My Story at EdmontonStories.ca!!!!

I am more than delighted to share with you my happy news that you can read my story, entitled: "Coming Home" at the Edmonton Stories website, along with one of my favourite pictures of this area.

http://www.edmontonstories.ca/story/home-city

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You can leave comments at that site and if you like the story, tell your friends about it and come back after July 31st to vote for my story :-)

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(The more hits and votes my story gets, means that I could win a MAC! and I hear they're great for writers and artists!!!)

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Blessings,

Kristi

quilt update

The fun continues!

{this is my baby's room so far}

I am still in the fabric procurement stage. I am finding it interesting how beautiful & inspiring some of the fabrics are, yet totally frustrating at not being able to find the exact colours that are in my mind! If this were a painting, I could simply keep mixing colours together to get that right shade or hue, but with fabric, sigh, you have to keep looking 'til you find the one that fits the picture in your mind, or, be flexible like me and buy things that are nice and will go together somehow!

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I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. Especially when it comes to making this quilt. I am beginning to wonder if I should buy a pattern, yet what I want is not a pattern to follow - the pattern is in my mind. I think this fear of patterns comes from the memories of my mom and her patterns and fabric spread out over the floor downstairs and the flimsy, thin, tissue-like brown paper that she meticulously pinned to the fabric and then cut precisely - it turned me off sewing then and I still shy away from that precision and calculated measured approach to sewing. I see its usefulness, but know it's not for me at this moment.

{My original qult idea was to have a white or cream base and three hot pink flowers appliqued on. Then it would be surrounded by bright purple shiny satin. Simple idea. Not so simple to find the fabric. This is the fabric I have found so far that is closest to this idea.}

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However, that said, my aborhence to tracing a pattern has caused me to run across some funny incidents which I will now share with you. Feel free to comment on my so-called pregnancy insanity :-P I arrived at a big fabric store in the city yesterday and as I was parking, realized I had no idea as to the measurements of a crib! Heck, I don't even have a crib yet!!! :-) [the majority of cribs nowadays are convertible, meaning that the crib looks like a squished up headboard, then it converts to a giant day bed for a toddler, then it becomes a double bed. Now here's the conundrum. I do not want my 5 y/o in a double bed. Heck, I do not want my 18 y/o in a double bed! - do I sound like a mother!?!?!?! haha. Plus, what if you have a second child? Their marketing theory of that one bed following the child throughout its life doesn't make sense unless you want both your children in double beds by the time they're in Kindergarten. Call me old fashioned, I don't care, but I don't want that for my child!!!! Further, unless you have one of those brand new mansions, that bed will take up the child's entire room - where will they play? Oh right, mansions have playrooms and toyrooms and nanny's quarters. Okay, rant over :-) ]

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So I walk into the fabric store not knowing how much fabric I need. I considered popping into the Walmart down the street just to get a standard crib measurement, but decided to just wing it. A crib is more than a metre long and less than a metre wide to my estimation so I figured two metres of fabric should be enough right?! Let's hope so (yes you can laugh now!).

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{after finding this fabric, a second quilt idea began to take shape in my mind: This is the top and if I can find satin turquoise ribbon to frame the quilt, then it will be the quilt of my dreams! lol}

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As I was driving home, now with TWO quilt ideas in my head, both requiring very different fabric, I began laughing because I realized that I had the filling, the top fabric, but not the bottom fabric!!! I still can't begin to sew this thing!!!! It's becoming a comedy of errors, but one done with so much love (& anxiety) and it's such a new art form to me that I can't help but laugh. I told Jer that if the quilt turns out a parallelogram instead of a rectangle, if anyone comments on its imperfections I will not take offense, but simply challenge them to do better. I think that's a fine way to shut them up! Unless of course they know how to quilt and then I will fall to my knees and ask for a lesson. But however imperfect this quilt is, never will there be a quilt made with more love than mine :-)

{funky fabric I just could not pass up - perhaps a funky breastfeeding blanket?}

{perhaps a burp cloth?}

Simple Things that make my heart sing

Simplicity

so rare a thought in our day and age and yet...
so easy to name the simple things that bring me joy:

walking into my sister's home and the smell of homemade cooking
the laughter of my nieces
the sound of tiny bare feet on wooden floors

sunshine & cumulous clouds hanging in the blue sky

the fresh earth smell after a rainfall
colourful sunsets
sparkling dew on flowers

glittering gems of raindrops on green leaves
dancing rainbows through crystals
glassy blue seas

fields of lavender or bright yellow canola
the ripple of the breeze across a field of hay
listening to the waves crash against the shore
soft, warm sand under bare feet

warm towels out of the dryer
fragrant tea in the perfect dainty cup
the purr of my cat beside me as I fall asleep

smiles returned
smiles given
friendship

thinking of the simple things that bring me joy is much like
counting my blessings.

the list could go on
but I shall stop and
thank God for the blessings.

"Captured Kiss" photograph taken by Christina Martin - http://soulaperture.blogspot.com/

This photo means so much because it is exactly what my nieces do to my 8mo pregnant belly - hugs & kisses for the baby {and then the 6y/o tells me that my tummy has gotten bigger since the last time she saw me, which sometimes is a mere 2 days :-) }

Thoughts inspired by Christina's challenge as to the simple things in life. You can check out the blogs of all those participating, as well as read her challenge at: http://soulaperture.blogspot.com/2009/07/list-of-blogs_07.html

Enter the fun!

