Here's Your Sign

Happy Valentine's Day!

Magnet Monday

Beware of the Valentine Monster!

I can't exactly hang him on the fridge, but I find him worthy of creative celebration just the same.

Don't let his innocent face fool you. He will gobble up your hearts, and your candy too.

"It's hard to fight it off much more

 I hear it drooling by the door

Eaten by the monster of love."

 - Sparks

Mindful Boogie

There is so much good advice floating around out there in the world...so much wisdom found in words, like this quote right here...

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live like it's heaven on earth.”― William W. Purkey

I think the key to everything in life is wrapped up in that one little sentence...everything. I can't think of one situation or relationship that it doesn't apply to. It's about being mindful...breathing, feeling, being...right where you are, right now. Letting go of everything that was, and everything that you think might be, and focusing on how you feel this very second.

Sometimes the problem with me, and wise words is, I see it...I get it...but I don't own it. Sometimes I wish I could just walk into it. Do you ever feel like that?

When I was a little girl, I was madly in love with the Jackson 5. I had a scrapbook full of their pictures, some of them cut out of magazines, some I drew myself with little hearts all around them. Little girl love. The kind of love that skips lightly, and doesn't know a thing about pain, or loss, or fear.

Last night, while I was standing in the grocery store check out line, the muzak busted out some Jackson 5, and I couldn't contain myself. I had to boogie. This isn't new. I do it all the time. My parents, even my kids, roll their eyes at me. But, you see, I can do it because I have wisdom...

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching...sing like there's nobody listening..."

I own those two lines. My shampoo bottle microphone and I, we don't care what anybody thinks. I'm my own little flash mob sometimes...

...but those other two lines...

“Love like you'll never be hurt, and live like it's heaven on earth...”

Dear Little Girl Love,

I want you back.

A Day of Bad Photographs

The other day, the sun came out, so naturally I wanted to go out too, and, of course, I wanted to take my camera with me...

It was 11:40am, and I had a mountain of things to do, so with my new time management skills (ha!), I decided to give myself just 20 minutes to walk outside, and enjoy the vitamin D. Twenty minutes of visual possibilities!

I'm going to cut to the chase here, and tell you that, photographically speaking, it was a bad, bad day.

Before I walked out the door, I tried to take a picture of the bar of soap that my boy had mangled up at bath time. Amazingly, out of the pieces, a heart emerged, and I knew I just had to share it with Chrissy and her game of Heart and Seek.

I couldn't get the lighting right, etc... So, I said, oh heck, I'll worry about it later!

I walked to the end of our lane...no deer, no birds at the bird feeder...nobody except this squirrel, who smiled at me a few times, but wouldn't move away from the curb like I asked him to.

So, I walked...

Into the field, into the woods, down the path...my camera at the ready, but nothing was calling out to me. Nothing was inspiring me. My lens was acting up. I wasn't "feeling" the composition in anything. My shots were coming out too grainy, or too blurry. Are you getting the picture? You are? Because I did not.

It was out of frustration, rather than wisdom, that I said to myself, "You know, you don't have to take a picture. You could stand here in the middle of the woods on this beautiful day, and just...LOOK."

To be honest, it felt a little unfulfilling and unproductive, but I did it. I looked at the trees, and the light filtering in. I listened to the birds, and the silence. I closed my eyes, and filled my lungs with the crisp February air.

My thoughts have been all over the place lately (or always), searching for purpose and direction, and it seemed, as I stood there clearing my head, it made just enough space for all of those things (not on my mind's VIP list) to fall over the rope and tumble right in.

Trying to cut through the chaos, as my uninvited thoughts fell all over each other, I looked up past the trees, and said to the sky, "What do you want me to do?"

And that sky, with all of it's glory and wisdom, just simply said back "You're doing it."

I walked back into my house (30 minutes later than my self imposed curfew), with a camera full of crappy photos, still trying to wrap my mind around that simple, simple thought.

Leave it to the amazing Brave Girls, and their Daily Truths, to set me straight...

It's TRUST. Trust is the concept that I'm having a difficult time grasping. It always had been.

The crappy photos that I took the other day, don't look like crappy photos to me anymore...now they look like lessons. Not a product, but a passageway.

Do you have any big thoughts that you're wrestling with these days?

Magnet Monday

Celebrating a little creativity from the front of my fridge...

A portion of the card that my girl made for her grandpa...I guess because it was a Birthday/Super Bowl party, the card needed to be football themed.

I love how she made the fans in the stands (not too many people in the cheap seats, huh?), but my favorite part about it is, she drew the whole thing in pen. Having that kind of confidence in her art is just the sort of thing that makes this mama smile.

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong." - Peter T. Mcintyre