But the blog has suffered, I think it’s the time of year, I have about two dozen blogs that I follow and everyone has been pretty quiet as of late. So I’ve been checking out other blogs, not that I’m abandoning my current blogs, just looking for something to read in the quiet hours. I’ve found some great folks doing some great things which got me to thinking that I should most definitely share them. So that’s coming soon.

That said I’d love to hear about your favorite blogs. Who do you follow? What blogs are your favorite?

Vermont Photo Challenge Episode 1

I’m 100% in love with this barn. If I could have packed it up in my suitcase I would have. There is so much color and texture. And what was amazing was that normally I’d say, “that’s a great wall, I’d love to shoot a senior or couple there.” But instead I focused on the wall, the barn, itself. I took about 20 photos of this barn, while standing in snow up to my waist. It’s going to be the main focus of a new painting I’m working on too. Thanks awesome barn.

Just down the road from the amazing barn was an old water run saw mill (at least I think it was a saw mill). I took some wide shots of it, played with long exposures, different lenses, but I think the most successful shot was this close up of the flowing water and the ice. There’s beauty and tension in it and I appreciate that.

I found this place, where the thick wood ends. I’m not sure which image I like more. But I thought the scenery was SO interesting.

Sheep in the snow might be my favorite thing ever. I came across another puffier sheep, who had a lovely amount of snow stuck to it’s wool, but by the time I switched lenses he had run back into the woods. This guy stood, staring at me for a good while. I thanked him with a smile.

We also took a trip to the Cabot factory where I saw how (and where) my favorite cheese is made. If you live close enough to Cabot, Vermont you also get to indulge in Cabot’s greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and veggie dip. It was probably the best greek yogurt I’d ever eaten.

I made several new friends while on the Goddard College campus. One was Becky who was the proud owner of Moo (the cute pup above). While Becky and I became quick friends I also bonded with Moo. I took this image during a leisurely hike through the woods, and it might be my favorite image from the hike.

I took the above two images on that same hike with Moo. I’ve noticed that the most successful images are the ones when I got personal with my subject (just like I would with a client), in this case some moss and fungus (?).

So that’s it for now. I’ll have more photos up shortly.Thanks for checking them out.

Have you every tried to challenge yourself in your own art? What did you do, how did it go?

It’s a fact. I love it. There was a section of my life where I wasn’t recording the day to day in photographs because I didn’t want to lug around my giant DSLR. I have a small point and shoot but I just didn’t want to bring that along either. But with the iPhone 4s and its sweet camera I’m seriously loving that I can take pretty decent pictures with something I already carry around anyway.

What I love about instagram is that it records instant memories of my life. It reminds me of having a Polaroid camera. But there was still one problem, they were:

A. Stuck in Instagram
B. Stuck in a digital form.

So I found http://instaport.me/, which was a super easy way to download my entire instagram library.

After unpacking the zipped file and filtering through about 443 images, I ordered 125 5″x5″ prints. I utilized my wholesale printer but there are loads of really great printers that will print your instagram images and even turn them into books, magnets, and a plethora of other really great things.

I’m so excited! It’s the same excitement I felt when waiting for film to develop. My order is currently ready for shipping and I’m hoping to get it today. My plan is to do a photo album of all the pics from the holidays, using a little journaling and notes to enhance the images. The others I’m going to hang in odd places throughout the house like on our home command center, mirrors, night stands, office boards, etc. I’m also searching for a cute little box type holder, I’d love one of these from Anthropoligie to hold them.

I can’t wait to share all my prints!

(oh and if you’d like to follow me on instagram my username is dilibertophoto)

Have you ordered printed items from your instagram feed?

What has been the best thing you’ve ordered?

One revelation is laboriously clear.

At some point, I forgot that I am an artist.

I AM an artist.

The “art” within my work has been a whisper.

If not silent.

I’m still trying to figure that one out.

But it’s definitely an issue I am going to quickly amend.

I’m in Vermont for the next few days, my mom is graduating with her MFA and I’m here to celebrate with her. I’ve been to Vermont once before in the fall (AMAZING by the way) and I’m always so intrigued by the way of life here. It is certainly “The Green Mountain State”. Everyone here recycles and buys organic and local and wears wintery hipster/earthy clothing. There’s regulations against billboards across the state so the landscape really shines. People walk places and there are quaint shops in little town squares surrounded by victorian houses and rolling hills. Everything here is in a blanket of white even though I have yet to see a snowflake fall. Pedestrians truly have the right of way as cars will stop in the middle of the street to let you pass, and most pedestrians do not look both ways before crossing (this strokes me smooth out). Everyone is very liberal and democrat and the graffiti is well thought out political art that seems to be screen printed on walls and odds and ends, a far cry from the gang-style tagging I see in Houston. It really feels like I’m in another country.

I’ll be sharing more details of my adventures like the FABULOUS knitting store I visited today and the B&B we’re staying at and the capitol building and more.

In the mean time, I leave you with this thought: Toms shoes in the snow is a bad plan.

