Favorite {Photo} Friday! #9 & 08.08.08

"The Eye of the Storm"


Holy crap does it get better than this? Oh how I adore this picture of Daniele Molmenti (credit to REUTERS/Darren Whiteside). I only wish I had a better quality jpg. Obviously I'm not the only one who loves this photo, because it was in the paper! Dani sent us this photo so I don't know the name of the paper. [Edited: it's the China Daily paper!]


The title caption under the photo says "The Eye of the Storm." Isn't that cool? Dani is like our brother; Jason and I would do just about anything for him (and vice versa, I think!). So I'm over the moon thrilled that he's an Olympian, and seeing him in the paper is super cool, too! PLUS, he was chosen as one of "Eight Olympians to Watch"! He worked soo hard to overcome his injuries after his accident and that makes all this sweeter!

And here's another great photo from REUTERS/Darren Whiteside:


I miss him so much and am so excited that he's been able to stay in touch with us while he's been in China. His event, K-1 Slalom, starts at 3:50 a.m. Eastern time on August 11th! In culo alla balena, carissimo mio!!! Good luck, Dani, listen closely and you may hear us cheering from here!

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The Olympics are underway! [Yes, I know that Opening Ceremonies aren't on until tonight, but after living abroad my brain is used to considering other time zones, and I'm thinking about what Dani is doing, so that means Opening Ceremonies started two hours ago (China is 12 hours ahead of EDT).] Oh how I love the Olympics! It probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that my favorite part of the Olympics is the human interest stories. I love hearing about all the trials and struggles that competitors fought in order to fulfill their Olympic dreams. I love seeing the desire in their eyes and in their hearts. Oh, it all just makes my heart swell! I can't wait to watch Opening Ceremonies tonight!!!

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Congratulations and good luck to all of the couples getting married today! I don't actually know any, but I remember all the hoopla from 07.07.07, so I imagine that it's the same a decade and a year and a month and a day (and an hour, probably) later! Actually, I was curious so I just googled it and found out that in China--where 8 is a lucky number--16,400 couples are getting married today! So congratulations and good luck to all of them and everyone else getting married today! :)

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The County Fair here starts today! My mom's friend Terri just won two blue ribbons for two photographs that she entered in her local fair, and it made me think... so on Wednesday I looked up the info and low and behold I could still enter! So I spent yesterday choosing photos and getting them printed and getting mat board cut (oh how it killed me to not be able to do it myself! I miss being a Framer!) and mounting them, filling out forms and labeling everything and then taking it to the fairgrounds last night. Like I didn't have four zillion things I should have been doing instead. I entered the maximum number of photos (10) and also my Avon Walk book, a scrapbook page, a greeting card, a pair of earrings, and a necklace, all of which I'd already made (obviously). I don't expect to win anything, but it's kind of fun to have entered, anyway. I almost didn't enter because I am a perfectionistic, worrying oldest child and feel like I don't have the right to enter a competition unless I think I have a shot at winning. But then I remembered all of my brave friends who are putting their worries aside and just going for it--Cynthia is starting a monthly scrapbook kit club, Jilliene just signed up for art school, Heather's starting her second semester of art school, and Amy submitted to Somerset Studio magazine and her project was chosen! So if they can do those huge things then surely I can enter the silly old County Fair for heaven's sake! So there you go. I'm officially a County Fair participant! Hilariously the main reason I'm excited is because as a participant I got to buy super cheap fair entry tickets, ha ha! Next year I'll have Jason enter something, too, so we can get twice as many!

Have a super weekend, y'all!

Thankful Thursday

When I first heard about Inspired (2008) on Kal's blog, I was, well, inspired! It sounded amazing... and also intimidating. Majorly, hugely, nearly-overwhelmingly intimidating. All of these capital-a Artists and then little old me. But I thought about it. And then I thought about it some more. And then I thought about it nearly constantly. And then one night after some liquid courage (which it should not take, I know, but sometimes does anyway) I told Jason about it and said, "I really want to learn how to be an artist and I think this..." and before I could finish my sentence he said, "Baby, you already are an artist; you make beautiful things every day." And then I started crying. And then he told me to sign up.

