Creative
-
Early October Book Report
It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these and I really don’t have a whole lot to report. If I don’t write one now it might be a few months before I get to one! Finished Reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo This book was making the blog rounds last spring and I wavered back and forth on reading it. I opted to listen to it as an audiobook via our library’s download system. It was a very easy listen, I think 5-6 hours, maybe a little bit more. The premise is that by keeping clutter and ‘things’, it can impact our mental status and…
-
July Book Report
So, July sped by! I did not read as much as I wanted and so I don’t have a whole lot to report on. You can see June’s report here. Completed +The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless I finished reading this book while we were on vacation in Port Aransas. I couldn’t put it down, though towards the end I did feel like things got a little repetitive. The short story is, Chris and Carine McCandless had very crappy parents. There’s emotional and physical abuse, not to mention the father was basically a bigamist–though technically not married to their mother when she had them but was living with her while…
-
June Book Report
When I wrote my summer goals last month I mentioned wanting to read three books this summer. I am well on my way to getting that done and adding more to the list. I credit a few things for this, one of them being that I gave up Facebook back in late April. The last time I spent this much time away from the site was for the last half of 2009. I’ve done little hiatuses here and there, but it just got to be too much. I don’t have the personality where I can just say I won’t log in…because I will. I have to actually close the account.…
-
On Writing A Book
Writing is hard. Much more difficult than I imagined. And it’s not like I’m writing a completely made up fiction story here, I’m writing about something I actually did. Two years ago, late summer 2011 at about the same time of year it is now—the sun adjusting its position in the sky, the flora preparing for a time of rest—I decided I’d write about our thru-hike of the Florida Trail. Back when we started on the Appalachian Trail in March of 2010 I’d decided before the hike that I was not going to go into the hike with the intent on writing a book. There were already a lot of…
-
Creating with the Family
Part of my family was in town over the weekend and on Saturday we went to the Calendar Garden for a class in which we would create our own garden markers out of clay. This was the real deal—real pottery clay, real glaze, and it would be fired in a kiln by the artist who hosted the class. Sweet! I haven’t used real clay since high school and as I worked with the clay it all came back to me easily. Made me wish I had my own potting wheel and kiln! My niece and nephew came along with me, my mom, and sister-in-law and they were good for the…
-
Studio Tour | New & Improved
Sorry about the cut off at the end, I was mostly done anyway but I didn’t have enough space on my card…oops! In case you missed the first studio tour: go here.
-
A Green Tomato | Vegetable & Fruit Portraits
It’s been awhile since I did any of these portraits. I took a lot of photos like this of our harvest last spring and summer but then we moved to the house and life got a little bit hectic. Now I am taking this week to process a lot of older photos and get both this website and Wildscape Photo updated a bit. With the Wildscape update I’m going to include a garden section where you can see some of these fruit and vegetable portraits. Several months ago Chris pre-ordered some canvas—-can’t remember the company at the moment—with the intent of having some of these fruit and veggies on the…
-
Searching For Wonder In Hidden Places
I originally wrote this to submit to Taproot but my submission didn’t fit their needs so I decided to share it here as I didn’t have another place that I wanted to submit it to. Excuse some of the background information if you, you know, actually know me in real life or have been reading here for the last 10 years. Growing up, I was an ocean girl. I thought my destiny lay in the ocean, the vast and unexplored spanse of water that covers three-quarters of the Earth’s surface. This notion developed over the many years my family spent vacationing on the Texas coast, with a few trips to…
-
Inspiration for the Uninspired
Maybe this will be some inspiration for you (and me) if you are uninspired (like me) at the moment. A little sunstar through the Hoh Rainforest, some ferns dappled in morning glow. Uninspired lately to sit down and work on photos, to write, to blog, to paint the studio, to do anything creative. Now I am coming down with something that I haven’t pinpointed yet—doesn’t feel like a cold, feels like something possibly worse. Sore neck, extremely sore glands, back of my head hurts. Not sure. Hoping to return soon to wrap up some trip reports and get back to being creative. This holiday weekend will be full getting yard…
-
Studio Progress
I’ve finally started working on painting the studio. The need to create and have a space that is organized and there for me to retreat to when I want has pushed me to get going with putting things together in here. One can of paint is all I bought but it is very clear that I will need at least one more. The deep eggplant paint on the walls is difficult to cover and is taking multiple layers of paint. I’m also painting the baseboards as I’m going. The off-white they were painted does not look good against the bright white of the walls. Listening to music via my mp3…