Inspired

If I were…

If I were a month I’d be May

If I were a day I’d be Saturday

If I were a time of day I’d be 8 am

 If I were a planet I’d be Venus

 If I were a sea animal I’d be a sea otter

If I were a direction I’d be south

If I were a piece of furniture I’d be a bed

If I were a liquid I’d be a Limonada Italian Soda

 If I were a gem stone I’d be a lapis lazuli

 If I were a tree I’d be an Arbutus

If I were a tool I’d be a needle

If I were a flower I’d be a daffodil

If I were an element of weather I’d be sunshine

If I were a musical instrument I’d be a bell

If I were a color I'd be pink

If I were an emotion I’d be happy

If I were a fruit I’d be a mango

If I were a sound I’d be laughter

If I were an element I'd be silver

If I were a car I’d be a convertible

If I were a food I’d be a Thai yellow curry

If I were a place I’d be a tropical beach 

If I were a material I'd be velvet

If I were a taste I’d be Key Lime Pie

If I were a scent I’d be jasmine

If I were a body part I’d be an eye

If I were a song I’d be “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Israel ‘Iz’ Kamakawiwo'Ole

If I were a bird I'd be a red winged blackbird

If I were a gift I'd be handmade

If I were a city I'd be Venice

If I were a door I'd be unlocked

If I were a pair of shoes I’d be flip flops

If I were a poem I would be The Little Gidding by T.S Elliot

And what would you be?

(Thanks to Joan at A Wild Patience for the inspiration)

Blessing to each of you…I'm so glad you stopped by!

Hello Spring!

“I have lived all my life up to this moment, to come to this day.”  Dan Custer

When spring arrives it feels to me that an old friend who has journeyed long, has finally arrived on my doorstep.  I fling the door open with delight and even though I’m expecting her, I’m always a little surprised at her arrival. 

But always…always…I throw my arms around her and we dance in the sheer delight of each others company.  She stands there smiling brightly…slightly windswept and wearing a spring dress of blossom pink and new leaf green that whispers softly as she moves.

“How long can you stay"?”  I ask her and she smiles and says vaguely “Oh, at least a few months”.  She never stays too long as she doesn’t cope well with the heat of summer but I know, I just know, we’re going to have a wonderful time together while she’s here…we always do.

Hello Spring, I’m so glad you’ve come!

And Still More Green…

The theme this week at Lens-Us-Together was “green”…so appropriate for the spring season as well as for St. Paddy’s day…and was suggested by Caroline at Constantly Evolving.

There’s so much green inspiration around right now, with nature literally exploding all around us but the greens that are inspiring me these days are the greens that I’ve been both wearing and decorating with…the lime and tropical greens that I spoke of in my last post.

Just before I left on my holiday I ordered the green bag in the photograph above and ladies, you’ll love this…it’s actually a camera bag !  It’s lined inside with strips of Velcro on each side of the bag and padded dividers can be moved around to provide sections for various lenses, etc.  It was perfect for traveling as it eliminated the need for both a camera bag and a purse.  Mine holds my Nikon SLR, two lenses, a small Canon point-and-shoot, my wallet, glasses, sunglasses, notebook, pen, lipstick and various misc., quite easily.  It’s a bit on the heavy side when it's fully loaded but I find it easier than taking both a camera bag and a separate purse and it has a cross body shoulder strap.  While I was traveling, I also packed a smallish over the shoulder, smaller knit purse that I could use when I wasn’t taking all the camera paraphernalia...out for dinner etc.  It scrunched up in my suitcase easily.

(image from Jo Totes)

The other reason I was happy to have this bag was that we were traveling just as all the new regulations for carry on baggage were “in flux”.  They weren’t allowing large tote bags and were strictly limiting what could be classified as carry on, but they were allowing camera bags. 

I had been waiting to get one of Maile’s new camera bags (love them!) but they weren’t available before I left…they’re now available and look fabulous.  My bag is from Jo Totes and is very similar but not quite as stylish.

The only trouble that I can see with these bags is that once you have one, it won't be long before you'll want another…a new style or a different colour for the change of seasons!  

Colourful blessing to each of you dear bloggy friends,

All Sides Are Greener…

in my home!  Lime green is one of my favourite colours these days…along with pink and turquoise and even orange.  I missed a green posting for the “Irish in me” yesterday because, well just because I haven’t got my act together since I’ve come home and I’ve also been busy doing “stuff”.  Really important stuff.  And it’s all important stuff.  Especially the sitting and the thinking  and playing working on the computer and the staying in my pyjamas till lunchtime and getting caught with unexpected company.  (I have no shame…I just invited them in and made tea and chatted…in my pj’s).

So here’s my green offering…

branch-sillouette-lime-green, 2. lime green, 3. lime green cuppies, 4. rain catcher, 5. chartruse and magenta flower heart 1, 6. Small Town Shadows, 7. Pink Lemonade Reusable Cotton Makeup Remover Pads, 8. Lotus Pink & Green, 9. goodbye, pink..

Don’t you just want to swoon with thoughts of spring when you see this?  The cupcakes have me thinking of inviting friends over for a welcome to spring tea party and the picture in the bottom right hand corner reminds me that I need to get out of my pyjamas soon and paint the den…in fact, almost that very same colour!

Spring will officially be with us this coming Sunday and and I think I’ll celebrate it with bunches of pink tulips…and maybe even a yummy key lime pie.

