Desolate Beauty

Fall in south central South Dakota is not the overwhelming assault of beautiful bright colors against your senses that you might find in other places. It’s a more subtle and barren beauty. The bold colors of fall are almost more surprising against the neutral and monochromatic background of the landscape surrounding them. The deep crimsons and bright golds lie hidden in pockets against the soft tans and greys.

The monochromatic scenery has a beauty and peace about it all on its own.

But when driving in a countryside filled with greys, tans, and creams, it’s awesome to drive around the bend to find brilliant fall colors mixed in.

My husband is always saying we live in a desolate wasteland in the middle of nowhere, but there is so much beauty in desolation!

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A few of my favorite things...

As it gets closer to my birthday, I start to indulge more and more in my favorite things. A picnic out in the beautiful Fall scenery, a strong cup of jasmine tea, buying new art supplies, and taking photos of stuff I love become priorities. And my husband gets more and more stressed as I put more expectations on him and ask him to do crazy things. Last year I was determined to have a picnic despite the fact that it was snowing---a little cold, but I got some great photos of Fall foliage covered in snow!
So I spent some time today taking photos of some of my favorite vintage finds over the years. Did I mention I like green?

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Happy As A Lark Painting

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New Window Displays

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Happy As A Lark...

Working on a new painting for a greeting card, called Happy As A Lark. I'll post a photo when I'm done. So I decided to do a little research on the saying.

Presumably, the saying came about because of the lark's beautiful song. Yes, you can say its just a bird staking out its territory and performing a mating call, but according to the Science 2.0 website, singing courtship songs actually releases dopamine in birds' brains. So they literally are happy when singing mating calls. You can check out the article here. And they must sound pretty happy because there is no shortage of lark quotes and poems, find a collection of skylark poems here.

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What I want for Christmas

Found a new stationery company that I absolutely love. Completely me: victorian and art noveau mixed with an asian influence. And lots of pink and turquoise, beautiful color combos. If you want to get me something for Christmas, get it from Papaya!

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Lots and lots of photos

Just uploaded an insane amount of photos of our China trip. Hopefully someone enjoys this! Click on the China Photos link to the right to view.Tweet

New Inspiration

Kind of like I thought, I haven't been able to consistently stick with blogging. I'm just not that type of person...I flit from one project to the next, only really finishing a few of them. Its pretty unfortunate because I really do intend to be consistent with things and would prefer to have a larger number of completed projects. Sometimes my flightiness causes me to be too lazy to even begin projects. I convince myself I'll never finish them so I shouldn't even start them. Here goes my attempt at trying to be more consistent.

Lately I've become obsessed with Emily Henderson (check out her blog by clicking on her name). I'm really not the type to become obsessed with people and it is frightening me a little. I happened to catch one episode of DesignStar where she designed a room in a glass house and have been hooked ever since. I absolutely love her style and I want to be like her :). Although a little creepy, maybe this is a good thing...something new and fresh to inspire me.

Her new show, Secrets from a Stylist, is airing on HGTV this Fall.Tweet

China

So we are back in China for a month. Finally got to the place we are going to stay for a while after going through a long and horrible train ride, because the sleeper tickets were sold out. It feels good to be back. I'm anxious to go out of the apartment and see what adventures are awaiting us!

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Window Display

Here is a picture of the window display I did for the church, the other window is not quite complete. When I first put this up, I had red helium balloons under the J O Y, which looked nice...Too bad the balloons go down in a couple of days.Tweet