Hello

I've been wanting a "hello" stamp for quite a while and now I have one!!

I laughed out loud when I saw my first imprint (top left).  Apparently I was too excited to get to the inking part, I forgot to finish outlining all the letters first. D'oh!!

#Carve December

Julie Balzer - from whom I recently took a stamp carving class - announced on her blog last week that she was going to carve a stamp a day for the month of December (you can read that post here).  I have decided to play along with this daily art project.  I especially liked the fact that she said, "If you miss some days, who cares?!"  Because, you know, it could happen.  :)

I was going to start easy by carving a small, simple design or maybe the word "December" or the number one for December 1st but then I drew this little face at work today and thought, hey, why not carve it into a stamp?

I was a little nervous getting started and had to tell myself to just start and do it. What was the worst that could happen?  If it didn't turn out, I could throw out that piece of rubber and carve something else.

I followed the directions in the beginning of Julie's book, entitled "Carve Stamp Play":

and it was easy peasy. I took my time and went slow. It took me about half an hour and it was quite relaxing and meditative.  You can see the sequence from right to left in the images below.

First I carved the outline and stamped the image to see what it looked like.  I was intending to carve out all the blank spaces and just leave the outline but I liked the way it looked with the solid black areas so I decided to leave it like that. But I decided she needed more lines in her hair.  I liked the frame around her face but decided to carve away the excess, as Julie recommends doing so in order to make it easy to place the stamp exactly where you want it.  Seems like a good idea to me!

I'm quite pleased with how this first stamp turned out and I'm looking forward to working through the rest of Julie's book as the month progresses and trying out the various techniques she has included. There are so many good ideas in her book and I know I'll have lots of fun trying them out.

Feel free to jump in and join us!  We're posting photos of our creations on Instagram under the hashtag #carvedecember.

Haiku My Heart Friday: A Celebration

Candlelit magic
The welcoming glow signals
a celebration.

Photo from happybirthday-cards.com

53 today
Each passing year a surprise
Still feel young at heart.


You'll find links to more Haiku My Heart Friday poems on Rebecca's blog.

Arriving in Mexico

I have started downloading my trip photos, all 1600 of them.  I told myself I wasn't going to photograph anything I took a picture of when I visited San Miguel de Allende last year and for the most part, I think I was successful in achieving that goal. Nevertheless, there was lots of prime subject matter. Here are some photos from the first day.

The flight down was uneventful, although getting on the plane took a lot longer than I have ever experienced before. My flight was at 6:30 am so I arrived at the airport about 4:40 a.m., expecting things would be quiet. Instead, there were lineups everywhere. Apparently, they had just started processing everyone at 4:30, so the backlog was huge.  By the time I got through customs and security, it was 6:10 and they had already started boarding the plane! On the plus side, clear skies all the way to Dallas and then on to Leon, Mexico.

Our first stop after meeting our driver, Luis, at the airport was the drive-through liquor store (which is built very much like our car washes - you drive in and there are stand up glass fronted coolers lined up inside filled with all manner of bottled cold drinks, both alcoholic and non).  I've only ever seen this type of facility in Australia.  The only difference being in the land of Oz, you're just there to pick up supplies.  In Mexico, they open the bottles for you and you can drive off consuming same if you so desire.  Lucky for us, Luis only wanted a bottle of water. :)

But that's not the only thing that's different in Mexico.  It always surprises me to see people riding in the back of pickup trucks, especially when they are young children.

The Xmas reindeer are already on display, lined up along the street as you drive through a certain small town, there to entice potential shoppers.  These dogs certainly seemed to find them of interest!

I remembered this sign from last year's visit and tried hard to get a photo of it.  As you can see, it's not easy to do from the back seat of a moving car, I wasn't overly successful.

My rudimentary knowledge of Spanish made me wonder exactly what a sign pointing to "Canada of the Virgin" might be but according to Wikipedia, it is a pre-Columbian archeological site. One of these days, I hope to visit there to see the ruins.

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende in time for dinner on a nearby rooftop terrace just as the sun was setting.  The Parroquia looked just as beautiful as I remembered it in the setting sun.

Joey, Pat, Bonnie and Beatriz

After we ate (famished after as many as 12 hours of travelling with little or no food - when did they stop having food available on airplanes?!), we strolled over to the Jardin (pronounced "hardeen") to see what was going on. It was the start of a holiday weekend and the locals were out celebrating, socializing and enjoying the pleasant evening weather.

Then we headed back to Casa Carmen, where we were staying for the week, to enjoy a fiesta in the courtyard.  The fountain looked beautiful, decorated with candles and flowers.

The staff made tortillas, which we washed down with margaritas.  Very tasty!

We listened to music provided by two very talented local musicians and danced up a storm.

All in all, a great way to begin our adventure in San Miguel!

A Store Called Mixta

I don't quite know where to begin sharing my photos of last week's trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, so I'll just start with this place which has been on my mind for the past several days.

It's the building that houses a store called Mixta.  The store itself is quite interesting, a fascinating mix of clothing, artwork, vintage furniture and artifacts, novelty gift items, household furnishings and jewelry.  Quite a delightful shopping experience, as you can see from their website.  I also found this blog post written in 2012 by a woman named Robin which provides a bit of the history of the building as well as several photos of the store itself.

When we visited there this past Saturday morning, I wanted to take all of these items home with me, especially the wooden four seater:

But what I really love is the building itself, which dates back to the late 1700's, according to the store's website.  Like many places in San Miguel, the beautiful entryway

(complete with a stunning mosaic tile floor)

leads into an even prettier inner courtyard.

There are several rooms that open off the courtyard, most of which are open to the public and are to display the store's various wares and some of which are not.  Pretty doors like this one lead who knows where.

This room has the most amazing artwork on the walls. I'm pretty sure the design is painted on, rather than wallpaper (but I could be wrong!).

Next time I go back, I'm hoping to have more time to explore this fascinating building. And of course, check out whatever goodies the store has to offer!

Home From Mexico

I'm home from my trip to San Miguel de Allende last week and back to work but still not quite back in the groove of real life.  I have a long list of things I "should" be doing (finish unpacking, laundry, catching up on emails, etc.) but so far, I'm not really feeling like doing any of them.

Instead, I've been doing things that seem to eat up a lot of time in the evening but don't qualify as accomplishing anything on said "to do" list, like watching cute cat videos on YouTube.

I don't know how I ended up there last night but I somehow found a video on YouTube about two cats named Shorty and Kodi, also known as "ShoKo".  Turns out, there are 216 videos about these two posted and I watched several of them.  Went back tonight for a second helping.  Most of them are short and cute, with several laugh out loud moments included.

Here's an example:

Do yourself a favour.  Go to youtube.com and type "shoko" into the search bar.  Make sure you have some free time cleared, you're going to want to watch a lot of them.

In the meantime, I'll get busy downloading my photos from Mexico and try to wean myself off the cute cat videos!

Greetings from Mexico

I woke up this morning to the realization that I hadn't blogged for a few days. I must be on vacation because honestly, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind before now. 

Here's a few photos:

The biggest church in town, apparently not a cathedral because there is no bishop there. 

Pretty glass tiles on the floor of my room. 

The courtyard of where we are staying, where we make art during the day. 

There are lime trees. 

It's so beautiful here!