Ladies and Gentleman... Meet Anoush!

Anoush being written on at NYC's Fashion Week
in September.
Photo by Meena Sajwani Appleton.

I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Anoush Froundjian.  Anoush and I met in college; where we were in a tiny screenwriting program together (we had all of our classes with the same 15 writers for all four years!).  Recently she has embarked on a new project, "I Got Written Up".  I love this project and think it's awesomely awesome that Anoush is doing it, so I wanted to share it (and her) with you.

"I Got Written Up" is an interactive project where Anoush covers herself in paper and goes to different places to get written on.  She asks everyone a question and allows them to answer (on her) with the sharpies she provides.  Previous questions have been "What do you want the most?" "What's your superhero name?" and "What do you think about when you're on the train?"  Anoush starts the day completely blank and at the end it's, as she puts it, "the noisiest thing you've ever seen."  

Anoush Froundjian is a writer, illustrator, and performer, who wants answers. She lives in New York City.

My interview with Anoush regarding "I Got Written Up" is below. 

L:  Hi!  So, tell me about your project. What are you up to? 

A:  Hi Lauren!  I've been doing a series of experiments where I go to different parts of the city while completely covered in paper.  I walk up to people, ask them a question, and ask them to write their answer on me.  The idea is to offer each person a blank slate to make it their own.  The whole experiment becomes this big, interactive project. 

L:  What was the biggest/scariest thing you overcame to actually take to the streets and turn this idea into a project? 

A:  The first time I did this, I was in Union Square and I was scared out of my mind.  I pinned all these papers to an extra large men's undershirt and wore a loose button-up shirt to cover it all.  I planned to show my "costume" at 2pm, and was waiting for my friend to be there to document it.  She was running late (L train) and couldn't answer her phone.  So I was on my own.  I realized there'd be a chance that this idea would not be absolutely, totally, fucking awesome, and that I'd have to face that reality while also looking like a dumb paper-idiot.  I stood there playing with my top button, and I started to tremble.

Photo by Meena Sajwani Appleton

I called a friend, who is also an improviser, and she gave me advice that made sense.  Something along the lines of "You have to just do it." Advice that sounded good on paper (Hah! Anyway...)  but I needed more than that.  The back of my neck was really hot and I was trembling even more.  She reminded me that I have to be okay with looking stupid.  If I'm not okay with looking stupid, I'm doing it wrong. 

I thanked her for the reminder and unbuttoned.  The shirt came off, and I started talking to people, and the writing started.  The L train finally brought my friend to Union Square and she started snapping pictures while people were already there.  Her not being there in the beginning was actually a very, very good thing. 


L:  What was your biggest fear? 

A:  First, people thinking I'm crazy.  Second, People thinking I'm just some artsy person trying to get unearned attention.  Thirdly, people not thinking anything.  Well... the people thing, pretty much.


L:  What's been the most exciting thing that has happened as a result of this? 

A:  Something really great happened on my way home after the last time I did this.  When I got to my floor of my apartment building, the elevator door opened, and maybe a nine-year-old girl ran up to me.  She said she saw me on the street and had to take my picture.  I didn't want to have my picture taken of me by myself because I didn't really think me alone with the paper all over me was all that interesting.  So I asked her if she would like to write down something she really wanted to do and she said: 

"Yes! Do you have a marker?" 

(Yes, my child - I have a MILLION of them!) 

She smiled and said while she wrote, "I really want to be famous."

I said, "Oh, you totally can.  Just go and do a lot of stuff.  GOOD stuff." 

"Yeah," she said.  "Good stuff." 

"Are you a dancer, or...?" 

"I like acting.  I'm going to start taking classes when I move here." 

"Oh, great. Yeah. Just go and do it.  Wherever or whenever you want." 

"I'm going to"

"It was really nice meeting you."

"You too!"

"Now, go be famous!" 

While I turned the key to my apartment, I thought - that was a good thing that just happened... 

