I have come to the conclusion that the free WordPress is limited. I’m sure if I was will to pay for service or have my own domain or something that WordPress would be fine. But… I don’t want to do that. I would like a lot of features for free. Sooo… I’ve gone back to Blogger who will support all my widget fascination.

Come find me at -  violetkey.blogspot.com   

I will be keeping this site up for a while becuase there doesn’t seem to be a good way to import my posts from wp to blogger. Until i get so bored as to hand repost to blogger I’ll just leave this up.

Thanks for viewing me here. Now go read about what I’ll be doing in November.

I’ll say it too – “It’s fall!” I have now had to turn my heater on and wear a coat at night. With the changing of the season, a challenge has been thrown out by my friend Erin to tell about your summer.  Here are a few highlights:

May – Grandparent’s Anniversary
At the end of May my maternal Grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I was able to design their party invite for my sister and aunts who were coordinating the event. The best part was flying down to Texas as a surprise! Amazingly enough it worked, those that knew in the family didn’t accidentally let it spill. Oh, how I miss my family!

June – Sister, her husband and his family come to visit
My sister, her husband, her mother in law and her husband’s brother all came up at end of May and left in that first week of June. We visited all kinds of places but to me the most interesting was Mt. St. Helen’s because i had not been up there in my 3 years of living in Oregon (yes, i realize Helen is in Washington). Second was getting to the top of Multnomah falls, never made the hike all the way up before, the river that becomes the long water fall is gorgeous. Again if I was good at the picture thing i’d post some.

July – First Wedding Anniversary
Yea! My husband and I returned to our favorite hotel to celebrate. If you want to read more about it Clicky.

August – Life
I’m not sure that we did anything too exciting in August.

September – Life again
Yeah, again, I think we just worked and lived and made a quick trip to the coast which we had not done since July.

Dog  Summer Activities:
We had the dogs in Obedience 3, off lead training and hand signals. I work with “Z” the female and this was her first go around. I think she did okay but I need to work with her more outside of class. We also did agility training – jumping over hurtles, going through tubes, walking on platforms. That was so much fun! Z is good and very fast at it but a little stubborn about jumping over the hurtles.  

That was our summer!

I slept until 11am this morning which I rarely ever do. So now, I’m not exactly tired and chose to post actual thoughts and not just a meme. Bare with me this might get rambly…

I have been thinking frequently about my home and how to keep it clean/organized enough for us to live in and enjoy it. I recently read a wonderful book called “Hannah’s Art of Home: Managing Your Home Around Your Personality“. I picked it up at the library because it was basically the only book left in the “Home Management” section. It must be a popular topic to read. I often read books on self improvement and find it overwhelming but not this one. I connected right away with her style of writing because she wasn’t condemning me for being messy or talking down to me like a child. She gets it. I have been classified as a “Stary Eyed Dreamer” – basically a really nice way of saying “sentimental packrat”, among other things. She’s inspired me to really clean out my home and apply a few basic things to keep it managed.

I have felt that cleaning my house is a lot like playing one of those tile puzzle games – there is only 1 empty space and you have to move around the tiles until it makes a picture. I don’t really like this game.

My motivation today came from a resent urge to create but not having a clean office to do it in. I had the thought that if i had the Christmas boxes out of the office I could clean my office and then create. I started with my hall closet, it’s bugged me for months and I believed it was the key to being able to move other tiles (ie Christmas boxes out of office). So, I put in “You’ve Got Mail” in my living room, turned the volume up and worked in the hall.

I should say that I live in a 950sq ft 2 bedroom apartment with only my husband and 2 dogs – you’d think that we’d have plenty of space but it’s amazing when two artiest (him photography, me collage/print/graphic design) move in together how much stuff they have. Plus, all the misc. stuff for the dogs, which include 2 large crates.

By the end of the movie, which i love, i have finished the hall and everything that needs to be in there is – including the Christmas boxes that were stacked in my office or what was the dinning area. As Hannah has instructed (and i’ll admit it, my mother also imparted this wisdom at some point in my life…) I made three piles: Trash, Give Away, Put away somewhere else. I’m pleased to say there was no “Put away somewhere else” which means the other two piles were used.

