Pressed in a book

My thumbs are not yet green, but that hasn't stopped me from feeling the need to surround myself with flora in some form . Before leaving for CT (nearly 5 years ago) my mother gave to me a pile of old telephone books and a calendar containing a collection of pressed flowers. She saved each flower from her garden delicately not knowing what she would do with them, and I took over her collection not sure of what I was going to do with them either.
After our fourth and final move I revisited this box containing the books of flowers. I thought of the sunprint paper I had on hand and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool to combine the sunprints of these flowers, with block prints I create of the same images?"

So here are the results (in the reverse order of when they were created):


I don't know how many of the flowers I will create in this series. But I do know I have dozens of pressed flowers to choose from, and making cyanotypes is just plain fun.

The story is in the soil, keep your ear to the ground

Aaron and I are eager for spring. In fact, Aaron has been counting down the days until the Daylight Savings change (this Sunday in fact) since the first day of winter. Last week when the snow had finally melted Aaron and I decided to tackle the first step towards our spring/summer/early fall project. A vegetable garden!

I daydream about stepping out the back door with an empty bowl on my hip and the warm sun on my back. "Oh this pepper is just right." *picks and places into bowl for dinner* "Mmmm cherry tomato don't mind if I do".*pops into mouth*

But the journey to this dream sequence is going to first take some back breaking labor. It should be noted we are quite the anomaly in our neighborhood. While the rest of suburbia wields large machines to perform the tasks of mowing, raking, and shoveling. We do all these by hand. Sure it is green, but it is also the most economical option. Step one of garden preparation: Turn the soil.

Aaron did the grunt work of turning the soil with an extra spade given to us by my parents. I followed along with the Garden Claw. Which leads me to what we discovered underneath the grass.

Things I was hoping to find in the soil:

Cool old bottles

Arrowheads

Money

Dinosaur bones

Things that actually were in the soil:

Rocks

Roots

ROCKS

Earthworms (which is a good thing right? yay!)

R O C K S

Those tree roots (to a tree that must be no longer, as we also found an entire buried tree stump) were so difficult to remove a saw was needed to get rid of some of them. And those rocks. Yikes. One was in fact so large that Aaron could neither dig it out or remove it. So instead he pounded it down into the earth as much as he could. I am guessing that is where we will put those plants that do most their growing above the soil?

I am hoping the gardening gene is genetic. As both Aaron parents and my parents have had years of being successful gardeners. With that being said, I do expect this foray to be a challenge. But I think we are both up to it. And I hope you enjoy following us along on our adventure.

Means so much more when I see

Silver & gold.



Living vicariously through the wreath on our house (because there is no Christmas tree inside), I decorated it today with some silver ornaments.
I also cut off a sprig from the wreath and strung it together with a few of the little baubles, thus making my own little presence of the holidays inside. I placed this over by the window in the kitchen, above the sink.
So, while I am toiling away trying to get the gook off the Griddler grills, I can gaze off to my left and daydream about next week on the Cape.

Oh, and the gold. I printed up some of my Gocco clocks in said color. I think I'll be sending these off to LPP...

Snow is set to make it's first arrival tomorrow. Looks like it is time to dust off the snowshoes...

Long way from, long time since

So its been awhile.

I'm just going to go ahead and zip to the events of this past weekend. In an Epic fail move, I did not take any pictures this weekend. But to make up for that I am going to insert enough hyperlinks & You Tube videos to make your head spin.

Saturday morning: Much good times were had with our good friends the Masons. The end of the afternoon was spent playing a little wonderful game called, Rock Band. Here I discovered that there are certain songs that I should never sing again. For instance, any songs by Journey. I'm just going to send out a public apology to any cars driving by while I was singing, because I am pretty sure I cracked the windshield on each one.

(This clip is the first thing I think of now when I hear Journey, and I giggle every time I see, or think about it. We saw this movie recently too. Kinda lame...ok VERY lame. I find Brendan Fraser is great for the guilty pleasure movie. )



The one song I did excel at (98% on medium, blah blah I sound like a dork...) was this song below. Once I finished Aaron turned to me with a look of surprise, and later he said he thought I sounded better than the original. Oh how sweet. I know what you are thinking, I married a keeper ;)
To put things into perspective, when I am usually singing to myself Aaron can be heard from rooms away yelling to me, "Find a key!!".
Aaron of course was completely charming both on the vocals (his ability to add lib and ham it up are quite admirable) and on the drums. We are still on the fence about getting the game for ourselves. Let's see attic insulation or...




