Me on Monday (or Tuesday)

Spent a long weekend in Phoenix, Arizona watching my boy play soccer in the national club championship tournament.

The boys won the national championship!

And Henry was named to the All Tournament Team for his outstanding offensive play!

Who could ask for anything more?

Well, apparently I could. Because I also got to sneak in a dinner date with one of my favorite blog friends, Deb of Paper Turtle. Overall, an outstanding weekend!
How was yours?

Visiting in an Enchanted Garden

About a half hour from my home is a beautiful estate called Filoli. It is surrounded by gorgeous gardens.

Yesterday I had the great good fortune to meet my friend Alison of Life in the Slow Lane who was visiting from Spain. We have met twice before (once in Spain and once here in California), and we always enjoy our time together.

We wandered through the gardens, sharing laughter and stories , before having lunch at the cafe. I learned that one of Alison's favorite flower is this one:

It's an aquilegia, commonly known as columbine or granny's bonnet. Besides visiting with Alison, it was also wonderful to spend time with my camera. I have many more photographs to share over the next few weeks. But, today, I just wanted to say "Thanks Alison for coming to visit and giving me a great reason to go visit Filoli!"

Good Times with a Blog Friend

 

Yesterday I had the great good fortune to get together with Jacky (of the Scrappy Jacky blog) and her family. We had met once before in London. This time, we met in San Francisco and did a terrific tour of the murals in the Mexican Mission District. We stopped in a playground for a photo opportunity. We posed on a feathered serpent named Quetzal Coatl.

 

Among the beautiful details of the mosaic sculpture included a dedication.

  

 

It reads "The Gifts of Quetzal Coatl." It seemed appropriate because the whole day truly felt like a gift! 

Blog Dialog with Deb: Affirmations

Deb of Paper Turtle also asked an interesting question - what affirmations, if any, do you post for yourself? For me, I collect affirmations from Facebook and keep them on my phone in the photos section. Here are a few of my favorites:

What about you? Do you have any affirmations? Where do you display them?

Five Things

I've been doing some catching up on blogs and thinking about my creative plans for this year, and here are five things that have caught my eye:

1. A series on photo organization on the Simple as That blog. Check it out here.

2. An art journal workshop with a prompt a week, sponsored by Journal 52.
3. A list of prompts for sketching. I found them on Danny Gregory's blog, but he describes them this way:
The EveryDay Matters Challenges were created by a great artist, Karen Winters who continues to post new ones on a regular basis. Thanks, Karen!

4. I became totally obsessed with the podcast, Serial. And it's led me to download many other podcasts. They've taken me away from reading, but at least I can do other things while listening to podcasts. Over at DPS, I found this terrific list of photography podcasts that I can't wait to check out. 

5. The "little moments" app by Fat Mum Slim and her photo a day challenge (I participate on instagram at #fmsphotoaday). I love that she's out of Australia; her happy, sunny color scheme; her quirky style; and the community of people who participate (I was happy/surprised to find many long time blog friend participating). Here's a link to where Chantelle announces its launch.

2014 Blog Highlights,Struggles and Lessons Learned

Every year, I like going back through my blog to find the things that really worked for me. It helps me figure out what to do more of. This year, I also noticed several things with which I struggled and this has given me some clues about what I to change. Here, in no particular order, are my 2014 blog highlights, struggles and lessons learned.
Highlights:
1. Frugal Still Life Photography Class. Cheryl McCain offered this class (see my review here), and it opened a whole new world of photography for me. Looking back over my photographs for the year, I realized how much I like the photographs I took for this class, such as the one up top. In fact, I liked it so much that I just signed up for Kim Klassen's still life class called Be Still -52.

2.  Organizing my craft room, re-doing the bathrooms and purging the house like crazy (an outgrowth of my 2014 OLW and Do What You Love's New Year's Revolution). My one little word for 2014 was illuminate, which means to lighten and clarify. I used that as the impetus to down load the free class "New Year's Revolution." The worksheets helped me realize how much I wanted to have a clean, well-decorated, presentable house; one where I would be happy to entertain. And I accomplished about 90% of that goal this year.

3. Summer of Color Houses - Sponsored by Kristin of Twinkle, Twinkle. Every summer, for six weeks, she posts a color palette a week and invites people to create something in that color palette. This year, I chose little houses and loved the project! Confession time: I only did five of them, but I plan to finish the 6th one soon!

4. The Art of Practising Gratitude Tag Booklet. Bernice hosted this wonderful, free month-long meditation on gratitude which also featured lots of techniques. I chose to make tags and really enjoyed the experience.

