Heart Art

Last night I doodled this “Love You Always” after admiring d’blogala’s Art Journal Friday heart. (Cool site to visit, btw.)

I scanned my little sketch and then colored, burned, smudged, etcetera in Photoshop. Then added a frame in Flickr and tada! A bit of doodle art to start the day off. Nothing spectacular… could use a little more handwork...just a little art time this morning and a new doodle technique for me! Have a great day, bloggy friends!

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Back from the Beach!

Hello, hello!! We are just getting back from a *spectacular* week at Bald Head Island. It couldn’t have been more perfect… lots of time sitting on the beach, reading books, looking for shells, playing games, riding golf carts, and eating (gulp!) ice cream! Even playing in the waves which is unusual for me!! Altogether wonderful!!

I spent more time this year than any other looking for shells on the beach. I collected white shells, triangular shells, striped shells, shiny shells, twisty shells, “hole-y” shells, and just plain ol’ interesting shells. My favorite by far, though, was what I called “sea nymph wings.” There were tons of them…here’s just a few sets above. Obviously they are just broken bits of shells, but they looked like wings to me. Actually, I mostly like the broken bits of shells instead of the whole ones… Brokenness is not a bad thing.

The sunset from our backdoor on the first night of vacation.

Me and my shadow!

The view from our backdoor during the day!

And here’s the house we rented. No!!! Just kidding! We drove by this house quite a few times just to ohhh and ahhh. I don’t think I was coveting… I couldn’t even begin to IMAGINE living in such a house or owning it… but I definitely appreciated its beauty. The view was of the shoals and at night the moon was indescribably gorgeous! We called this the “King of the Island” house.

I loved this house, too. It’s a little hard to tell from this angle, but its built to look like a ship. This shot doesn’t do it justice. Trust me.

But of all the wonderful houses on the island, if I had to choose one to be my very own, it would be this one in the marina but still beachfront. Navy and cream. Classic! Lucky for me, it’s for sale!!! I think its only a little over $2 million… er…that would be dollars…. of the U.S. variety! (Ok, maybe I’m coveting a little over this one.)

Me, Matt, & Mary at the Marina on our last (sniff!) day. E was with us from Sunday to Wednesday. The Boy and The Girl joined us on Wednesday to Friday. Plus we were there the whole time with our good neighborhood buddies, the W’s.

And just for a bit of artsy-fun, here’s a shot of place cards I worked on at the beach for a friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner coming up this weekend. They are just like the ones I did for The Boy and The Girl except on yellow cardstock and with blue ink.

That’s all for today, bloggy friends! I would say I promise to do better with posting, but apparently I’m not to be trusted. Blessings~

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3rd of 3 Book Reviews

Two posts in one day! Haven't done that in a long time! Here's the 3rd book review I wanted to get done this weekend:

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood, Paperback: 240 pages, Publisher: Anchor (March 16, 1998), 

ISBN-10: 0385491115

Source: snagged it off a friend's bookshelf (Yes, CD, I'll bring this one back!)
Rating: 3 of 5 STARS

Atwood is one of my top five favorite authors. I love her stories and the way she strings words together into something intricate and beautiful yet still simple. A friend had this collection of short stories sitting on her bookshelf just begging for me to borrow. I'm working on a short story or two myself and I had the idea of reading these and maybe dissecting them a bit to see  how a master does it.

These stories didn't particularly resonate with me, though. I didn't find myself marking one passage of great writing like I usually do for Atwood. (See my review of Alias Grace and the "Good Words" I collected there.) It wasn't hard reading or boring or anything like that. These stories just didn't touch my soul like I've come to expect from Atwood. Still, I plan to pick my favorite and pull it apart for my writing edification.

So, if you're an Atwood fan, definitely read since being a fan myself, I'd like to read everything by her. But if not, and looking for a good set of short stories, I'd recommend her collection Moral Disorder and Other Stories instead. I read that pre-blogging days so don't have a review for you, but it is super-excellent!