Anoush at Grand Central.
Photo by Meena Sajwani Appleton

Another was when a woman on the subway, on my way home, asked if she could write something down.  She told me that I was doing something very new and the it moved her to see someone create something that had to do with everyone else. 

L:  A lot of artists struggle with identity - who they are, what they do.  You and I met at school for writing, and you've always had some performance mixed in, too.  How do you introduce yourself at a cocktail party?  What do you say you "do"?  Do you put yourself in one category, or are you open to whatever happens? 

A:  I can't really afford to categorize myself - my name is already "Anoush Froundjian".  Giving more information than that at once might cause an explosion (figurative!).  I need to be patient and figure out how to relate to people first and then take it from there (and then bring up comedy).  But I think if I go around telling people who I am and what my purpose is, (which I'm still figuring out), I'd never make any new discoveries. 

That being said, if anyone has any questions about Armenia you know I'm always here to help. 

L: What is the biggest thing you've learned through this process? 

A:  That I can talk to anyone about anything!  Except sports...! And I was also surprised to learn how much people like being approached.  I've also learned that when you're entertaining a group of people, sometimes it is better to let your audience do the talking (writing).

L:  What's the next step for this project?  What do you want to do but haven't done yet with it? 

A:  My plan is to create a bigger project from all of this with each physical piece of writing. 

So far, I document everyone's responses here: http://igotwrittenup.wordpress.com.  The photos were taken by Meena Sajwani Appleton, who has been accompanying me on these adventures.  

Also, please go to my Facebook page and become a fan (or if you're just curious): http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anoush-Got-Written-Up/528229813869545?ref=ts. 

I hope to get you to write something soon! 

L:  Any new projects or other pursuits we should look forward to? 

A:  I do a few things in addition to this.  I have a web comic called "Anoush talks to stuff at http://anoushtalkstostuff.tumblr.com.  It's about me and the inanimate objects I live with and talk to. 

I also design t-shirts called Monster Eats T-Shirts.  About different foods that hate people.  That's over at: http://www.cafepress.com/monster_eats

I also have a collection of monster drawings that I post here at: http://teethandeyeballs.blogspot.com.  It's a lot of teeth and a lot of eyeballs. 

L:  Thank you for doing this!
A:  Thank you for asking me to do this!  This was fun.  I have a question -- do you still do voice impressions, when you're not writing movies?  I remember your English accent being really, really good.  I was just curious.  You can leave this part out if you want.  Actually... don't :) 

L:  Sometimes... I do... [talks in a British accent for the rest of the day].

Anoush being written on in Union Square.
Photo by Meena Sajwani Appleton

Cheerio :) 

(Successful) Food Experiment: Peanut Butter & Banana on Pumpernickel & Rye

It's rainy today. I don't mean just rainy I mean like, the Hollywood version of a rainy day.  It's dark - so dark I need to have lamps on in every room - and there's a delightful pitter-pattering outside that's providing a nice soundtrack to my work.

One thing that I can't avoid on a day like today is a desire for warm and hearty food.  Mid-morning, I got it in my head that I should make a warm grilled sandwich.  It was too early for grilled cheese; I wanted something sweet.  And so my mind immediately turned to one of my old favorites: grilled peanut butter and banana.

I discovered grilled peanut butter and banana sometime in high school.  There's a cool little restaurant in a town near my house that makes it.  It quickly became a staple in my life  - a warm cozy blanket I rely on three times a year or so to deliver a delicious serving of satisfying comfort.  Usually, I make it like a grilled cheese - white bread, butter, peanut butter, and bananas.  But today I didn't have any white bread. Once I get an idea in my head though, I have to go for it, so instead of giving up the dream of this sandwich, I decided to experiment with what I did have: marble bread - rye and pumpernickel.

This was actually quite delicious.  The flavors of the rye and pumpernickel actually undercut the sweetness of the banana and peanut butter in a way that was rather perfect.  I'd definitely suggest trying this, regardless of whether you have some white bread in the house!  This really added new depth to an old classic.  And it somehow felt a little more "grown up", too.

Instructions for this sandwich are below.