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a wonderful evening to bunker in

“Just living is not enough… One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
Hans Christian Andersen

I wandered through a farmer's market this Saturday, marveling at the size of the leafy lettuce and how green it was, wondering about the lives of the farmers growing their produce and how the drought is affecting them. I enjoyed looking at the pretty artisan creatives and discovered a new beadmaker! I'm thinking Christmas presents already!

It has been raining non-stop for almost 24 hours here which is making the grass greener by the hour! We really need the rain out here as many counties have declared agricultural states of emergencies and the crops of hay/alfalfa/canola are just not high enough. Cattle breeders are worried they might have to sell off their cattle as many fields don't have enough grasses to support them! It's so sad.

I am looking out my window, splashed in rain so that the view is distorted. It is like looking through a waterfall. Degrees of grey in the sky hangs low to the ground. My meadows (which I've named Grace Meadows!) are looking more lush by the hour. The gophers are not playing above ground today, which is fine by me :-) The faery glen is radiating shades of green and the grass looks as if it's grown a few inches overnight!

I am going to cuddle up in bed with a movie after dinner and forget about unpacking for the night. I am also going to steep a cup of wild raspberry leaf tea (no wine for a few more months!) and enjoy the sound of the rain outside. I always sleep deeper when it's raining.

I took a picture to upload with this post, but I can't find my camera cord to upload it. Even with all the unpacking already done! And then I crashed my shin into a very solid wooden box which was on top of a "nice-to-run-into" cardboard box and when I had my breath back and lifted my pantleg to look, I had an immediate lump and bruise as well as a cut! Living out of boxes is a hazard - lol! So my wonderful evening is slightly off course already. Ah the freedom of living in flexibility land. I now will be curled up on the couch with an ice pack, blanket and a book I have never read: Persuasion by Jane Austen. Yes, I know. I'm 32 and have yet to read an Austen book. Missed them in all my University English classes and I figure there's no time like the present!!!

Blessings!

interesting factoid

AT 5 MINUTES AND 6 SECONDS AFTER 4 A.M.

ON THE 8TH OF JULY, THIS YEAR,

THE TIME AND DATE WILL BE:

04:05:06 07-08-09

The email said that this will not happen again until the year 3009, but I know that if you want to see it again just read the date - day, month, year - and then you will see it again in August!

(I had a deep feeling that you just needed to know this)

:-)

easy poem that anyone can write

Writing poems scare people. BUT! I have an idea to make this easier. The new concept, well, not so new, but this century poems are more a stream of consciousness. Forget Shakespeare and Donne and rhyming couplets and stanzas and ABBA formats. Poems do NOT have to rhyme. Poems do NOT have to be long. Poems do NOT have to be mysterious. Poems do NOT have to be so deep as to be un-understandable.

This is a fun poem that you can use to try out writing a poem OR to use as a brain warm up for your writing.

Take a month, any month (there are only 12 options here) and write about what that month means to you.

Example:

June

June is...

June is...

June is...

Allow your mind to flow freely. Sometimes having something as basic as a fill-in-the-blank poem to get started writing takes the intimidation out of the process so that you can be all about the enjoyment of writing. And it's all about the JOY!!!

Here's another idea to take the poem one step further.

Write your "Month" is... poem before the month starts and then revisit it at the end of the month to determine what your month was actually like. You might find that you used stereotypes in your beginning poem and then your after poem was your reality. It can also be a good evaluation of yourself and the world around you. If you were expecting flowers or showers, did the weather deliver? Did you write about running through sprinklers in July? Did you realize that you had not run through a sprinkler the entire summer - leaving that for children's play? Although how much fun would it be to run through a sprinkler on a hot day, no matter how old you are?!!!

Enjoy the creative process. It need not be scary or intimidating. When you start with easy prompts, you often find that you keep writing because you leap frog into the ideas that were waiting there for you in your subconscious, just waiting for you to let them take shape.

Remember: "Leap, and the net will appear!"

Happy writing!!! :-)

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Best Writing Conference Around!

One of the best writing conferences around is the Surrey International Writing Conference. It is held in Surrey, BC (just outside of Vancouver) in Canada. People from all over Canada, the US and even the UK attend. I've been privileged to attend twice and although I'll be missing it this year (new baby!!!), I plan to attend again in the future.

The exciting thing about this conference is that there are editors, agents, and publishers to whom you can actually pitch your idea! This is included with your registration. You can also have your work critiqued at a Blue Pencil Session by a published writer. Those two opportunities can be reason enough to attend!!!

The workshops (more than 70 workshops, panels and special events this year!) are by great authors and you can attend any of them that you like. In addition, there is a trade show where you can purchase writing books by the workshop leaders, other writing books/material and find out about new products/services in the industry.

There's also a writing contest where you could win $1000!!!! (that would cover cost of registration, hotel, food, and travel!). That kind of goes with the theme of a writing conference, doesn't it! It costs $15 per submission.

The 17th annual conference takes place October 23-25, 2009 and registration is open now online. I recommend you at least check out the website :-)