Then I started on my office which I’m suppose to use for so many things, personal art, side work, bills, dog food storage… This is where my “I might need this later for my art” “Oh, that’s inspiring” “Awww a wedding card…” thoughts come into play and the Trash pile becomes very very small and my anxiety about how to organize and store gets very large. I can’t say I had a lot of success in that room tonight but then again i didn’t make the mess in a day either. Mostly I just re-stacked stuff and threw away a little bit of stuff here and there.

I did have some thoughts about that room. First is i must get more sinsable storage for things – not everything is made for a book shelf or easy to access/use placed inside a cardobard box. Second, I do not want any more nic-nacks, I like having my one shelf of special misc. things and that’s it. Third, I do not think i’m going to become one of the woman that love candles, I have a few and I never burn them.

I kept remembering a section in the book when Hannah talks about sintamental clutter. She explains that when someone receives something they get this emotional burst. Often people hold on to that object hoping that every time they look at it they will get that same emotional burst but very often it won’t and that object just because clutter the person starts to feel guilty/resentful over. She encourages you remembering that you liked that object and it did it’s job that one time but now it’s time to let it go. I keep having to remind my self of this. Case in point, I have 3 small boxes full of cards from different periods of my life. I have a small box full of “graduation” certificates and ribbons from our dogs going through obedience classes – i have conflicting urges to throw it away because we’ll never do anything with them and another to put them in slip covers and store them in a binder to look over later. I could go on but i think i’ve made my case of sentimentality.

So, I think i’m going to have to really go through things and choose to keep or part with it. She also encourages that if you really feel like you can’t part with something to put in a box, store it somewhere and go through it again in a year and choose then… well, I would like to say that half of the stuff in my office hasn’t been touched in a year and it’s time to make that choice. And I might choose to keep some stuff for another year…

I started the tiles moving today thought and I have enough space on my table to at least do a little bit of work.

I was going to blog about real life happenings but chose to procrastinate by changing my blog theme.

Hope you enjoy the new colors!

Future topics might include:
- new pictures
- I deserve this Or do I?
- Being One Stop Shopping for the Spouce

I’m back from a 5 day vacation on the Oregon coast. It was so relaxing.

(on a side note: i just found the freakin’ text editor in the “visual” setting for a poster. Yea! No more coding the color!)

The past 2-3 weeks had been extremely stressful. My husband’s job changed – his boss sold his private vet practice to a corporation. Thankfully, no one got fired but still lots of changes as far as schedule (longer hours gets home at 8p on some nights), people & rules. The changes of course had brought on some stress that was felt by both of us. Then my company has/is going through it’s busy convention/trade show time and i’ve been working long hours under crazy deadline pressure. It was also very stressful trying to leave the office for vacation – it took forever to wrap up all my loose ends and i still don’t think i did a tidy job of it. So, needless to say we needed this!

The other more important cause for vacation – we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary! Weeeeee!

We staid at the wonderful hotel with the even better view Inn at Spanish Head for 4 days and 3 nights *sigh*. I would show you pictures but I can’t get them off my camera at the moment because my computer isn’t recognizing it. Updates soon. This hotel is built into the side of the bluff so every room has a fantastic view of the ocean.

Saturday we ran about town – store for cheesecake*, Borders for Harry Potter. Oh, Saturday morning was spent at the Gresham Art Walk. The Art Walk is made up of all these different artist in booths selling what they make. I drooled over a few very nice watercolors that i couldn’t afford. However, what I did pick up was equally wonderful: 1 – a hand blown class cup, it has purples and white swirled together, beautiful work! 2 – a print of a watercolor of gold and white koi fish swimming in blue water, it’s printed on this stringy fiber Japanese paper – it’ll look great in the living room. It’s being framed, we get to pick it up tomorrow.

*The significants of the cheesecake; we had it at our wedding instead of traditional cake. We included berries and chocolate sauce. It was delicious!

