I love playing in the basement with the studio lights.  Every now and then, I find something that the creative juices tell me to shoot down there.  Most of the time, it is flowers or a small item around the house.  It keeps me busy and motivated when the weather isn’t great outside.

I was out cutting the grass one day, and I saw these bright yellow flowers as I was finishing up the backyard.  I thought to myself that they would make for great pictures.  So, when I was done cutting the grass, I went back and grabbed them.  I took them into the basement and got to work.  I have a 5′x7′ reversible background down there.  One side is lime green (green screen) and the other side is a dark blue.  It makes for a great contrast against the yellow of these flowers.

So, I took the pictures using my DynaTran softboxes that I got a few years ago from Amvona.  They are great for studio shots.  For a few of the shots, I used a piece of black cloth we picked up at a craft store for a black background.  Here’s what I cam up with.  What do you think?

]]> http://pointfocusclick.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not/ Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:16:08 +0000 MTR http://pointfocusclick.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not/

He loves me!

© 2010 Point Focus and Click. All rights reserved

“Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.”

- Oscar Wilde

Photo by VC Ferry

© 2010

It’s so sad.

I was getting froyo. (That’s not the sad part, that’s actually the yummy food part)

When an old friend and coworker of my dad walked past me. Here’s the sad part. She didn’t recognize me when I said hi. The woman who used to let me use her spare computer and play computer games all the time in her cubicle, the woman who gave me japanese fruity candy whenever I visited. The woman who learned Japanese just so she could manga.

Sigh.

She didn’t recognize me. Apparently I’ve grown up. Apparently it’s a good thing and a bad thing.

Sigh.

Well, life goes on.

~By the way, I got mini daffodils called “tete-a-tete” for my room! Daisies are the friendliest flower (You’ve Got Mail) but daffodils are the cheeriest flowers. Bright yellow.

pocket collage 2 by singmomartstu

Hands and Daisies grown in Los Angeles watered by the Owens Lake.

Join the pocket collage project by tweeting your own pocket collages to @singmomartstu on twitter and I will post the images!

Thursday [full moon 8.53 am]

Had fire. Too busy with shopping to garden. Small broom in bottom garden is a picture with daffs in front of it. Daffs, primroses and double daisies looking very well now. Had amusing talk with Miss Brant about gremlins and whether Russia was putting something in East wind.

Mouse pad, mug and note cards of this image available on Zazzle.

Dance of the Daisies

Supports the Celtic legend that the spirits of children who died during childbirth enjoy daisies scattered on the ground around their parents in mourning.

Stunning gold hairpins, each ending in a daisy-decoration found when the Minoan palace has been excavated on the island of Crete. They are probably more than 4000 years. Egyptian ceramics are decorated with daisies.

Daisies English "was the day for the eye, the way this flower opens and closes with the sun. AndDoctors primitive has the obvious conclusion that there is apparently due to treat diseases of the eye. Assyrians crushed daisies and mixed with oil to turn back dark gray hair.

Marguerite, the French word for daisy, is derived from the greek and means "pearl". Francis I called his sister Marguerite daisies, and the lady used the daisy, as their device, said Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry IV and Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, is an old English saying,The spring has not arrived yet, to put your foot on twelve daisies.

King Henry VIII ate dishes of daisies to relieve pain stomach ulcer. It is a common medium for insanity was to drink crushed daisies dipped in wine, in small doses for 15 days. If this drink is effective or not, well, the jury is out. I do not think it is recommended that no scientific research behind him, the author does not attempt unless under the supervision of a doctor (and then verify the doctor's medical school, whenhe / she says "Go for it".

On the other hand are a beautiful flower daisy send to express friendship and / or love.

Tags : Discount Fireplace Screen Watch Transformers Toys

Below are the list of activities for World Thinking Day. We can do these as families or as troop. Our Troop is attending the World Thinking Day event NEXT Saturday, February 13. This is activity #8.