These dinosaur 2″ circle party printable decorations are piping HOT off the presses (or off the computer I suppose). I haven’t even shot the promo shots for them yet. I was just too excited to have them just sit in my computer files, waiting to be shared with the world.

I’m really really excited about them!

I don’t think you could tell.

They make me wish I had a little boy to throw a dinosaur party for because as I was making them I was getting all these awesome ideas of party games and DIY projects. And since I don’t have a little boy to share them with I’ll just share them here on my blog so I can live vicariously through mom’s with little boys and dinosaur themed parties.

First off, I created an Dinosaur Birthday Party Etsy Treasury and there is A LOT of cool stuff out there, but more on that in a moment.

A Dinosaur Birthday Party Game

So I thought it would be hecka cool if you did a child style archeological dig. It would be great if you already had a sandbox, if not I suppose you could use a tarp and cover it with sand. OR you could use the game as a good excuse to build a sandbox <link to a SWEET sandbox I pinned. But make sure you build a sandbox with a cover on it, or neighborhood cats will thank you for building them the ultimate giant litter box. And let’s face it, you don’t want your party guests digging for that kind of treasure.

1. I found these very cool personalized sand pails from DeLaDesign over on etsy. She’ll do them in just about any color, so you can have them match the green, orange and blue in the party printable design. She will also do them with a SWEET dinosaur on them instead of the alligator pictured. The goal is to get your guest list nailed down ahead of time (by sending out our dinosaur themed printable party invites, wink wink) so you can have Debi over at DeLaDesign create one for each of your guests. I’d definitely suggest getting a few extras, without names, just in case.

2. So what will your child guests be digging for…well anything really, candy, fake dinosaur bones, those little plastic dinosaurs you can get at the dollar store, tubes of bubbles, anything. OR they could dig for this. Yep, that’s right, its concrete dinosaur bones, and at a great price too. I’m the educational type so I’d take the opportunity to teach the kids all about archeology and dinosaur bones and all of that.

They’d love me or they’d hate me.

3. But they’re guarenteed to love me if they’re also digging for these. This are probably the coolest cookies ever! They come individually wrapped in cellophane bags with ribbon. If you made sure that ribbon was tied really tight I’m pretty sure you could bury these in your sandy archeological dig without them getting…sandy.

The rest of the Dinosaur Birthday Party Etsy Treasury is below, there’s a lot of really good stuff down there; handmade dinosaur bunting, dinosaur shaped crayons, and patterns for DIY crochet Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Triceratops. I’ve also included some decoration staples like cupcake papers, cupcake stand, dino cookies, striped straws, and an oilcloth tablecloth in coordinating colors. It’s the perfect dino party for sure!

You could use this color scheme for a guy’s birthday party or valentines day party. I based this etsy treasure on the sample of my newest party printable line, Stripe and Dots Custom Color. The sample uses red, gray, black and white that we used for a friend’s 50th birthday party. However, it has complete color customization, you choose the color! And it’s a full party, everything you need, for $25 bucks. Seriously! You can click the photo above to go to the complete Etsy Treasury and view all the great vendors.

Many of the color decisions the fashion and design worlds make are based on Pantone’s fashion color reports which are compiled by top designers and what’s shown at Fashion Week. Below are the colors for the Spring 2012 fashion report (image from Pantone.com, you can download the full report here).

The cool thing is once you see the report of colors you’ll start to see them everywhere. Pantone is the guide to color for almost all creative industries (fashion, interior design, graphic design, product development), and each of these industries takes cues from the reports Pantone puts out each season. The most notable is how it affects the fashion industry.

Here is a sample of Vera Wang’s Spring line for David’s Bridal. While the colors aren’t exact you can definitely see the influence they have on the collection. (Images from DavidsBridal.com).

I’m so glad I found this image of J.Crew’s Spring 2012 collection. It really shows how the colors influence the whole collection and how they can be successfully used together. I’m actually really excited about the colors for the spring. There are some classics like the sodalite blue and starfish, but tangerine and cockatoo are fun and spunky (I could totally see them together with sodalite in a men’s striped tie).

Pantone has also put together a similar color palette for men’s fashion trends. Some of these colors can be seen in the women’s collections above, the men’s collection adds a few more solid, manly colors like dazzling blue, granita, vintage khaki, and tradewinds.

So that’s that, my little heart is fluttering with joy at these new colors. I’m looking forward to seeing how they’re used throughout all the creative industries.

What colors from the Pantone Spring 2012 collection are your favorites?
Have you already seen these colors showing their pretty little faces in stores?

We started by sitting down with the bride and talking about her vision for her wedding, the color scheme, the look and feel, the style of the event. She wanted colorful and fun so we went with it and came up with an over all graphic design theme for her wedding.

The Wedding Invitations

I was lucky enough to be able to do a For The Love of Couples engagement session with Bethia and Joel and we knew they wanted to include an image or two on their invitation. Even though the invitation would be seen by guests months before the wedding I knew I wanted it to coordinate with design elements we’d use later in the wedding decor and accessories. So I created their own wedding seal, which we used on their invitations, party printables, and their photo guestbook.

