Inspire Me Thursday - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Here is my offering for Inspire Me Thursday's theme this week: 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' for Earth Day 2008 honoring precious Mother Earth.

Fresh paint in my paper bag journal that I made after seeing a tutorial on one of my favorite artists blog, Judy Wise. The woman is insanely creative & talented - I would love to make it to one of her classes some day, her journals are so real and unbelievable, honestly :) These journals are fairly easy to make, the only thing I would maybe do differently with my next one is not crumple the bags and simply cut them to size /stitch together. Either that or alternate wrinkled pages with smooth ones for more options.

As some of you may know I'm relocating to the Southwest in a few weeks, so not much else has been on my mind - packing & purging are on my daily to-do list. I think the folks at Goodwill are starting to expect to see me just about every day lately! This entry reflects how I've been feeling lately. The butterfly you see (taken from my growing stash of magazine clippings for collage work) is only one of many that are fluttering around in my stomach these days as I prepare our family for the.big.move.

I took a trip to the Southwest recently to check out some new digs - here are some of my fave photos. I loaded them up in this cool little [paperless] photo album and added some music , a spin on the Rolling Stones' 1971 song, 'Wild Horses', as I was feeling quite moody & nostalgic putting this together. The story behind the original song can be found here.

Enjoy...

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

More trip pics...

A few more pics as promised of my recent trip to the Southwest, which as some of you may know is where I'm relocating to in about a month's time - yikes!! So much packing & purging coming up in the next few weeks.... it's wonderful to have these pics to take me back there and make it all more real & tangible :)

These shots are from the White Sands National Monument located about 15 miles southwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was so absolutely gorgeous and pristine there - I was in awe at the natural beauty of it, wow. As well, the amazing thing is that unlike quartz-based sand which can get extremely hot especially in summer months, these dunes stay cool due to the fact that they are made from gypsum.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig...

Back from the Southwest and wow what a trip! I decided to do some spring cleaning here on my blog to reflect the beautiful color palettes I absorbed. The photo in my banner was taken in the Guadalupe Mountains. Oh my, the air was so fresh, clean and sweet out there - what a feast for the senses let me tell you!!



In the air - enroute via Denver, Colorado
Photo location: Pike's Peak Rocky Mountains, Colorado



The Purple Prickly Pear Cactus is a member of the Opuntia genus. It can grow to 5 feet in height and has round to oblong purple tinged pads which give the cactus its name. Unlike many other types of prickly pear, the purple variety has few if any spines. The cactus grows in sandy or gravelly soil at elevations below 4000 feet. It has a light jasmine scent which is used to attract nocturnal insects.
Photo location: Chihuahuan Desert - Big Bend National Park, Texas

Back from the Southwest and wow what a trip! I decided to do some spring cleaning here on my blog to reflect the beautiful color palettes I absorbed. The photo in my banner was taken in the Guadalupe Mountains. Oh my, the air was so fresh, clean and sweet out there - what a feast for the senses let me tell you!!

The trip itself went very fast but we managed to fit quite a bit into the 2 short weeks we had there. Everything went fairly smooth until we got held up for the trip home in El Paso, Texas for a few days. Our original flight home was via Houston which we changed to Dallas to avoid a long layover but even that one eventually ended up being cancelled (we actually boarded the plane then had to get off!) as no flights were going in or out of Dallas due to heavy rains and a tornado touch down. We did finally luck out when an 'angel' ticket agent at Continental found us a way home through another airline for the next day - what a sweetie she was to be so sympathetic to our plight!

Anyhow, as some of you may know, we're relocating to the Southwest in about 2 months. I feel so much better that I actually got to check out the city where we're moving to and can't wait to get out there and settled. It's quite a change from everything we've known most of our lives here in the Midwest. When we arrived back home to the dreary landscape with banks of snow and grey skies though, it really made me want to start packing asap. I do know it gets quite hot in the summer months down south, but you don't have to shovel the heat!!



JACK RABBIT
Photo location: Alamo Village - Bracketville, Texas

I thought this pic above from a day trip to the Alamo Village was very fitting for Easter. Oh my this bunny was quick (!) I was lucky to get the shot before he took off in another direction! We stopped at The Alamo Village on a whim and were glad we did. It was a bit 'touristy' in a way but quite authentic for the most part as we found out that it actually has been host to more than 200 major feature films, TV movies, mini-series, documentaries, commercials, and music videos over the years - from the original The Alamo and Lonesome Dove to the Bad Girls movie starring Andie MacDowell & Drew Barrymore.

Anyhow, I have soooo many things to share with you all, everything from travelling through the Guadalupe Mountains and visiting the White Sands National monument in New Mexico, to art and antique shopping along the way, so please check back for updates as I unpack, regroup and come back down to earth :)

Happy Easter!