Other things done on the vacation:

• strolls on the beach
• - picking up agates
• - broken pieces of mussel shells
• - tiny tiny tiny purple swirl shells
• - getting slightly sunburned on the face
• lunch with the husband’s grandparents that live on the coast
• shopping at the outlet mall
• going to galleries we’d never been to before
• reading the last Harry Potter – nice ending to the series
• watching the sunset from our balcony
  - i was reading HP off and on while hubby snapped photos
• driving down the cost
  - imagining what it would be like to own one of the houses for sale
  - taking more photos
• eating breakfast at the hotel’s great restaurant – yum!
• watched a few movies in the room
• lots of sleeping – it’s wonderful going to bed around 11p and not getting up until 9:30a or so when your body naturally does it!

The very last thing we did as we were leaving town as pop into a new housing development “Olivia Beach” – awesome homes! This the style, the size, the interior decorating that i want for my home where ever it may be but hopefully on the coast. The funny thing… we’d been left by our selves to wonder the model home and when we came back down a woman (different from the first realtor we met) greeted us and started chatting us up about the house. She asks what we do and she finds out the husband is a photographer and gets all excited about seeing a portfolio we don’t have with us. She said she had just got photos back from a photographer they hired for shots of the houses in the development and how horrible they were! More business talk goes on and she proposed that if we had a little bit of time to shoot some of the houses she’d pay us for whatever photos she liked. So, of course we take her up on the offer, get toured around some more and leave with the promise of emailing her so she can view/but the photos. Funny that we stop in for dreaming and walk away with a little bit of potential business. If nothing else, she was a great to talk to.

So, we got home and picked up the dogs from being boarded. They where VERY VERY excited to see us. Z is sleeping beside me now – aww.

Back to the grind for me tomorrow and I bet at least 60 emails.

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.

~William Plomer

I found this meme on Luna Nina who I found through Live-Love-Read who I found through ThursdayThirteen…

This meme is all about free association:

1. Tumor :: Horrible
2. Bunch :: Grapes
3. Gratitude :: Grandparents
4. Feel alive :: Ocean
5. Connect :: Dial Up
6. Temptation :: Chocolate
7. Brighten :: Saturate
8. Jewelry :: Shiny
9. Tough :: Nails
10. Harmless :: Flowers

Okay that was fun…

MarillaAnne also posted about this meme from Tip of the Iceberg.

Directions: “Look at the list below: Bold the books you’ve read; Italicize the books you want to read; and leave the formatting alone for the ones you aren’t interested in.”

There are a few on here that I have never heard of but a few that reminded me that I wanted to read them once upon a time.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) {Plus the other five in the original series}
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) {I did not like this book}
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) {first school book I couldn’t put down in 7th grade}
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) {sure these other sound good to: plus Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Eight Cousin’s, and Rose in Bloom.}
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) {and the rest of the series}
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) {i cried and cried…}
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) {loved it – i want another one by him}
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) {i started this book but couldn’t get into the first time – since i keep being told how great it is – i’ll have to try again}
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible {i haven’t read the whole thing but i’ve read many parts of it}
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) {i started this book but again couldn’t get into at the time – i’m thinking i should pick it up again}
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) {loved this book! i cried.}
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) {and the others}
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) {i’m pretty sure this is the one i read in school}

MarillaAnne opened the Wikipedia meme to all who wanted to search Wikipedia. Who doesn’t want to do that? Here are the guidelines and below that are my results. You can tag specific people or open it to all your readers.

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday Month and day only.
2. List 3 Events that occurred that day.
3. List 2 important Birth days.
4. List 1 Death.
5. List a Holiday or Observance. (if any)
6. Tag 5 other bloggers.

Events – i had no idea so much happened on May 6th:
(there are a lot of war events as well)

1536 – King Henry VIII orders translated Bibles be placed in every church.

1816 – The American Bible Society is founded in New York City.

1861 – American Civil War: Arkansas secedes from the Union.

1954 – Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.

