A Vision & A Verb Photo Contest

As a child, I was a great fan of literature and poems. I don’t read the classics much anymore, please tell me I’m not the only one.

Not having television in my own native language as a child gave me a lot of time to explore Voltaire, Chaucer and Shakespeare. I can’t say I understood all of what I read. I only know that I found most of the prose beautiful.

There is some that “stuck” with me because our English teacher insisted on memorization. I still think that repetition can lead to understanding and appreciation of what we are learning. As a result of that, I can still recite a lot of what I was exposed to. There are some poems that I found so beautiful that they have become a part of me. The poem, Trees, by Joyce Kilmer is one them. I don’t know why I love it so much, I just do.

So I’m using it along with this photo of a weeping willow as my entry into the Vision & Verb photo contest, found here. Contests ends August 18.

Please consider entering also! The prize is fantastic but I also love reading all of the wonderful prose written by sage and creative writers and poets. So go to the Vision & Verb facebook wall and enter now!

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

Hello Love Winners!

Thank you for submitting fantastic photos! First there was one winner, then there were two but now… I have some wonderful surprises below.

Danny Douglas chose Jenica as a  winner. Here’s what he said about her special family image.

“GRAND PRIZE WINNER – I love, love, love these images. I love the kiss in frame 2, and the mom face in frame 4. This one says family love to me!”

He ALSO chose Michelle of My Two Seasons as 1st runner up. As such, she is too a winner! Here’s what he said about her wonderful image of sisterly love.

“HONORABLE MENTION  – I have a soft spot for daughters!”

Hello Canvas chose Sarah of rowenleaf.blogspot.com as a winner of a free canvas. What a fun image!

So yes, there are THREE winners of the 16 x 20 canvas.

But don’t go away.

I know it’s August and it’s hot and you have many other things to do but so many of you took the time to enter this little giveaway and spread the word. I am so appreciative of that. So there is a 25% discount for all of you who entered a photo in this contest and choose to place an order with Hello Canvas. Please contact me directly for your discount code.

This is my kind of giveaway, everyone is a winner! Remember you can also get a 10% discount by using the offer code HelloLove. Perfect!

Danny also took the time to acknowledge these two images.

HONORABLE MENTION Kath of Seours du Jour – I can feel the caring in this image! Sister trying to comfort her brother.

HONORABLE MENTION Marcie Scudder – Although not human family love, animal love is awesome too.

I will have another soon. And it won’t be as much work for you.

Congratulations to all of you and thank you Hello Canvas!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Family Love

Thanks to those of you who have already submitted photos for the Hello Love – Family contest! I am going through you submissions – again – at work:) Hello Canvas is also blown away, so much so that they have offered to give another canvas of the same size to an additional winner. Yippee! It’s Christmas in August.

I love the images and the stories behind them. They make me laugh and cry, thank you all for submitting! I love each of your interpretations of family.

Here’s some examples what I call family in my own life.

This is not my family by blood but I just love them all the same.

Here is a family at work…Little Steven is the office manager. He’s walking now.

Here’s my friend Chris (who I think is the most important person in the world right now) with his two sisters, Miss Becky and Miss Amy. Miss Amy was adopted from Korea and Miss Becky is blond, but for some reason, these three look alike to me.

How about this family?…oh the hair! It’s the bane of my existence. It’s a good thing I love my hairy family too.

Here are the girl and Ella. They see more of each other now-a-days than we do of the girl. There’s love there for sure.

So there you go! So glad to see your wonderful families. The contest ends tonight, sometime after I finish dinner:) And don’t forget to leave your link at this post for consideration to win the 16×20 canvas from Hello Canvas who is sponsoring this giveaway. There’s going to be two winners! I’m tickled pink!

August 2, All In The Family

This is Zepp, short for the mega rock group Led Zeppelin. He’s trying to figure out what these other little creatures are that moved into his house. He was really gentle with the chick though, a big lug indeed.

Please show me a photo of what family means to you! You can win a 16 x 20 canvas from the wonderful people at Hello Canvas. Find out how here.

Posted on Tracey’s Best Shot Monday.

Hello Love ~ Hello Canvas Giveaway

Update: Entries are now closed. Winners will be announced on Friday!

It’s not too early for the dog days of summer, it is certainly hot enough. It seems especially appropriate then that Hello Canvas has graciously offered to cool things off with a canvas giveaway – on this site – for you.

On top of the wonderful product they offer, I can say they are very nice people as well. A pleasure actually. Imagine my delight in their offer! And I can’t think of a better way to thank you for coming here and visiting. It gives me great joy to read your comments; it’s no little thing.

If you have been visiting a while, you will know how much I love my family, warts and all…so if you would like to win a 16 x 20 inch canvas from Hello Canvas, then please leave me a link to a photo that best represents family to you.

I know families come in all shapes, forms, and sizes so please don’t feel shy.

How it works:

1. Leave a comment here with a link to a photograph on your blog or flickr site that best illustrates “Hello Love – Family” to you.
2. Photos will be judged on how the photo best illustrates the theme.
3. If you could pass the word and share I’d be most appreciative, but I’m just glad you are here. Really.
4. Enjoy!

Only one link per person please. And only we can only judge those photos that are shared here through this post.

Who will judge? Because I know many of you who come here and so many are fantastic photographers, I don’t feel like I can truly be objective as a judge so I asked my good friend and photographer extraordinaire himself, Danny Douglas of Danny Douglas Photography to make the determination on the winner. Note: The judge is on a strict low-calorie diet so no bribing with candy allowed.

The contest closes on Wednesday, August 4. And another will open…

Also – Hello Canvas has offered to give you 10% off any one one of their great products for a month. Fabulous! Please use the offer code hellolove when ordering.

