Cloud Watching

I can't believe no one's commented on my floaty word cloud thingie! It took forever to find the perfect one. Isn't it beautiful? (Though sometimes it reminds me of a swarm of mosquitoes) What I love is how dynamic it is; it's poetry in motion - literally. So expressive. Don't you just want to play with it forever? Dragging your cursor thru, in, around and beside, twirling it, stretching it... Like silver thread thoughts from Dumbledore's mind.

image via art via

May 3, 2010 Update:  Blogumous mysteriously quit working much to my disappointment :(

A Sparkly!

I'm all about Yayoi's dainty silver twig bangle from Candy Store Collective. Whisper thin, just the way I like it.

This bracelet reminds me of a bracelet I got for Christmas when I was six that looked like varying shades of Chicklet gum strung together. I loved that thing! So Irina Blok had me at hello, but then she added tree branches = double whammy of voodoo love.




I so want Nicole Kidman wrists so I could wear this chunky berry branch bracelet by SNG! The inversed image two thirds thru reminds me of a photograph.





And talent runs in the family. AG designed the bracelet below - it's an id bracelet for modern times - your name and birthdate gets printed on it in binary code!




Everyone's talking about Yoon Jung Yun's inner message rings, and I have to add my voice to the throng. There's raised lettering on the inside, so when the wearer removes the ring after wearing for a good amount of time, the message is still there, imprinted on his finger. There are two standard messages - "Marry Me" and "Always" but for three times the money you can have a custom message. Most will go for something heartfelt and romantic, but if you're worried he's going to take off the ring while flirting with stewardesses, you can always have it say "You Dirty Rat". Or maybe this message for the day after the divorce..."I Was Pretending" or "Psyche!"

PS I'm not jaded about marriage ! M for Amazing and I have True Love (4 Ever). Just not so confident in other people's unions.

One Potato, Two Potato....

If anything in this photo makes you drool, than you really have to check out THREE potao FOUR! I don't care if you've been shopping there for years; it's new to me so let me rave :)

Here is a sampling of some of my finds, and believe me, it's only the tip of the iceberg! First up is a Snowden Motorway Plate (almost enough to make me like pink), (2) British Rollsign Numbers, (3) a simple but genius wooden Kid O puzzle of narrow to wide ; dark to light-likely to occupy a child's attention for far longer than many more complicated toys, (4) an awesome map of Manhattan (one can never have too many maps of Manhattan), and (5) these old Check Register Numbers. I have no idea what I'd use them for, but I know that just standing in a silver 1950's anadozied aluminum cup on my kitchen shelf they will make me smile. Funny how my mom's china knick-knacks are clutter but my vintage numbers are art.

And this is the one I let get away. Sob. No matter that I didn't know the site existed. It's astronauts! I should've been inexplicably drawn to them like a magnet. I registered for a restock notification. Like that will ever happen.

Hon-eeey?! Where IS my Super Suit?!

M for Amazing goes surfing every Friday with our boys. ( Which is a another story in itself, considering how unsurf friendly it is here, but I digress...) When he returns he faithfully rinses out and tends to his very-spendy-but-bought-on-sale wetsuit, then carefully hangs it on a hook in our hallway for drying. I forget about this, and invariably on the weekend I will turn the corner in the dark of night and about have a heart attack when I see a quiet man lurking in our hallway!

The Black Stig is alive and well and hangs out at my house every Friday night.

PS Hover over the title - it's cute.

I don't know why I keep posting pictures of destruction. I'm sure it's something psychological that I really don't want to know about myself. The first time I saw this first photo my mouth dropped open for about fifteen minutes. I thought it must've been a mock up or some sort of photography trick. For some reason it's a lot more scary to see a fat tornado than a skinny winding funnel.

Maybe I look at these images for the same reason I look at the night sky. It reminds me

of how small and puny we are. Which is good to think about sometimes when you need a dose of humility, but not so healthy to dwell on.

The very last photo is of the largest man made tornado ever created. Mercedes Benz

built it. Those clever Germans. I'm amazed we ever even built one, I had no idea! It was 113' tall.

But you know what? Amazing as that is, we still have a long ways to go.

[1] Orchard Iowa Tornado Photo via

[2] Nature At Its Wildest via

[3] Mercedes Benz Artificial tornado via

Tongan Undersea Volcano Erupts

Space Chimp. Literally.

