Siblings

This is me with my two siblings. We've never all been in the same place before--it was pretty cool.

Hopefully we'll all get to hang out again!

Endorphins...or just gasping for air?

I am not a runner. I admire friends who run like DesignLadyNYC. She's raising money for Race For the Cure and tracking her runs with Nike+, which I find completely awesome. Yay Jerlyn! And then there's my friend Ericka who managed to do a half-marathon in the middle of raising her two gorgeous boys. Double-yay Ericka!

But I have NEVER liked running. I would be embarrassed to use Nike+ because my posts would say "Gardenia ran 1 mile at a speed of 3.2." Lame. But you have to do something, right? So today I ran. And thanks to a podcast from Motiontraxx, it didn't suck at all. I think that part of the reason I don't like running is I get really bored. I've tried music, but if you don't get the tempo right, it just doesn't work, and most of the music I enjoy listening to doesn't exactly work. I've tried audiobooks (like Ericka) or podcasts from NPR (naturally), but that only works if you also like running, which I don't. The Motiontraxx podcast was perfect: built in tempo, duration, and intervals, and a soothing voice telling you when to change tempo. I will definitely be downloading more tracks from them.

Not sure how far or fast I went--I do know there were a LOT of hills, most of them up. The podcast I used was 32:15, but I wasn't home by the end of it and probably went another 10 minutes. So maybe 45 minutes of running and walking intervals. That's got to be at least 3 miles, right? Yay me!

Here is me, post workout:

 

Just what I needed. 

Self Portrait

I don't think I'm exactly talented, but this is the first thing I've ever drawn that actually looked like something.

Vintage Inspiration

Been playing on colourlovers.com almost every day, and today I got inspired by a poster who created palettes from vintage typewriter ribbon tins. After searching through vintage images I found a group of vintage hairnets (discovered in the basement of an old porn studio, so the story goes) and created a few palettes from this inspiration.

Color by COLOURlovers

 

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Puros animales aqui.

We've had some recent visitors from the animal kingdom. First there was the garter snake we found while out walking the dog.

And the day after we let her back into the wild, we had this little fellow stop by.

Plays with Colour

I've been playing around with colors and palettes on ColourLovers.com. Here are some of my creations:

A tribute to my birthday:

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

A tribute to the sofa I dream of having:

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

A tribute to Swingtown (WHY did they cancel that show?):

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Celebrations

This is called a casuela:

Mineral water, a little orange juice, and chunks of citrus fruits. Oh, and tequila.

And this is the mariachi band and dancers:

It's always great to celebrate!