Have I mentioned how much I love my husband?

So I did--I signed up that same night. And I am so thankful that I did. The experience took my mind and opened it wide up and shifted it all around to make room for a world of possibilities. Plus. PLUS. PLUS I became involved in this amazing community of women artists who inspire me and are my friends and whom I treasure. Words don't exist to explain how I feel about these women. Or maybe they do and I just don't know them. Ha! Nothing like a little levity to break up the lump in my throat.

Cynthia is going through a tough situation right now, and she is all the way over in Minnesota, which I lament weekly. Since I can't take her some ice cream or make her a casserole or clean her house or bring over a stack of DVDs and a new pair of fluffy pajamas or take her for a walk to the park and talk for hours while we swing, I told her to create art to help her work through it. Little did I know she would make art for me! I absolutely adore this canvas and cried when I received it in the mail. It's mixed media focused on a vintage postcard of Piazza San Marco; she knows how much I love Italy.



It is sitting proudly on a stand on my mantle, and it makes me smile every time I see it. Thank you so much, Cynthia!! (And you know I'm thinking of you and your mom every day!)

A while back I got a wonderful package in the mail from Shannon. She's is an amazing artist who inspires me with nearly every blog post; she's on a blog hiatus right now so hurry up and come back, Shannon! which I totally understand. She made me this amazing little flip-out book about "10 ways to infuse your work with your personality." It's super cool!


She also made me this amazing card! One of the reasons I love Shannon is because her style is so different than mine; every time she makes something I love it but I never would have thought of it! Here's the inside of the card before she wrote inside of it (Shannon, I hope you don't mind I stole this from your blog!).


I love how she stamped the bird onto a page of text and then cut out and pasted the body onto the card. Sooooo cool! She also sent me a whole bunch of goodies to play with. Thanks again, Shannon!

I'm also grateful that I've slept better the past few nights so I had enough energy and brainpower to finish my charm swap. The theme was Favorite Places so, big surprise, I chose Italy. :)


I made the base of each charm with polymer clay (a blend of colors to get terracotta) and on the front is an image of a couple on a scooter (with the Coliseum in the background, no less!) and on the back I stamped "Ciao ciao!" I think they turned out pretty well. I have a couple extras that I may make into necklace pendants!

Also thankful for:

• Being signed up for Inspired 2009!
• Being signed up to meet Deitra in Richmond to take three classes from Donna!
• My Chiropractor!
• Two mini-vacations just planned for later this month and next! Wooo, it's about time, Jason and I are getting restless!

So what are you thankful for today? Let me know and I'll see you tomorrow for Favorite {Photo} Friday!

Wordle Wednesday

I found out about Wordle and since I am apparently addicted to really digging computer-generated semi-random art lately, I just had to try it! You can either type in text or a URL, so I did it for this blog!



I love that you can change the colors, font, direction of words, etc. I love that the size of the words indicates how many times the word is used and that you can remove any words you don't want (although I didn't). But it's still random, too. Super cool! I had so much fun that a few of these are on their way to my friends' inboxes, too (I used each person's blog to make her Wordle). :) I think I'm going to make a few postcards out of them along with my Camosaics! Click here to make one of your own.

Hints & tips:

• Click on Randomize to try a few things and see what comes up!
• Make all words capital or lowercase under Language.
• When you change the font it changes the layout (but maintains the colors).
• Change direction of the words and also whether there are rounder or straighter edges under Layout (this also obviously changes the entire design).
• Create a custom color palette by clicking on Edit Custom Palette and then clicking on each square of color to choose new colors (or just input the HTML color code if you happen to know your favorites, ha ha!). You can also choose to use the exact colors or to have a variance.
• If you like the colors but just not which words are which colors, click on "Recolor."
• You can't save directly from Wordle. To save the image as a jpg you have to "print screen" and copy it into an image-editing software program and crop out everything but the Wordle.

