Photobooth Friday.

We are in looooooooovvvvvvvvveeee with the photobooth friday! Next mission - maybe think of some fun accessories (ooh la la...this makes me excited) and maybe find a new photobooth to jump in.

one cool thing.

I can probably list about a million cool things that I have experienced since newly discovering this world of blogs a few months ago but one of them arrived in my e-mail box today so I thought I would share. OK...maybe not a million but I'm a million times happy about the cool things I've discovered! Anyway, it's an e-mail magazine (free subscription BTW) all about art happenings in cool cities. It is full of smart links that take you places to learn something new about the artwork and artists they're featuring and all of that good stuff. This is good for me, particularly being that I'm a nerdy accountant with a passion for all things creative but missed the college art studies boat. Anyway, I highly recommend checking it out!

monday.

It's Monday and I spent a good part of the day with my eyes closed visualizing myself still on break, but, then I would open them to find that I wasn't. That's OK. There are projects to be managed, meetings to be had, and things to be done and Friday will be here before I know it!

n. williams

Yesterday I decided to continue on with my new found love of borrowing Greg's camera and finding an hour to myself to walk and photograph. I decided to head over to our lovely old (and missed) neighborhood in NE Portland. This corner mural and graffiti art sits across the street from a daily stop I used to make on my way home where I would wait for cars and bikes to go by so I could weave my way into the traffic.

Anyway, made my way over to Alberta Street to walk, snap some photos, stop by here, here and here, and grab a coffee. I enjoyed Alberta in a new and different way and while I was sitting here enjoying a delightful soy latte and a chocolate chip cookie, I began asking myself, why is it that so many times I appreciate places on a new level AFTER I've lived there more than during?? Not that I didn't enjoy Alberta when we lived near...I loved it...but didn't see it in the light I saw it yesterday. Maybe it's because when we lived there I wasn't living in the moment as much as I try to practice now, I was working like CRAZY in public accounting and barely saw the light of day, or maybe it's because I never took an hour simply to walk up and down the street solely to find a few photographs. I think it's a little of both and I like how taking photos is helping me to see things in a new light. One exception to this was when we lived in Cincinnati for a year before we were married. I loved every moment in the moment and looking back I think it was partly due to us knowing we were there for a short period of time, but, I must ask myself...can't that be said about everywhere?

I wore children's socks yesterday (um...ya...and, we don't have kids :) ) for one of two reasons, or, maybe both. None of mine are clean, or at least, none that I can find. The sock 'drawer', we'll call it, is the one section of my closet that I choose to leave in complete disarray. I don't know why exactly, but, I REALLY like it that way. I LOVE to throw all of my multicolored socks into a pile when they come out of the dryer and jam them into this brown boutique bag I call my sock drawer. The rest of my closet stresses me out if it's not neatly organized, folded and hung in a color coordinated kind of way, so, I figure the craziness with my socks is just the yin to my closet yang. Nonetheless, as I was trying desperately to find a matching pair of ANY socks - no color really critical as I was wearing wide leg jeans with a pair of brown chucks - I noticed this neatly folded, laundered pair of mini white gold toe socks. Flashing back to some friends of ours joining us for dinner and a movie with their kiddos, I smile and decide then and there that those would be my socks for the day. They kind of fit but held up fabulously AND it looks like I have Asher's Christmas present picked out!

Photobooth Friday

Not only am I now hooked on photobooth friday, I've also enlisted greg (my husband). I'm thrilled he's thrilled because we've had SO much fun in and around the photobooth. Of course, in total greg style, he first begins to talk about how he can make a business out of the photobooth and how we should have one for our house. He goes on to talk about how much a photobooth will cost and how he can market it to people for weddings and parties and so on and so on. All the while I'm sitting here thinking to myself, how on earth would you cart a photobooth around, does it come with a trailer? And, how do you maintain it and even find a cool photobooth for sale? I'm also thinking if we had a photobooth at home it might lose its magic...we wouldn't have the incentive to go downtown to the oh. so. cool. ace hotel and have a coffee drink and sit in the marvelous lobby and pretend like we're still in college and save our $1 bills and when it's finally time to jump in we might not have the excitement and butterflies like we're just about to get on a carnival ride. He loves to dream big in everything he does, which, is something I adore about him so I'm very careful to not rain on his big dreamy parades.

This was our first photobooth together (about a month ago)...tragic, I know. How could we have missed out on ALL of those photobooth moments in all of the fun cities we've lived and frequent - well, all the more reason for us to treasure them now and go back to the places we love. Anyway, we jumped in the photobooth without realizing that the chair height is adjustable (we figured this out after the second trip) and just went for it. Our dear friend, greg (#2), was visiting so he decided to pop in on the third frame...we're SO glad he did!