flickr obsession

Along with my new blogging habit, I've become a little obsessed with flickr. I've been intrigued with flickr for awhile - mainly due to the 365 self-portrait project that I keep running across in people's blogs. Yes, the project is taking one picture of yourself every day for an entire year. The current 365 flickr group has 7,465 participants! Ruby Soho was my first 365 addiction and then I found a long-lost high school friend - Jen - who is doing the 365 project, which of course has led me to more amazing 365 participants with a lot of inspiring work. As most of you know, I despise pictures of myself. I'm much happier behind the lens of the camera taking pics of everyone else. Part of it is just the run of the mill insecurity and self-image issues, but the other part is the fact (often pointed out by Nan) that most pictures of me don't end up looking anything like me. So as I've been digging through all my old digital photos to see which pics I want to post to my flickr account, I've been on the lookout for pics of myself that I don't hate :) So here's one that cracks me up:
I don't think I'm ready to commit to the 365 project yet (the thought of taking a picture of myself EVERY DAY is way too scary right now) but I think I might try to start taking some self-portraits - and see what what appears...

I also found a 52 weeks group - one self-portrait every week for a year. Sounds a little more manageable...

Superhero Photo Challenge #1

One of my fave bloggers - Andrea from Superhero Journal is linking with a new cool, women's photography blog called Shutter Sisters. Andrea started her "Superhero Photo Challenge" assignments for this year and I'm going to try to keep up with them.

The first assignment was "find a face in an unlikely place." Here's my shot from my very short (cold!) walk to the brewpub to meet Tracy and Britt for a sunday afternoon happy hour :)

bake-o-rama

It's another baking Saturday. I started out making swedish rye bread and then - because it was taking so dang long - I decided to make ginger molasses cookies while the dough was rising. I found the recipie online and they turned out amazing....so I'm including it below. I'm on a big ginger kick lately.


Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

preheat oven to 375

2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon ginger (dried - or use 2 tbl fresh ginger)
3/4 cup butter (soft)
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
another cup of sugar for rolling...

Mix together flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl (sift if possible)
Beat ginger, butter and one cup sugar until light and fluffy, add in molasses and egg.

Add in flour mix and beat together

Chill 1 hour

Make into small balls and then roll in sugar.

Bake on greased cookie sheets (or use parchment paper) for 10-12 minutes (or until edges are brown).

farmers' markets

It's a lovely sunny day in Portland - and from my office window, I can pretend it's still summer. I've been digging through some photos from last year and found these shots from the Portland Farmers' Market. We have an amazing selection of farmers markets throughout the city - including a huge one on Saturday mornings on the PSU campus. I took these shots when Melissa and Maggie were visiting last year. The market comes back on April 5th - can't wait!

brrrrrrrrrrrr

One of the many many things I love about living in Portland are the temperate seasons. Yes, winter may be gloomy, grey and rainy but its usually never freezing....usually... So we are in the midst of a freakishly cold snap. The highs have been in the 30s with a wind chill of around 15, NOT fun for wimpy ex-midwesterners.

Another thing I love about Portland and the surrounding area is that if you want to see snow, it's right there waiting for you up on the mountain. You can cruise up there, play in the snow and then come back to happy, snow-free Portland!

Last weekend I took Lulu subaru on her maiden snow voyage and trekked up to Elaine's (one of my bosses) house near Mt. Hood for a 'snow day' with a bunch of fun folks from work. She has an amazing 'cabin' about 5 miles from both the big ski resorts, in this gorgeous area of about 20 houses surrounded by federal forestlands. I went snowshoeing for two hours - basically just following trails around her property out in to a meadow. It was fairly warm the first day - around 30 - and after snowshoeing we had a fabulous dinner, hung out in the hot tub - all around wonderful day.

The next morning was crispy cold with bright blue skies - only 10 degrees but I had to get out and take some photos.

It's truly an idyllic spot - you can see Mt. Hood from several spots near their house. I still get ridiculously excited about seeing mountains - it just never gets old after spending all my formative years in the flat-lands.

sewing club!

Friday was sewing club at my house. We (Kim, Maralea, Tracy and Sarah) are all novice sewers and thought it would be good to get together every couple weeks to help each other out with projects. Depending on the mood, sometimes more chatting, eating and wine drinking occurs than sewing, but that works me for me!
I'm pretty proud of the two projects I did last night. I made some draft snakes out of an old pair of black velvet pants - for the windows in my rather chilly living room. Of course, they don't exactly fit the window sashes, but I'm convinced they are helping. I tried to take some pics but they just end up looking like big black blobs.



