Vote 4 Me!

I just happened to check back at the Huffington Post this evening to see if my picture showed up for the supermoon, there it was! ------------>

I had a zero ranking, 2 likes, 2 dislikes. Why would someone click dislike? Really? What's not to like? Ha! 

 

The more clicks on "Like" you receive, the closer it gets to #1. I asked help from my Facebook friends, so I'll have to check back to see if there's any movement. How fun!

You can vote here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/23/supermoon-2013-photos-tweets-live-updates_n_3472311.html#s2610919'

My photo is ranked in the 200;s so a close way to get to it is using the scroll at the bottom of the slide show. Lots of nice, creative photos. I feel honored to be amongst them.

One other time my photo got published. This one was taken in Crown Point, IN on the corner of the street where I lived. It was published in a local paper called the "Seasonal". I lived in a gated community that was like its own little city...law enforcement (security guys), firehouse, clubhouse, golf course, 5 lakes, swimming pool, tennis court, etc. Living in NW Indiana, which was not far from Lake Michigan, and 30 minutes from the once known as "the murder capital of the US'--Gary, IN...I felt safe living in Lakes of the Four Seasons. But it was cold, really cold. This picture was taken with my 2009 cell phone as I was stopped at my corner. It says it all.

I must say I am very blessed to be living in Northern California now. I love, love, love it here. A true testimony to the saying, "Ask & Ye Shall Receive". I kept saying I was moving to California over and over. I started wearing a necklace with a palm tree on it, I pictured myself on the west coast, and everything fell in place to lead me here. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!

Perigee

This past weekend there was a Super Moon. 

Condensed from Wikipedia: A coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth.

The most recent occurrence was on June 23, 2013, as the closest and largest full moon of the year and the Moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. It will not be so close again until August 10, 2014.^[3]

Supermoons occur about once every 14 full moons in a full moon cycle.

The glow bounced off the roof & vines despite obstacles.

I ran out with my Nikon Coolpix camera and grabbed some shots from the back of my house, facing west, when I got home from work. The skies were clear all the way down the mountain and through the Alexander Valley vineyards as I rushed to where my camera was instead of with me. I ran out back and still received a moonshine facial as I looked up to the cloud filled skies.

The moon & clouds came together to highlight burnt umbers.

I sent these to Huffington Post to add to their slideshow of the event. I received an email that at least one was selected and can be seen here 'Supermoon' 2013 Photos And Tweets I'll be checking later, but so far am unable to see it amongst the 200 plus photos. If it is "liked" I receive points and it is moved closer to the beginning of the slideshow. Here's some I clicked on "like"...

Art and the Community

I'd Rather Belong to a Community Than a Company

"As Joni Mitchell said, I was “unfettered and alive.” While some people mock that as lazy, I believe that time spent making art, even time spent daydreaming, is of value and cannot and should not be commodified."--from a Bold Italic article written by Anisse Gross.

The Frig'

It occurred to me while taking this photo in remembrance of the Healdsburg Antique Fair of which I had a booth with my Floral and Hardy creations...that I have expressed my creativity on more than one refrigerator over the years. Museum worthy pieces of art. Interesting to look with a grin at least. 

It started when I began collecting old Look magazines when working for an architectural antique company in the early '70's. We would purchase large items for our boss who held auctions catering to interior decorators, restaurant owners, and celebrities. The little items were ours to keep so I collected things like old bottles, gingerbread (fancy pieces of wood) and other fun items.

Typically a collage made with old kitchen/food related ads from magazines from the '50's and 60's went on them. Great art and obviously thought (I learned this from Mad Men) went into creating those ads.

This is from one I covered in 2009. My friend Betty gave this refrigerator to me to put in my garage for my essential oils and other ingredients for Tat Jam. It was probably from the 70's, large and with character. However, it was an ugly grey. I tried spray painting it black but there were spots the paint didn't go on too smoothly so I started covering them up and got carried away as I do when I go on a decorating tangem.

I should have gotten a closer up shot of the ad entitled "Bringing Up Grandma". She's talking to her grand-daughter who she endearingly calls Puss about Kellogg's Bran Flakes keeping you regular. No way Don Draper thought of that one.

