Monthly Archives: January 2016

That’s Just Cheating! Flower of the Day, Jan 27, 2016

That’s Just Cheating!


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Yes, sure.  I’ve done a lot of playing around with this image but I don’t consider that cheating, do you?  So what could it be that I’ve done that is slightly unethical?

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If it isn’t perfectly obvious from this unedited original shot,

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then perhaps it will be in this closeup.  Honest, folks, I didn’t notice when I took the original shot.  I was working fast and just going up and down the street taking shots of flowers.  It wasn’t until I got into the eidting phase that I notice what was wrong with this particular bunch of flowers!!! Cee’s said it before. I need to slow down. Perhaps after the art walk!

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/26/flower-of-the-day-january-27-2016/

Pushing and Shoving: Favorite Quotation

Pushing and Shoving

“If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

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I’m trying to set up for the art walk this weekend, but it is tricky when you are away from home without the usual display materials. I did a photo shoot this morning, but all of the photos mysteriously disappeared after I edited them. Hmmm. This is a quick shot of a display of retablos set up in the bedroom. I need to avail myself of all available surfaces!

I envy people who can throw things together with great flair, but I’m not one of them.  I need to experiment, nudge things around, walk away and come back and have another look, leave the room and walk back in to surprise myself and see if I really like it, seeing it as a stranger of sorts.

When my friend Patty had me come help her arrange things in her new house after her old house blew away in a tornado, she said, “I’m going to have to leave the room while you finish. It drives me crazy watching you fuss!” Ha!!!  I always think of this every time I am pushing things this way and that.

I blame this on my mother.  From the time I was little, we would wait until my dad went to bed and then rearrange the living room furniture.  We’d sit with our backs against big heavy pieces like the piano and push with our legs and backs against the heavy beast to budge it without risking popping a muscle or tendon.  Then we’d sit and survey our work, move one thing or another.  I think my mom in this way made me a collage artist before I even knew the meaning of the word.  It was performance art where we could actually walk around in the assemblage and tug it around.

When I work in the art studio, I usually work on 12 to 20 pieces at a time.  I arrange them, then come back the next day and take out one thing, add another.  Pieces can take a week to come out right or a year–or, after a year I sometimes take them all apart and start over.  I don’t know why a piece finally feels right.  I just know when it does.

Yes, when it comes to art, decorating or setting a table–I think “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

The same goes for cooking!  If it doesn’t taste right, I just start adding things until it tastes right.  I like lots of flavor in a dish.  Subtle just doesn’t do it for me in either decorating or cooking.

The Prompt:  Do you have a favorite quote?  Tell us what significance it has for you.

Color Your World Chestnut

Chestnut

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Art by Mieke Herman, photo by Judy

Mieke burned this image into wood making use of a magnifying glass and the sun!  It helps that she lives in Arizona part of the year.  Can you imagine the control this would take?  No mistakes allowed.  She later added paint as well.

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Version 2http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/26/color-your-world-chestnut/#like-8825

Pretty in Pink: Fun Foto Challenge Jan 26, 2016

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Pretty in Pink

Found this little charmer along the street in La Manzanilla yesterday.
Just right for Cee’s challenge.

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/26/cees-fun-foto-challenge-pink-or-magenta-flowers/

Blog-out

 

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Blog-out

Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!

He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.

Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.

Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.

Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.

A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.

History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.

 

The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/

Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it.  See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right?  WordPress doesn’t let you do that.  Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them.  So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution.  As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised.  What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius!  His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!!  Tell me that isn’t genius.

Keep Your Junk in the Drawer

Once again, Red has rummaged through her junk drawer, found the right nail and hit it squarely on the head! New blogger or old, don’t miss reading this reblog of her advice to writers.

Red's Wrap

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Even gritty blogs need to have some class.

I know this because I have a fairly gritty blog where I’ve said some hard, rough things about my life and life around me. And occasionally, I’ve taken junk out of the drawer that should have stayed put, said things that didn’t need to be said, gone over the top.

So you might think I’m a fine one to be lecturing other people.

But, in this, my sixth year of blogging, it’s the advice to keep your junk in the drawer that rises to the top. Here’s why:

  1. There isn’t an endless supply of junk in the drawer. Even the biggest, deepest junk drawer has a finite capacity unless, of course, you are replenishing the drawer with new junk. When the drawer is empty or when you get to the little scraps of junk that aren’t all that interesting, your blogging life…

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Cerulean––Color Your World , Jan 25, 2016

Cerulean

IMG_2008You can’t get more cerulean than this sky, albeit obscured a bit by feathery clouds. I snapped this picture today in La Manzanilla, Mexico, where I am staying for two months. I was out looking for flowers to snap for Cee’s Flower a Day Challenge and got this bonus shot of the sky.  Then I decided while I was at it, I should get some pictures for Thursday Doors, so I wandered up three two blocks and back on the other side of the street, snapping pictures of front doors.  I love what blogging gives me license to do!

http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/25/color-your-world-cerulean/

Dusty Petals: Flower of the Day, Jan. 25, 2016

                                                               Dusty Petals

There are not an excessive number of flowers in La Manzanilla, but I found these little blooms down the street in a strip of soil near the curb, well-dusted by traffic on the sandy pavers.  If anyone knows what they are, please let me know.

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For more flowers, see: http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/25/flower-of-the-day-january-25-2016-parrot-tulip/