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Jul

11

Days of Summer #7

I about cried when I saw the fog roll back in this week- with relief. Back to mornings in the garden without fainting dead away from heat exhaustion by 9:00 a.m. I am so not meant for hot weather. So, that’s where I’ve been the last few mornings reveling in the cool sweet weather, weeding, pruning, cleaning out the chicken coop, etc, etc, etc. Sigh. It’s been lovely. Along the way I harvested a whole mess of herbs to dry; Parsley, Basil and Oregano all made their way into the food dehydrator. I Picked some flowers for the inside of the house too. I usually have a bucket handy while I prune, as there is almost always something interesting I come across for an arrangement. And then, there was another humming bird photo shoot. Cannot.Help.Myself. I have now named one and and have concerns about a suspicious growth on his neck. He and I will be chatting more about this later. Today didn’t feel right-we’d had such a nice morning together.

Today the quilting dynamos (Jennifer and I, I feel like a”duh” here is warranted, but I shall refrain) spent a fantastic afternoon on the back patio conceptualizing and planning out a quilt for her mother in law. Lots of new ground here, seriously, waaaaay new territory. Not exactly sure what the next steps are, but today included large drawings on the back of wrapping paper, some very suspect pattern making, and color coding-paint by number style. We may not know hwat we’re doing, but we sure do look official. We’ll see how this all goes…more to come on that later. We meet again next week to wrestle with the next steps. I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of youtubing and googling in between now and then.

Aug

01

Vacation Photos- with a twist…

photography / summer / travel Posted by Laura Aspinall / 1 comments

Sticking with the summer theme, lets talk vacation. And what is something almost all of us do on vacation? Take pictures. In the age of digital photography, this translates to taking LOTS of pictures. “capturing the moment” if you are not careful can lead to missing the moment, or maybe if you are lucky, capturing the moment you are missing. Its a delicate balance between being present for the experience that is right in front of you and documenting the moment for the future. I think at the end of the day, what most of us want is to look back at our photos and remember the feeling that we had being in that place.

The staff here at Makeroom (me) would like to help you navigate the tight rope between these worlds with some advice: pick a few subjects to consistently photograph across destinations. Makeroom would love to take credit for this brilliant idea (that will be explained shortly), but alas, credit must go where credit is due. My dear friend Dena Bliss introduced this to me after her trip to Vietnam. Dena, as the imminently organized and artistic person that she is, hosted a slide show of her trip. During the slide show she causally mentioned that no matter where she went in the world there were a few things she always took pictures of: laundry, brooms, and doorways. It was like a fourth of July firework display went off in my brain. What brilliance!!!! What simplicity!! What an easy way to capture the essence or feeling of a vacation or place. Sure, still take pictures of the sites, the family you visit, the friends you make, but maybe you also pick a few more personal items or topics to photograph along the way as well.

This past spring I took a lovely trip to England and Paris. I resolved before I left to try out Dena’s concept. For whatever reasons, the following subject matters made themselves known to me: graffiti, signage/advertisements, dogs, and shoes. Looking for these things to photograph was a fun and interesting kind of travel version of”Where’s Waldo”, it also gave me a lens so to speak to look at the places I visited through. As I put this blog post together, I looked at a lot of photos from my trip. Many being traditional touristy photos, or people I visited. And while these are great and bring back memories, I have to say, that the thematic photos I took evoke the most feeling of the places I visited. For your viewing pleasure I have put together some of my favorite photos I brought home with me. I hope you enjoy them and that on your next trip, be it a day trip to a museum, or a month long stay in the Swiss Alps, you make a little room for yourself to capture the moment to savor long after the luggage has been put away and the credit card has been paid off.