2004 – US TV series Friends ends after 10 seasons

Births:
1856 – Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (d. 1939)1915 – Orson Welles, American director (d. 1985)

1953 – Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Deaths:
2006 – Lillian Asplund, last American RMS Titanic survivor (b. 1906)

Holiday & Observances:
Feast days in the Roman Catholic Church

Thirteen Websites I read about or found this week

This post originally was going to be an email and then I realized – why not post for everyone? A majority of these links I found in the magazine Real Simple issue March ‘07. I’ll be quoting and paraphrasing snip-its of their original comments. If you’ve never picked up this mag, I highly recommend it. It covers all the general topics that make up a woman (home, life, health and fashion {but in a helpful here’s what’s in and where to get it and if you’re this body type heres what we recommend} ) On another size note -i have not personally visited or test every single site and or service, use your own judgment.

From RealSimple:
1 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – www.ocw.mit.edu

MIT offers a far more comprehensive selection of free online courses than other universities. Although to use the online feature you can’t enroll, take classes on campus, or earn degrees.

2 – BBC, FrenchPodClass {and many other languages} – www.bbc.co.uk/languages www.frenchpodclass.com

The BBC offers top-notch online and MP3 lessons in languages familiar and obscure, including French, German, Poruguese, Mandarin, Greek and Urdu. These lessons however are a one size fits all, which fast learners may find sluggish and slow learns may find difficult.

3 – U.S. Small Business Administration – www.sba.gov {click on “Local Resources” for a nearby center & for financial & marketing info}

Learn how to write a business plan, register your company, and deal with the tax details of running a home business at your local Women’s Business Center evening classes (men are welcome, too). Again this is a one size fits all.

4 – Apple Stores -www.apple.com {click on “visit an Apple store”}

Gives excellent classes on business and entertainment software, music programs, and computer basics, all remarkably free of sales pitches. Classes are also offered for Apple hardware, like iPods.

5 – Kid’s Night on Broadway – www.kidsnightonbroadway.com

Once a year (this year it was in late January), children ages 6 to 18 can experience the Great White Way for free with a full-paying adult. There are also Kids’ NIghts for nationally touring shows throughout the year. Of course, tickets go fast.

6 – Skype – www.skype.com

Download and install free Skype software and call other Skype users, computer to computer, at no charge, anywhere in the world. Best used with DSL or cable modem.

7 – PaperBackSwap.com & Title Trader – www.paperbackswap.com www.titletrader.com

List the books that you’d like to get rid of, then wait for someone to request one. Mail the book to the person and you’ll receive a credit to choose your own book. PaperBackSwap is only paper back books but Title Trader is dvds, cds, and vhs.

8 – The Freecycle Network – www.freecycle.org to find a group

The nonprofit community group with an enviromental mission lets users “recycle” unwatned items by posting ads on local online bulletin boards. If you find something you like respond to the ad. You are responsible for taking the stuff home.

9 – Real Simple – www.realsimple.com/weeklyexpenses

This is a free downloadable form to keep track of your spending. I haven’t looked at it yet but it might be helpful.

Sites I found on my own:

10 – Etsy – www.etsy.com

At this website you can find anything handmade! The concept is you have a business of making oh, say, jewelry and you want to sell it – well Etsy lets you have a virtual store! I don’t know the logistics of it but it’s an awesome place to browse. I highly recommend: Rainy Prints for some amazing lino block prints.

11 – Rhonna Designs – http://rhonnadesigns.com/

Inspiration for scrapbooking – paper but more excitingly digital scraping which is what I’m interested in. If nothing else was good about this site I would just love for the web design. You’ll have to go look around for your self. She currently has a weekly challenge/meme going about color. Journal is an interesting link but the other three lead you to different scrapbooking sites or her personal Cafe Press site.

12 – Starbuck’s Make It Your Drink – http://www.mystarbuckstshirt.com

Never mind if you love or hate their coffee. It can not be denied they have a sweet budget and creatives for awesome design and promotion. Now, through the power of the net you see your drink order in great hand writing typography.
Here is mine:

13 – Penelope – www.penelopeillustration.com – www.IllustrationFriday.com

She is a great illustrator and has inspirational work. I enjoy her blog as well. She also created a great weekly creative excersize called Illustration Friday – a topic is posted at the beginning of the week, you illustrate it, post it to your site and link it to hers. The website and little goodies like interviews has really blossomed over the past year, though i’m not sure how long its been going total.

Hope you enjoyed!

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