You will need: 

-  Two slices of rye/pumpernickel marble bread

-  1 banana (less ripe can be better so it's not too sweet)

-  2 tbs of peanut butter

-  A tiny bit of butter

-  A frying pan

Heat your frying pan to medium.  Don't go any higher - it may cook faster, but slow and steady wins the race here.  

Put your butter in the frying pan and melt it.  While that's melting, assemble your sandwich by putting the peanut butter on the bread and cutting the banana into "chips".  Put the banana chips in the peanut butter and put the other slice of bread on top.

Throw your sandwich into the butter and let it grill slowly.  It should take about three minutes on each side.  There's nothing to really cook here - it's all about the bread toasting and the peanut butter melting. 

Enjoy! I like to eat the leftover banana chips that didn't fit into the sandwich on the side.  A nice cold glass of milk is also a nice accompaniment. 

What's your favorite rainy day food? 

❤Lauren

Penne a la Vodka Receipe

So, years ago, when Garret and I first moved to Brooklyn, we lived in a "small town" within Brooklyn called Bay Ridge.  Brooklyn has many neighborhoods within it, and Bay Ridge has a very tucked away feeling.  It has streets with brownstones and avenues with shops, restaurant, bakeries, and meat markets.  It also has parks and baseball fields and rows of normal houses with yards.  It really does feel like a secret little small town within the greater space of Brooklyn.  And parts of it - certain streets, corners, and shops - almost feel frozen in time.  I'd go for walks in the morning there and at certain points within my walk, I could have been 2010 me, or I easily could have instead been a much more stylish 1960's version of myself, headed to my job at Sterling Cooper.

[P.S. I am obsessed with Peggy Olsen (the character) and she (the character) is from Bay Ridge!]

Anyway, on the corner near our house was this very frozen-in-time catering place:

This picture is weird because I did Google Street View to find it
and then took a screen cap. HEY, technology!

I have no idea what the story is with it (but trust me, I made up plenty).  Nobody ever went in and nobody ever came out.  There were usually garbage bags out front as pictured above.  Most of the time, it just sat there and let my imagination run wild, inventing all sorts of [creepy] scenarios for what could be going on inside.  But sometimes - like, three times a year - the most delicious smells would emanate from this place.

One crisp fall day I could smell penne a la vodka being cooked.  I'd never actually eaten penne a la vodka, but I'd seen/smelled it plenty and I knew it was delicious.  So I became obsessed with eating it and looked up a recipe and made it.

Delicious.

I made that recipe for a while, but this was years ago and I lost track of it.  The last few times I've wanted to make it I've spent fifteen minutes or so scouring the internet for the recipe, and I haven't been able to find it.  So, I've come up with my own version, which I thought I'd share!

Penne a la Vodka Recipe

You will need: 
-  2 cans of crushed tomatoes
-  1 can of tomato paste
-  1 can of tomato sauce
-  1 vidalia (sweet) onion
-  5 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced (pressed gives you more flavor!)
-  salt and pepper to taste
-  5 or 6 fresh basil leaves
-  3 oz of vodka
-  3/4 a cup of heavy cream
-  1/2 a stick of butter (oh, by the way - this sauce isn't exactly healthy)
-  1 box of Penne

Here's What to Do: 

I should say that this recipe takes a while: 3-4 hours from start to finish.  So it's not great for a weeknight dinner, but it is perfect for one of those cold winter days when you just want to stay in the house and be embraced by delicious smells.

So, first slice your onion so that you have a lot of thin onion rings.  Throw a bit of olive oil in a pan and cook the onions over medium/medium-low head (depending on your stove).  Cook them for about ten minutes, until they begin to become translucent.

Add your garlic to the pan and cook it for a minute or so, until the scent of the garlic is released into the air.  Turn the heat down to low.

Now add your tomato products - two cans of crushed tomatoes, one can of tomato paste, and one can of tomato sauce.  Stir it all up and let the mixture get warm.

When your sauce is reaching the "warm" point, rip up your basil leaves and stir them into the pot.  Use salt and pepper to season the sauce now, too.

