Dappled Air

Even though we still have snow on the ground and the snowstorms, but every so often there is a day when spring is in the air. February 25th was such a day and the crow was asleep in our blue spruce tree until I decided to take a picture. Wallpaper with Calendar 1024 x 768 pixels 1280 x 1024 pixels 1920 x 1200 pixels Wallpaper without Calendar 1024 x 768 pixels 1280 x 1024 pixels 1920 x 1200 pixels

I have run into a little snag with my blog. I am trying to cover too many subjects and so find it difficult to submit the blog to be included in sites. I guess, that is the problem when your interests are all over the place rather than limited to just a few. So I am trying to figure out how to solve this problem. My main website is called Marlies' Creative Universe for exactly that reason. When I started it in April of 1997 it was manageable, but now after all that time it has grown to humongous proportions and is more like 5 websites in one. On top of it due to the amount of traffic I am generating and the fact that I am using TYPO3 as CMS the site literally crawls. That is not good for visitors, as they have to wait for the pages to load. So temporarily, I have solved this slowness problem by making most of the pages static rather than dynamic. It helped, but I still will have to figure out a way to improve this on a permanent basis and that brings me to the problem of switchin...

I have a lifelong interest in dreams. My hubby is a natural at helping people understand their dreams. After being married to him for as long as we have been, it has rubbed off on me and I now can usually interpret my dreams myself. Before you can try to understand your dreams, you have to remember them. Some people never remember their dreams and others are like me that they go through waves of remembering their dreams and then suddenly nothing. I view this like this. The dreams I don't remember have served their purpose and don't need to be remembered. The dreams I do remember have message for me that I should pay attention to. Some dreams explain my current situation and offer support or tell me that I am on the right track. The dreams I find hardest to place are the ones about the future, as I don't know that they are about a future event until that event happens. This weekend I came across a website with an article about understanding the meaning of dreams that comb...

Following my post from two days ago, I had to add this post from a RSS feed I subscribe called Chief Joseph Newsletter . For me this article is the way I see the world, but to some reader it might be very strange. Life, Death, and Plane Crashes Last week, on a cold foggy night in Buffalo, New York, Continental Flight 3407 suddenly spiraled down into a fiery crash five miles from its d estination. John Cali The plane, for those of you who might not know, crashed on its final approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport about 10:20 that dark foggy night in Buffalo. Fifty people died, including all passengers and crew members, plus one man on the ground. The sad events in Buffalo had a particularly poignant personal meaning for me. The next night, as I read about them, my thoughts carried me back to a time lo...

My interests are not mainstream and when I came across this interesting article at the 'Dying to Live Again Foundation website' with a different perspective on Alzheimer's I just had to post it. It is the view of 90 year old woman who has died and found a way to talk to her daughter and explain the last years of her life from the perspective beyond the grave. Patricia on Alzheimer’s Patricia is a 90 year old woman who had died a few months earlier after having Alzheimer’s for 20 years. She is speaking to her daughter. I am so excited, my dear one. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been trying to get to you. I know that there are ways that you can kind of feel me and know that I’m around but you’re not sure what it is all about. Do I have a message? What’s going on? So I can tell you right now that I just wanted you to know I’m with you all. I love you all. Just because my body is not there anymore doesn’t mean that I don’t feel that connection. I actually had the most unusual...

Here is a tip for a quick Valentine craft. It is easy to make and quite unusual. I took the idea for a scrapbooking fan album and shrank it down in size. I used 6x4 inch photo paper to make the small strips that are 2x6 inches. Each fan used 2 6x4 inch pages and so has 4 pages that are held together by the colored split clip and a scrapbooking flower. Full instructions and MS Publisher template is available here

Yesterday on the local radio station I heard them talk about being a maven, but they had no idea what that meant. That gave me the idea for today's post. I call myself a 'creative maven', a Jack no Jill of all trades. I grew up in Switzerland where in grade 1 I learned to knit and crochet and then over the years to embroider, sew and more. Eventually, I had the opportunity to learn metal work, I learned working with wood by watching my dad. My learning style is monkey see, monkey do. So what is the meaning of maven? It comes from the Hebrew word 'mevin' to understand and when you have mastered something you really understand it and become an expert, a maven. Wikipedia's definition Google Dictonary's definitions

Today is different because it is my birthday. There is big snowstorm going on outside and I am sitting here at my computer save and warm. Working from home definitely has its advantages. This morning as I was contemplating my blog post, I had this idea that I was going to see what I could find out about today's date. In the past I had a computer program called 'special day' that made a printout of what happened on any specific date. I used to include it in my numerology and astrology readings I did for people. Sadly, it is totally out of date, but now with the Internet there are many other options to find that information and here are just a few: February 3 at wikipedia.org On this day from the BBC On this day from the New York Times Today's Canadian Headlines from the Globe & Mail Time Capsule of this day This day in Disney History Today in Literature Those were the days

The first month of 2009 is over and we are still on a roller coaster ride, the weather, the economy and our emotions are all over the place. Then I watched this video by Esther Hicks , based on "the secret - the law of attraction" and realized that is has a balancing effect. If you don't want to watch the whole video every day when you are down, here are 2 a cue cards with the affirmations from the video. Making the cue cards, gave me the opportunity to use my experimental backgronds. I discovered that most official envelopes have a pattern on the inside and each one is different. So I sliced the enveloped open, stuck them in the scanner and then created square pictures of the scans.