Here are a couple more of her books I've reviewed on this blog:

 The Blind Assassin

Cat's Eye

AND - as a help to me, here's a running list of books I've read this year but have yet to review! (@#%$^!!)

•Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (3 of 5 STARS)

•In the Time of the Butterflies (5 of 5 STARS)

•Still Alice (4 of 5 STARS)

•Let the Lady Speak (5 of 5 STARS)

•Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (4 of 5 STARS)

•Safe from the Sea (4 of 5 STARS)

•A Broom of One's Own (5 of 5 STARS)

PS. The cover above isn't what the cover of the book I read looked like, but I really liked this one instead! Which brings me to a cool site to share with you of an artist in St. Louis, Matt Roeser, who makes alternate covers for popular books. Hop over. I like his work. Here's his take on the cover of The Disappearing Spoon I reviewed earlier today! I also really liked his version of  Lord of the Flies.

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2nd of 3 - Book Reviews

Here's number 2 of the 3 book reviews I'd like to get done this weekend:

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean, Narrated by Sean Runnette, Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (August 24, 2010), ISBN-10: 9781400169528

Source: Where I get all my audio books - our wonderful local public library!

Rating: 4 of 5 STARS

This is simply a very, very interesting book. But here this is coming from a person who truly remembers the instant she fell in love with atoms in sophomore chemistry class and who went on to get a degree in chemical engineering. So I could be biased and the "normal" person (a group I sometimes include myself but not often) might find it dull and hard to follow. It's hard for me to tell. Also, since I listened to this book instead of reading it, I tended to get lost in all the techno-language of orbitals and quantum mechanics and radioactive decay and spent a good deal of time backing up to relisten to sections. Or either just admitting I wasn't following along and zone out until something intriguing (and less difficult to understand) caught my attention. Hence the 4 instead of 5 rating. But that could just be a fault of my personal brain and not the reading public in general.

The Disappearing Spoon is chock-full of fascinating stories about the scientists involved in constructing the periodic table. I've gotten tons of ideas for tangential short stories I hope I eventually follow through with and put pen to paper. Stories of Robert Oppenheimer, Tycho Brahe, and Louis Pasteur to just name a few.

Minus a few sluggish areas, this book is well worth the listen! And actually, I'm not sure I would have made it through the book in print. Narrator Sean Runnette does a fabulous job. His voice is very expressive without being annoying and carried me along from disc to disc whereas if I were reading The Spoon it very easily could have been one of those books that I might have been tempted to put down for a while and never gotten back around to.

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1st of 3 - Book Reviews

I'm so very behind on book reviews! I'm going to try to do a little catch-up work this morning, so here's the first:

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer; Hardcover: 320 pages; Publisher: Penguin Press HC, (March 3, 2011); ISBN-10: 159420229X

Source: Random from Public Library
Rating: 5 of 5 STARS

I really, really liked this book. As a 40-something (ahem) woman, my memory seems to be beginning to let loose and fail. Yes, I know going into a room then forgetting what you were going to do once there is relatively normal... but I'm doing some other weird things such as forgetting I've done things like taking a can of food out of the pantry to cook and then going back to the pantry to look for it five minutes later. (And getting mad because who in the world would have eaten my one can of green beans??) So, when I saw this book at my local public library, I couldn't resist.

Journalist Joshua Foer takes the reader on a journey to look at not only how to improve one's memory but also tells the tale of the history and science of memory. He takes us on a tour of memory anomalies like S, a young Russian journalist who remembered (literally) everything and EP, a man with the most extreme case of amnesia ever documented - his memory only extended back to his most recent thought. A really interesting aspect of the book is Foer's training for the U.S. Memory Championship during the year he performed research for the book. He actually won and shares his techniques for training. Especially interesting (and useful) is the hundreds of years old "memory palace" technique. I've tried it and, yep - it really works!

As an aside - if you're interested at all in classical education (which I am since I've taught at a classical school and have had two children attend) this should be on your reading list. Great thoughts on why it is still important for children to do memory work.

So, I highly recommend this one bloggy friends! It's one after reading I wished I owned to add to my personal library. And here's a great video of Foer being interviewed with RSA.

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