Now you're going to simmer the sauce for a long time.  Like, three hours.  Stir it every thirty minutes or so and if it's starting to bubble, turn it lower.  For me, the last hour is usually spent cooking on the lowest setting possible.

Once the sauce has been cooking for three hours, you have about an hour to go.  Now is the time to stir your vodka in so that it has time to cook off.

Let the sauce with the vodka cook for 45 minutes.  Next you're going to cube your butter and throw that in, stirring it up.  The sauce will get a shimmer to it once the butter is added.

Once the butter is stirred in, it's time to add your cream.  Stir it in - this is what gives the sauce its signature orangeish pink look.

While that's cooking together (twelve minutes or so) cook up your pasta according to the package directions.

Enjoy!

Ripped up basil in the sauce.

Hurry Up and Give it a Go

Last night I couldn't sleep.  I mean I couldn't sleep in a serious way.  I spent several hours watching old talk show interviews on YouTube, I started re-reading The Scarlet Letter (and didn't get very far, because apparently when your English teacher isn't assigning that text... it's easy to put down) and then I clicked on a PDF that I had forgotten I had downloaded a while back: The Greatest Writer In The World by Dallas Clayton.  Then, my sleepless night became my can't sleep but this sure is wonderful, night.

Dallas Clayton is a writer and artist.  His website's bio reads:

My name is Dallas Clayton. A few years ago I wrote a kids book for my son. That book changed my entire life. Now I spend my days writing stories, drawing pictures, having big ideas and traveling the world sharing them with people of all ages.

Dallas Clayton seems like an all around awesome guy.  I love that such inspiring and wonderful words could have been born out of something so simple -- he wanted to write a book for his son.  Now he shares ideas and inspiration with kids (and grown ups) all over the place.  You can view the text of his books on his website, and he shares daily pictures, ideas and thoughts, too.

One of his poems in particular really stood out to me as I was reading last night, so I thought I would share it with you here.  Here's how it looks in the book.



In case you can't read it above, the text reads:

POINTS

Did you win the Superbowl yesterday?

If so
congratulations!

If not
let's work on that.
You've got an entire year.

Unless of course
you are not eligible
because of your age,
size,
determination,
or the fact that you don't like or play football.

If that's the case,
let's find something else to win.

There are plenty of things:
Games
Awards
Lotteries
Hearts
Life

Just pick something,
whatever it is,
and hurry up and give it a go.

So this time next year
the rest of us can cheer you on
and possibly dump beverages on you
because we are so happy
that we can't control ourselves
and that is the only thing that makes sense to do
to celebrate.

Here are some of my other favorites from Dallas's website.  You should really go check it out for yourself, though -- www.dallasclayton.com.

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

❤Lauren

Finding Beautiful Announcements That Fit Your Style

My twenty-something years have been filled with good news.  Engagements, weddings, babies,  new jobs, graduations, new homes.  It seems like new chapters are always unfolding for the people I love.  It's nice to have so much fun, exciting, good news in the air! 

One of my favorite parts about fun life moments is the opportunity to send out an announcement (and receive them!).  A save the date on the fridge is a constant reminder that something fun and exciting is coming up.  And, because they accompany our biggest and most intimate life moments, announcements are a perfect thing to infuse with your own personality, style, and character.

When my fiance Garret and I got engaged, we knew that we wanted to design something that was very "us".  Garret and I are both artists, and art has always been something we share.  So, it makes sense that when it came time to announce something together, we wanted a card that was a reflection of our shared artsy minds.  Even more exciting was that it could be something we created together.

We ended up designing these announcements/engagement party invites: 

Our engagement announcements/party invites. Garret drew us,
and then I tweaked me to look more like "me". We designed the
back of the card together.

Even if you aren't a designer yourself, though, there are tons of options out there for finding announcements that fit your particular personality, style, and that reflect the moment you're experiencing. 

Here are some tips for finding announcements that embrace who you are: 

1.  Pay attention to emotion and humor.  How do you want people to feel when they get your announcement?  Light?  Happy?  Proud?  Humored?  Different styles say different things - embrace the feeling you want to evoke.