If you collect loose change to donate to the Juliette Low World Friendship Fund, you will also complete activity #1 that day.

Bring your loose change to donate at our
SU Thinking Day Event on Feb. 13

Everyone who attends Thinking day with us will only need one additional activity. We will do activity #18 in our Troop February 16 meeting. IF you are absent for either of these days, you can simply do any of the activities below at home and just tell me about it. Last year these patches were beautiful. I look forward to awarding them to your girls!

World Thinking Day 2010 Activities

Thinking Day patches will be available for purchase through the GSNETX Shops after a minimum of 3 activities listed below have been completed.

1. Donate to the Juliette Low World Friendship Fund.
2. Learn what: “Our Cabana,” “Our Chalet,” “Pax Lodge,” and “Sangam” means.
3. Invite someone from another country to visit your Girl Scout Troop.
4. Begin working on the International Friendship Patch.
5. Learn a song from another country and share it with your Girl Scout Troop.
6. Hold a birthday celebration for Lord & Lady Baden-Powell.
7. Think about what you like best about being a Girl Scout. Write it down or draw pictures of it.
8. Attend a Thinking Day Activity with other Girl Scout Troops.
9. Learn to say “Hi,” “Bye,” “Please,” and “Thank You” in two other languages.
10. With your Girl Scout Troop or group, plan and take part in a special ceremony for Thinking Day.
11. Create your own Thinking Day Activity!
12. Ask Girl Scout Troop members from which countries their families came from. Mark the locations on a map.
13. Visit www.Wagggsworld.org to learn more about the highlighted countries this year.
14. Read a story or watch a TV show about children who live in another land.
15. Listen to music from another country.
16. What is this year’s WAGGGS theme? Take action by indentifying community needs related to the theme.
17. Make costumes & act out a story or folk dance from another country.
18. Learn (or review) the meaning of the World Pin.
19. Find something in your home from another country. Share your discovery with your Girl Scout Troop.
20. Learn and play a game from another country.

Sometimes I ignore passions of mine because I’m embarrassed.  Not embarrassed about them per se, I just like to keep them to myself.  I don’t like people watching me as I paint.  So tonight Brandon is at Luc’s and I finally get to paint on the canvas that’s been sitting on the easel..  for 7 months now?  We don’t have a spare room so I just can’t disappear into it and paint.  And I hate painting in front of people.  But I’m so excited.  There was a photo that I had taken last summer of a yellow daisy and I’m going to paint something like it onto the canvas.  I need something bright and cheerful to remind me of summer.

What are you passionate about?  Something that you like to do alone or with people or in front of people?

Note cards available on Zazzle.

Pink Gerber daisy

Back in November, I did a series called “Photos that look like paintings.” It was a lot of fun to do, and I’m going to do a similar series again this month that will run through the 12th.

The name of this image is called A Bunch .

My daisy card for the Cute Card Thursday Challenge. My own garden was the inspiration for this card – in my country it is summer now and the daisies are blooming gorgeous.

I used the following to create the card:

• White cardstock
• My Mind’s Eye scrapbooking paper
• BRS rubber stamp (Best Rubber Stamps (South Africa ))
• Cuttlebug dies (“Naturals” and “Floral borders”)
• Spellbinders Nestablities dies (“Scalloped Circles”)
• Gold embossing powder
• Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils
• Flower Soft (Yellow)
• Gemstones
• Butterfly embellishment

Thanks for coming by.

Amelia

We don’t yet have the daisies blooming, but we’ve had wonderfully clear skies the last couple of days. So I chose this image with its tutti-frutti bokeh for today’s post.

This is a cake for a 40th birthday which features handmade daisies.

A smile can brighten the darkest day. ~Author Unknown

It takes a lot of work from the face to let out a smile, but just think what good smiling can bring to the most important muscle of the body… the heart. ~Author Unknown

A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. ~Author Unknown

Flowers from a luncheon I attended recently.  Made me forget (temporarily) that it is 25 degrees outside today!

