Let the games begin!

As of right this minute, I'm officially jumping into the art fair season with both feet! So far, I have seven art fairs in the next seven months. Hot diggity.

First up, Luna Festival~ this one is a women's art and business fair and will be held on Sunday, April 26th from 11am-4pm in the Showers Building.

And then, A Fair of the Arts! Whitney and I have been accepted for ALL SIX SHOWS. We are thrilled. We just started putting our work out there last year, and we did three FotA shows last season. This time around, I think we both kind of expected to be offered the same number of dates, but we're in every single show. Did I mention the part about us being thrilled? Because we ARE.

A Fair of the Arts takes place alongside the Farmer's Market in Showers Plaza, on the second Saturday of the month, from May through October. (Hooray for local food and local art!)

We'll be doing things a little bit differently, but will still be sharing a booth~ she makes amazing jewelry; I sell my greeting cards and prints of my photography, as well as a few other goodies. And there's a lot to do to get ready in the next few weeks!

Please stop in and say howdy! It's going to be super fantastic.

bird stalker

There's a pair of pileated woodpeckers preparing to nest in the wooded area outside the house where I work. I watch for them whenever we pass by the bay window, pretending that we're standing there to greet the ficus, talking to the baby, "Good morning, friend plant! Hello, great outdoors!" I tell him about all of the edible fungus growing on the trees, all of the critters soaring or scampering by, all of the things we'll do together when he gets bigger... But all the while, I'm hoping for a pileated sighting.

Today was my Lucky Day. I saw both of them, and this one stayed for quite a while, working very diligently on what I assume will be their nesting cavity. The baby was patient while I took three thousand pictures. I put him in the sling and went outside to get a better view, and I'm pretty happy to have managed a couple of reasonably clear shots. We were pretty far away, and I had a wiggling person attached to my torso, so I can't complain.

These birds are interesting, and rather comical, to watch~ and it felt like an honor. I don't care if that sounds cheesy. We rarely see them, and it's usually a glimpse of red and then they vanish. They're huge, but not terribly confident when it comes to a human audience, so this was a treat~

oh, spring

So nice to see you again, groovy green growing season.

I think that maybe spring is a better time for resolutions than January 1st. Time to stretch up tall and come out of hibernation. Time to turn our faces to the sun and wiggle our toes in the dirt.

I'm resolving (again, sure, but that's ok) to do more of what's good for me. Not as much of what's easy and comfortable, though there are times when that's inescapably attractive. But I'm shown consistently that certain things, lovely nourishing things that I desperately hide from and have to push myself to do, make my life exponentially better.

Motion and creation. Stepping outside the circle.

When I write, when I play with art supplies, when I move this body that I live in, when I leave home even though it feels like such hard work, good things happen. When I don't, I'm thinking that I should. And this takes more energy than the doing. Avoidance is exhausting. Stretching lets the light in~