Wishing each of you the sunniest of blessings,

Changes

 

It’s been a long time (for me!) since I’ve changed my blog design and I’ve been itching to change it for awhile now.  I started designing something while I was away but the wireless connections were usually less than stellar so I ended up just playing with the design aspect without uploading anything to Typepad. This ended up being a good thing as I was able to spend some time reading about design and playing around with different ideas. 

This particular design is all about the white or negative space, which is really appealing to me these days.  I seem to be leaning towards the spare and uncluttered aesthetic in my life right now.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a studio space in my new home, which will continue to cramp my style for awhile but this spring/summer we’ll be building a separate studio outside the house…a smallish one…and I’m soooo looking forward to it.

I have no idea what the plant in the photograph above, is called (the “flower” is about a foot long") but I took the picture while stumbling through the mountainous jungles of Panama in La Amistad International Park, which straddles the border with Costa Rica.

I was on a hike that turned out to be an endurance marathon for this out-of-shape person of eternal optimism!  Other than the fact that this is a stunningly beautiful and mostly untouched area, all I can say about my experience in the cloud forests is…Oh my God…I thought I was dying!  I stopped long enough to take the picture and then with legs shaking, stumbled to catch up with the group (because we all know what happens to the weakest one in the pack!)

It was actually a great experience for me as I realized how much I’m really physically capable of if push comes to shove.  I’m also realizing now that I’m home, that the warmth of Mexico and Panama were really good for mobility and ease of movement.  Since returning to the damper and much cooler weather of the west coast, it feels as though my muscles are really struggling to move easily again.

(If I look like a drowned rat who’s hiked straight up one side of a mountain, then straight down the other side only to fall in the river while fording it numerous times…well, that’s because that’s exactly what I’d done by the time this picture was taken. The things we do for fun!).  I was going for the pathetic look here.

Thanks for stopping by and the sweetest of blessings to each and every one of you!

Flying High, Lying Low

Home is looking good and feeling even better!  We were greeted with happiness and hugs and the added delight of delicious and decadent, Ooh, la, la Cupcakes…oh, pure perfection.  I’ve been craving a cupcake for weeks…even before Char posted about her key lime cupcake escape last weekend!  Yes, dreams do come true.

I’ve been wandering around my home delighting in the  utter perfection of it…the bright sunlight, the openness, the not-too-big but not-too-small size, the warm, polished concrete floors.  Oh yes, I still love it!

This weekend: regrouping…period! 

I still have that surreal “what planet am I on” feeling.  It’s all so far from Panama.  

A wonderful weekend of perfect blessings to everyone.

Leaving Boca

We left Bocas del Tora, an archipelago of islands in the Caribbean, this morning and I have some lasting impressions to share.  Bocas is built out over the water…most of the stores and restaurants in town are built on piles and much of the business and daily life of this area is done by boat.  The little panga’s (water taxi’s) zip around between the islands, dodging the slower and more traditional, hand-paddled (and often dugout) canoes which are still numerous and popular as a means of transportation.

The flavour of the area is much more “Caribbean” than anywhere else in Panama…which isn’t surprising, as it’s in the Caribbean!

The beaches are beautiful and numerous…

…and you may not have to be a millionaire to have waterfront property!  Between the fish at his front door and the bananas at his back door, you can see why fried fish and fried plantains are so popular (and they’re delicious too!)

Although these hand embroidered Molas are made by the Kuna women of the southern Darien region, they’re for sale all over Panama.  Molas are hand made using a reverse appliqué technique. Several layers (usually two to seven) of different-coloured cloth (usually cotton) are sewn together; the design is then formed by cutting parts of each layer away. The edges of the layers are then sewn down.

We ended our time here with a day wandering through the mangroves,

watching dolphins play in the bay, finding gentle sloths in trees and discovering the teeniest, tiniest of bright red frogs…barely an inch long!

But for most of the time that we were Boca del Toro during the “dry” season, this is what happened…

to get the actual effect of the torrential downpour that went on for days, the volume needs to be turned up loud...it was so loud we could hardly hear each other speak! 

We got lots of rest, read lots of books and listened to the howler monkey in the jungle around us who were complaining about the rain too.

That Was a Nail Biter!

…especially when you’re thousands of miles away and the wireless won’t stream the game!

and you really, really, want to know what’s going on back home with the Olympic Gold medal hockey game in Vancouver…Canada vs US.  (That’s Bob above, trying to connect our computer to something…anything…video or radio…that we could download and listen to the game, but nothing worked).

So we followed the updates on the computer…but it wasn’t updating fast enough.  What’s a Canadian in Boca del Tora (a Panamanian island in the Carribean) to do? 

I emailed my daughter Meghan with the hope that she’d get it on her blackberry.  I knew she’d be watching the game somewhere.  She picked up the email and we then got a goal-by-goal update via email until Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal in overtime! Woo Hoo!

What a nail biter that was!  Even sitting thousands of miles away, we felt connected to Canada and did our own little happy dance on the patio of our temporary “home” on Boca.  I’m not a huge hockey fan (I watch the playoffs) but I’m a huge fan of Canada and winning this was really important on our home turf.  We Canadians are not big on tooting our own horns but from what I hear, the horns were blaring loudly yesterday. We missed all the Olympic celebrations while we were away…choosing sunshine instead, but it sounds like it was a huge success and everyone had a lot of fun.

(Our son-in-law is an American living in Canada, so for him this game was win-win…no matter who had won, he would have been happy!)

Olympic sized blessings to all,