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

Into the Unknown

Making huge life changes is scary--- even when you are not forced into it. How do we get the courage to actually take the leap? Status quo is so much easier, even if it’s stressful. And why is it easier? Simply because of the unknown.

To take a leap completely blind, no plans, no idea of what is in front of you is terrifying. So we try to plan it all out. If we have a plan, it gives us some assurance that we might know what is going on. It gives us a direction to push for. Things don’t get accomplished without a plan. It’s like the quote by Basil Walsh,“If you don’t know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?”  

Planning it all out relieves some of our fears, at least we have a direction we are headed. However, there are still many unknown factors. As we all know, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Although we have control over our reactions, we really don’t have control over a lot of what happens to us. So it’s still crazy scary even with a plan, and sometimes we need to make the change whether we have a plan or not.

Either way, this is where I get to the end of myself. If I sit here and worry about it all the time,  freak out when it doesn’t seem to be going right, imagine the worst will happen, then my mind is in constant turmoil and fear and that stress definitely outweighs the stress of whatever is going on that needs to change. This is where I decide, plan or no plan, I’ve got to give my future and what is going to happen over to God. He is the only one that knows what is going to happen and can help me through whatever does end up coming my way. I’ve got to trust Him to lead me and not try to lead myself. So hard to do, especially for a control freak like me. But the peace that comes, that passes all understanding, is amazing.

For a few seconds, until I grab back my worries. God, help me to just completely let it go…

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