Pin It!!

I am just obsessed with Pinterest and I am not ashamed!!  

viv @ hens teeth

woky-shoten.cocolog-nifty.com

In fact it's transformed my life (in a good way :) given me such inspiration, connection with like minded creative people, and I just love it.....

Stunning photos of - well everything I could ever imagine, there in front of me on my computer screen - heaven.

  

Click here and see what I'm looking at, inspired by, in awe of, plotting and planning to see the real thing in person, following and watching, and definately doing and creating. 

If you like anything you see, why not follow me (see Pinterest button in left hand side bar) - I'd really love that.

Thanks Pinterest friends, I'm feeling the love! XX

images via pinterest.com

sisterhood of the travelling cake queens

India and Ella have been working very hard on a special project for some time now – they have been busy setting up a small cake baking and making company. And they've done all this in a failing economy, and whilst studying and taking school exams, working their ponies, and coping with very challenging emotional circumstances.

Family Gee in search of cake and fresh pasta in Lecce, Southern Italy

Read all about their inspiration gathering cake eating adventures all around Europe at The Small Bakehouse. Please leave the girls some positive feedback to spur them along, maybe even order a cake*jar or three.
One very proud mum XXxxxx

new home wanted for pet...

house trained.....

British artist/psychotherapist Robert Bradford now residing in France, inspired by a storage box of his children’s cast away toys, now repurposes discarded, recycled toys and stuffed animals into playful organically created animal, robot and monster sculptures and installations.

Inspired - i always wondered what to do with all those boxes of tiny toys we seem to have accumulated over the years.

XXxxxx

new blog

we have a new blog - finally documenting our house building and home creating journey in Pembrokeshire, on a shoe string that turned out to be more like a knotted broken boot lace:

check it out and follow us as we tell the whole story - the hopes and dreams, the whys and whereforths, the blood and tears, the sun and rain and rain.

xxxxxx

milestones that break and make

As a family we love to celebrate personal sucesses, achievements and evolution - opportunities for reflection and in particular the transformation and transmutation of something that is not working, past it sell by date, into something new and functional, more attractive and comfortable.

Last Friday evening saw the Private View of an exhibition featuring the art work of both Laurie – Pre Degree Art Foundation, and Lily – A Level Photography.

For Laurie especially, it was very personal milestone that marked the ending of a traumatic and emotionally charged time. A year that had begun with such high hopes, vitality and promise of a bright and shiny future but unexpectedly morphed into the type of life experience that either makes or breaks.

Ironically it did both – the sudden loss of a very special friend shattered the rose coloured spectacles in one fell swoop, destroying everything that we believed to be a given. The impact was beyond words, the emotional pain indescribable, yet completely tangible and all consuming. Resilience and resourcefulness betrayed us for some time, but eventually... slowly but surely, we all came to a resting place that clearly demonstrated to us that experiences such as these can be wonderful opportunities to reflect; reassess our beliefs and  values, our life's aims and objectives, our loves and desires, and our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to each other.

Laurie bravely chose to expose herself; to examine these fragile and very personal emotional experiences and translate her inner landscape into three dimensional form. Exploring what identity, collective consciousness, freedom and separation might look like and how they could be contained or defined, understood and integrated. If the human body is such a container for emotion, how might this be depicted in abstract form?

The resulting sculptures and light boxes are inspiring and demonstrate a true commitment to integrate and define a year of challenging experiences. Check out Laurie's art blog to read her own insightful reflections of this exploration.

 

Despite intending to depict four individual aspects of herself within four separate forms, Laurie's final exhibition has become more like pure emotion itself; undistinguished and elusive in what the sculptures represent with the experiences and emotions overlapping and merging within. Moving independently spinning and swaying, yet spontaneously connected with each other; the pieces interacting in ways that can not be anticipated, truly representing real life emotional adventures subsequently influencing and affecting our everyday actions both consciously and unconsciously.

Our family reflections concluded that at any given moment we can choose how to utilise and make the most of any situation or experience, of what we have on offer; sad experiences, happy memories, exhibition space, materials, time etc. even those thrust upon us.

It is what we choose to create from these, that truly defines us, makes us, as individuals. Laurie's gorgeously talented friend will never be forgotten for she now resides in the hearts of each of us, inspiring us every day to live in the moment, to take nothing for granted and seek opportunities for creative expression and connection in everything that we do.
xxxxxx

must see...

wow, this is really going to be something special

i can't tell you how much this lovely lady's books figured in our lives.

thanks to Ina May Gaskin, Lily was born full term to the day, at home - with no intervention, no pain relief, no specialist equipment, no gore, no pain, just calm serenity and a whole lot of bliss.

we bathed together then i made dinner which we shared in bed - all four of us together. beautiful. easy.  i felt strong, elated and empowered. and healed at super speed.

just the way it's meant to be.

please support the film makers' campaign to share the works of this wonderful community of brave, insightful and spirited women who have been instrumental in the empowerment of women to return to their roots and restore their belief in their body's innate wisdom and intelligence. 

check out the birth story movie

xx

throw away art...

just loving....
this eleven metre high whirlwind of debris and all it has to say. Beijing - based artist Wang Zhiyuan created society art piece Thrown to the Wind to be something much bigger than himself.
and that it is.

reaching high into the sky... a larger-than-life tornado of plastic waste, representing the heaps of plastic domestic waste that overwhelms his hometown, it's surrounding environment and the world beyond. whilst it first appears to be something spectacular, amusing, even clever...

on closer inspection and then reflection...
becomes horrifying, embarrassing, evoking and overwhelming.

it shouts loud....we sure have a problem here. and that we do. xx

via job's wife