{.retta} » To know

the beauty of photography

retta — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:41:26 +0000

This video is so inspiring:

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books, fashion and living the good life

retta — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:22:36 +0000

This past weekend I attended the second ever Barefoot Works book club meeting and we discussed “Hip Tranquil Chick: A Guide to Life On and Off the Yoga Mat“. I really enjoyed the book and gained a lot of great information and things to think about but more than anything I enjoyed the two hours of hanging out with other smart, funny women, talking about self-care, getting the most out of our yoga practices and how to find balance in this crazy world.

One of the topics the book covers is how to dress and show your own style, by using a few great articles of clothing, while also learning to shop mindfully and only purchase things that work well for you and that enhance your wardrobe. She also suggests, for every item you purchase, choosing an item in your closet to give away. I love the idea of this but that is something that I will have to work on! I really don’t shop a lot but I always think that I may need the old items later. I rarely ever do.

In thinking about clothing that I love and feel like matches my personal style, I always think about this great etsy store called Treehouse 28 that I discovered last year. I don’t personally own anything from this store…. yet…. BUT I will once I reach a certain milestone on my fitness journey. The clothing isn’t cheap but it isn’t unreasonable either, especially since the items are made specifically for you. You have to send in your measurements when you order. They are also very versatile and so beautiful. I’m in love with them.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

3/4 SLEEVE TOP

ARMSLEEVES

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these shoes are made for running I’m wrapping up week one on the new workout plan from the trainer and decided this morning to treat myself...
compassion Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know...
the happiness project I have been following Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog for about a year now and just recently read the book,...

Best of 2009: blog find of the year

retta — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:41:26 +0000

December 7: Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can’t believe you didn’t know about until this year.

I follow a lot of blogs that cover everything from web design and development to arts and crafts, psychology and human development to interior design and green living but here are a few of my favorites.

re-nest: Abundant Design for Green Homes (http://www.re-nest.com/)
This blog belongs to the Apartment Therapy network and is filled with wonderful style and beauty. I could move into this blog and live there if that were possible. It is a nice place to visit, sip my coffee and dream a little.
noupe: curiosity for finding what’s new & better (http://www.noupe.com/)
This blog focuses on design, from product packages to photography and more. I have found several great articles that inspire me in my own work. I often return to these articles for techniques and suggestions as well. If you are a designer or just enjoy looking at great design, then check out this blog!
grinding (http://grinding.be/)
This blog makes me think about all the things that are possible in our world today and the amazing experiments that are happening out there. It is part sci-fi mixed with real world projects that are changing lives or have the ability to do that one day in the future. Technology fascinates me and there is plenty here for me to be fascinated about!

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Reflection on 2009: The year I turned 35 This year I turned 35. I know that isn’t really old. In fact, most of my 30′s have been the...

dance like no one’s watching

retta — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:54:05 +0000

dance like no one’s watching, originally uploaded by i.Anton.

I stumbled upon this photographer on flickr and I’m in love with their entire photostream.

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‘Roid Week Wrap-up

retta — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:19:19 +0000

This was the first year that I participated in ‘Roid Week on flickr and I’m in Polaroid love. My little sx-70 is one of the cheaper cameras and doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles of some other models so my images came out pretty unpredictable. Sometimes that worked to my advantage and others not so much, but I got a few that I’m happy with. I had been in a slump when it came to my photography for a while and now I’m feeling the creative wheels turning again. I’m excited about that.

Here are some of my favorites taken by others. I’m so inspired by these!

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home.

retta — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:30:13 +0000

I wanna have pride like my mother has,
And not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.

~ from The Perfect Space by The Avett Brothers

The lyrics above really touched me at the concert the other night. I have always respected my mother and thought she could do no wrong but as I have gotten older I have started to understand her on a level more fitting a friend, someone I enjoy to talk to and share interests with. One such interest is gardening.

My momma is an amazing gardener. Her flower beds are huge and beautiful and a lot of our conversations turn to topics about the latest gardening magazine that we have picked up, the best way to get rids of pests organically, the best time to plant or dig our bulbs, etc. A large number of my flowers started in her garden which makes them even more special to me.

Today I was cleaning up flower beds and getting my garden ready for winter. This included picking hyacinth bean seeds for next year that were gifted to me last spring from her and planting all the new plants she just sent me. Of course I had to call her once to get her suggestion on a good place to put them all.

I love her pride, the good kind that is wrapped up in her home and family. Ever since I have been out on my own, I have used her example as a benchmark to strive towards when it comes to having a home that feels good. I still haven’t mastered her grace and easy skill at it but I keep trying.

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Jedi garden tricks I rather like to think of myself as a gardener. I thoroughly enjoy planning flower beds and going to plant nurseries to...
“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then” Is there anything more perfect than a small jelly jar with cut flowers from your garden sitting on the kitchen...
family I spent this last weekend visiting my family. It is always nice to go home for a few days. The...

Polaroid

retta — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:44:20 +0000

, originally uploaded by attercat.

I’m finally getting the hang of using my “new to me” Polaroid camera. Today was the perfect day for a good Halloween shot. I hope everyone has a spooky, treat-filled Halloween!

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“New” Camera “New” Camera, originally uploaded by attercat. Just last week I picked up this beauty knowing that film would be expensive...

