become someone else

 

"When one reads books, he/she starts living it and identifies (or not) with main hero. These print ads for the Mint Vinetu bookstore, which sells lots of classics, focuses on the idea of becoming someone else. And provokes people to try on different personas."

Yay for reading! Yay for creative ad campaigns! Yay for books!

[ad campaign by Love, seen first on Black*Eiffel]

another photo obsession

about a month ago, I discovered the Instagram app for my phone. Things will never be the same.

polaroids for music

Mt Desolation - Departure from BABANUKI films on Vimeo.

Not sure about the song, but love the use of polaroids for the videos. Also really cool is that the artists recorded themselves on webcams or personal video cameras and were brought together through the polaroid concept of the video. Great idea!

(via Black Eiffel)

digesting saturday

this is an instagram of some tangible things I accumulated on Saturday.

The intangible things are innumerable.
Saturday, April 2, 2011, I attended a 1-day conference called "Focus on Children's Literature." I discovered it just a few days before its occurrence. Thanks to a helpful little Knoxville email list I happen to be on, I was scouring the emails' many contents late one evening last week and happened to see this event in small little letters. My heart's beat quickened. I raced into our studio bearing the iPad and held its screen directly in front of my dear man's face. With pleading eyes, I asked that I be able to go at whatever cost to our wallet and our weekend plans. My darling man vehemently agreed and we proceeded to get me registered as quickly as our finger typing skills allowed.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, skipping much anticipation and dreams about what the day would hold, I abnormally awoke early, agonized over my attire and got myself to the school that was hosting it about 12 minutes early. My plan had been to get there a bit early, be able to scope the place out, settle my nerves and calmly drink my coffee until registration began. Ah, the joke was on me. My fellow attendees, I did not realize, were about 200 librarians and teachers, all eagerly anticipating Knoxville's first children's lit conference as well. And apparently all of them are used to getting up early and being at a school building. Who knew! Feeling a little behind already, I got myself into the building, successfully found my tiny packet of helpful info and unhappily attached the sticky nametag to myself. That's when I spotted the book sale table being set up. And so did every other eager beaver in the room.

Thankfully, I kept my wits about me and didn't rush to the table. I would not have survived such a daring move. Instead I maintained a safe distance and became a pro at peeking through tiny openings between varying heights, bent elbows and wide hips. In my attempts to keep this post less than a youth novel length, let's just say I visited that book sale table 4 times throughout the day and came home with that lovely stack of books in the top right corner of above instagram. Contents are:
Pretty Penny Sets Up Shop (which I first discovered here)
All Kinds of Families! (a favorite French illustrator)
Seasons
Being a Pig is Nice (author of The Jesus Storybook Bible)
Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit (first discovered here)
Applesauce Season (by Caldecott illustrator and includes a recipe!)
Busing Brewster (by one of the main speakers)

The conference itself was fabulous. Jack Gantos, author of many books including the Rotten Ralph series, was the first main speaker. He's a brilliantly hilarious man with witty stories and many surprising thoughts. He gave a great talk about what makes picture books work and he illustrated his points with about 20 famous books like Where the Wild Things Are and Ferdinand the Bull. I captured so many inspiring quotes from him and can't wait to read more of his books. "Read more books and get smarter."

Next up was a screening of the new documentary Library of the Early Mind which I actually posted about in anticipation here last June. Co-producer Steven Withrow was there to talk about it and he was amazingly insightful and had a passion for children's literature that was extremely contagious.

Skipping details about lunch, we went back into a panel discussion about the film and children's literature with Jack Gantos, Steven Withrow, and the last speaker, Richard Michelson. They covered many thoughts and also ruminated on the well-known NY Times article about the demise of the picture book. Upon mention of said article, I'm pretty sure I felt the entire room suck in their breath. My feelings on this topic are another post including a very large soapbox.

Finally, the event was closed with another great talk by author Richard Michelson about his childhood, ventures with his art galleries and career in authoring picture books.

