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Archive for March, 2012

colors of spring…

Posted in Beauty, Color, Honoré, Nature, Spring on March 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »

I have two rooms in my house that I’ve appropriated as studios: one is my sewing/knitting studio and library. The other, my computer/scrapping/art journaling space. This room – which I call Studio B – was originally designated as a craft space until I started working from home and then it became my home office. Now that I’m in protirement, I’ve repurposed Studio B.

March is generally a month when lots of people’s thoughts turn to spring and cleaning…certainly mine have and actually, since Feb 22, I’ve been in a rearranging and purging state of mind. Heaven knows I have too much stuff and it seems, that no matter how many times or how ruthless I am when decluttering , I still have too darned much… Funny, as I was reorganizing, I found an album I created in 2005 documenting a workshop on time management Kathy and I were planning. The album featured a decluttering/makeover of the then office and now Studio B. After several days of reorganizing my studios, yes, yet again, yesterday (Thursday, March 29)  afternoon, I put the finishing – for awhile, at least – touches on the two studios and decided I owed myself a treat: a walk outside.

Tho’ a bit windy, the day was beautiful: bright, clear and very colorful:

Wisteria

Iris

Japanese Maple

Tulips

a tree whose name I know not but I love the richness of its deep pink blossoms...

and my absolute favorite: the dogwood

Certainly a wonderful display of color. I am so glad we’ve been treated to such an early, glorious  spring and actually, I am also glad March is in it’s last few hours. Seems to me  the month has been longer than usual and I’m ready for April!  Have a great week and we’ll touch base again next Sat, April 6.

Cheers~

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showing up to the page

Posted in Authenticity, Books, Celebration, Commitment, Friendship, Gratitude, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Self Care, Writing on March 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »

During Verb Tribe we were given this prompt: What do I need to do to be a successful writer? After writing for ten minutes on my paper bag it came down to these simple five words: show up to the page.

Show. Up. To. The. Page.

My fellow WriteNiters and I made a commitment to show up for 31 consecutive days in the month of March. Yesterday was day 29 and I have not missed a day. I have on average written a page a day on my screenplay. The goal was not quantity or quality but consistency. Wednesday night we celebrated our one year anniversary of WriteNiters and toasted our success—each of us showed up EVERY day this month!

Thursday evening you would have found me tapping away at my purple laptop keyboard for my writing practice. Here are a few visuals of what consistency and commitment can produce:

My screenplay :)

In print! it's waaaay too long for a screenplay, I'm at 300 pages and haven't written the ending yet. Step two: rewriting!

My reward for showing up as well as an action to celebrate myself are these two goodies from Barnes & Noble:  Artful Blogging magazine and a new blank journal. Bliss.

The Artful Blogging magazine...beYOUtiful. And a lovely blank journal are my rewards for 'showing up to the page'.

Thank you my awesome WriteNiters for showing up with me and always encouraging me!

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…on the First Day of Spring, Mother Nature gave to me…

Posted in Gratitude, Kathy, Lifeology, Nature, Spring, Time on March 21, 2012 | 1 Comment »

...a wild plant a-blooming...

...buds that are leafing...

...and a flock of spider webs in the fog.

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yesterday was AA’s birthday

Posted in Beauty, birthday, Celebration, Friendship, Funny Stuff, Just for fun, Laura, Lifeology, Memories, Nature, Photography, Spring on March 21, 2012 | 3 Comments »

A few years ago I wanted to surprise our friend Antonette with a special ‘on the day you were born gift’ with Mickey Mouse on it—she’s a huge Mickey fan. So I went to the source to confirm her birth-date—her mom!  When she received the gift in the mail she called me and laughed and laughed and said, You asked my mom didn’t you? She always gets the date wrong my birthday is March 20th not March 21st!  So yesterday was the first day of Spring and Antonette’s birthday. I love you no matter which day you were born A! ;) But Jeff and I called her today to sing her happy birthday and laugh together and Jeff asked her, are you going to believe a piece of paper or your Momma?

I know its Spring because our lilies are blooming:

...sooooo gorgeous...

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welcome Spring 2012…

Posted in Honoré, Nature, Spring on March 21, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The Centennial celebration of the national annual Cherry Blossom Festival officially began yesterday,  the first day of Spring. My intention was to journey to the Tidal Basin, along with the millions of tourists, to see the cherry blossoms…as they are in full bloom, and of course, magnificent.

