A week in pictures - Project 366

I am going to start a new way of sharing my daily 366 project with you. I got the idea from this inspirational photographer. I'll be posting my daily photos, every week or two, with a short description for each. Sound good?

So here's my last nine days in pictures:

 

 And words:

02/20/12 - Quick street capture, taken post-dinner and drinks with friends.

02/21/12 - A blue hour snapshot outside of my parents' home.

02/22/12 - I have this lantern suncatcher from Vintage Aimee up in the window of my studio. Pure sweetness...

02/23/12 - A trip to the king of all big box stores....

02/24/12 - My soldering station with a collection of tweezers, solder picks and flux brushes

02/25/12 - Warming up by the 'fire' in my son's kindergarten class that morning.

02/26/12 - Windblown selfie. We had a fun time hanging out at the Boulder Creek, feeding the ducks. It was super, super windy....I took several self-portraits and pretty much every single one had my hair whipping all over the place.

02/27/12 - Looking through the fireplace at the bookstore. Another place that we frequent...

02/28/12 - I took this blue hour photo in front of the post office. I am at the post office. a. lot.

02/29/12 - This is a snapshot of some new pegs I just got in the mail. I am always ecstatic to add new tools to my ever-growing collection.

03/01/12 - A quick capture on the way home from the morning school run. I am visually drawn to farmhouses and barns. I guess the lifestyle appeals to me. That is one twin in me speaking....the other one wants to live in Brooklyn :)


All these pictures, along with additional photos, can also be viewed on my Flickr page.


Have a great weekend, everyone!


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independence

Today is Estonian Independence Day.

Why would a little New Mexican girl like me, care?

Well, you see, my husband --the other half of blue hour designs-- just so happens to be Estonian.

He was born and raised in Tallinn, Estonia and jumped over the pond to come to school in New Mexico many moons ago and the rest, as they say, is history...

We remain very connected to Estonia, even now, by frequent visits to see his family (all of his family is there) and also by keeping the language alive in our household: he strictly only speaks Estonian to our sons (and has since they were born), which has better enabled them to have that connection to their Estonian family and the culture in general.

Estonia has an incredibly rich, long, tumultuous and courageous history that is documented in a superb film called The Singing Revolution. 

It came out a few years ago and the trailer is below:

Today is the original Independence Day, but they have two....(yes, they have been occupied many times).

There is another, on August 20th, that celebrates their Re-Independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Much of the film, documents Estonia's struggle during the late 80's and early 90's. Norbert and his family experienced and took part in many of these events that led to their Independence, along with most Estonian families, at the time. All this makes everything in the movie that much more real because he lived through it.

This film documents an incredibly rare and magnificent occurrence, where a culture was able to be revolutionary, without violence.
(And very important to note: Lithuania and Latvia had mirrored experiences)

If you are able, I highly recommend, watching...

Elagu Eesti!

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source

I found these feathers, on a path nearby, while taking a walk last fall.

They gave me the idea to do this:

Amazing, the places where inspiration can be found.

It is everywhere.

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rollercoaster

This has been a tumultuous week.

And when I say tumultuous, I mean, rollercoaster.

But first, a few highs:

Norbert and I celebrated Valentine's a few days early.

I had no idea what events he had planned for the night so the whole evening was one wonderful surprise after another.

I love surprises.

We started here first.

We left the restaurant in kind of a rush because apparently we had to be somewhere at a specific time....

I didn't know he was taking me here until we actually drove into the parking lot.

And let me just tell you:

I love theater.

I love live performance.

And man alive, I love Cirque du Soleil, so yes I screamed a bit when I realized where we were going :)

It was absolutely amazing. Of course!

There was a whole lot of, 'oh my god!', 'holy sh*t,' 'did they seriously just do that?!'.

It's like viewing the human body, performing at its highest ability, and then swathing it in a vision of beauty and light.

It just totally and completely blows you away......

And then post performance we headed here for a night cap and some dessert.

It was really, such a fantastic evening.

This was our 10th one, so we felt especially festive.....

______________________________________________________________

And then a few days later my Dad got sick.

Really sick.

The kind of sick that warrants a trip to the hospital for four days.

Thankfully, he's on the mend. Slowly.

The past week has been totally off and I know this has a lot to do with it.

Feels a little bit like functioning through a fog.

But, I'm still taking my camera everywhere and taking pictures everyday.

Even of these moments.

Capturing the highs.

And the lows.

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rings

There are six of them:

One of the changes that I will be making this year starts today.

More frequent listings.

In smaller batches.

This is one of the things that Norbert and I promised ourselves at the end of last year:

New designs - more often. 

And this is the first step!

I'll start listing these bad boys right after this post goes live.

See you on the fb page ;)

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colorado winter {part two}

It is like a dream here, right now.

Everywhere the edges are blurred and the landscape is saturated in white.

So not tired of this winter, yet.

These are my daily views.

And I love it.

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colorado winter

First:

The lovely Bliss is currently hosting a giveaway of our 14k Gold necklace over at her website.

Click here to enter in the drawing....she will be choosing the winner tomorrow (Wednesday)! 

Next:

Some 366 snippets....

This is how we warmed up one night in Boulder... :)

Warming up again..

They created him on Friday and he just got dumped on overnight and this morning with fresh snow.

It is completely gorgeous outside.

Loving this Colorado winter.

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the everyday...

He tells them stories often and they love it.

The lost art of storytelling.....

This is what I step over. Often.

I smile when I see it because I realize it is a perfect capture of their phase in life at this moment.

And a peaceful, alone moment with my coffee and camera this morning.... 

Week 1, over and out.

51 more to go :)

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announcing some announcements

There are multiple things I want to tell you today.

1. We are bringing back our weekly sales. Our Duality ring is the first one this year and can be found here and here.

Second, many of my older designs are back in the online shops.

We had intended on shelving a few designs for awhile, but we've had a tremendous amount of correspondence in the past month requesting many of these designs, so we decided to bring quite a lot of them back!

Three:  we are having a free shipping promotion in both of our shops from now until Valentine's Day,  February, 14th for domestic orders. International shipping will be reduced to 3 bucks.

4. I will begin a monthly giveaway on my Facebook page starting in February.

Yep. Monthly.

I'll be setting that up very soon....I'll announce there and here when it begins.

Numero 5 - I have decided to embark on a 366 Project.

This means that I will be taking at least one picture each and every day for a year (this year is a leap year, hence 366 and not 365). I began the daily picture taking last week and I'll be posting them all on my Flickr page. I won't post them everyday because I'm not quite that crazy (Norbert thinks I'm a little loca to take this on!)....I just don't have the time, but I will post them at least once a week and many of them will make their way here onto the blog. I'm super excited because the bottom line is that I want to improve my photography and you know what they say about practice......

So with that said, here are a few of those photogs:

:)

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