Currently:

Feeling guilty cooking up lots and lots and veggies! To counter the veggie karma, I found some vegetable poetry to munch on. As a petitioning vegetable I think I'd be the potato..."POTATOES." Hahaaa

Allowing some corny kitty inspirations to work while meditating on this neat fountain!

 Wondering if the state fair light festival will be fun to go to, the fair starts SOON!

Reading a lot about ammonites and hoping to one day find some of my own! These two are incredible!Wanting a kitteh!! Especially one like this, a Norwegian Forest cat. Awesome. Letting crystals and good stuff inspire some blog changes. I've really been appreciating the fact that I get to talk about rocks and gemstones throughout the day and how much I enjoy that. One customer asked me why I didn't major in geology and I didn't really have an answer! Always something to think about I suppose!

I've been listening to "Summer Hits of the 90s" on Pandora constantly, and it's flipping awesome. Really. Cheesy dancing galore. 

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I also signed up for the Reddit teachers exchange! It's a win-win-win...I get to have fun buying school supplies, teachers catch a break and kids have fun, yay! Sign up here!!!!

Snail Mail #3

This package was too long overdue! When I first started working at Nature's Twist I immediately thought of this friend and had been waiting for the right piece for her, and it ended up being labradorite!  Normally I would mosaic or sticker a jewelry box but since this piece was special I thought it should have it's own box. These wooden boxes are 1$ at craft stores and can be painted, mosaic-ed, stained, whatever your hearts desire or covered in fabric like I chose to do this time. You can buy cheap fabric squares at the craft store or use scraps!

I took out the screws and wrapped the box like a present, using Mod Podge to secure and cover. The only problem I ran into is that the box has a hard time shutting now that there are two layers of fabric in the middle but it looks pretty! I took one picture of the pendant with flash and one without, trying to capture the coloring in the stone but it's difficult to capture the iridescence of labradorite! Let me just say this piece is ten times more beautiful in person! Of course, another funny address label and an Oscar Wilde card to inspire - 'Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.'  Happy Birthday!! 

Snail Mail #2

Mail! I really really enjoy sending things in the mail! I like to collect random things that remind me of someone and then eventually I'll send a little box of those things to them. My friend is out on the East Coast and apparently finding lots of sea glass; I have these cool old empty vials so I figure, send em out there! In case you're wondering, and even if you weren't, the wrapped package is leggings that I needed to give back, hee. I had a lot of fun with these packages - the mailing labels are macro shots of household items! Can you guess, haha!?

My best friend got published (!!) and engaged (!!!) so I had to send her something. Just a congratulatory card with some mini roses for the engagement and a necklace that I hope she likes! I had picked it out for her and was saving it, but what a better way to celebrate a job well done? 

Reflections

My last post, about three weeks ago, was very positive and it was a little hard for me to maintain that level of positivity recently. All in all, it's been a rough few weeks. Not to say that the world isn't without pain everyday but from a national level to a very small personal level, there has been too much bad recently. My thoughts are with the victims and those affected by the terrible acts of violence seen in Boston as well as the tragedy in Waco and my own hometown. Death will always been a side affect of life, at once being the most horrific and the most empathetic of axiom's and also one of the most complex symbiotic human experiences; for we each battle, we each have both lightness and dark raging within. This relationship can bring a community together but it can also isolate feelings of hopelessness, blind confusion, hate...then we each have to make the choice of how to battle with ourselves. 

These past few weeks I've felt a lot of hopelessness out there. Helplessness. And that is my dark side winning. Then, someone gave me flowers totally out of the blue. And I remembered to smile, and it felt so good, and I was reminded that there are still good people in this world. And then I remembered Dumbledore. Ok technically I remembered the words of JKR but whatever, it was just what I needed. 'Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light.' I've been holding onto that and really trying to cultivate appreciation and love for allll those little things. I made myself a few little easy goals but they really do help, I've been taking photos as often as possible, in any little moment I can, being more in contact with friends/family, adventuring, sending packages and cultivating happiness!

I realized I enjoy sharing happiness just as much as I enjoying sharing in others' happiness. And that, it the light side winning ; ). Like an incredible view on a beautiful, clear day in Seattle. And the beautiful evening light in my kitchen, on a rainy day after getting surprise tulips. 

Every time I see the tulips I can't help but smile! They are really so beautiful, and I seem to have gotten several different types and colors, yay! I wish I could send them to people, but I think there will definitely have to be some guerrilla tuliping from me in the near future...

 I found I have a collection of pink on my windowsill.  

Tulips enjoying showing off in the light of the sunset

I wish that life could always be silly breakfasts and elevensies of tea and bites, but it can't, so I savored every moment of such a morning while tackling 12 impossible things (before lunch).  

It isn't selfish to take care of yourself. You need to take care of yourself. Find time for yourself and enjoy it however you can. Even if it means a fancy donut breakfast, or a teacup of mandarins. 

A Celebration of Spring

Happy Easter! For myself, and many others out there who do not celebrate traditional Easter, it's really just another Sunday. Today is actually my Saturday and my Sunday which stinks but hey, sometimes it happens. To make the most of it I enjoyed an amazing meal out last night with wonderfrul friends and finished it off with a special treat - old school custard! Which I had never had, holy cow it's like vanilla clouds in your mouth. I also treated myself to a cute lil Easter present (!!!) and some beautiful flowers from the Market. The flowers are in full force at work and it really helps me to keep balance and sanity in my day. Spring is really showing off - it started off rough with snow the second day in but now the temperature is consistently pleasant, the sun has been radiating and the mountain views have been gorgeously clear. Thus, I declare today my Celebration of Spring!

I'm making some yummy Sunday morning tea and enjoying my Ode to Spring windowsill. The glitter skull lives on this windowsill and I was going to remove it from the picture but then I realized, it's actually pretty fitting for Easter haha.

A few posts ago I shared a brief video that was so universally beautiful, breathtaking really, and several ideas strongly hit within me. I have been trying to be mindful of these ideas each day. A piece of transcript form the video, "You think this is just another day in your life. It's not just another day. It's the one day that is given to you today. It's given to you. It is a gift. It is the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response, to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it was the first day in you life and the very last day then you will have spent this day very well. Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can  open. That incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for pure enjoyment."

I used to really dislike the saying, "live everyday like its your last" which is more or less the message here. I guess I had always associated it as an excuse to make a poor decision; there's a million stories of someone acting like a total idiot, saying "yolo!" I'm all for spontaneity, but you can't spend every day in total lunacy. Life is hard. For many like myself, it can be difficult to see good in this world and carry a strong light day by day. But hearing this narration allowed me to see this idea from another perspective and rework that saying into one that say's if you can find nothing else to enjoy in your day, look to the little things and then you will remember there is goodness in this world. Again, if you haven't seen this short video, I insist!  

 

Enjoy this day, whatever you are doing!