Mother Nature had other plans: we awoke to a bona fide spring electrical storm. So, instead, I settled in for a longer-than-usual Morning Solitude and Quiet Time (MSQT) session and enjoyed:

sipping hot tea and tasting the sweetness of orange juice  followed by the coolness of a ice H2O…

sitting in my chair, surrounded by my Circa journal, iPad, pens, magazines, and books…

listening to the rolling thunder…

seeing flashes of lightning…

hearing the rain’s patter on the skylights…

counting the seconds between flashes of light and claps of thunders…

loving the sound of the pen as it moved across the page, capturing my thoughts and revising my plan for the day…

wondering, still, if a trip to the Tidal Basin might still be feasible …

Though the storm lasted just about an hour, the skies remained grey and threatening most of the morning and early afternoon. So, I went to the library…

...though the bag is from Delaware libraries, I went to a library in nearby Prince George's County Maryland, where I once worked...

…stopped at Starbucks for a free drink (received from my visit last week) and a local CVS drugstore for a box of crayons (for a project  to be revealed in another post someday soon)…

Doncha just love the idea of a new box of crayons? Treat yourself!

About 3 PM DST, the sun broke through in all its glory…but too late for me to hop a Metro train, especially since rush hour was just beginning (read: people were starting to get off work and would be adding to the already crush of tourists on the Smithsonian Mall/Metro and at the Tidal Basin). So, instead, I decided (and needed) to take a walk throughout the neighborhood, to check out the signs of Spring:

the ubiquitous dandelion, of course…

…and lo & behold, some flowering trees:

Could they be cherry blossoms? A quick comparison with Google images suggest the answer is Yes! Yes! Whatever, they are beautiful!  Today, it is grey and misty but I expect it will clear up …so, perhaps I’ll get to the Tidal Basin later …and if not, certainly another walk around the neighborhood is do-able.

Happy Spring!

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finishing touches

Posted in Commitment, Creativity, Gift, Just for fun, Laura, Learning, Lifeology, Productivity on March 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Tuesday is a Weight Watcher morning so I wasn’t up until 7am. I peeped my eyes open when my alarm beeped and asked myself with a groan what I did to make me sore all over. I missed CrossFit Monday so I attempted my first half mile jog Monday night and I did it—I even went on for another 4/10’s of a mile and sprinted the home stretch! Needless to say my muscles were talkin’ to me Tuesday morning.

My morning routine is fruit and water, my WW Leader alerted me she was making a green smoothie with mint cookie crisp snack bar in it and would share with me. It was dee-lish. I was home before 11am and had another smoothie with frozen fruit and a mango, mmmmm. I slurped on that while I wrote my morning pages.

My priority yesterday was to put the finishing touches on a gift that has been a work in progress for Jeff and I for the past month. He designed a ‘thought bubble’ to put the quote inside in Mistral font and the results were spectacular! It looks way better then either of us expected. We finally decided to complete it over the weekend and commit to shipping this week.

The sign is made from re-purposed materials—wood that used to be something else. In this case the bubble was made from a piece of an old maple kitchen table. Keeping the stories and conversations alive. And the letters were made from a piece of bed rail off of a broken children’s bed. Jeff wrote an adorable story about the bed-frame and the little girl it belonged to until it broke. I explained how the quote was chosen and the re-purposed wood and we printed it out and attached card on the back of the thought bubble just below the hanger.

I’ll post a few photos of the process today and post an entire image once it has been received. This was a rewarding project and we learned a lot about color and paints by experimenting, the process will be less time intensive next time around!  Jeff and I make a great team and I am always astounded by his willingness to run with an idea—especially some of my crazy ones!

Story glued to the back of thought bubble.

Giraffe card I made to accompany gift...

It's in the box!

Protecting the precious cargo.

It's kinda cool that this photo blurred...it's off to mystery friend :) Project complete!

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3:12 pm on Mon – 3/12/2012

Posted in Color, Creativity, Honoré, Just for fun, Photography, Time on March 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The 12th of the month is a day that many bloggers take photos, make  a collage and then post on their blogs and/or  to add to their scrapbook or photo albums. Yesterday, conscious of the date and the fact that I was going to be posting here, today, about yesterday, I kept my trusty camera handy as I went about the day’s agenda:

Quilt Guild in the morning

Lunch with some of my quilting friends

Drive to and fro

As I drove, I decided that I’d focus on capturing green: signage; trees; vehicles; etc. The latter proved to be very interesting – I drive probably 25 miles one way to quilt guild so I thought, why not count all the green cars I see on my way. Literally, during that 30-35 minutes drive, I saw about a dozen cars that could count as green…guess it’s not a color of choice for most car owners ( a quick google search reveals that white, silver, grey and black remain the most popular colors). But I digress. On my way, I was surprised to see a lot of green business signage, more than I’d have thought since red is generally regarded as the top marketing color . Think: red = stop! But again I digress.