In film you learn about juxtaposition. When you're filming you need to watch not just the actors but also the background. For example, there's an Olive Garden Commercial playing now where a father is talking about how he and his wife take their daughter and her roommates out to dinner everytime they visit. If you watch the first few frames you will see that the father's head is exactly in front of a white lamp shade. It looks like he's a lodge member with a fez hat perched on his head. Gotta be careful about that.

I've found the same problem exists in my Blog World. With my eyes in this blog header, I keep inadvertantly making faces out of my opening page. Like this one....










Excuse me now - I need to go audition for Planet Of The Apes.

Oh... for frame of reference, see for yourself...

Cat's Eye

This is a straight on edge view of a galaxy. I know it's two years old but I've been saving it in case I ever blogged. The image says it all; I'm totally speechless. I feel the same reverence for the Hubble as I do for large old trees.

Thru Orange Tinted Aviators

Despite everything my father taught me, I gravitate to modern art. Thus, discovering Pop Art Machine a day ago on my quest for images to express myself was like finding the big X from the treasure map. I already have a long list of favourites (the image above is just a sampling to whet your appetite). They have an Industrial Storage Container Series that I find irresistible, and their Postage Stamp Series misses being on my list by a smidge-they don't take it far enough. If they'd dare to take that extra step it'd be delicious. I find myself stocking up on their business men images they way some people collect Beanie Babies . [ insert gagging motion here]

There's hundreds to look at - don't miss the archive! I'm inspired now to "PopArtMachine" some of my family photos so I can fill a wall with loved one pics without feeling Traditional. My only complaint is that some people get so caught up in the experimental-ness of the art, they forget to have a point of view. But all the images are of excellent quality and free to download. So - no excuse for decorating with Ikea prints anymore!

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Type O

I love words, letters and numbers. I love books. I love typewriters, type, and typography. And so does pretty much everyone else in the world. I know I am totally not unique in this regard. But the upside of being one of the unwashed masses is that there's a market for what I like, so people with talent keep creating it!


Zebra Eye by, White Hand-type by, Inject Knowledge Question Mark by, Insomnia by
When M for Amazing was little his dad would play an old radio play for him about a shipwreck loaded with rats that crashed onto a lone lighthouse in a storm. The rats are cunning and surround the lighthouse gnawing and exploring, trying to find the way in. The Lighthouse Keeper goes mad and in one scene throws his body against the glass window then falls back to view all the rats pressed against the glass in an effort to get to him. "Look!" he screams, "My portrait in RATS!"

This is Stacy Benson's self-portrait not in rats, but in words. So cool.


I think the following piece, besides being such a perfect visual representation of this type of conversation, also absolutely rings true in content. We've all been there, done this.

I think these next two are excellent examples of consumer friendly typography in ads - Madison Avenue Smart. The Titanic poster isn't done justice unless you click on it and look at it full size.


{Why Did The Titanic Sink? via}

And this bit is called Point of View, for obvious reasons. . . Leave it to the Brits.

Via far better bloggers than I

Death By Chocolate

The Chocolate S'mores Keyboard hijacked my brain, now my mind keeps drifting to Chocolate Thoughts.

By Naoko Tone and Atsuyoshi Iijima. Hisashi Hidano`s “c.red “412-810″ by HIMAA{images found swissmiss.typepad.com}

We had chickens when I was a kid, and soon we were overrun with eggs. Tired of scrambled and hard boiled eggs, my mom and dad looked for recipes that would use a lot of eggs. In an old Betty Crocker cookbook they found the recipe for Chocolate Chiffon Cake with Brown Beauty Icing. It used a glorious 7-10 eggs! Still absolutely the best American icing recipe ever. No sickening powdered sugar sweetness. It tastes like chocolate truffles. And the light chiffon cake is the perfect counterpoint. My family had this for dessert for about eleven months straight. I'm not joking. It was heaven.

When I got married and began hosting my own dinner parties, I soon learned that while planning the party I would have giddy excitement and elaborate plans to make a seventeen step Double Chocolate Truffle Sacherorte with Blackberry Coulis Reduction, or some such, for dessert. But the gritty reality was that day of the party I didn't even have time or energy to make Rice Krispies. So Peg Bracken's Pots de Chocolat recipe from her Appendix to the I Hate Cooking cookbook became my never-fail-to-please standby. It's rich. It melts in your mouth. Its simple presentation always evokes oohs and ahhs. And it takes about five minutes to make. Tops. There is a god.

