Thankful. Grateful.

So many things I could list I am grateful for this year. The first? Being able to comfortably have thanksgiving at my Grandfather's house this year.

I am grateful for mismatched chairs, mismatched plates, mismatched serving dishes, mismatched styles of stuffing, but most of all... mismatched people.

I am grateful that they needed to figure out how to fit two extra dining tables in the living room. And for needing to pull out every chair we could possibly imagine could work for seating.

I am also grateful for perfect weather, open windows, and natural light flooding in.

I am grateful for having to fill so many cups with drinks. And for getting to spend another year with my grandfather, who is now in his mid-eighties. And has been my hero since childhood.

I am grateful for mischievous nieces and opportunities to give aunt-worthy advice.

For cherry pies.

And first attempts at sweet potato pies.

And having so many pies that they can only be stored in the laundry room and on top of deep freezers.

For actually having enough green bean casserole for leftovers this year. (it is usually the first one to be demolished within the first trip around the table.)

And for evidence of full bellies. :)

Other things I am grateful for this year:

A good job

Good friends

The sound of my big brother snoring in his chair right now.

My lovely, sensitive, mature, hilarious nieces.

A new place I feel safe in.

Friends that are fantastic enough to help me move into this new said place.

Male family members who gripe about me having a low tire... then air it up for me.

My camera.

My brother making me rocket fuel style coffee to cure my caffeine headache... at midnight.

My creativity.

The strides I have taken in healing some things within myself.

My nephews coming into town tomorrow evening.

My long day of black friday I have ahead of me tomorrow.

And last but not least. My grandfather allowing me to inherit beautiful, vintage, handpainted Christmas ornaments that originally belonged to my grandmother. It meant so much.

Happy Thanksgiving guys!

Photoblog Post- Maternity shoot with Loni.

Hi guys! It has been a few days since I posted these on my flickr page but I thought I would share these on my blog as well.

A while back I posted up a preview shot of the maternity shoot I did with Loni as a gratitude post. Just wanted to share a few of my favorite shots from that day.

There were a lot of pictures taken but I tried up just upload a few of my favorites. Also there were some demi moore ish semi-nude photos that we had taken but to respect Loni's privacy I will not be posting those online (which is really too bad cause they were beautiful!).

Perfect Yellow flowers.

Pink heels and morning sun.

Baby gifts and Framed Ultrasound.

Sillouette. And Loni sporting a Canada hoodie. (her husband is Canadian)

Belly and Little Bing.

Cheese?

Bear.

So cute.

*melt.

-Angela

Vintage Video Friday! - Joni Mitchell sings California.

Last night I took a bubble bath in my new place and listened to the entire album "Blue".

Hello all! I am backk! So happy to be in my new place and starting to get it all set up. Such a relief. Can't even tell you. No more lousy upstairs neighbors. No repairs to worry about. No flakey landlord. Sigh. of. relief. 

So the moving process was such a whirlwind I didnt get to take any pics of my new place all empty. But as I get decorating going I will be taking photos and it would be lovely to get some opinions on what I should do. I have already unpacked the kitchen and the bathroom and gotten the living room started on being arranged. But my living room is kind of an awkward shape so i need help with how i should arrange it. But one thing is obvious already. The dreaded realization....

I must get rid of some stuff... (noooo!)

Next week at work we were given wed-friday off and i decided that monday and tuesday I am taking a couple of vacation days in order to unpack and get some mores stuff set up. It will be lovveellyyyy. And this weekend may be dedicated to going estate sale shopping for smaller versions of the things I must get rid of. :( Like my vanity. Small desk in exchange for full on vanity? Smaller Dining room table? Maybe. MAYBE.

Well I must go now. Have a very happy pre-Thanksgiving Friday! 

MIA.

 The fridge is always the first thing I decorate when moving into a new place.

Mine is covered with postcards, pictures, and letters to spell out words.

I love how random yet orderly this one is. 

I've got to apologize for not blogging at all this past week. I have been so busy with working, packing, and getting things ready for my move that I haven't really had much time to gather my thoughts enough to put together a post.

Friday is the day I get the key and can move little things in around the cleaning service. And Saturday is the big moving day! CAN'T WAIT. I will try to post up some pictures of the inside of my place while it is all empty and maybe post some pics as i move in and get all set up.

What do you decorate first in a new place?

-Angela

Blog Award!

I have been nominated by Brianne over at BrianneLee for a Kreativ blog award! Thanks Brianne! Brianne has a really cool thrifting/fashion/shopping blog, you guys have to check it out. I think I may have been nominated for this by another blogger at one point but don't really remember and I don't think I actually tagged anyone in a blog entry or anything so here goes:

The drill:

1. Remember to thank the person who nominated you! (and link them from your blog)

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. State seven things about yourself that most people don't know. 

4. Nominate 7 other Kreativ bloggers. (and link to them too!)

5. Leave a comment on each of the lucky duckies blogs letting them know. 

7 things about me:

1. I love thrift store, junk store, estate sale, garage sale, and antique shopping. Finding things that no one else has and making them my own is one of my favorite things in life. Things that are new make me yawn. Things from the 60s make me swoon. 