Have fun Wordle-ing! :)

p.s. If you post a Wordle to you blog post a comment with a link!

Dark Garden

I innocently did a little Google search today and I stumbled upon an unbelievable blog. And by unbelievable I mean that I sat and read and stared at the screen and thought, "This is not real. I don't believe this. Who would waste this much time and energy on such a vitriolic bashing of another person's life and blog?" The entire blog is about her reading two other people's blogs and then bashing everything they say and do and Googling them and dishing dirt about their private lives.

GET SERIOUS.

What a waste of time and energy. This person purposely spends time reading something she hates and then spends more time writing about how much she hates it. Saaaaaaad. Sad sad sad. I was in such shock that I didn't realize I had wasted three minutes of my own life reading it. Then I snapped out of it and did a somersault across the living room.

I've been searching for another signature for my e-mails and this reminded me. So Ta-Da! My latest StoryPeople signature. I {heart} StoryPeople. This is "Dark Garden."

I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do.

Happy happy day, y'all! :)

Or Should It Be MosaiCameron?

I was unable to sleep last night and my brain power is zilch today. But I had so much fun doing the last mosaic I had to do another one!


The questions & answers:
1. name of birth place--Portland
2. country where you live--America
3. favorite kind of house to live in--organized!!
4. one word to describe your style of decorating--ugh (things are so in flux here now this is the only word that comes to mind, ha ha!)
5. favorite town for a city trip--Venezia (at least it was, I don't have a new one yet!)
6. favorite country for a holiday--Italia
7. favorite piece of furniture--roll-top desk
8. favorite kind of garden--vegetable
9. favorite flower--stargazer lily
10. a historic place you visited and liked very much--Firenze
11. where would you move to if you had to? Seattle (and I'd move in next door to Kellie!!!)
12. favorite room in your house--studio

The Flickr links for the photos:
1. Portland, Oregon, 2. Fourth on Lake Austin, 3. bookshelf, 4. Ugh., 5. Red boat - Venice, 6. PHOTO & CO, 7. studio, 8. colors in the market, 9. Stargazer Lily, 10. Santa Maria del Fiore, 11. This Way To Pleasure, 12. Bullentin Board 06'

The credit:
Thanks to Sabine for the list of questions!

Aaaand the vote:
What do you think: Camosaic? Or MosaiCameron? This is very, very important and I won't sleep until I have reached you have helped me reach a decision. Please help. Thank you. I put a poll over there <------ in the sidebar. 'Cause I just figured out you can make polls and I wanted to, that's why. :) PLEASE VOTE. C'mon, pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaase? Thanks!

The Camosaic...

The Mosaic of Me, Cameron... hence the Camosaic. :)

When I checked out my good friend Sooz's blog this morning I knew immediamente that I had to hop on over to Big Huge Labs and Flickr and make one for myself. So fun! Check out the story at the bottom of this post.

The questions & answers that generated the photos:
1. What is your first name? Cameron
2. What is your favorite food? Carbs!
3. What high school did you attend? North Marion
4. What is your favorite color? Turquoise
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Mark Wahlberg
6. Favorite drink? Dark beer
7. Dream vacation? Thailand
8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? Good Mamma
10.What do you love most in life? Balance
11. One word to describe you? Empathetic
12. Your Flickr name? Create Beauty Daily

The Flickr links to the photos:
1. Boh Tea Estate, Cameron Highlands, 2. Homemade: Fettuccine Alfredo and 4 random Basil leaves, 3. Lower North Falls, 4. Melissani Lake - Kefalonia Island, 5. 2218992067_cbeb806712_o.jpg, 6. me and you.., 7. Between water and sky, 8. szechwan peppercorn creme brulee, 9. Mom and Baby Giraffe, 10. the unexpected... ♫ ♫ little egret from bali♫, 11. Hey, You're Awesome and I Love You., 12. Reach for the sky - Blue sky moment #15

The "rules" and the cool story:
Here's how you do it...Type your answer to each of the questions above into Flickr search, and using only the first page, choose your favorite image, copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows), and it generates the mosaic for you. (So wish I would have known about this then!)

