Victoria, of the lovely sfgirlbybay, does a weekly feature titled Sunday in the City.  She is so creative with her compositions, her fun play on words, and her photos are always fantastic.  Reader’s photo compositions  were recently featured in last week’s Sunday in the City, click here to check out the amazing submissions.

We too had phenomenal weather on Sunday, so we all took a walk to Baskin Robbin’s for some ice cream and then strolled to the park so the kiddos could play.  I brought the camera along and snapped a few random photos along the way (it was a bit annoying to my family, btw).  I’ll leave you with a couple of the pics, lil glimpses from my lens.  I had to include the G, bubble gum ice cream and all.  I was thinking I might do a post of the faces of G; that might be fun.  I promise to cover interiors here, really, I will.

Saying found on Tumblr via here.  Photo taken yesterday on our walk to have ice cream and play in the park.  I need this today; just not feeling whole. Some days are like that.

Here are the full sized images from the photo bits game posted last Friday.  Thank you to all who commented on the blog, via phone calls and emails.  It was a fun lil exercise for me so I hope you got a kick out of it as well.

Photos will be posted in the order of the game, 1-7. 

In other news, a loyal reader sent in an inspirational color palette after reading this post.  I was so excited to get reader participation and will share their inspiration a bit later.

As always, thank you for joining me, it really does make my day.

Perfect timing for so many reasons.  I happened upon this motto photo through the lovely Katy Elliott.  I encourage you to stop by her blog and at a minimum learn a bit about her.  She has an impressive background, is very down to earth and feeling the impact of this economy on her career path; her outlook is quite refreshing.  I have to agree with her #10.  Photography is a newfound interest of mine that has been rekindled as I prepare the studio and write here regularly.  Motto originally created here.

I do love fashion, and I pop in to certain fashion blogs now and then just to take a peek. There is not a lot of frivolous buying going on in our house right now, but a girl can dream, right?.  I had to post this pic and yes, the fashion is stricking——but the backdrop, are you kidding me?  I am loving the texture of the pitted concrete wall, the distressed flooring (looks like cork?), with it’s cracks and discoloration at base of floor and all.  My eye is replacing this darling, style maven in black with a clean line organic wood bed or chair, with simple texture and a pop of color; well, like this for instance:

Do you ever find yourself visualizing completely revamping a space?  Tell me about it; I’d love to hear your experience.

Friday seems like the perfect day for a silly little photo game.  7 of my images in this photo collage; guess what each image represents by leaving a comment below.  I have had so much fun the last couple of weeks sharing a bit of my world.  I know I’m brand new at this public expression gig, and there is so much for me to learn but I’m enjoying it and being surprisingly lighthearted about it (I have an ugly critic that lives in my head).  It truly brightens my day to read your comments and emails, so please say hello if you haven’t had a chance to yet.

These images are fairly obvious, but I thought this might be fun.  Warning:  the scale of each image may or may not be an accurate depiction of the image.  I’ll post full photos of each image on Monday, so please check back in.  In the mean time, enjoy this day and have a fabulous weekend.  I would love to hear if anyone has become more conscious of noticing the art in daily things.  Oh, and remember:

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.      johann wolfgang von goethe

I saw this tonite via Tina Roth Eisenberg of the lovely swiss-miss and wanted to share it with you here.  I am by nature, a relentless perfectionist, not in all things, but in things that define me, things that I am passionate about.  I am passionate about interior design and blogging about it is a new adventure; one that requires me to be visible as I learn.  The perfect read for me at this time and I appreciate Tina for blogging about it, and Bre Pettis and Kio Stark for writing it. Cool poster version designed by illustrator James Provost.  I hope you enjoy it as well.

I’m side tracked with client work today so I don’t have a lot of time, and blogging takes me time, cuz you see, I am new at this, and this new skill requires more left brained strength than I can muster on creative days.  I am grateful for all aspects of my work (ok, almost).

Here’s a photo I snapped this morning.  People sometimes ask where my inspiration for color palette’s on design projects comes from.  When I was in design school, I began noticing much more color, texture and balance of both by opening my eyes to it in my daily activities.  I remain committed to the exercise of noticing; it adds a lot to my mental library for current and future design work, and just happens to be something I thoroughly enjoy.

I created a sample color palette from this photo, using the eyedrop tool in photo shop to select colors from this succulent vignette.  I decided not to trim away the dried portions of our planter prior to taking this shot, as those pieces add to the richness of the dark end on the color spectrum.

As always, I so appreciate you coming by; comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.  I am not a photographer, and do not have very sophisticated equipment.  Bear with me, I hope to get better at illustrating my ideas via photos for this blog as I progress; baby steps, am taking baby steps.

I’ll leave you with another photo, a burst of color and light, these bursts boost my mood when the days are cloudy and nature’s colors are hibernating.

I have to run out for a client consult, but wanted to post a lil somethin special.  Our girl took her first ballet class yesterday.  Mommy was completely misty, snapping pics the entire time.  I had fun playing with a new faux polaroid toy found here.  I have seen this talked about on other blogs, but saw it again today via myturtleneck.  This lil biscuit (and her brother) warm my heart, add color and texture to my world beyond what I could have ever imagined, yep, it’s better than that.

Today I was visiting some of the first websites and blogs that I had bookmarked.  These sites were either covering interior design topics, blogging tutorials, or all things in and around babies that I happened upon.

When Hijiri and I were discussing the basic items I wanted included in the blog, I knew for certain I wanted a section to feature visuals that were, well, rooted in style.  I will be continuing, through trial and error, to refine what is reflected under that category. I’d love to hear your comments, suggestions and feedback on each idea I try on and share.

 VT Wonen covers a variety of products, artists and design elements. I had hoped to give you a detailed description of what VT Wonen represents.  Their site is written in dutch, so I’m slightly stumped on the written.  What I do know is that Wonen means live and their site is living inspiration for me. VT Wonen ran a photo feature throughout 2007 and 2008.  In essence, this feature posted a photo for each week, based on a color selected for that week.  Colors coincided with seasons or other aspects of the year that drive our color desires.  To see the specifics (in dutch) and more information, click here. 

I selected just a few from the 2008 weekly photos to share with you.  I added a few words on what contributed to my love for each photo.

I want to ensure credit is properly given for all pictures included, and since I cannot make out the text, I will list the week from which each photo was selected.  This is the 2008 series. I tried to link directly to the photo itself, but that did not work through their site.  Click here to view the entire year’s thumbnails. 

Upper left photo, Week 22;  Upper right photo, Week 28, Lower left photo, Week 49, and Lower right photo, Week 31.

I look forward to posting some of my own photos for these in style posts and my hope is that you will join me in sharing visuals around those topics.  We have done a significant amount of work remodeling the design studio (which was previously a gun shop—a dirty, boy, gun shop).  I will post a few before photos to give you an idea of where we started.

I need to invest in a new digital camera to share with you the fruits of our labor. I had a ton of support on a variety of fronts in getting the project to where it is today.  I do need some signage in the front, and we should be pretty much ready to officially open the doors (the product side of the studio that is—I have been doing interior design work in the studio throughout the remodel.)  

Thank you for stopping by.  Your comments, emails and feedback are appreciated.