Incidentally, I’ve been studying up on the blogging software so perhaps I will be able to do some enhancements here one of these days.

Dearest Pandamanda,

First off, let me tell you that once again you are entirely and incredibly wrong. Practicality and Efficiency are vulgar concepts created by ugly people and Nazis. We are neither. These ladies are both:

kate winslet made a lovelier nazi-ess

Neigh, neigh, pretty pony. Nay Nay. We are Artists. Creators. Visionaries. We should be concerned with concepts like Beauty, Freedom, and Freeloading Off of Parents. People like us don’t ask questions like “Does this make sense?” or “Will this serve a purpose?” We buy pet tigers for our infants. We build houses with names like “Neverland” or “Graceland.” We change our names to those of Roman goddesses. We adopt children who already have parents in third world countries. We blog. And we don’t apologize for it.

So go ahead. Build a skyscraper out of starter logs: when it combusts, say that it was a statement about our economic situation. Construct a school that is suspended from tree limbs and made of glass: it will elevate and lend transparency to our education system. Design a cruise ship carved entirely out of ice: the Titanic of the future.

These are the feats for which history will remember us.

Vive la resistance,

Annetastic

Celebrate your Engagement party in style with one of our sizzling summer Engagement invitations.

Ideal for that summer vacation theme, especially if your party is outdoors, a pool party or garden party.

This invitation can be personalised to help you create the perfect invite for your Engagement.

The invite features white and yellow daisies in a romantic heart shape on a summery blue sky background.

See examples of engagement invite wording or see our blog for more.

Invite size is A6 (148.5mm x 105mm) and printed on a heavyweight 350gsm Smooth White Board. The invitations come supplied with high quality envelopes.

posted by caroline picard

I recently finished One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power. It’s one of the Zero Books, a great project that states in its mission: “Contemporary culture has eliminated both the concept of the public and the figure of the intellectual. Former public spaces – both physical and cultural – are now either derelict or colonized by advertising…Zer0 Books knows that another kind of discourse – intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist – is not only possible: it is already flourishing, in the regions beyond the striplit malls of so-called mass media and the neurotically bureaucratic halls of the academy. Zer0 is committed to the idea of publishing as a making public of the intellectual.”

Power’s work lives up to all those expectations. Providing clear and reasoned insight into the pitfalls of feminism–a title that, according to Power, further commodifies the woman, making her values complicit with consumerism such that the contemporary woman celebrates her independence via purchasing power and decadent selfishness. “I think there’s a very real sense in which women are supposed to say ‘chocolate’ whenever someone asks them what they want,” (Power, p. 37). Rather than fulfill herself, however, the contemporary feminist further distances herself from herself, her body, her peers. “They, the breasts, and not their ‘owner,’ are the center of attention, and are referred to with alarming regularity, as completely autonomous objects, mush as one would refer to suitcases or doughnuts. Constantly fiddled with, adjusted, exposed, covered-up or discussed, contemporary breasts resemble nothing so much as bourgeois pets: idiotic, toothless, yapping dogs with ribbons in their hair and personalized carrying pouches.” Concise, generously phrased and to the point, Power describes the society in which we live, one governed by a market that, through momentum and historical precedent, alienates women, alienates sexuality and, really, separates the individual from a sense of freedom.  You can pick up the book by going here.

Power also describes this film, “This 1966 Czech film features two young women who dedicate their lives to spoiling everything in increasingly surreal ways, with seemingly little rhyme or reason. Who are these irresponsible young women who find it more amusing to play with each other, and occasionally with men, but only so they can return to each other and be yet more ’spoiled’ (a in ruined rather than pampered, of course)? The formal inventiveness of the film would undermine its claims to ‘realism,’ but this is all the better. For all the male ‘coming of age’ stories in the world, it makes sense that their rare female equivalent would have to be as bizarre as possible,” (p.40).