 2.  Fonts are key.  I'm obsessed with fonts.  They add so much character information to a word!  Since an announcement is largely about the words on the page, you'll want a font that fits your character. 

3.  Say what you want to say how you want to say it.  Most designs on the web are really customizable.  You don't have to stick with the old stand-bys ("Together with their parents...") if you don't want to.  There's nothing better than getting beautiful correspondence from someone and feeling like they themselves created it.

Most of all: have fun!  Announcements are a reflection of the fact that something really fun and exciting is happening in your life.  Let them be as happy and elated as you are!

❤ Lauren

How To Make One Glass of Lemonade

Sometimes, there is nothing better than a glass of fresh lemonade.  Particularly on an afternoon when I'm feeling kind of sluggish, pure citrus like lemon is refreshing and rejuvenating.  Usually I'll rely on a slice or two of lemon in a glass of water, but every now and then I want to go all the way with a tall glass of lemonade.

Of course, making a whole pitcher is time consuming and I don't always want that much.  Until recently, my solution was to make one glass using the powdered stuff.  Then I started experimenting and found out using one lemon, some sugar, and some water, I can actually make delicious fresh-squeezed lemonade one glass at a time!

To make one glass of lemonade you will need: 

1 Lemon

4 ounces of water

2 tablespoons of sugar (to taste)

Ice cubes

What to do: 

It's simple!  Squeeze your lemon into a glass.  I have a great citrus juicer that I found a thrift store, but you could do it by hand or use another tool too.  You'll end up with about 1/8 a cup of juice. 

Add water to the juice.  You're only filling your glass about halfway with water - 4 oz or so.  I use warm water for this part so that my sugar will dissolve better.

Add the sugar to the lemon/water mixture.  I use two tablespoons of sugar. It's a lot, but I very rarely drink sweet drinks, so I don't mind.  You may want more or less depending on how sour you like your lemonade. 

Stir away!  Next, add ice until the cup is full. 

Enjoy!

P.S.: For a particularly refreshing twist, rip up some basil leaves and throw them in the lemonade. Delicious! 

❤Lauren

Feel What You Wear: Calm Art

I find that what I'm wearing can really affect my mood, productivity, and general energy.  Sometimes you need to dress a certain part.  Today I knew that I needed to get really creative with various projects that I'm working on.  I needed to feel inspired and comfortable, and I also needed to stay level-headed.   I needed to feel like an artist who's letting ideas come as they will.  Nothing forced, nothing high-energy... just dabbling. 

I ended up wearing a pair of super flowy black linen pants, a long brownish purple Buddha shirt, a dark green sweater, and my favorite necklace - a hand sculpted clay Buddha made by a local artist, Chris London.  Mid-day I needed a break from my notebooks, so I took a few pictures inspired by how my day is going: Buddha, flowy paints, and mugs of tea (I think I may be getting a cold).

What's your outfit inspiring you to feel like today? 

❤ Lauren

Oh, That's... Pinteresting...

Someone once told me that if you think of yourself as deserving a good world and life, you keep your house clean and nice.  That's obviously a big statement and it comes with a lot of baggage, but if you think about it, it has some semblance of something to it.  A clean and well-maintained space does, at least for me, provide a more stable playground for creativity and life in general.

Lately I got to thinking about my online "spaces".  Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Pinterest are kind of like separate spaces for our online selves (you were onto something, MySpace!), and the truth is we spend a lot of time in those spaces.  They all serve different purposes, too. Facebook is a space for my "real life".  This blog is the space where some of my ideas are presented.  Pinterest is the space where I collect inspiration for those ideas.  It's also where I collect ideas for my house, for my design work, for my writing, for food, for entertaining, for my wedding... Pinterest is like my catch-all creative studio of madness.