After the event, there were author signings, more book buyings and a near purchase of an awesome poster by Mo Willems from R. Michelson's gallery, but some sneaky librarian woman hooked it first.

I have many more thoughts about this awesome conference, but those are for myself, one-on-one conversations and a much bigger story. Here lies my documentation of the event for myself and anyone else who may be interested. I proceed to again and again thank my sweet husband for allowing me to spend the entire day dreaming, thinking and spending money on my beloved passion of children's books. I also wish to thank the CCYAL for putting on this event and hope to keep posted of more things they offer.

Until further posts on the subject, I've begun to again count my pennies and save up for the annual Children's Festival of Reading! Hoorah!!

for my own inspiration

Thank you for your brilliance Tomi.
[via his blog]

happy St. Patrick's Day

Love this cake. I want a piece. But of course I don't have time to make this today and more importantly right now, I don't do food coloring, at all. But it is beautiful nonetheless. I love it.

Here's the recipe. Discovered thanks to Twig & Thistle.

anatomy of a cupcake

(via Things)

let's sing it this way

Happy Tuesday for those who have adjusted correctly to Daylight Savings spring forward. Rosie and I have not.

This made me laugh, aloud actually.

(via Society6, seen at Design Crush)

how could I not share this?

We No Speak Americano ft. Cleary & Harding

Things like this just make me smile. And slightly flabbergasted. And somewhat heighten my feelings of incompetence and uncreativity.

chaos

Well, our world has spun out of control. Most days I'm barely hanging on but Mark and I keep reminding each other to just breathe through and thank God for each day. Don't freak. Nothing bad is happening, just an insane amount of busy. Too many balls in the air and each time I drop one, the world just shrugs and says, "that's fine. here's 3 more." Despite all this, I decided to break the silence with a random picture post. Here's a couple shots from the past few weeks and some news on what's going on.

Here is one of my new favorite dresses.

 I've decided to mock our culture and it's lack of dresses for everyday wear and I'm wearing more dresses. I love dresses. And thanks to ModCloth, one of my favorite online stores, my stock of dresses has increased without killing the bank account. This day I wore this dress to work from home and then Mark and I drove to Maryville for a lunchtime showing of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical which was fantastic, made me actually cry and also made Mark and I giggle that we were the only ones in attendance without a child as an excuse. And yes, this dress has acorns all over it.

Next picture, Mark and I all gussied up and ready to attend the Knoxville 2011 Addy Awards.

(thanks Adam for the iPhone pic with fancy photo filter!)

If you are wondering what is in the background, we are at our church where Mark was recording for hours upon end and I joined for a couple hours to help with a particularly impressive "stomp-clap" group recording. So that pile is a drum kit covered with blankets to help separate sound, of course. More info about this to come, hopefully, but our church music team is recording an album right now. We've been practicing for about 2 months and started recording sessions. Mark is playing second guitar and I'm singing back-up vocals for many songs and lead on one. It's exciting and something we've never done before. The album is set to come out Easter week (appropriately so as it is an Easter album.) Just in case you are wondering, our group has a great folk element, a little Indelible Grace/RUF edge, and features great musicians on banjo, mandolin, electric guitar, marimba, and typical instruments such as piano, guitar, brass, strings, drums, etc…. Yes, all those together. You'll probably want to check it out.

But back to the Addy Awards. It was an exciting evening, and not just because I got to dress up which I never get to do, but because we actually won some awards! Mark got a silver for one of his web designs and I won a gold for my design for The Happy Envelope. It's my company's first gold! Here's a pic of the developer and I who worked ridiculously LONG hours on the site.

And while I'm tooting our horn, here's a program that our music team did for Christmas. It's an hour long, and has the Scripture readings and homily in the midst, but you can get a feel for our music style. You can jump around in the recording and hear great things like the children's choir belting it out. A little short of a quarter in is a dramatic Latin song that Mark plays the lead guitar on(!) and a couple songs beyond that is one of my favorite songs we do called Hail to the Lord's Annointed and I happily got to sing the lead on it with our worship pastor harmonizing. It was a really fun program to do. Mark and I created the advertising materials, which I need to take a picture of and post. We also got to perform a shortened version of it at a local venue called The Square Room.