What else is great is that if we replaced the date with their home address created awesome return address labels for their custom thank you cards!

The Decorations and Printable Decor

We had a lot of fun working together to create Joel & Bethia’s custom printables and wedding decor. Bethia was a very hands on bride and did a ton of crafting with friends and family to create her perfect wedding. Her boquet was probably my favorite of all time!

She created it using antique broaches she found on ebay and local antique stores. It was beautiful.

Anyways, back to the printables. Bethia knew she needed 2″ Circles for cupcake toppers, food labels, and 2″ thank you circles. At first she had planned on doing adorable colorful bags with different artisan sandwiches in them so we created these to stick onto the colorful bags:

Last minute they changed the food menu so we scrapped these awesome food labels and went a different direction. I still love these labels and hope I can eventually find a way to use them.

Bethia planned on making tons of cupcakes and using them on tiered platters for the centerpieces. She asked if I could create 2″ party circles they could attach to lollypop sticks and use at cupcake toppers. We utilized their personal seal as well as elements from their invitation to create the 2″ circle cupcake toppers.

We also created 2″ thank you circles with the phrase “thank you for sharing in the merriment” as their thank you circles. In the wedding invitation wording that Bethia wrote “to be followed thereafter by merriment, dinner, music, and cupcakes” which is where we got the thank you for sharing in the merriment line. The cheers wine glasses were from their invitation.

Wedding Accessories

While the whole wedding was AMAZING, and Bethia did a great job of bringing everything together, one of my favorite things was their photo guestbook.

It’s an exclusive item from Diliberto Photo & Design, we explained the whole thing a while back on this blog post. Basically we used photos from their engagement session and left space for people to sign. In my opinion it’s way better than a book of people’s signatures.

To top it all off, we also used their custom wedding seal on the back of the book.

It was SO fun to be at the wedding and watch people look through the book and sign it. Most people wrote wonderful message to the bride and groom and I hope that this book becomes a cherished piece in their home that holds tons of memories and love from family and friends.

The last and final thing we created for Joel and Bethia’s wedding was the little instructional signs which were framed in inexpensive frames. Signs like these need a bit of planning but they really bring it all together and helps guests know what to do. For Bethia and Joel we did a sign the guestbook sign and a few other instructional ones as well as two quotes that really summed up who they are together. The one below by Dr. Seuss is probably my favorite:

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

And that’s how we bring it all together. For Bethia and Joel’s wedding I had the pleasure of working directly with the bride but we love working with wedding planners too. These custom wedding collections are some of my favorite to create and the most exciting part is seeing them in use, among all the other elements of the wedding and decor.

Are you planning a wedding or party? What kind of theme are you doing? Is there anything we can do to help?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about our whole “going organic” adventure. It’s been going very well, we’ve phased out most of the non organic things in our pantry, replacing them with more wholesome items which have ingredients that I can pronounce and understand.

I’ve been playing with a lot of really delicious recipes. Bill bought me two WONDERFUL organic cook books for Christmas and I plan on reading them as soon as I get a second to myself. The above left is an AMAZING boc-choy stir fry I made. I’ll have to share the recipe soon.

We’ve still been getting organic shares from The Rawfully Organic Co-Op here in Houston and I have a back log of photos to share. So much bounty of deliciousness!! The local organic strawberries have been my favorite (oh the joys of living in a place where the average winter temp is around 65 degrees), they’re usually gone by the time we get our share back to the house.

Infused water is my new obsession as I try to increase my intake by about 1000%. I’ve been drinking water with cucumber or pineapple in it for years but lately I’ve really gotten creative with the combinations. That’s the beauty of infused water, you can pretty much add anything to it and get a slight boost of flavor (and vitamins) that make your water just a little more…flavorful. Most recently, organic orange slices and mint from my garden is a favorite.

I’ve also been playing with “hiding” veggies in our foods. Bill isn’t a huge fan of most cooked vegetables so it’s been a challenge for me cook them in a way that he’ll eat them. The “way” being that he doesn’t know he’s eating them. I recently made some AMAZING turkey burgers with shaved carrots and zucchini, it was a recipe that had had been mulling around in my head for a while and it turned out awesome. And bonus, he loved them! I’ll be sharing it soon.

We’ve also discovered locally (Houston) made Kickin’ Kombucha, which we love. Kombucha is basically fermented tea with yeasts and all kinds of other cool living things that make it fizzy and delightful (for a really fancy description visit Kickin’ Kombucha’s FAQ page) . It’s good for you and delish, which means we’re for it! I recently (like today) found this great blog called Deliciously Organic, and Karrie posted a very cool recipe to make your own Kombucha. I can’t wait to try it.

On a side note both the Deliciously Organic blog and The Rawfully Organic Co-Op use the same font for their logo (both in orange too). I noticed it right away. Yes, I am a big fat design nerd. Don’t judge me.