I joined Pinterest when it first came out and on a bit of a whim.  My original thought was kind of that I had enough online "spaces" to manage and I didn't need another.  But then, like many people, I got sucked in!  There are so many great ideas out there, I couldn't help but get involved in the Pinterest world.  Plus, it's an awesome way to collect visual ideas for something like a wedding or shower.

But since I joined kind of haphazardly and then got sucked in all of a sudden, I basically went in with no plan whatsoever. As a result created a lot of random pinboards that have no real sense behind them. Pins upon pins were lost under headings like "Cool!" which could seriously apply to anything at all.  Then I'd go back to find a pin and have no idea where I put it - under cool, or under awesome?

I decided to organize my pinboards.  If you're like me and joined Pinterest on a whim and then found yourself obsessed, I can't recommend doing this enough.

Here's what my Pinterest looked like before my re-vamp:

I mean, Love, Cute Ideas, Art Projects to Try, and Interesting were all kind of the same thing!

So I got to work creating much more descriptive, organized pins.  Here's how the boards are organized now:

These are organized by what the pins are either functioning as or providing inspiration for.  Gift ideas, design inspiration, home inspiration, wedding inspiration, etc.

I'll admit that Weird/Funny/Awesome is still a little vague, but come on!  How else could I have possibly categorized this:

❤ Lauren

Getting Lost In Wise Words

I often find myself getting lost in visualizations of wise words.  There's something about beautiful words being made visual that makes them all the more... well, beautiful!  I like to decorate my workspace with these little reminders and points of inspiration so that when I'm pausing in my writing, tapping my pen on my notebook and looking around, these little morsels of goodness find their way into my brain.

I recently became enthralled with Lisa Congdon's work.  Lisa is an artist with a blog that has one of the best titles I've ever seen: "Today Is Going To Be Awesome".  She's doing a project called 365 Days of Hand Lettering, and the results are captivating. In many of them, she's taken little phrases, art in their own right, and turned them into visual art. I'm hoping to fill my space with some of her work via her Etsy shop once she is back from vacation!

Here are some of my favorites:

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

What words of wisdom do you keep around your workspace?

❤ Lauren

10 Creative Uses for Ball Jars

As anyone who has been to my house in the past year knows, I love ball jars.  I know they're not for everyone but if they fit your style, a set of 12oz ball jars can be a great stand-in for a set of drinking glasses.

When we moved last year, I knew I wanted to do just that: fill my cabinet with these jars instead of drinking glasses.  But, over the year, I've found many other great uses for them, too.

Ten Uses for Ball Jars

1.  Pencil & Pen Cup: Display away!  Everything is easier to find when it's organized, and this can give a fun look to a simple, rustic, creative space (like my home office!).

2.  Frosted beer glass: Since they're resilient and come in large packs, throw a bunch of ball jars in the freezer next time you're having a party. Your guests will enjoy a stylish frosted beer glass!

3. Storage: Because they each come with an accompanying screw-on top, the greatest use for a ball jar is the one it was originally intended for: storage! I find them to be especially great for loose stuff like rice, pasta, and nuts.

4.  Vase: Depending on the flowers, fill a ball jar with water and you've got yourself a perfect vase.

5.  Cotton Balls & Q-Tips: This is especially great for a guest bathroom.  Throw cotton balls and Q-tips in a jar and display them on a countertop surface in the bathroom. The jar gives the cottony goods almost an apothecary-esque look.

6.  Snacks & Candy: Great to use at a party in place of bowls.  You can fill these up, screw on the lids, and place them where they'll be for the party without worrying about the dog getting into them.  Right before the party starts, take the lids off, and you're good to go.

7.  Candle: Stick a tealight or even pillar candle in one of these jars and you have a lovely glow that can go anywhere.  Particularly great for rustic weddings.

8.  Iced Coffee:  Leftover coffee in the morning?  Pour whatever's left in a jar, screw on the lid, and throw it in the fridge.  In the afternoon, fill it up with ice and pour some milk over it and you've got yourself a perfect iced coffee.

9.  Measuring Cup:  Ounces are actually marked on the sides of the jars.  If you're like me, you only have one, maybe two, proper measuring cups in the house.  Which can be a real bummer when it comes to measuring dry & wet stuff at the same time.  Ball jars to the rescue!

