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

new look & new material

Fall is upon us, and even though I am several years out of school, I can't help but get inspired by the rows and rows of school supplies that emerge at stores around this time of year.  I think there is no better time than the fall to dive into something new.

On September 4, 2012, I am going to launch the new Love What You Do blog site.  I have a bunch of new posts, ideas, and approaches cooking.  

As part of that, I'll be tweaking the appearance of the site in the coming weeks.  Please excuse my virtual dust! 

found in my childhood bedroom

I'm living at my mom's this week.  My childhood best friend is getting married, and I'm her maid of honor.  I'm in town helping her prep for the big day, so I've taken up residency in my old room with my old things. 

Today I did a little snooping into the things my former self kept in this room.

Snow White and Alice from Alice in Wonderland.
These were my mom's and my aunt's.  I ended up with them as a kid.

I got the mirror in my room at a garage sale when I was around 12.  It has a mushroom at the top.  Probably some fabulous 70's teenager's at one point.  This is where I hung my tassel when I graduated high school.

In an old box of letters from my great uncle to me, I found a letter from my mom's
childhood pen pal to her.  It specifies: written in 1975.  Her pen pal was in Australia.

More of my mom's letter from her pen pal circa 1975. Her pen pal wrote out a short story she had
written for English class.  I love that she wrote it out and used different color inks for the title, etc. 

One of the many saved letters from my great uncle to me. This one is from 1995. He always included
newspaper clippings that he thought I might find interesting. He always typed the letters on a typewriter
but signed his name in ink.

A snowman mug I made in ceramics class.  My mom keeps jewelry, etc. in it now.

The cover and inside pages of, "The Goodnight Book". Which was apparently my 'favrit' book. So much so
that I put my (old) phone number and started to write my address.  You know, just in case I... left it somewhere.

I always loved the line "Good night footsteps passing in the hall..." from "The Goodnight Book"

One of my many copies of my favorite book, The BFG.  I love Roald Dahl's imagination.
I have a copy of this in my current (grown up) bedroom, my office, and in my childhood bedroom.
Sometimes I just like to open to a random page and experience the way he formed his sentences.

I haven't changed much, really.  My room is still full of books and words! 

Hello Giggles!

Over the past few months, I've been giving myself time to actually sit down and engage in the very many awesome things that are happening on the internet. One of those things is Hello Giggles, a particularly wonderful website that is described by itself as "..the ultimate entertainment destination for smart, independent, and creative females." In a dream future, I would write regularly for Hello Giggles.

I've read some great pieces on the site that were contributed by readers. They're not just little write-in things, they're real articles written by real people.  I find that really exciting, and when an idea for a particular piece of writing came to me, I decided to give it a shot and submit it to Hello Giggles for consideration. Well, guess what! They published it!

Click the image of the website to go to the actual article!

Woohoo!! So exciting! What's even more exciting is the amount of fun warm thoughts I've been getting from Facebook friends about the piece. Which is, essentially, the point of the piece!

Some other thoughts:

I've revived Bricks to Sticks!  I'm going to be doing a lot of work on Love What You Do in the coming weeks.  I want to create a really creative, fun, wild space here.  So, I'll be putting most of my reflections-on-Vermont pieces there, instead. There'll definitely be so overlapping, but nevertheless, Bricks to Sticks is back!

I'll be back again in a couple of days! I'm getting together some fun projects, recipes, etc. to start launching this website as what I think it can be in its best form!

the drive-ins!

last night we did something i haven't gotten to do in a long time: we went to the drive-ins! hathaway's drive-in is just outside of bennington, so it was about a 45-50 minute drive for us (believe it or not, here, that is not a long time!) because it was a weeknight they weren't showing a double feature, so we only got to see spiderman (sorry: 'the amazing spider-man') which is okay because even that didn't end until 11:15. it gets dark late these days!

we brought a blanket and pillows and turned the back of our car into a comfortable little laying pod (one benefit to having a 14-year-old station wagon!).  i forgot how awesome it is to lay in the open air and watch a movie.  and i had really forgotten how weirdly cool it feels to walk toward and under the screen while a movie is playing.  i departed the car to go to the bathroom at one point and there i was in this open field walking toward a movie screen.  i don't know why it felt so cool but it did.  i guess because it's not something you usually get to do.

anyway, here's a few photos i snapped.

the sun setting next to the screen. the funny thing is that when i showed garret this picture,
he had actually just taken the exact same one with his phone. 

murgy and i settle in while garret grabs us some dinner from the snack bar. 

it begins! this is actually a trailer, not spiderman ;)
murgy, who has never been to the movies before, was rather alarmed when it started.
she eventually settled down and i think thought our car was actually our bed.

daydreaming

I've had a fun/inspiring day so far today.  I woke up to a message that someone wanted to put in a custom order for a pregnancy announcement through my Etsy shop!  It's so exciting to be putting this little bit of art out into the world, and to realize that my photos, words, and ideas are going to play a role in such important and exciting correspondence for someone.  Twenty people I don't know are going to receive my work in the mail, and it's going to deliver exciting sentiments to them.  How fun is that!

The sale inspired me to sit down and create some new card designs, which I did for a few hours this morning.  I came up with seven or so new cards, which I ordered photos for.  I'm excited that I'll be able to offer new designs as soon as the photos start coming in!

Afterwards, I headed to a big open field in our neighborhood (pictured above with some words embedded).  I've been doing a lot of writing outside lately.  Not only is it beautiful out, but being isolated outdoors with no internet and just a notebook tends to boost my productivity/focus.  Instead of clicking away at Facebook during pen pauses, I glance around at my surroundings and think about the work.  It's simple but it really does make a big difference.

Each day I'm here I fall more in love with the tiny little details of "life in Vermont".  Sitting in that field is one of them.  Out there it was nothing but the sun, a swingset, and a sheet I was sitting on.  It reminded me of the playground at Latham Ridge, my elementary school.  Of course, we had a big [particularly awesome] playground that was much more than a simple swingset, but for some reason every time my friends and I would find ourselves there, we'd retreat to this one solitary swingset.  We'd sit on the swings and talk for hours.  Big ideas and daydreams were exchanged.  I did some great imagining there - about other people, about what my future would hold, and about who I was.  And semi-full circle, it seems, here I am again in a field, near a swingset.  Wondering about who I am and what I'll do, reflecting on all I've done.

I think that back when I was on those swingsets at school, I thought that by now - 27 - I'd be living some fancy fabulous life and that I'd have it all figured out.  I'm starting to realize, I think, that there's no such thing as having it all figured out.  There's just daydreaming and wondering and ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles.  Which is just fine, if you ask me.