Kind of cool: I started tracking back entries, because Sooz thought it was fun when she saw it on Denise's blog; who in turn was inspired by Megg; who'd found it on Claudia's blog; who saw at Jamie's; who was inspired by Darlene; who'd been tempted by Kiki; who found Rachel's irresistable; who got sucked in by Janet; who jumped in thanks to Leah; who had seen it at Nicole's; who jumped on the wagon due to Jess; who didn't link anyone so either she started the game or wants us to think that she did. :) These women live literally all over the world. And in the past two months and four days we have all become connected through this weird blog world of inspiration. And this is only one "stream" of backtracks... I could spend hours clicking links to other people who have also done it, too (but I won't for Pete's sake!). It's very cool to me to think about each person affecting each other person in this small little inspirational way. And don't even get me started on all the photos and photographers who are included. Wooo, mind-boggling!

Anyway, it's totally fun and also really cool. I've already found another set of questions so I know I'll be doing this again in the future! :) Post a comment with a link if you decide to play along, too!

Favorite {Photo} Friday! #8

It's FRIDAY!! Woo-hoo! You know what that means! :) I'm so glad Stella started this, it's so fun!

This was taken in Romania at Bran Castle--more famously known as Dracula's Castle. You know how that goes; Vlad (aka Dracula) maybe stopped by there one night and hundreds of years later it's a tourist trap. :P But if you happen to find yourself in Transylvania you kinda have to go anyway, right? So we went. It was a cool old castle with great old furniture collected by a Queen and it has--oh, how I dreamed as a child!--secret passageways! Am I the only person who dreamt of finding a secret passageway to a secret room? Oh, those were great dreams! Much better than the lame and/or weird dreams I seem to have as an adult. [Sigh.]

Anyway, we had great fun in Romania. It's a great country and to travel there is akin to traveling back in time; people drive horse-drawn buggies (alongside cars) and work fields by hand. It was fascinating and a wonderful trip and we met kind people and I got a ton of great photos. But I chose this photo today because I just found that shirt in my closet and, well, let me just say that, ummm, it doesn't quite look like this on me now. I know it's the angle and all, but hello? Look at that waist. Mamma mia! I've been slacking off on the diet & exercise and this is just the motivation I needed. So there ya go! :) I'm officially back on the wagon.

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Happy Birthday to Daniele!


Dani is in China, training for the Olympics! Here he is at the Great Wall and he calls this photo "The Great and The Wall," which is hilarious to me because it's pure Daniele. I miss him a ton and I hope he has a WONDERFUL birthday today!!! (I wrote more about him here.) Tanti baci, carrissimo mio! Buon compleanno!

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Dear advertisers of Silk brand soy milk: In one of your television commercials the actress (who is pretending to be a real Silk drinker, but c'mon, we all know she's just an actress being paid to say the lines) says that she was "a little weary of trying soy milk." What I believe you mean her to say is that she was "a little leery of...." Weary is what I am after seeing this stupid commercial. Leery = wary, suspicious. Weary = tired, fatigued, exhausted. Please remove this commercial from the air. It's making me crazy and besides that, it makes you look stupid. Thank you.

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Today I'm running some errands, heading to Costco, cleaning the house, and generally trying to bite off more than I can chew in one day. In other words, it's par for the course around here! I need to set up a photo shoot this weekend and so I need to find a willing victim subject. I need to clean off my dining room table and wash the guest room sheets because Erin is coming to visit on her way from New York to North Carolina, yay! I haven't seen her since I babysat her a zillion years ago. I need to pop a few things in the mail. I need to move the computer from its perch on the fireplace in the living room to its original location downstairs in the office, since my sweet husband did his magic on the router last night (thanks, Bebe!). And, of course, I need to program my brain to dream about secret passageways tonight. Okay, let's do it!