Also, I busted out one of the 'kits' my sewing guru Nan made for me - a snazzy pillowcase with groovy polka dot and cupcake material. thanks nan! the tote is next on my list...


Cora and Jason (and Bella - who has the cutest ears ever!) made it in to town from WaWa (or technically Milton-Freewater) around 9 - staying overnight at chez heathre on their way to the coast. It was great to see them - even thought it was very brief. We had an amazing breakfast at Screen Door (must take dad there when he's in town at the end of the month...)

Headed up to Mt. Hood tomorrow for a 'snow day' with some work folks. I rented snowshoes and the drive up will be a great test for my new car (aka Lulu Subaru - yes, I have a horrible habit of naming all my large purchased objects...although I still need a good name for the new camera :)

Back to baking chocolate chip cookies (bruce's famous recipie, of course!)

I hope you all are having a lovely weekend...

preparing for cora and jason's visit....

I'm waaayyy late for the holiday, but better late than never, right??
To learn more about Mandarin Day (December 7th), check out cora's blog

reggie-isms

I just got back from boxing class and I'm dying but feel great. It's only my second class back this term, so it's still a bit of a shock to the system.
Luckily, Reggie never changes. Reggie, the semi-pro boxer in his late 20s, fancies himself the ladies man, a great teacher who knows to push just hard enough. He's always full of his little Reggie-isms, which he cheerfully shouts at us while we try to hold that push-up for 10 more seconds...

treat yourself, don't cheat yourself
get your money, get your money!
pain is only temporary
beautiful work, my soldiettes

I'm too brain dead to think of some of his other witticisms. I've been taking class from him on and off for about four years. It's a "Boxing Fitness for Women" class held at a community center in my new neighborhood. Maralea got me hooked after dragging me to class...I never thought I would love it. I still feel ambivalent about the sport of boxing but at least I can now appreciate the skill involved. And I have to thank Reggie's boxing class for helping me survive my last days at freightliner - great way to work out lots of crankiness and frustration by hitting the heavy bag!

The community center is actually a very historic place for boxing in Portland. The Knott Street boxing club produced a ton of boxers in the 60's and was inducted to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2005. Alot of the old guys still hang around and train the younger boxers (who clear out at 7 when the 'ladies classes' start. It's very old school...maralea and I went one day and took pics when we were taking a b/w photo class. I need to dig those up...

Here's a link to an article about the Knott Street Boxing Club.

Oddly enough, it was written by Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love (one of my all-time fave books) is a huge boxing fan and writes extensively on boxing. She hasn't written a novel since Geek Love (1989) but according to wikipedia she's publishing one in Sept. 08!

She has an essay in the book Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms (looks like an interesting book with tons of great b/w pics - i just put it on hold at the library)

so yeah, who would have thought that a vegetarian, tree hugging pacifist would end up LOVING her boxing class? not that i actually have any interest in actually hitting people instead of the bag, but still....it's pretty damn fun beating the crap out of that bag...

sunday bliss

Some things that make for a happy sunday:

1) new mattress delivered cheerfully and on time
2) fabulous craigslist - took about 10 minutes to find someone to take my queen futon mattress away
3) yoga class with char
4) sunshine!
5) a little nap
6) lovely walk to the library with camera, taking pics of anything and everything



not so blissful...my ipod (aka marco pod-o) has decided it doesn't want to sync with itunes on my computer anymore, so i can't listen all the fun new music i loaded up yesterday on my computer....

hello!

I'm finally done procrastinating and getting the ole blog officiallly started. I'm still not sure about the title - I think it will be a work in progress (and thanks to the ladies for their blog title input) But for now 'more adventurous' fits for a couple reasons. First of all, I love the Riley Kilo song and one line has been going through my head for weeks.

I read with every broken heart we should become
More adventurous

And one of my many new years 'hopes' (trying to avoid the whole resolution/goal thing) is to continue to become more adventurous about life in general. I feel like I'm falling in to a bit of a rut and letting inertia taking over....

So here's to 2008 - more adventure, more photography, more sewing, more yoga, more ???

And more bread baking! I made potato bread today, pretty darn proud.