On my way home, I thought: Starbucks is on the route and soon it will be 3:12 pm and I have my iPad and wouldn’t it be cool to capture a screen shot of the iPad at 3:12 pm today and Starbucks is known for decorating its door with a monthly theme, I could  also get a photo of my reflection at Starbucks and this would be perfect and, and…  Yep! You guessed it; the rest is history.

So, here you have those two photos commemorating my brilliant idea. Lots of fun.

(if you click on the picture, you’ll see the time  better)

And that’s the way it was : 3:12 pm on Mon – 3/12/2012.

Cheers~

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…Monday, March 12th..Thank Youz…

Posted in Uncategorized on March 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

…for the first time in 23 days my entire family woke up Wretched Cold free! Thank you, open windows with gentle breezes. Thank you, antibiotics. Thank you, Cosmic Forces.

I submitted my 5 budgets to our Fiscal Director at 9p Sunday night and they are just fine! In fact, the FD told me that I caught 2 pieces she had missed. GOAL! [BTW, the FD's name is Kathy. When we call each other, we get to say "Hi Kathy. This is Kathy." Dumb fun, I realize. But when you have such a common name, I say find the fun where you can.] Thank you, Morning Brain. Thank you, Healing Husband. Thank you, Calculator.

..off to work with completed FY 2013 budgets...can I get an amen?

Healing Husband, you ask? Yes, Jim returned Friday, March 2nd from Lexington, KY – running fast from the storms there – with pneumonia. Wretched Cold gone rogue. That’s why there was no Sunday, March 4th post from me. It was a blank day. Not bad…just blank. Happy to report, he’s a-ok now! Thank you, God.

...remember the buds from my birthday last month? Here they are Monday in the 70 degree weather...

 

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Monday meanderings

Posted in Beauty, Books, Celebration, Just for fun, Laura, Learning, Libraries, Time on March 7, 2012 | 7 Comments »

Monday is a CrossFit day so I was up at 6am out the door at 6:30 and running laps with my buddies at 7:01am. After our workout Brin dropped me off at home I got to writing as soon as possible: morning pages, screenplay, and Verb Tribe prompt. Check, check, check. I whipped up lunch and a smoothie hopped on my bike at 11am and pedaled half a mile to a local business that is hosting Weight Watchers at Work. The WW Leader goes to the business, cool eh?—it’s not a new concept but its growing. Unfortunately that day my Leader forgot to call and cancel my participation—they were one person short to have a receptionist. Oooops!

I’m fairly flexible and easy going I don’t get mad and blame others. Anger is counterproductive. Sometimes things are not meant to be no matter how much we plan! I could have been mad and still there for no reason or I had the choice to be happy I had a couple free hours. The latter felt WAY better—so off I biked to the library and picked up a stack of books and sat in the sun and ate my lunch.  Ahhh!

I opened The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and was instantly swept away to another world. I read for a couple hours—the library was a happening place with no school on Monday so I people watched in between bites and pages. My idea of an unexpected blissful afternoon!

Here’s a couple shots of my meanderings:

Horse statue decorating the WW At Work biz I visited (briefly).

Stone wall in front of the library—the sun was a welcome warmth while I ate my lunch and read.

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at the end of the day…

Posted in Honoré, Productivity, Time on March 6, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I am a morning person. I often joke that when the sun comes up, I’m up! I’m generally awake and up between 5-6 AM. And yes, I am retired, so there’s no reason for me to get up so early, as everyone reminds me, but there really is. I like daylight. Always have and since I have for 69 years (and counting), I really don’t see that I’m going to change.

The other part to this story is that when ol’ Sol goes down, so do I. I can literally feel my energy being drained from my body; it comes over me like a wave. Generally, if I am home  and on the computer or sewing or working on scrapbook page, I will just stop, quit whatever I’m doing in my studio and leave the room.

Sunday mid-afternoon, I’d been arranging and cutting strips of fabric for a class I was scheduled to attend the next day…

I  felt my energy begin to drain and then I noted the light was changing…the sun was starting to set…

I looked up at the clock and realized the time, noting that I’d been awake and up since 6 AM. A full 12 hours! If you look closely, you can see my shadow in the clock…

This time however, I did take the time to straighten up my workspace and to take a picture or two before I shut down. I consider that a real accomplishment.

Cheers~

PS. I was up at 5 AM Monday morning, rarin’ to go ;-) ).

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