“New” Camera

retta — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:09:23 +0000

“New” Camera, originally uploaded by attercat.

Just last week I picked up this beauty knowing that film would be expensive to buy and not exactly easy to find and then today I read that The Impossible Project will start producing film in 2010, http://www.good.is/post/polaroid-lives!

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1/365 1/365, originally uploaded by attercat. I’ve decided to start a 365 project using the camera on my cell phone and...
Polaroid <3 , originally uploaded by attercat. I’m finally getting the hang of using my “new to me” Polaroid camera. Today was...

Fort Nelson –> Fairbanks

retta — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:23:08 +0000

When I last left off, I was in Fort Nelson in a hotel, rested and ready to hit the road again. And that is what we did. We drove and drove and drove the past few days and have finally made it to Fairbanks Alaska!

The drive from Fort Nelson to Whitehorse was long and I made it even longer because I wanted to drive an extra 2.5 hours round trip to the Northern Territory just to say I had been there. We only went a few miles over the border and then turned around and drove straight back to were we started but at least I can now say I have been there.

All day Friday we traveled the Alaskan Highway. We saw some beautiful scenes along the way including lots of caribou and buffalo. They would just be walking in the road and you would have to slow down and ease around them when they felt like moving. One of my favorite sitings was a caribou that was swimming across a lake and then he bounded out on the other side, shook himself off, did a little dance and ran across the road in front of us and up into the hill on the other side.

We ended up stopping in a little town between Fort Nelson and Whitehorse called Watson Lake. It is often called the Yukon’s gateway because it is the first town you run into in the Yukon if you are coming from Canada to Alaska. They have a great little visitor and info center there and they talked us into watching a short movie on the history of the Alaskan Highway. I found it to be very interesting and it was a nice break from driving. One of the things that Watson Lake is best known for is their Sign Post Forest. “The forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.S. Army G.I., Carl K. Lindley of Danville, Il., Company D, 341st Engineers. While working on the Alaska Highway, he erected a sign here pointing the way and stating the mileage to his hometown. Others followed his lead and are still doing so to this day. On July 20, 1990, Olen and Anita Walker of Bryan, Ohio placed the 10,000th sign.”

We made it to Whitehorse really late on Friday night and found a room, fell asleep and headed out again about 6 a.m. so we saw very little of it. It is the capital city of the Yukon and was the largest town we saw while traveling through the Yukon. There are very few places to stop along the Alaskan highway and there were a few times when we got a little nervous on the gas situation because the places that sell it start shutting down in September for the season. We will have to plan well on our trip back through in a week or so from now! We are hoping to get to see more of Whitehorse when we pass through again on the way home.

One of the great bits of advice that we got from the lady at the Watson Lake info center was the suggestion that we take one route out of the Yukon into Alaska and another back in so that we didn’t have to drive a lot of the same road both ways. We decided to detour and take the Klondike Highway to Dawson City on the way to Alaska.

The drive itself was pretty and we stopped along the way to see things like Gravel Lake:

We also saw the entrance to the Dempster Highway which we would like to make into a future adventure. It is a road that will take you all the way up and into the Arctic Circle. It has been known to bust a few tires and beat up vehicles pretty bad but the scenery is well worth it they say.

Dawson City was once a booming gold mining town and it has kept its charm with dirt streets and wooden sidewalks. You can even see some of the original buildings from the early 1900s mixed in with the newer, more colorful buildings. We had lunch there and then took the George Black Ferry across the Yukon River to the road that would take us to Alaska on the other side. The ferry and road is only open in the summer so we just made it. After September 15th we would not have been able to do this. The road I’m talking about is called the Top of the World Highway and it was BEAUTIFUL! Fall has arrived in the Yukon and we saw it better here than any where else.

I could have taken photos all day on this road and we stopped a lot which made us a little late in getting to Fairbanks…. but it was totally worth it! Most of the road on the Top of the World Highway was unpaved and rough but we didn’t mind.

We crossed into Alaska on top of the mountain at the most Northern US customs gate. The Taylor Highway, on the other side of the gate, took us off the mountain, past the little town of Chicken, AK and then back to the Alaskan Highway on the Alaska side. We made it to Tok, AK (the first Alaskan town on the Alaska Highway) just in time for dinner and had some awesome pizza and the famous Fast Eddy’s restaurant.

We are in Fairbanks and the surrounding area for a few days and then on Wednesday will head out again to Anchorage in the South. The weather has been great and we are having a blast! Hopefully we will get to see the Northern Lights while we are here…

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Best trip of 2009 I love the blog challenge from Gwen Bell to blog about your “bests” of 2009. I’m a little late in...
Back in the states… In the past week, we drove through the Yukon again, took the Stewart-Cassiar highway and drove from Watson Lake in...
KY –> AK – Week 1 We have been on the road less than a week and I can’t believe how much we have seen and...

Tasty Tom Selleck Cake

retta — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:39:13 +0000

Tasty Tom Selleck Cake, originally uploaded by the small cat club.

I LOVE this cake. It made me laugh and laugh. This makes me want to decorate a cake of my own and put something as awesome on it.

The chest hair is the best!!

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artist are cool Tonight my friend Shannon and I decided we would skip our weekly planned yoga class and head over to the...