It's All Up From Here!

I'm surprisingly happy right now as I look outside at the, once again, SNOW. Day after day.... more snow. No blue skies... just snow everywhere. This fact causes me be grateful that it is almost spring. The only good thing about winter is to make you appreciate the amazing springtime. Thank you winter!

I have to realistically remind myself that it's not spring yet, but in the meantime, I planted my first plant of the year. I named him Wall-E because there was a free order for an evergreen tree with our edition of the movie Wall-E. It arrived the other day and I was able to rummage around my gardening stuff and find the right pot to stick it in. It's all up from here!


*p.s. I wish this was my own Wall-E artwork but I thought it was cool anyway.

My Creation

I love to create things. I think that people are most happy while they are in the process of creating things. For example: artwork, quilts, memories, babies (haha), aprons. For Christmas my family picks another family member's name out of a hat and we have to give that person a gift. We also pick a theme every year. Last year we had to buy (or create) something that had to do with a room in our house. Last year I had my sister in the bathroom (with the wrench... haha jk). This year we chose the theme of colors. I gave to my mom with amazing color of .....orange. Ya, orange. Gross. I know.
Anyway, I racked my brain for a cute thing to create because I have no money at all. I miraculously made an apron from an idea out of a library book. You must know that I have never sewn anything in my life unless you count the time in 7th grade home-ec class when I made shorts, and on the way home--they unraveled.

It's reversible!

Above is a pattern of some kind of vase with a flower sticking out of it that I made up. The original idea came from the book Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter. I also wrapped it in a Macey's ad that had oranges on it so it fit perfectly with my theme. I was so proud!

Librarian Perks

I work at the library. Along with that job is a perk called: "I-get-to-see-a-lot-of-books-before-other-people-have-a-chance-to-check them out!" It's not often that I check out a book that I love enough to actually BUY but I will definitely buy this one. I have read (and will continue to read) a book called The Creative License- Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are by Danny Gregory.

The point of the book is to persuade the reader to become the artist we all are and can be. Danny Gregory has filled the book with very fun illustrations that just inspire me to draw more and gives me the confidence to do... art.

I especially liked this story he writes about in the book-

" When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous and said, 'You mean they forget?'"

-Howard Iremoto

I love the idea that we were all artists at one time in our lives but most of us digress to become business men or accountants. Art is now looked at as "out there" or not worth the time to pursue. I wish that more of us could be like my six-year-old brother who loves to doodle, draw and think of his own stories. He intensely sits at our living room table for hours finishing his latest drawing of our family. If only we could keep the child-like artist in us.

This was done by my brother at age 4. It is a drawing of our family eating dinner from a bird's perspective. The rectangle is the table with round plates of food on it. The outer circles are our plates with broccoli on them. I think it is a very creative viewpoint and is awesome for someone his age to draw!

ASL

I am in a Sign Language class. I really love it but it is really hard for me to grasp language concepts. I took two years of spanish, now I can't remember anything. I am in the 2nd semester of Sign Language and I feel like I don't learn it as well as I should but I really love it anyway. In hopes of becoming more motivated to learn, I am posting a video on here that we went through in class by this really cool guy on YouTube. Maybe someone can understand it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qpsbHPn1qk



For my class I also had to attend a "deaf activity" of some kind. In other words, I had to go to some function where there were deaf people present. My mom and I went to Sanderson Community Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Annual Bazaar a couple months ago. We (more like I ) felt totally out of place. My mom knows a little sign language from her friend from twenty years ago and I had only taken a semester of the language. It was funny because people could tell that we were hearing and they signed a lot slower to us and signed more in English than they normally would.

I just think that unlike any other language, Sign Language is a cool artform and very visual. I am a visual learner and like to think of myself as artistic so I figured that it would be easy to learn Sign Language rather than Spanish. I have a lot of work to do and then maybe one day I can post a video of me on YouTube.