Saturday night: Just when we thought the day could not get any better, my brother arranged a get together at Wagamama, in celebration of the next day's events (the Bazaar Bizarre). My best girlfriends attended and we stuffed ourselves to the gills with Moyashi Soba. Afterwards we walked around through the city streets. I think nighttime during the holidays is the best time to wander around Boston, or any city for that matter. Sometimes I wish we lived somewhere other than suburbian CT. Ok, more than sometimes...

Sunday: Bazaar Bizarre time! This year was even better than the last. Thank you to all who came out for this!! You are my sunshine.
Again I don't have any photos. But here are a couple I found on flickr:

Click here for a BEFORE shot, and look for Aaron and I *hint bottom right*

Click here for an DURING shot, and notice the intense amount of people. Oh Bazaar Bizarre, I love you!

I'll leave you with a couple of photos of my latest works. Which if you have been over at my flickr should be familiar to you.

Love plus one

Another happy weekend visiting family on the Cape. Together we celebrated my mother's birthday in a particularly special way.

Meet Charlie!

Full name: Charlie Star. (side note: his name immediately made me think, "That it is the perfect name for a 1930's newspaper reporter.")
Age: 6 weeks
Size: Smaller than a breadbox. In fact, smaller than my lunch.
Location: Cape Cod. Indoors & outdoors.
Hobbies: Pouncing, purring, meowing.
Interests: Sitting in little baskets. Curling up next to his new owners. Needlefelting.
Favorite book: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".
Career aspiration: Mice catcher extraordinaire.

Mr. Sandman

Setting: bedroom. The room is dark& quiet. Aaron is showing the first sign he is falling asleep (body twitching). Kate's mind is reeling as usual.

K: Aaron... I have an idea... about that Saturday...when Ruth comes...we could...
A: What are you trying to say?
A: Just say it!
K: ...we could go to that paint your own pottery place, and use the gift certificate we have!
A: replies in a mocking tone
"I have something to say...but I am going to take a long time to say it...wait here it comes...it's a really great idea... you're gonna love it..."

A: Sounds good.

*end scene*

Come on-a my house, my house a come on

What's this? You have clicked upon my site to discover an actual new post! Why such a special occasion should be marked with some grand news. And news you shall have.
*throws confetti into the air*

House news
Being that we in fact, do have a house of our own! I have been hesitant to talk about this topic, and for the most part I am going to remain mum on this. The reason being that I am a believer in, "If you don't have anything nice to say..."
Let's focus on the good things shall we? We are happy to be homeowners. Since arriving in Connecticut we have been diligently saving every penny in anticipation that we could someday have a house of our own. And now we do. It is very surreal and I'll say it, I am proud of us. Owning our own home, years before reaching the age of 30, for some reason boggles my mind. The home search and purchasing was insanely difficult. But, we stood together as a team and made it out of that whole crazy mess together. Most things while horribly dramatic when they occurred, have already reached the stage of hilarity and have made for some interesting stories. Like when our brand new refrigerator never worked, thus destroying all our food...

Running news
Each weekend you will find fuel belts strewn about the house and Aaron passed out from exhaustion on our new lawn. This can only mean one thing, we have reached the peak in our training for the Chicago Marathon. My thoughts waver from being completely relaxed and ready to take on the distance, to "another one already?!?"
We are just shy of one month away. Which means Aaron and I have two more monster long runs to tackle, before the ever so wonderful "taper" begins.

Art news
I wish I had some completed projects to show you, but unfortunately with the move and all the house drama, things had been placed aside for a bit. But my studio is just about in working condition, and just in time. As I have just learned that I have been accepted to participate in Boston's Bazaar Bizarre again this year!
Thinking about how much printing I need to do to beef up my inventory is very overwhelming so let's move on to the last bit of news...

Spider news
Yup, you read that right. It seems that we are not the only ones thriving in our new wonderful neighborhood. A daily battle occurs between myself and these horrible little creatures. Scampering across the floor as I unpack, dangling from the shower curtain as I replace the liner I just washed.
The pictures below are ones (of many) that I discovered living outside our house.
Spider outside = snap a photo as I appreciate what incredible creatures they are.
Spider inside = no time for a photo, now where is my flip flop? Die! Die!

I must warn if you click on these photos, a severe case of the "heebie jeebies" could result.