Betty's old frig didn't get full collage coverage like it should have. Guess I ran out of steam. I sold this frig in 2012 when I moved from Windsor to Healdsburg. It traveled from Indiana to California with me in 2010. It was an energy gobbler and very large. I sold it to a young guy that gave me the runaround then finally picked it up for $50. Actually, I ended up giving him back $20 because he said he didn't have any food to put in it because he spent his grocery money on the frig.

Hopefully he appreciated the humorous artistic nature of this exquisite piece.

In Honor of Leaf Dancer

Joan wants to show full support for Leaf Dancer by taking it off...

The Leaf Dancer Story

 

This is Joan before taking it off. She's wearing her summer attire consisting of an authentic 1970's homemade bathing suit top and her favorite shell necklace. The suit bottom is random from my better body bathing suit days. 

A shot of Joan hanging out with Shaggy photo bombing in his own special way. 

I was once offered money for this top when Joan wore it to a special event I did in 2009 when selling homemade t-shirts designed with recycling themes. Joan was there holding a sign. I made the top back in the 70's in the days that my ex and I were living and traveling in a purple school bus on modest means. I needed a bathing suit, so I found an old bra I had neglected in wearing; I didn't wear one often back then anyway. Patching clothes was very popular, sustaining, and looked really cool. Especially if they were embroidered on, which I did. I had plenty of pieces of material collected, so I put together this top which I wore with cut off blue jeans.

The tassle was added in the 90's.

Joan put to work August, 2009

Joan, adorned with her Halloween mask, peered out the window and thought, “If I were only a real girl, I could Trick or Treat.” Oct, 2009

Lily Tomlin said "For fast-acting relief, try slowing down"--Joan says, "so hard to relax with a stiff back".May, 2011

Hedda

 

She wore a shower cap in my bathroom for years; 

it was time she grew up.

Happy Plants

I'm so excited about my new profitable expression. I have an artistic nature, ever since I used to hang out in my room as a child drawing anything and everything with a pencil that my father sharpened with his pocket knife and some blank paper from my Aunt Thelma. She worked in a paper mill in Luke, Maryland. During visits the smell coming from the plant was pretty nasty. When asking my parents about it, they said, "that's Aunt Thelma's bread and butter"; needless to say, I avoided bread and butter at meal time at Aunt Thelmas. A product of the fifites, I entered one of those "Draw Me" contests from a magazine when I was about 9 years old.

I WON~Art Lessons!

My mother may have secretly paid for them. She never mentioned it. Those magazine contests were all a scam. Like the time I answered one like  this.......

I received a box of flower seeds. My mother was so angry when she received the invoice, she called up the company and complained, LOUDLY. She didn't want me walking around the neighborhood selling things; unbeknownst to her I had been doing that since third grade. Kathy Sinclair and I raided our storage room. My father was a former salesman for Fuller Brush so we had tons of leftover plastic pronged soap dishes. Kathy and I went door to door selling them for 5 cents each. All the money went for CANDY! Candy Kid was the nickname my mother gave me for right reasons.
So, after she calmed down she agreed to pay for them if I planted them. I was so excited when she gave me my own plot of land (about 8 feet along the back of the house) to plant my flower seeds. What a wonderfully fulfilling experience that was. That's where my true appreciation for the beauty of flowers began, watching them and feeding them with water everyday. They flourished. They were gorgeous. I was so proud.

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” ~Buddha

I remember a neighbor had succulents in her backyard. I didn't know what they were back then, I was in grade school. They never taught us botany in grade school, a shame. It was what I know now as a Jade Plant. We used to pick off a leaf, squeeze out its innards and blow into it's thin, green shell. We called them frogs. They were our play frogs. An imagination was a staple in our mid to low-income neighborhood. A string with a button in the middle, empty boxes to create a playhouse, or even a stack of cut-up trees to crawl in was FUN!
No more making frogs and I have a refreshed respectable love and fascination for succulents, including the Jade Plant I abused as a child.

This is my first installment towards a business that will profit so I can keep doing what makes me happy. And I may have to go door to door, in a sense.

UPDATE: Setup a site for inventory and business progression updates. HBFloralandHardy.com

click here...Healdsburg Floral and Hardy...click here