Cabin Fever - P52 Week Eight

My husband and I spent the afternoon driving the back roads of the U.P. looking for a cabin for my P52 picture for this week. The theme is Cabin Fever. We are in the U.P. visiting our daughter at college. She had classes most of the day today and other activities tonight, so we had the majority of the day to ourselves. It was very nice spending time together just the two of us.

I felt a little bit like a stalker standing at the bottom of the driveway of a cabin of somebody I do not know, but thankfully nobody was home, and no neighbors too close by to report back to these people that somebody was taking a picture of their cabin.

The snow distorts the landscape

Beneath its weight, trees sag, bushes bow
A blanket and a burden

Individually unimportant

A collective load

Impassable and impersonal

As featureless as a blank check

A smooth, white road too deep to drive

Too slick to walk

Too cold to enjoy

Beneath its pillowed surface only ice

And the fragile grass

 © Jessica Minier Mabe

True Love - P52 Week Seven

True Love between a girl and her dog...

Meet Mallory and Riley. This picture was taken almost 10 years ago, when Mallory was 8 years old and Riley was 3 months old.

Mallory really wanted her own dog. After some convincing I agreed that it would be a good idea. Pet ownership teaches responsibility,  develops nurturing skills, and promotes outside exercise. She set up his kennel in her room so he could sleep near her at night, she fed him and helped potty train him. They were constant companions. She could tell him anything and he would always listen and never judge.

He has always been there for her, taking walks in the woods together, running on the beach together, a constant companion. When Mallory got her first car a few months before she turned 16, Riley would climb in the car with her while she practiced going back and forth in the driveway.

When she turned 16 and had that driver's license in hand, with Riley sitting in the shot gun position they set off on their first unsupervised driving adventure together.

Fast forward to February 2012, Mallory a beautiful young woman is now off at college, and her faithful companion Riley is now stuck with only me during the day. He still leads an active life, we head out for walks almost everyday, we go in the car sometimes for bigger hikes, and instead of sharing the bed with Mallory and his little brother Scout, he only has to share it with Scout. But the big excitement of Mallory coming home each day after school is gone, and he has to wait for the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring breaks instead.

Even though apart more than together, they still love each other so very much and look forward to their next reunion. Thankfully Spring Break is only 2-1/2 weeks away.

Paper Purge

The papers in my filing drawer were overflowing...

This problem has been going on for quite a while, and it was really starting to bug me. I had papers dating back to 2005 in there, and it would take me forever to find something even though things were categorized (I use that term loosely). So this week I purged papers and organized.

I found this magazine with an inspiration picture in it and I bought the supplies I needed and got to work.

Now things are much more organized and a lot fewer papers.

I have one more project finished and off of my to-do list :)

Drink Up! - P52 Week Six

Wow! Six weeks of the project have gone by really fast. I am so proud of myself, I have not missed a week.

This week's theme was an easy one for me. One of my great passions is wine. I love the whole experience  that surrounds wine; wine tasting trips, talking with the folks that work at the wineries, finding new favorites and revisiting old favorites, and sharing the experience with either my husband or my girlfriends, the B.S. girls.

What can be better than snuggled up on the couch watching the fire blaze in the fireplace and sipping a refreshingly sweet glass of Riesling? 

I am NOT Finishing This...

I know that I have committed to being a "finisher" this year, but this is where I draw the line in the sand. This year is also about change, and doing things differently.

In the past, even though I disliked this hair product (it gives me hair like Bozo when I blow dry) I would keep using it, because it wasn't finished yet. I would use it on days when I wasn't going out of the house, and that was my justification for it "Nobody is going to see me anyway." Sadly, this is not the first hair product that I have felt the need to finish even though it is doing nothing for my hair. I even know the reason why I feel this overwhelming need to finish things I hate. In my head I hear my grandmother's voice saying "You need to finish that, there are children starving in China." She always said that in relation to finishing the food on my plate even though I hated whatever it was. So, you see, that need to finish things that I hate was planted a long time ago.

So today I am taking a stand and throwing out the things I hate even if they aren't finished. The starving children in China aren't going to want them either.

Here are a couple of my current hair products that I love and that I will finish:

I became addicted to this shampoo when Glen and I were staying in Chicago this past fall. The hotel we were staying at had these as the samples to use, I absolutely fell in love with the smell of it. 

I am not a spokesperson for Aveda, so no worries there, but about the time I fell in love with the Rosemary Mint shampoo my salon started carrying Aveda. My stylist used this product in my hair and I fell in love with the smell again, smells like pine needles, and it gives my hair some grab to it to make it style easier.

Shadows - P52 Week Five

When I got up at 6:00 this morning and checked the weather and saw that it was going to be another cloudy day, I was ready to throw in the towel for this week. Everyday this week there was the promise of mostly sunny or partly sunny, but what did I get instead, gray and cloudy. There were a couple of times when the sun came out briefly, once when I was walking the dogs and once when I was getting my haircut, neither time did I have my camera.

Like so many others, I wanted a straight from that golden globe we call the sun; shadow. I had a few good ideas, and everybody that I told this week's assignment to had ideas, and all of these ideas involved the sun.

As I was getting ready for my morning walk, I saw this shadow on the wall and I thought "Well this is as good as it's going to get." When I got back from my walk I dragged my tripod out of the car, where it had been waiting for a trip to the beach to capture the shadows, created by the sun, of the snow fences. I set up my tripod and got to work.

As I thought about it, this picture ties in nicely with my blog theme, since this flower arrangement is suppose to be part of my new dresser vignette inspired by this picture:

Obviously this needs to be finished yet!