a good reminder.
“No great thing is created suddenly.”
— Epictetus, via Quotes on Design
learning, just because.
I have a fairly long list of skills I’d like to learn ‘one day’, and this weekend I finally made progress on one of them by taking a (free!) knitting class at the library.
My project at the end of class. Wobbly, but better than I would have done figuring it out on my own!
The sad part is that I really can’t remember how long it’s been (if ever) that I learned something in a group setting just for fun. Here, my only motivation is to learn something — not to earn a grade or be the best at it — but because I want to learn. Plus, after years of following online tutorials and trying to figure things out by myself, the experience of learning alongside others is just really fun.
handmade, craft, Greenville, life,If you’re thinking about making resolutions for the new year, I’d like to suggest this approach instead. Not only does it seem more effective, it sounds like a fun way to try new things and actually reach personal goals. Just imagine what could be accomplished in 30 dedicated days!
Ideas for my 2012 goals include: 30 days of
· making the bed
· not eating dinner in front of the tv
· sketching something every day — like I had to for drawing class
· reading (besides facebook and twitter)
· going to the gym
I first saw this video several months ago and loved the idea, but looking toward a new year seems like a great time to give it a try!
good memories.
Tying these shoes on this morning made me think of my Grandma Jumara. She had feet even smaller than mine and they often wore shoes like this.
It seemed like a good day to wear the pearl she gave me.
family, life,more Brooklyn Beta.
The sign outside the front door was handpainted. Not the first clue it was going to be awesome.
While the conference days were really laid back and the schedule was flexible, the event was extremely well-planned and executed. You could tell the organizers worked hard to make everything special and comfortable for us. Well, as comfortable as you can feel in a room full of people you don’t know. I did my best to be social, but it was also nice to retreat back to the Greenville crew now and again.
Greenville has a really talented web community (many of whom are part of CoWork, where Andrew works). In spite of the small size of the conference (there were about 250 attendees), there were a good number of Greenville designers and developers there. Serious kudos to these (and others) who are putting Greenville on the map when it comes to quality web.
Speaking of quality, check out these pillows in the hang out area.
Our friends Mark and Paul gave a demo of their project Coursebook.
Andrew wearing his name badge. Us being somewhat anti-social.
A couple things I really really loved about this conference:
· Each attendee was given a name badge that had a custom bio written by the organizers. I have no idea how long it took Chris and Cameron to research and write these, but you can’t make things much more personalized than that!
· The speakers weren’t announced beforehand, which might have been a drawback for any other conference. But considering the rave reviews from last year and the quality of everything else, I didn’t think twice about it. It was actually really refreshing to sit down, not knowing what was coming next. I hope to share more about the content of the presentations and discussions, but for now I’m still processing everything.
· This conference was all about bringing the social media connections into the real world. Which means there wasn’t free internet. From the event email:
“Like last year, we will not be providing Internet access at the conference. We see this as a feature, not a bug. You’re of course welcome to use your fancy phones and other devices that can talk to the Internet without our help.”
People still used their phones and computers to access the internet, but in a crowd of heavy Twitter users, I thought it was relatively rare. Real conversations were taking place and most people were engaged during the presentations, not surfing the internet or busy tweeting profound tidbits.
· Both lunch and dinner were provided for us on all three days of the conference. What I loved most about this is that we were introduced to even more great local Brooklyn food without even leaving the building. Personally, my favorites were the sweets. Pies from One Girl Cookie and unbelievable cookies from FattyCakes.
After this, the bar for conferences has definitely been set high. I took notes, and left inspired to make my corner of the world a better place.
Greenville, design, life,a walk in the park.
It’s been way too long since Andrew and I had our photo taken, so last weekend we headed to some of our favorite Downtown spots with our new friend Katie Stewart. Katie is a writer and photographer who moved to Greenville not too long ago, and we had lots of fun hanging out in Greenville’s downtown parks together.
I picked out two of my favorite photos to share here, but you can see more at Katie’s photo blog.
If you need photos taken, I definitely recommend Katie! Her rates are very reasonable and we felt comfortable enough to be ourselves with her, even in front of a camera.
My favorite part? Seeing how well she captured how much fun Andrew and I have together.
Greenville, life,special delivery.
Several months ago, I bought a Living Social deal for Milk & Honey Organics. Last week, I called to place my order, scheduled the delivery, then forgot all about it. When I got home from work on Thursday there was a cooler and a bunch of bananas waiting for me. What a great surprise! I was excited about the idea of having fresh food delivered to my door, but look at how much wonderful produce was packed in that cooler!
Taking these pictures reminded me of the last time I had this many veggies on my kitchen table.
We’ve eaten most of the bananas, but the delivery also included: tomatoes, fresh greens, broccoli, cauliflower, parsley, sweet potatoes, chard, apples, pears, and peas.
As always, by this time of the year, my garden has long been scorched by the South Carolina summer, so all this fresh produce is even more exciting! Now, to figure out how to prepare and eat chard.
food, life, products, gardening,gametime.
We’re making a concerted effort to step back (even a half-step is good) from technology and the role it currently plays in our lives. Andrew and I had a great conversation about this on Tuesday, and it resulted in us turning the TV off and having not one, but two game nights at our house this week.
We’ve had game nights before, but there are only so many two-person board and card games that are actually fun. And while we love game nights with friends, they require planning ahead, and there’s something nice about impromptu games. Now that Melanie is back for school and can join us, game night just got way better.
If you haven’t played any board games with your family or friends lately, make time for it this week. It’s been refreshing to spend quality time together — in spite of all our competitive natures and Andrew’s ruthless Monopolizing.
Tonight, the trend continues.
