how cool are these???

From Domino magazine's blog.... Wishes in the Sky! Chinese lanterns that you light and they float up into the sky. The company sells them in boxes of ten along with a marker, you are supposed to write a message to heaven, and the lantern will carry it up for you.

I love it. I wish I could send one up every night...

feeling bookish

I just finished this book- yes, I know, everyone else on the planet has already read it, I know... but I HAVE to throw my 2 cents in- this book was amazing. Like, jump-up-and-down-shouting-woohoo-I-want-all-my-friends-to-read-this-so-we-can-talk-about-it good!

Liz's journey is familiar and exotic and heartbreaking and laugh out loud funny at times. She just blew me away on so many levels; I give her heaps of credit not only for searching as she did, but for being so (apparently) honest about everything (including the unflattering and downright embarrassing).

I devoured this book, and kept thinking "I have to get a pen" while I was reading it, but I never got the pen because I was plowing through to the next paprgraph, pulled forward into her narrative. I will be rereading this book pronto, and will have my pen with me- guaranteed every page will be marked up like a preacher's wife's bible.

And while we are on the subject of books, go check out Julia Rothman's blog Book By Its Cover- it's like passing blissful hours in your favorite bookstore... only better. Joy posted about it, I am officially on inspiration overload, here!

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feeling like an artist

(image from betzwhite.com)

what a relief- i am finally feeling like an artist again. or whatever i am. i owe a lot of this feeling to sketchyartists- throwing myself into a creative pursuit, hanging it out there, making connections with like-minded people- i have gotten back so much more than i would have imagined. and it is, God willing, only the beginning!

i found this neat-o wisconsinite yesterday via shelterrific. i invited her to join sketchy, but she is much wiser than me, and wrote back, "My first reaction was to right back and say YES! but now I am rethinking things. I am truly swamped. I have to say no to something and at this moment it has to be to this. I have to be realistic."

i am so appreciative of this. Appreciative of her enthusiasm, and appreciative that I got a sneak peek at a lesson I have yet to learn- how to seriously evaluate my commitments.

-wife
-mother
-daughter
-friend
-artist (for lack of a better term)
-Christian
-aspiring web mogul

Now, over the next days of my life, I will be working on what order these come in, and I imagine 6 of the 7 will regularly compete for the top spot. But the 7th will always be 7th.

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