Rosie is still quite alive and seems to be very happy with us.

She can often be found retrieving her beloved tennis ball in places like under the sofa.

Well, that's all for now from this girl. Work is calling, laundry has piled up and everything must get done before a marathon evening of singing for the Ash Wednesday service, practicing for Holy Week music, and then practicing til late for the recording session this weekend. I never thought music would be my life.

wild world and wild things

My breath caught when I saw this in my reader today.

So stunning. If only it weren't so much. And I had a reason to have it gather dust on my shelves.

[via ImagineNations and BB-Blog]

sometimes I get lost

Perhaps this explains it best.

Although Google Reader should be factored in there somewhere too. Facebook and Twitter are a come and go thing for me. I guess have short-lived binges with them. Google Reader and Gmail however, they are my best friends.

[not sure where I saw it first as it is making its way around the blog-o-sphere, but it comes originally from Fuchsia Macaree]

when I was kid, I really wanted a monkey for a pet

It probably would have been just like this one. A golden snub-nosed monkey.

(from National Geographic, via Heart Charlie)

rosie the infamous high-jumper

no autographs yet please.

oh rosie

pardon the delay, but may I present Rosie:

about Rosie:
• 1.5 years old
• 20 pounds
• probably has some beagle in her which makes her longer and a little shorter than typical Jack Russells
• one ear always sticks up and the other always flops over (unless she's in trouble and then they both go backwards)
• sometime in her life, someone docked her tail so now she only has a little tail nub as we call it. It's pretty darn cute when that little tail nub wags.

• she rarely barks, so far the only thing that makes her bark is the vacuum and if she really has to go out and we aren't paying attention.
• she's scared of vacuums
• she's a super-tracker and would take down every squirrel on the street if we let her off-leash.
• she's incredibly friendly and will lick your face if you put it within range.
• she's wonderful with kids and very friendly with other dogs

• she would play ball for hours and hours
• she has mad jumping skills—the highest so far being level with Mark's shoulder (yeah, that's high!)
• she is pretty smart and loves to be trained
• she didn't seem to know any commands when we got her, but now has pretty much mastered "sit," "go lay down," "crate," and "outside." We're working on "stay" and better leash training.
• she is a fast, and I mean fast runner. We learned this the fun and hard way when she slipped out the back door when our friend's kid stood with it open too long and we just watched her race around the cul-de-sac and feared we'd never see her again. Thankfully, she already liked us and once she had her fill of running her heart out, she stayed put for Mark to get her.

• she has a "diva-butt" as I call it and refuses to do her business if the ground is too wet to find the perfect spot; even if it means we have to traipse around in the snow for 20 minutes and she is shivering and whining.
• she is a fierce, aggressive chewer. Thankfully though, she only chews things that we give her to play with. Unfortunately, everything we've given her so far has been destroyed in about 20 minutes (especially if it has a squeaker)
• she can shimmy herself under our couch (about 6-8 inches of space) to retrieve her favorite ball

 • and she now has the coolest dog bowls around—one says Thirsty? and the other says Hungry? in big beautiful type.

 

Well, there she is. She would love to meet you and teach you to play ball!

design so beautiful sometimes it makes me cry

Poster for "The Hold Steady" designed by Helms Workshop.

(via)

travelling pretty

Please tell me that someday I can be this awesome little old lady. I love her so much without even knowing her. From her cute white curly hair in the stylish hat, the awesome oversized glasses, the fashionable scarf around her neck, and that coat! Oh, that coat! She makes old age look grand.

(via Design Crush)

mesmerized

Legacy of Letters from Luca Barcellona on Vimeo.

via bb-blog

meet Rosie

That's right folks, the Schafers have a dog.

More pictures and details coming soon.

a children's book that makes my heart flutter

and for the iPad now, no less! Amazing.

Oliver Jeffers 'Heart and the Bottle' iPad Picture Book App



via swissmiss