Disclaimer: I know some of you are not photographers but let me give you some ideas.

1. Ever had your family portrait done? Get your photographer to send you a digital copy.
2. Ever taken a great vacation photo? Well, it would look great on canvas.
3. Ever wish that you had more photos of you as a child? Don’t make your child wonder the same thing. Take their pictures now!

You’ll never regret it, never.

Thanks for coming by and submitting a photo and best of luck to you!

I’ve Got It All Wrong

I try the best I can to adopt a healthy lifestyle. I do fall off the wagon and I have to pull myself back up again. Speaking of which, I haven’t done any cardio in two weeks. Hello belly.

I’m sitting here, minding my own business, and mending my body when I received a funny email from a friend which tells me that I’m doing it all wrong.

Or as she puts it, “I knew all that exercise and eating right stuff was crap - now there’s proof from a real doctor!!!”

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Photos are mine. The words are not. I don’t even know if it’s true but it’s funny all the same.

Still resting…

What Deer?

I don’t have the most observant dog.

Lets face it, if I quit my job and stayed home every day, I would drive you crazy.  Still resting I am.

July 27, Five Things About Sinus Infections & Can This Flower Be Saved?

Great title huh?

1. You are sick and you think, “Okay, no big deal. I’ve had colds before,” and you continue with your life thinking it will just go away. You would be very wrong about that.

2.  The symptoms are pain, dizziness, headache, sore throat, fatigue, annoying cough, grouchiness, apathy, ringing in your ears and a short temper with those you love. Sorry lovies.

3. Don’t wait six days before seeing th doctor. I found my current doctor three years ago. I felt like I have been waiting for her all my life. Anyway, she immediately knew what was wrong with me. She always does. I love that. She said, “You have the sinus infection from hell.” Don’t wait to see your doctor, go right away because…

4. You can get medicine to fix it. I asked her how long it would take for the body to fight it off without medication. She said in Europe, sinus infections go untreated. It can take one 12 weeks to kick it without antibiotics. 12 weeks. I said, “Give me something please.”

5. Rest. I love that advice.

It may be psychosomatic but I feel better after only two applications of the medicine. Dare I say that I can’t wait to take some more drugs this evening:)

Here is the above flower before tweaking, playing and editing it all yesterday evening (I’m resting remember?)

For some reason, my camera seems to over saturate bright colors against a neutral or dark background. I don’t know why…I didn’t take this is in vivid setting, which I play with from time to time.

The edited version reminds me of the kind of pattern you would find in an old Hawaiian quilt…

The Pioneer Woman & Dancing With The Stars & A Weird Internet Coincidence

After we met the Pioneer Woman at a book signing, the husband decided to do some research into why everyone was so fascinated. I asked him to read Black Heels to Tractor Wheels and he was laughing out loud.

Then he decided he was going to make something from her cookbook. He settled on these burgundy mushrooms which were delicious but four pounds of mushrooms goes a long way in our house. We ate them for three days afterward.

I think he’s hooked.

And another thing, coffee ice cream is my favorite flavor of ice cream…really…ask my kids.

My real point is this. There has been a lot of synergy lately on the world wide web. The blogs I visit all seem to be on the same plane of thought. And then there’s this…

I spent four hours in line at the book signing with a nice woman named Alyce. As it turns out, another nice woman, Jolyn, who blogs at a year of happy, saw her on my blog and said they knew each other. I asked if it really was true and yes, as it turns out, they did.

Very strange coincidence indeed.

So now to my real, real, real point. I fell asleep last night before the end of Dancing With The Stars, so I didn’t see the winner, though I knew who it would be. The synergy – the coincidence – the great chi in the universe is such that I’m going to make this statement.

The Pioneer Woman will be on Dancing With The Stars next season.

I don’t have my finger on the pulse of Hollywood or on the cattle farm. But mark my words. If it really does happen, then I said it first. If it doesn’t happen, then oh well.

I’m in a very strange mood today. Off to work now.

Hosted by Cecilyand Mamarazzi

And Now For The Walking Shoes…

It’s really fun when you find the perfect thing, you just want to shout it out to the world. So that’s what I’m doing.

I ran out of time yesterday to tell you about these shoes but I really want to. Because I can’t believe I found these. I told the husband several times that these are hands down the best walking shoe I have ever had the pleasure of putting on my worn, calloused, flat and ever-lovin’-I-can’t-wait-to-get-off-of-my-feet feet.

First of all, they have a heel. For a shortie like me, that’s a huge plus. But they don’t feel like they have a heel. They somehow medically and scientifically built them to cushion your feet for optimimum walking. I can wear them ALL DAY and still feel good at the end of the day. The one drawback is that they have a suede bottom so I bought a product that you can use on the bottom and help the suede stand up.

They are from Dansko, the Sela model. The one I have is the nubuck color. I like the neutral color because it doesn’t immediately draw people’s eyes to your feet like a darker color would. However, in researching these I saw the Berry Gecko color and I thought, “Hmmm…those look great.”

At $110 a pop, I guess I’ll pass on another color for now but I’m tellin’ you, I would own every color if I could.

Speaking of money and clothes/fashion…I’m on a roll. The bathing suit I spoke about yesterday is $158. These are $100 and up, depending on the color and material. You say, “I can’t afford that.”

And I’m wid cha.

But tomorrow, I’m going to tell you a story about the investment of a good quality piece of clothing or shoes. Hopefully it won’t be a soap box…

Wait! Here’s the link to Zappos.com. I bought them at the mall but there are many distributors out there. Dansko sells a lot of clogs…hmmm…I was never a clog person but they may have another sale this winter.

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