my son.

 The rain chain my son gave me.

He also put up the gutters, hung the chain, and designed what the water flows into.  He knows me so well: he used an old galvanized bucket inside an open wire basket, sitting on used bricks.  The fish you can barely see was a throw-away from his nursery job.  He found the front half, asked if he could have it and then spent 30 minutes searching for it's tail.  It's now glued together and sitting nice & shabby to the right of the bucket.

 The sunflower was made by a former upstairs neighbor.

We spray painted it after I saw the sunflower fields of France.

I like how the rust is slowly seeping through on the petals.

Hidcote Lavendar

Leaving La Cascade

 

The food was fabulous

The desserts divine

 The art projects were inspiring

 The green jar was purchased at the market with yogurt in it.

Yummy yogurt, great pen holder!

My "black & white" box

It reminds me my artistic sensibilities keep my from copying no matter how hard I try!

 Our rooms vacated

 Suitcases in trunks

Au Revoir

when we next meet our heroine, she will have arrived in Paris . . . from the overnight train . . . that is a story . . .

Pink Saturday

Last summer I spent the month of June in France.  Here are some images in pink from that trip.

Durfort

Montolieu

Ile St-Louis, Paris

Le Petite Trianon

Marie-Antoinette's Village

Versailles

 Merry-Go-Round at Place Wilson

Toulouse

Another day

Teenagers in Toulouse.

You can read more about my trip here, here, here, here, here, and yesterday.
As I mentioned in my first post I took over 500 photos, so I will be sharing a lot more of this adventure in the coming month.  Hope you will join me!

To see who else is participating in Pink Saturday, visit Bev at How Sweet The Sound

French Market

When we last checked in with our heroine, she had just returned from a lovely walk in the French countryside.  A few days later the group went to the Saturday market in Revel.

In looking over my photographs from France I discovered I took very few of the wide picture.  So here are some close-ups of the market we went to.

 The Revel market is held underneath and around this structure.

 These houses surround the market.

 Flowers to plant

 Vegetables for salad

 The image of the French countryside

Not only are these radishes absolutely beautiful, they are very tasty.

I bought a package of seeds to plant in my garden next spring!

 Around the outside of the market vendors sold wonderful things like vintage linens.

This delightful woman had beautiful linens at reasonable prices.
Her website, in French, is also delightful.  If you google baroque brocante, you will be able to get an English translation.

A couple of these pretties from her stall came home with me!

Note to Readers:  I am experimenting with a new layout and have sized my photos extra large.  Please leave a comment if you like this or not.  I'd like to hear if you can see the whole photo, etc.  I have a wide laptop screen and they show up fine to me, but I'm not sure how they will look on your computers.  Thanks, Marilee

New Year, New Blog

I have to confess, I started my blog to become famous.

Oh, and to make friends and become a star of the pretty pink section of the blogosphere.

Funny!  It hasn't worked out that way!

Seriously, it's no wonder this blog has not always been a source of contentment for me.
I mean, really!  How could it be?

But what to do?

 

I love to journal.  I have done so since I was a teenager.  I haven't read those journals in years but they are all packed up in a box labeled "Marl's Schoolwork."  I thought the label was boring enough that prying eyes would not stumble upon my very personal musings.


 For my personal journals I write about what is bothering me; things I want to change about me and other people; family members I would rather never see again, or since never seeing them again is probably impossible, how best to deal with them.  I work things out by writing and often it helps me become un-stuck. It's really private stuff.  Not what I would share with another human being.

So with this as my usual manner of writing, when I started my blog I didn't exactly know how to be myself.  And I had no idea how to become a star, which truth to tell is not being myself either.  I have read of blogs where the artists only tell of the good things in their life.  That sounds wonderful and I applaud that.  But it sure isn't my writing background.  I know how to write research papers.  I can make a killer annotated bibliography on any subject.  And I know how to write all the secrets of my heart.  But how to find the balance of informative & personal.  How to let me shine through?

 

Three years from when I started his blog, I have given up wanting to be a star.  I want my blog to be as great a source of satisfaction to me as my personal journals, but of more interest to those who read it.  To that end I decided to write a MISSION STATEMENT!

 

 
 When I told my husband his immediate comment was "San Juan Capistrano."
You probably need to know him and some details for this to make any sense.  

image c. Gavin Arts.  

San Juan Capistrano is the 7th of the California Missions founded by Father Junipero Serra.   It's always been my favorite, a beautiful structure and quite romantic.  And every year on March 19th the swallows return to build their nests.  There's a song my mom used to sing to me about it.  Tommy de Paola has written a beautiful children's book about the swallows returning.  And my husband is quick witted & punny and makes unexpected connections.  San Juan Capistrano was his was of saying, "oh, you want the readers to return" . . . just like the beautiful swallows!

So my new & updated purpose in writing this blog is to share the magic and beauty I see everywhere.  To provoke thought or laughter with a healthy sense of the absurd.  To inspire the people who come here.  Not to take myself too seriously and to give more than I expect to get.

A big thank you to Tara Frey, who's book has truly inspired me!

Frey, Tara.  Blogging for Bliss.  New York: Lark Books, 2009.