2. I dont have cable. I have a small television that is strictly a "movie watching machine". 

3. I speak a some french and want to learn more. I also really love french pop music from the 60s. 

4. I have an obsession with socks and tights. Especially printed ones. I have them in all patterns and prints. I got more argyle than you could shake a stick at. I do have a hard time finding outfits i could wear them all with though. I guess i just like to have them there just in case? haha. 

5. I grind my teeth at night. :(

6. I am a collector of things that borders on packrat. If I see a picture, postcard, a quote, a book, etc, that really speaks to me then I will collect it and keep it until I painfully force myself to part ways with it. My camera has made this easier on me. It is a little easier gain inspiration from the objects without owning them when you have a picture to draw from. 

7. When I was 9 I wrote, illustrated, and bound my first book after asking my teacher to show me how. This began my love affair with creativity. 

Ok now your turn. I tag:

Erin

Anna

Mary Jo

My Little Apartment

Rob

Justin

Stacy

Gratitude Days - Fun Work Projects.

Brochure I just got back from the printer. 3 color foil stamped on deckle edge paper. 

Hello to the 3 of you that read this. :) 

Halloween was a blast. Hope everyone had fun!

Anyway, I've been having a kind of weird, stressful past couple days, with preparing for the move and all, so I just wanted to take a minute to be grateful for having a fun job. Especially in this economy. 

I just got my fav project I have worked on so far back from the printer on Friday! A brochure for The School of Visual Arts. A school within the private university I work for. I am grateful because I was given so much creative freedom with it. I am always given quite a bit of freedom, but they really let me go pretty wild with this one. :) So it was super exciting to see the finished product. 

Anyway, I normally try to leave work related things off of my blog but I had so much fun doing this project that I couldn't just keep quiet. Maybe sometime I'll get brave enough to post pictures of the inside and let all you fellow designers out there pick it apart. Haha. 

Have a great day guys. Maybe gratitude will bring me luck and mine will get a little better. :)

-Angela

Vintage Video Friday! - Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River.

As a homage to my favorite actress, favorite movie, and favorite song ever of all time. And my last year's halloween costume. Enjoy.

Ghouls Gone Wild.

Halloween is right around the corner! But I've practically been celebrating all month long. It is my favorite holiday.

So for some reason in OKC everyone decided to have the Halloween events the weekend before Halloween, which kind of defies logic to me. But I was also secretly happy about it because I feel like I get to celebrate Halloween longer. :)

The only problem was the costume. I hadn't made mine yet! So at the last minute I decided I was going to participate in our Halloween Parade that was started by The Flaming Lips 3 years ago. This was the third year that, as a finale of the Halloween parade, they round up 1000+ people to dress up as skeletons and march the parade with flaming torches (with real fire), called "March of a Thousand Flaming Skeletons". While Wayne Coyne follows behind in a giant hamster-ball-like spacebubble. It's quite a spectacle if you have never seen it. And me and my friend Christa decided to be a part of it this year.

I managed to bring my camera and snap a few pictures. It was extremely dark at the parade so it was kind of hard not to get blurry shots, but some of the longer shutter speed pics came out pretty fun.

Needless to say, even friends we have known for years didn't recognize us.

Doing the make-up was a challenge and well, pretty fun.

The line when we got there was so long. Inside Wayne was commanding the masses of skeletons.

Standing in line for our torches, I snapped a couple of pics of the insane lights and inflatable costumes that were to be surrounding Wayne and his Spacebubble.

The floats ranged from the creepy, to the whimsical.

So did the costumes. (yes, that is me on the left.)

My torch.

Christa looking sinister. Along with the rest of the skeletons behind us.

Then of course I had to start playing with my camera. Long shutter speeds are too much fun when there are torches around.

Halos. And lines.

We were starting to march. This was our first curve around a corner. I loved the movement in this shot.

You can very vaguely see the crowd to the side. The walk was nearly 2 miles and the sidewalks were packed the whole way down.

Before I knew it, the march was over, so I turned around and snapped that picture of the skeletons walking towards me, going back as far as the horizon.

The photographers all gathered around to try to get shots of Wayne.

Then Wayne emerged from his Spacebubble, and was sped away in a golf cart.

So we walked back to McNellies to have a drink and plan the rest of our evening.

Happy Halloween guys. Hope you have a good one. :)

-Angela

Gratitude Mondays - Artistic collaboration with friends

Kidnapped In Dreamy Llama Country. Click to see the photos. http://quickmechanism.com/kidnapping/

I am not good at this whole blogging thing due to my ADD inherited trait of getting my days mixed up. Oh well. I guess the whole point is to be grateful once a week right? :)

Anyway. I would like to say I am grateful for my friends affording me the opportunities to be part of their creative projects. For me, being creative all alone isn't nearly as much fun as having someone there to bounce ideas off of, have fun with, and occasionally i get to be the guinea pig, which is always fun. 

My friend Derek Doublin took this set of pictures of me back in July. He tells me more are on the way, which I can't wait to see. He drug me out to Jones, Oklahoma to take these pics and it was a blast. Some were taken at the local swap meet, some in the middle of nowhere. I have to say, since I've been taking pictures for a while it was nice to be in front of the camera for a while instead of behind it. Derek is truly a wonderful artist and very good at what he does. 

Derek also has a website and poetry blog:

http://www.quickmechanism.com/

http://www.upsidedownlawnmower.com/

Just another thing to be thankful for.