10.  Drinking Glasses: Of course, my original intention!  These jars are great for anytime drinking, and they make a glass of lemonade or iced tea feel just a little more special.

*  *  *

What is your most creative use for a ball/mason jar?

❤ Lauren

Love What You Do

One year ago today, my fiance and I moved from Brooklyn to Vermont.  When we made the decision to move, we experienced several puzzled expressions on the faces of friends and family members.  "But... why?  Aren't you supposed to live in New York City?  You're a writer and a filmmaker.  What's in Vermont?" 

The move from Brooklyn to Vermont was about a lot of things for me, but one of the biggest ones was hitting a "reset" button on my passion as an artist and on my spirit as a person.  A lot of the things that make me inspired weren't present in Brooklyn. For an artist, that's dangerous territory.  We survive on inspiration - it is the marrow of our livelihood.  And the subsequent absence of the royal jelly called dreaming was taking its toll on me in a big way.

Hindsight makes me seem worse than [I hope] I actually was, but by last spring, I was getting really anxious about the fact that without inspiration, my artist self was slipping away.  An artsy, weird, nerdy little girl I once knew was being replaced by a grumpy, frustrated, jaded weirdo.  The result was a ball of confusion that was unfortunately housed in my body and was interacting with other people as me.  And clarity as to what was causing it was getting less and less obtainable with every day I spent away from sweeping parks, the sound of crickets, and the smell of firewood in winter air.  I'd been consistently away from the things that fuel my inspiration for so long that I had forgotten their potential effect on me.  Instead, I was starting to think mean and grumpy was just "how I was".

This was a make or break moment, really.  A few more months and that once inspired little girl might have been permanently trapped inside a furrowed brow, destined to ride subways for the rest of time.  But then one day on a train that was crawling up the Hudson, the former version of myself, the artist, sat down next to me.  She whispered something to me that I can't believe I heard.

What if to revive that artsy nerdy girl, I needed to go in pursuit of the things that made me tick? What if I could be inspired again?  What if I just needed to let myself be?

She whispered her idea directly into my consciousness. Then that piece of me - the artist - disappeared into a melting sunset.

But she wasn't gone, yet.  I just had go to find her.

Over the past year, I have been teaching myself to discover and embrace the things that make me "me".  The things that make my artist heart flutter and stir a pen to sprawl romantic flights of fancy onto a page.  For me, that ongoing discovery has been driven by being away from where I was. While I was there, I couldn't see it.  Riding the subway, I couldn't know that if I were to instead take some of my favorite songs for a long drive in the countryside, I'd remember that winding roads and beautiful music are an inspiring combination to me.  I couldn't know, in apartment air filled with the conversations of passersby and neighbors, that it's only in pure quiet that I can hear my characters speak.  My hungry stomach couldn't remember that although delivered pad thai is indeed quite good, a homemade tomato cream sauce that takes hours to create is oh so good.  I had to come here and do those things in order for them to work their way back into my soul.

But this blog really isn't (I say after so many words,) about Brooklyn or Vermont.  That's just what contributed to all of it for me.  Nevertheless, it feels appropriate that on this first day of my second year here, I am officially re-launching the Love What You Do blog.  In its new iteration, this blog is fully dedicated to the idea that the more we embrace the things we each love, the more fulfilled our spirits will be.  That fulfillment is what lets us dance, laugh, and sing.  It's what lets us enjoy one another.  When inspiration meets inspiration, magic happens. Happiness happens.  We happen.

Love What You Do is a creative space dedicated to inspiration. It is a collection of things that inspired me and projects, foods, recipes, and ideas that might inspire you.

In life and in writing, I am (now, again,) all about the details.  I think it's the little stuff in life that makes our world colorful and exciting.  From appreciating the poetry in tiny moments to making something as simple as breakfast at home feel special, I strive to embrace the details in my life.  I hope to inspire readers of this blog to do so too.

❤Lauren