I Heart Faces ~ Kitty Clyde

Wowza! This month has blown by. Doing our taxes ate my mojo a couple weeks ago and then this last week, I've enjoyed spending time with my kidlets as my son has been on his Spring Break.  But, I've missed this ever fun online world!

I Heart Faces' current photo challenge is Pets and I'm linking up our favorite photo of one spunky cat!  (If you've been reading here for awhile, then you may have seen this, but I've never linked it up with I Heart Faces....and it truly is our favorite! :>)  He's no longer with us, but our whole family has some mighty fine memories of Kitty Clyde.

If you want to check out oodles of cute critters that have captured hearts, head over to I Heart Faces and have a look!

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana & SITS

Last month, when I read that SITStas would be reading The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, for the SITSGirls Book Club, I sat straight up, excited and devoured the post.

This book appears to be one that I will love reading.  It is a true story about a woman, living in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule who manages to create a way to support herself and family against numerous odds.

And I finally have my copy in my hands today!  The clock cannot tick fast enough 'til I can start reading it later tonight!  What a perfect way to start our Spring Break here, don't you think?! :>

Obviously, I'm not able to review what I have yet to read, but thankfully, SITSta, Andrea of Great Thoughts has written a review that you can check out to see if this is something you might like.

And guess what?!  It gets even better.  The SITSGirls are having a Book Club Twitter party on May 5th, using the hashtag #SITSBooks and.....wait for it.....the author, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, will be participating.  Now, how cool is that?!  (And if you're not a SITSGirl yet, what are you waiting for? It's a great group of women bloggers! :>)

Okay, if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to try to get the clock to tick tock a little faster (hmmm...usually I'm trying to slow time down, trying to speed it up is a new one for me!).  The fact that my boy has a minimum day, leading into the arrival of Spring Break....finally (!!!), should help.

What are you reading right now?  Are you fan of crisp paper pages to thumb as you read or have you made the switch to an e-reader?

Disclosure:  I purchased The Dressmaker of Khair Khana myself.  All opinions are my own.  And yes, the links to the book are affiliate links.  All other links are informational and great sites!

It's a Birthday Blog Hop!

It's a birthday bloghop for an uber special blogger, my in real life friend, Elise of Mamacow Creations!

She rocks the creative span, ranging from oodles of papercrafts (card making to scrapbooking to home dec to food art...you should see what she does come pumpkin time!) and on down the line, to gorgeous fine art paintings (the first one here is  my current fav).  Elise is known to tickle a funny bone, get silly in the wee hours, write and sing an ode to the creative man, Tim Holtz, and make so many of us smile with her sweet heart.

Thanks to the gals at the Just Us Girls challenge site, I'm thrilled to be able to wish her a Happy Birthday!!!

And the birthday gal needs a birthday card, right?!

Elise had been begging for spring not too long ago and when I walked by a few of my Dew Drop ink pads, they whispered to me.  (No, really, they did!)

Well, their shape awoke some slumbering inky card making mojo and so I had to run with it!  I started with the orchid and then filled in with the purple.

A birthday needs sparkle, so after adding a piece of chunky purple bling for the flower's center, spica glitter pens went to work, laying on oodles of sparkle onto the vine ribbon used for the flower's stem. (It doesn't show fabulously in the photo, but it really does sparkle!)

Happy Happy Birthday, Elise!!

I'm grateful for your friendship and
hope your day is wonderful, launching an awesome new year! :>

I hope you'll hop along, visit the partiers, and most of all, stop by Elise's Mamacow Creations blog and leave her some birthday love (even if you're not a papercrafter, we know how fantastic the community of bloggers can be and would love if you stopped by to wish her Happy Birthday! :>)!!!

Supplies:Cardstock: Papertrey Ink
Ink: Tsukineko Brilliance Dew Drops
Ribbon: May Arts
Bling: rhinestone - stash;  Spica Glitter Pens - Copic
Other:  FabriTac, foam tape, ScorPal

In Concert

Sunlight dances through the canopy of woven branches,

Partnering dust motes as they flit and float by,

Tapping its toes on the carpeted forest floor.

Underfoot, rust colored needles, grind with each sneakered step.

Birds trill and chat, branches whoosh and crack,

Insects whizz, whir, and chirp, water trickles by.

An orchestrated concert erupts from the forests’ walls,

A sweet serene hush unites their song.

Together, they create a comforting softness that blankets a soul.

I wrap myself in its memories, its peace, its tranquility

And simply breathe.

It's RemembeRED time again!  This week we were prompted to write about a sound or scent that brings you right back to your past.

I've spent time camping on both sides of this country (from the Cascades to the Adirondacks and back to the Seirras) and some of my favorite individual memories are from those trips.  But, the feeling I get inside the forest is always the same regardless of who I'm with, what I'm doing, or which forest I'm in.  And so that's the direction I took for this.

We had a 700 word limit.  And while I am usually quite a wordy gal, I'm here with 88...hope I put them to good use! :>

World Autism Awareness Day 2011

While the whole month of April is dedicated to Autism Awareness, today is World Autism Awareness Day.

As some of you might already know, we have been affected by autism in our family.  And we have found it to be everything from an adventure to a challenge, from which we continue to learn daily.

In the first year or two after diagnosis, I lived on Google, sought advice from other parents with a child living with autism, read and learned from 'the experts'.

Now, while I am still learning and seeking information from a variety of sources (at the top of that list are my kidlet's words, actions, and behaviors...they will tell a lot if we'll just try to understand), one resource that I'm learning quite a bit from is the growing community of adults living with autism, who are sharing from their perspectives.

So, I thought it quite appropriate today to share with you a piece I read yesterday (thanks again to the tweeps tweeting away on twitter for sharing!), written by an adult living with high functioning autism, asking people to move beyond simply being aware of autism and learning more about what autism actually is.

Awareness, understanding, acceptance at Normal is Overrated

Please take a few moments to click over and read.  And if you have a story to tell, something insightful to share, or a resource you want to spread the word about in regards to autism, please do!