Merry Christmas! & Happy Holidays!

For the past few days, I've been coughing up slugs and it feels like a giant elephant has squashed my nose. During one sleepless night, I drew these Christmas cards.

I hope to gift you with a smile after taking time to look. Thanks for visiting!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Years!! Cheers!

Words of love, wisdom, and action.

"So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people." from President Elect Barack Obama's Victory Speech at Grant Park, Chicago, IL. November 4, 2008.

At a Coffee House

End Junk Mail!

Tired of junk mail? I recently learned about the website:

http://www.donotmail.org/index.php

From the info page:

"American mailboxes are inundated with junk mail. More than 100,000,000,000 pieces of junk mail are delivered each year—that’s more than 800 pieces per household. In fact, junk mail in the United States accounts for one-third of all the mail delivered in the world. Even though 44% of that mail goes to the landfill unopened, we still spend 8 months of our lives dealing with it all. But junk mail does more than invade our homes and waste our time; it also destroys our environment. "

I recommend clicking the "end junk mail" tool on the website. To save time, it provides letter templates to the companies that send junk mail requesting that they remove your address and information from their databases. It's worth a try. Sign the petition too!

Friendship Bread takes work!

Busy, busy, baking! My friends Mark and Mary Michelle gifted me with a bag of Friendship Bread starter dough. Cool! I thought! I love this stuff!

Amish Friendship Bread is the equivalent of a chain letter, but you can eat it. It starts with someone offering you a bag of starter dough and a list of instructions. Inside the bag of gew are active yeasts yearning to become real loaves of bread.

After ten days of saying encouraging words to my dough, smashing and tickling the bag, the dough doubled in size. By baking day, the happy dough multiplied to four more bags of starter dough and two wonderful loaves of sweet cinnamon-tasting bread. Yum! Bill and I dove into one loaf, and the other loaf became a friend's birthday gift.

And what became of the gewy siblings? Bill successfully gave one away. I couldn't wait to offer a bag to friends. I brought it to work.

"O" looked at the dough, then looked at my smiling face, looked at the dough again; looked at the list of instructions, then looked at me (my smile fading), and then very politely declined the offer. I went to another co-worker's office who recently shared her delicious plum and fig cake. Just as I stepped through the door, she caught sight of my dough and said, "Please don't give that to me." She explained that her mother-in-law just gave her a starter dough and that she wasn't up to the task of another batch. Understandable. I returned to my desk, and when J visited for his morning rounds, I happily offered him the bag of dough.

J: "What the heck is that?!"
Me: "It's Friendship Bread dough. It's delicious. You'll love it! But you need to take care of it for ten days."
J: "You mean it's living?"
Me: "Yeah, it's yeast."
J: "You bring bags of yeast to work?"
Me: "It's suppose to be shared."
J: "Uh. . . thanks, but I don't know. It's alive."

Strike three.

Finally, I called D. D is a mega busy mother of a very cute baby boy, who recently returned to work, sees struggling students, and still has time for ten million other extra-curricular activities with local moms.

Me: "Hey D. I know you're very busy, and you don't have much time, but I've got some starter dough I'd like to share with you. Would you be interested in adopting it? It's a delicious bread. It takes ten days to care for it. . . BUT you don't need to give it that much attention if you don't want to. It mostly sits there until you're ready to bake. I mean, it's not that much of a hassel to take care of, you know? It's really rewarding. The ingredients are pretty basic. You won't have to buy anything extra or exotic ingredients to make it. I think you'll love it. It makes your kitchen smell . . . ."
D: (interrupting) "Sounds good. When can you drop it off?"

Saved!

As for the other two bags at home, I decided to keep them. I skipped the instructions for day 6 (that step would have continued the ten day baking cycle). On the tenth day, I stayed up late baking. It cut into drawing time and other chores, but it had to be done. The bags of dough finally reached the bread state-- although, some of them were cake shaped-- a result of not owning enough bread pans. My kitchen is finally friendship bread free. I'm taking a break from baking. For now . . .

"Camp Bean, All Things Woodsey"

The end of summer is almost here. For those who did not get outdoors, please visit my homage to summer camp and a landscape inspired by Yosemite!

The future home of Camp Bean online is:
http://www.campbean.net/ --please be patient, we are still in the process of breaking ground.
For now, enjoy!
http://www.bestfilmoncampus.com/filmmaker/default.aspx?filmmakerID=1720&filmID=1155

Schoolism design class with Stephen Silver

Here is an assignment from Stephen Silver's class. His critiques were incredibly helpful and for me, it was the first time someone provided insight on how one approaches and thinks about design. I have yet to rework and strengthen these Jekyll & Hyde designs based on his suggestions.

Lunchtime zoo drawings & Brand Park

Just some zoo drawing fun. As you can see, we caught the animals during their afternoon siesta.