5. Zoom In < Zoom  Out. Helena hosted this wonderful weekly meme, and I participated most weeks. You can see all my zizo's at this link. It was a good reminder to see the world through a camera lens.

6. Good Fences Link-Up hosted by the Run*A*Round Ranch Report and One Photo, Twenty Words hosted by Abi of Creating Paper Dreams. I enjoyed these photography memes very much, even if I didn't participate every week. You can see all my fence posts here.
Challenges:
1. Facebook ate my photos. In an attempt to short-cut the tedium of uploading photos to my blog, I often upload photos to Facebook first and then copy and paste the URL to my blog (especially if I'm using iphone photos). Unfortunately, these links don't last. So, when I go back to look at blog posts with those photos, all I see is a broken link. Argggh!!! So frustrating!

2.  Studying Under the Masters Class - I signed up for this class last January, and I've worked through a few of the exercises. The class is well constructed and can help develop fine art skills in drawing and painting. The challenging part is that these exercises (like the Georgia O'Keeffe shell above) were difficult and not that fun for me. I did enjoy creating the Matisse inspired still life though. I think that I have learned that representational drawing and fine art painting don't really excite me. I like photography and mixed media art better. It's a good lesson to have learned and will help guide my art work in 2015.

3. The Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. I love hosting this event. I love coming up with the list and seeing the results. I love taking the photographs .  .  .  but, it is a bit exhausting. I think the lag in my blogging over the last half of the year is directly related to the rigors of hosting the hunt. I still plan to host the hunt next summer, but I need to find a way to do it that works better for me. All suggestions welcomed.

Returning to Blogging

Well, that was a long break . . . 
I didn't have a plan to step away from blogging, but I did.
Life happened, work happened, and I just didn't have the time to devote to writing posts.
But now I'm back.
And I'm looking forward to visiting your blogs and seeing what you've been up to.
Thanks to those of you who sent me emails to make sure I was still alive . . .
as you can see from the above, I am. And so is the rest of the family. The photo is from our annual trip to the Rancho Siempre Verde Christmas tree farm. 
I'll update you on what we've been up to over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season!

Blogs v. Facebook: Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt Update and Questions

#3 Birds on a Wire

For the first time this year, there is a facebook page for the Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. I toyed with the idea last year but shied away from it because I have traditionally not liked classes where there are multiple places to post work, as things get too diffuse for me. Also, I surveyed people and found that there were many people who don't like or don't use facebook. So I shelved the idea. I liked having the Hunt be mainly a blog-based event, and those without blog managed with flicker or other photo-hosting sites.

Birds on a wire, part 2 (filtered instagram)

Oddly enough, I did not have the same hesitation about creating an instagram hashtag. Last year, it was #summertimescavengerhunt (and it's fun to look at the photos there). Instagram just seems like its own little world; different somehow than blogs or facebook. The instram hastag for this year is #rindas2014photohunt.

This year, Kathryn took the initiative to set up a facebook page, and it's been GREAT!  None of my original fears were realized, and I don't feel like I have to monitor or manage it.  And there have been some really wonderful finds showing up on facebook that are not showing up in blog land.  Here are a few of them:

Eileen Taylor's Bakery (#9)

Paz Padrid's Horns

Catherine Channing-Hutt's sign in language other than English

Fiona Patch's Public Garden

Lindsay Coleman's prom photobomb

Julie Jeavons and her undersized gnome.

That's not to say that there aren't wonderful blog posts popping up all the time, too. In particular, Lady Ella at The Flowers of Progress has been posting great finds, like these gnomes (which I think will now be on BIG SALE - sorry England) and colorful horn:

And Alison of Life in the Slow Lane has already posted 11 finds, including this very meaningful tattoo:

And, finally, there are others, like Joy Shallcross who are posting on both facebook and her blog, Daisy Row.

Summer Solstice Sunrise

So, I guess the lesson learned is that there's room for all kinds of participation in the 2014 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. I'm glad that facebook has made room for folks who don't have blogs to participate, and I am glad that people are blogging about their finds. And I enjoy seeing photos pop up on instagram as well (although I don't know how to easily put those into a blog post - technical help anyone?).  

This post put me in mind of some of Seth Apter's musings on the extent to which facebook and instagram displaced blogs for a while and whether blogs are making a comeback. What do you think? Blogs? Facebook? Both? And what about instagram? Is there room in your life for all three? Has the presence of more than one platform hurt or improved your Hunt experience? Or has it not made any difference at all? Feedback welcomed!