Want vs. Need

This pretty much sums up how I feel a lot of days. Wanting is fine. Wanting is natural and can be motivating. Getting what you need on the other hand makes for a more peaceful existence. Which leads me to thinking what do I need? The basics are pretty obvious. Food and shelter of course. But I'm drawn to considering what are the things that make me thrive. Here's a quick impromptu list:

Sunshine. Really bright warm sunshine. I find it too rare this time of year.
Time to doodle and draw and think. I'm working on giving myself a little time every day.
Friends. I wish mine were not scattered so far away these days.
Laughter and love. My daughter provides both in abundance.
Hope and purpose. I'm naturally hopeful but could use more direction and purpose some days.
The pursuit of knowledge. I thrive on challenges and learning new things.
Free time. To delve into thoughts, books, drawings, people.

Wow, my list surprises me.

Perfect Pairings #1: Drawn to Each Other

I'd love to have either of these two works hanging on my wall. Even better would be to have both and hang them together in a little ode of sorts to curves and color. The photo print Velodrome is by James Deavin and the print Curvilinear Time by Jessica Snow. Both are available at 20 x 200.

Drawing Inspiration: Paper Worlds

I'm gearing up to get drawing. I have had eight sheets of paper with a first layer of color up on my closet door for over a year now just waiting. I'm starting to get attached to them just the way they are, but now I'm going to risk ruining them. I think that is what drawing and art making are all about: how far you can take something before you go too far. Knowing when to push it and when to stop. Can't wait to dive in.

I was doing image searches this morning and found some offbeat inspiration while clicking through the patterns and color ways on the Thibaut Wallpaper website. The site has nice functionality and the option to bookmark favorites. I ended up wishing I had a room to wallpaper. In the meantime, I love the crazy details in wallpapers like the parrot feathers above and also seeing how changing the color palette completely transforms a design. I wouldn't be surprised if a crazy parrot emerges in one of my drawings.

Finishing Up Old Projects

I spent yesterday tying up some loose ends literally. I sewed up three hats to send off to friends and while I enjoy knitting I certainly don't enjoy seaming. To keep myself going I thought of how nice it feels to finish things and kept a beautiful ball of Crazy Sexy Wool from Wool and The Gang in my sights. I stumbled across their new shop in Soho just before Christmas and couldn't resist leaving the store without something. So I ended up buying one ball of chunky wool in a vivid magenta. It is destined to become a warm cowl that I'm going to keep for myself.

To Resolve or Not to Resolve

I find New Years resolutions so heavy. It's like setting oneself up with a lot of "shoulds". Should is just not a fun word. It has built in to it, that one really doesn't want to do the the thing in the first place. Not a great way to start any undertaking.

I should pay my bills on time. Of course I should, but I often don't. Saying should never helped me pay my bills. They get paid because I have to pay them. So rather than setting myself up to feel like a failure and weighed down, I'm forgoing resolutions this year. The "have tos" among the "shoulds" will end up getting done.

But it is the start of a new year and a new decade, so something seems in order to get things headed in the right direction. So in place of resolutions, I have decided to make a list of the things I want to do this year. A list of things I like to do, want to try, am curious about or feel will make our lives more fun, more interesting, richer and worth remembering in ten years years.

Here's a few of the things I've come up with:

Read bedtime stories with my daughter

Plant 100 sunflower seeds and see what happens

Learn to make Vegetable Green Curry

Go swimming as often as possible

Finish building the Fairy Circle wall I started

Teach my daughter her numbers and letters

Read at least one good book, maybe a classic I've never tackled (No small feat these days)

Start a full blown vegetable garden with carrots and lettuces

Get a great photo of my daughter and me together (Another not so easy feat)

Play more music

Put on a little lipstick each day so I feel a little more glamorous

Talk to and see my friends more often

Draw with my daughter, draw by myself, draw, draw, draw!

Under a Blue Moon

My daughter will be just over twenty the next time a Blue Moon falls on New Years Eve. That is hard to imagine as I look at my two year old sitting on the floor surrounded by a jumble of toys. It seems such a long way off, but a decade is ending and the last ten years seemed to have flown by.

Aa I write this, a commercial for the Winter Olympics startles me, has it really been four years? I vaguely remember watching the ice skating while sitting on the futon in my old apartment. Lots of falls, if I recall correctly. How different my life was four years ago. I would need to do some excavating to unearth the details but most importantly, I was not yet a mom.

When I think of not being a mom, it seems a lifetime ago. When I think of being pregnant that seems like only yesterday. As I look at my two year old, time seems to have stretched and speed up at the same time. Time is such a strange thing. To me it seems slippery, inconsistent. and mysterious. Is time a thing or just a concept? Is it real or imagined?

Well, it is real in our world view. The 2010 calendars are already printed and waiting to be filled in. What will our new year bring? I hope good things for my daughter, my family, my friends and a little selfishly for myself. I hope it will also be a good year for those outside my small circle. As one of my friends insisted on Facebook today "Let's make it a good New Year!" I liked that. We may have no control over time, but we can make the most of it and make it good. I'm ready to make a wonderful new year.

Deck The Halls

The tree has been up & lit for over two weeks now, but still only has two ornaments that managed to stay on from last year. Yikes, there's only ten days till Christmas. I really need to get going on the holiday trimming and deck the halls.

Luckily there's lot's of ideas and a great selection of decorations at RE that have inspired me to get going and make the house holiday worthy.

Bits of the Day

Time to Decorate the Christmas Tree

Thanks to an allergic reaction to a real live Christmas tree two years ago, I now own a a real live fake GE Pre-lit Christmas tree. Thanks to my pre-lit tree, I am now one of those early birds who put up their tree Thanksgiving weekend. And I love it! Sure, I feel like a giant nerd but it only took me ten minutes to put up. I did have a little scare when the mid section didn't light up but just as I was about to search for a bad light bulb, I realized I hadn't connected all of the plugs.

Now that the tree is up and glowing, I just need to decorate. If I were in the market for ornaments, I would love to get some of these beauties from Anthropologie and create my own woodland-themed tree. Sadly, my two year old has her own ideas about tree decorating and redecorating. We'll be sticking with straw ornaments from Sweden this year. Still very pretty and very unbreakable.

Giving Thanks and Black Friday

As the Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, I'm pondering gratitude and how easy it is to forget what we have to be thankful for on a daily basis. I'm going to try harder to remember how much I have to be grateful for and what really matters each day.

A day never passes when I don't stop and think how grateful I am for my daughter. If it doesn't occur to me at least five times during the day, I'm always reminded at bedtime when she's cuddled up next to me as she struggles to go to sleep. It's also when I get to catch up on kisses and hold tights.

So, while I am constrained financially this year and sometimes lament that I can't join the shopping frenzy and partake of the huge discounts, on another level, I'm glad to actually have to refrain. It's not that I haven't bought anything, it's that I have had to think before I spent the money. My shopping has been focused on my daughter which actually is more satisfying.

I realize there are so many things I already have that I don't use regularly or fully enjoy. So my goal for the upcoming year (I'm getting a head start.) is to truly be grateful for what I have, to make use what I have and really appreciate all the great stuff that is already a part of my life. I think I am going to start by reading all the books I've bought and have been dying to get to.

Most importantly, I am going to remember the best stuff in life doesn't come in shopping bags.

Hmm, I just thought of how grateful I am that I wasn't out in a store on Black Friday. The photos above are pictures I took of store shelves the day after.