I now welcome all chocolate ramblings, recipes, and recomendations. I'm sure I will also be adding more... and more... and more to this topic.

If Only

Best. Baby Shower. Ever.

I was expecting this...

{Ribbon Gothic by Ataxia}Instead it felt like this!

{VE Day UK 1945}No Funny Hats. No Diaper Pin Games. No Cream Cheese Sandwich Loaf.

Just Fresh Flowers. Great Food. Lots of Passing the Baby Around and Happy Conversation.

It was everything a shower should be - pure celebration. Our genius hostesses booked a table at the wonderful Tillicum Place Cafe, ordered lovely food, then sat back and let the afternoon cheerfully take it's own course. Three and a half hours later we slowly and reluctantly pulled ourselves away.

I am so doing this next time I host a baby shower; I don't know why I never thought of it before.

Word

I've been trying to add a dynamic tag cloud generator to this blog - not a static one-time-shot, but one that would continually renew the image as new posts were added. I guess my html expertise of four days isn't enough to accomplish that yet. But it's been fun playing with all the different widgets and gadgets. The results remind me of Magnetic Poetry but more sophisticated. I'm thinking a lovely piece of art could be made by inputting a favorite poem or an old love letter. Or maybe an individualized gift for someone by entering words from their life history? Or sweet baby words to hang in a nursery. I can tell I'll definitely be playing with Wordle a lot more in the future; give it a try!

(poem image via the awesome Hank Conner}

There's No Accounting For Taste

M for Amazing and I were down in Centralia this weekend and these old doors caught my eye. I find the colors so appealing I can almost taste them.

And these two I took because I thought son M would think the orange lichen was sweet.. or sick.. or groovy in a far out happening way...

Because 25 Random Things is 25 Too Many

For the last three years I have been trying to get the nerve to bring a Despair.com calendar to work; unfortunately, the owners want to hang up real Motivational Posters, so I don't think they would appreciate my sense of humor. Luckily Despair.com hasn't reserved their take on things just for the work environment. They have enough sarcasm for the rest the world! And now that I'm a facebooker, I really enjoy this t-shirt!

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

I've discovered a new toy! I've been playing with it for about three hours straight. It's a web site called The Color Hunter. It's an interactive site that generates color palettes. You may either input a color code or you can upload an image and it will pull out the palette,. So, if you wanted to make your website the same colors as your favorite dress, you just upload a picture of your outfit and Presto! you have the color codes to make your dream happen. Although it was started for websites, now brides, interior decorators, and artists are finding it useful.

And Addictive.

Waterloo! Couldn't Escape If I Wanted To...

Now that plastic bottles are bad for us, I'm caught in the Inbetween - can't get myself to drink all those chemicals, but I haven't bought a replacement bottle. Which means I'm dehydrating a little more each day; if I don't do something quick by Friday I'll be a big raisin . So this weekend I buckled down and started researching bottles. I couldn't imagine myself carrying around a neon green Nalgine bottle, I wanted something "signature" and I discovered the perfect one! So sleek; so elegant; so mod............


.....so expensive! ( $75 )


Gulp. So instead I'm going to be getting one of these. It's nice but my heart knows I'm settling...







When I'm ready for a second one, I'm going to get at least one of these! They're awesome.
I don't know if I can choose just one.

But it's all for my health.
Really.

Through the Looking Glass

I'm not much of a jewelry girl, but a year ago I fell in love with a resin necklace I found in a local shop. It had an image embedded in it of a black bird sitting on a telephone wire. I'd never seen anything like it, the depth of the image fascinated me, and even though it was a small, simple piece it definitely had the presence of "Art". It reminded me of two of my favorite things - beach glass and photography - merged into one.

Of course, when I went back to buy it it was long gone.

But last night not only did I discover these at Bethtastic's Shop (Etsy), I also found a video tutorial by John Goldon via YouTube on how to make them myself! My mind is roiling with ideas, I can hardly tamp them down!

If you prefer brighter, more dynamic colors, then check this resin jewelry out, it may be more your style.