successful

oh my, I do so LOVE taking photographs and I love documenting our day to day life

Success is going from failure to failure
without losing confidence

Winston Churchill

This last day of January I've been thinking I want, more than anything this year, to be successful. Success much like beauty tis in the eye of the beholder and this particular beholder is my self.
I know just what it will take to make me feel successful again. I have felt it before, more than once, and I know deep inside that I will definitely feel it again. It feels very near ... I can taste it

being successful this year 2011 would be

• to once again have a bustling, multi customer, product design business
• to have my own licensed product line with a big fancy pants giftware company
• to develop a crazy, colourful line of inspirational + whimsical art for kids
• to further develop my current hand drawn + collage typographic inspirational line
• to learn to paint and create art with abandon
• to teach myself, through online tutorials and practice, Adobe Illustrator + Photoshop
• to be super organized with my work & photographs and archive it all like a mad freakin' woman
• to say at last See ya later & Bye Bye ! to 20lbs that's been hanging around for far, far too long

there I've sent it all out there, out into la Universe

last night's dinner - baked chicken fingers coated with seasoned panko crumbs, honey mustard dipping sauce, oven baked fries with sea salt & olive oil and steamed broccoli
last night's movie (borrowed from the library) - A Mighty Heart

and this tres beautiful song from the soundtrack of A Might Heart by Nouvelle Vague

without a plan

oh how I love a brand new clean calendar blotter page + paints + bursts of vivid colours

to live a creative life
we must lose our fear of being wrong

Joseph Chitton Pearce

Now I know that February is still 2 days away and I know well the old adage don't wish your life away. Let me explain, if you look at the month of February you'll see it begins on a Tuesday which means I can fill in the Sunday & Monday slots with the last 2 days of January and thus have on the beloved teak topped desk a brand new month, a clean, crisp new calendar page ... & (shut up !!) this month, avec hot pink typography (merci every month B. Shammy). Snippets into the mind of an obsessive planner trying desperately to morph herself into more of a doer.

Yesterday's creative adventure. I spontaneously just began, without a plan. A little collage, a little painting, drawing on top of that. I will confess (and I'm sure you can tell) I haven't a clue what I'm doing. I'm trying to do, without a goal, without an end, with a don't have to like it attitude ... oh oh ! or should I say oh no !! I'm going to make a painting of some shape or size every week. Yikes.

When I speak of "vein of gold" many people think in terms of productivity.
"Once I find my vein of gold, I'll strike it rich".
It is more accurate to think of the vein of gold as a heart vessel,
carrying the precious cargo of the flow of our true nature.
Viewed this way, we don't need to "get" rich. We already are rich.

blurb from the back cover of Vein of Gold - Julia Cameron

OK let's go !


May 11 - painting No.1 - 5x7 - Susan Black

randomness

beach treasure and a few other photos of random goodness from this past week

more randomness,

When I look out the windows this early morning from my very cozy nest of down & flannel all I see is the palest blue & grey. No early smudge of pinkish orange or lavender this morning announcing the sun's appearance. It's a cloudy, overcast day in the forecast for today after yesterday's spectacular, mild, melting blue sky & sunshine - which we needed. This morning it's back to a winter sky, a monotone blue gradually fading to the purest fresh snow white striped occasionally here and there with the grey of the bare trees.

I miss the colour. I really do but I also love our seasons - winter creates spring, summer creates autumn. I'll search for colour elsewhere, inside.

I have the book The Artist's Way from our library. I cannot explain why it's taken me all these years to embrace Julia Cameron and this book. I guess it doesn't matter. I'm embracing it now.
I have an early morning appointment with the Prince to bring in firewood and then it's a day of creativity, hopefully wide open, here at the teak topped desk. I sure do love a Saturday.

good morning

Miss D + my Hey ! the sun's just coming up, early this morning walk around our little village

The day after the storm
Hey ! good morning, beautiful brand new day !

pretty snowy, pretty white

the view this early morning from my, Hey it's still a bit dark out, studio window

pretty snowy
pretty white

your best teacher is your last mistake

Ralph Nader

oh but at the time they sure do feel like mistakes ... they feel just like failures.

One of those large life lessons I mentioned yesterday, those lessons I keep finding lately everywhere - tucked into corners, sleeping in drawers or sometimes splayed out on my desk like some big, fat, black velvet cat we all know

there are no mistakes ... there are no failures - oh yeah !! hooray & a big ol' P-H-E-W !!

everything you do, everything I do ... pushes us forward but often that forward movement is so very subtle, it happens in such teeny, tiny, incremental bits that we don't see it. Sometimes we don't see it because we don't know how to ... we've forgotten how to see our own experience.






Winnie & I walked along the harbour's edge on the path kept up by Greg & Toby (ducktoller)

good January things

gorgeous pages from Cavallini calendar goodness - sigh

It's been cold ... frigid cold, arctic cold, with icy streets to creep along being careful that we don't slip. It's cozy inside and days go by that other than my walks with Winnie I don't leave the nest, the office, the kitchen where I love dreaming up some new thing to have for dinner or the snug movie watching central den by the fire. This morning we sipped our coffee in a still dark bedroom, in a bed laden with furry beasts and listened to the sounds of snowploughs racing up and down our village streets getting things cleaned up and ready for all of us to go out walking.

A few especially good January things

• draught contract has been reviewed - les real contract on it's way via courier - hooray !!
• working once again, years later, with a design director who knows me & my work very well and is challenging my skills & abilities to the hilt - scary, stressful & ultimately tres thrilling - merci!
• doin' a little battle with some red tape & bureaucracy and making a wee bit of progress • selling another original from my etsy shop • rounding corners (literally) - oh my how I LOVE a rounded corner. Where have you been all my life you little stamping machine you • loading up the bird feeders each and every morning. We've spotted another Lady Baltimore and I see the large beautiful falcon daily on our (miss D + me) jaunts out n' about • longer days • signing up for the e-course Get Your Paint On !! • watching the cats watching the birds from their pillow topped venue at the kitchen window • practicing, practicing, practicing ... just being in the moment that I'm in - it's challenging • bundling up in down & fleece and going out, camera in tow, and hitting the icy streets with my best girlfriend Winnie • clementines, squares of chocolate, and hearty spicy vegetarian stew • finding those darn life lessons every where I look lately - good things ... and lots of them

last night's dinner - salmon/brown rice cakes, steamed broccoli + oven fries with olive oil
last night's movie - Scott Pilgrim vs the World - I so heart Michael Cera
from the soundtrack Beachwood Sparks covering Sade's By Your Side - a favourite of mine

missy D went a callin'

Missy D + the Juice Man hanging out, havin' biscuits and tea, in a big patch of sunlight

justification

Mrs Delany floral collages

Wow !! discovering Mrs. Delany and her incredible botanical collages (this book in the gift
section of the December Martha Stewart magazine) is justification and then some for my obsessive magazine collecting/perusing/addiction. Read more about her here & here & here.

the ice

scenes from the middle of January

the ice in the harbour has finally arrived ... along with his pal Winter