Cameras

New camera arrived yesterday. I am a bit overwhelmed at all the buttons and slowly learning how to use it. When I woke up to the rain I thought the magnolia flowers outside looked like teacups, all standing pretty and catching rain. All I want to do is take pictures and play with my new camera... there is not enough time in the day! That is frustrating. But it is so wonderful, I coo at its capable lens and sheer potential.
Everywhere I look there is something fun to snap a picture of - Tony made an origami snail out of a dollar bill.
I thought this dyeing tulip looked like abstract art... I like the colors and the way the petals folded on themselves as they dried up and shriveled.

And kitty is always fun to take pictures of... although yesterday he wanted to be pet rather than have his picture taken, he is giving some love to the legs of a folding chair here in this picture.

Thai Massage in Portland Oregon

This week I exchanged massage with a LMT here in Portland who specializes in traditional Thai massage. It was heaven! This is a short video of her working, check it out:

I found this video on her website and I had to share. Its hard to describe Thai massage. Its very gentle and soothing, you remain fully clothed and the massage therapist works over your entire body, from head to toe. Once the therapist has relaxed your muscles, they are then stretched out as if yoga was being done to your body. I have never experienced a massage that felt so good!

In Thailand this massage is part of the traditional multi-faceted approach to health care. Treating ailments is seen as a combination of herbal treatments, psychological/spiritual care and physical massage work. This tri-modal system is ancient and still practiced. At this point there is plenty of western medicine available in Thailand, but the Traditional Medicine is utilized as well.

When I went to Thailand back in 2000 I had the privaledge of going out to a temple in the countryside outside of Chiang Mai. I was studying Thai massage at the time and the Hospital where I was taking the class took a group of students out to work on local Thai farmers who had the day off because it was a national holiday (if I recall correctly it was the King's birthday). Out at this temple a lot of local people showed up to seek medical help. The Old Traditional Hospital had arranged to be there for the day with herbs and food and all the doctors. It was cute to see how the local people sought their health care. Most seemed to go up to the panel of doctors in groups. Walking up together they would chatter about their various ailments... even thru the language barrier (I do not speak any Thai other than friendly exchanges of Hello and how are you, etc) you could tell the people were trying to describe their problems together with their siblings or cousins around them, all chiming in their 2cents about what the major complaints were. It was funny to see this casual group diagnosis kind of thing. It was very honest. And then the doctors would write down their prescriptions on little colored slips of paper with directions to seek out the herbalists or the massage therapists or the monks (for spiritual help)... if they needed some massage work they would apprehensively hand one of us white kids their colored little slip of paper and we'd do some traditional Thai massage to their hard working bodies. It was pretty incredible. One old lady became so fond of me after her massage that she took me by the hand and found her sister and together they dragged me over to the food and made sure I had some lunch with them. It was cute. Again, I couldn't really speak to them... but I could say Hi and I had been taught the word for "pain" in case I might hurt someone :)

Anyhow, I digress with side-stories. I am full of them about Thai massage!

If you ever want to treat your body right, get your blood flowing and have the best massage of your life, contact Stephanie Glass and get a Traditional Thai Massage. And don't be affraid to request 2+hours, they are long massages, the longer the better! The massage I received on Monday lasted 3 hours and I was in heaven.

video clip - bill dan balancing rocks - sausalito . . .

video clip - bill dan balancing rocks - sausalito . . .
Originally uploaded by billbalance - busy

I found this on the Flickr Blog today

I love balancing rocks, but I'm not this good! :)

New Portland Saturday Market Site

The construction in Waterfront Park seems to be moving right along. We might get to start moving in next weekend. I took this picture today and you can see it looks almost ready. They seem to be laying floor tile (that is what is stacked up in crates in the back of the picture). I am excited.

And the Winner Is...

This wire frame was quite popular - I cannot wait to see what Lea makes out of it! My favorite part of this giveaway was hearing what other artists would hang from it. I loved that!

Thanks for entering my give-aways!

I'll announce the next give-away ASAP. Sorry it took me so long to get around to selecting the winner with this one.

Cute Overload

This is Opal, my friend Maggie's foster puppy, taking a nap under my magnolia tree. Her cuteness must be shared.

I just want to give a little shout out to my ladies of the IHLAC for coming over and hanging out with me under the flowering tree. It was such a lovely day. Cute babies and beautiful skies, I am so thankful to have had such a nice afternoon with such lovely ladies. The strawberry Italian wedding cake was fabulous too. I think I might go eat one of the last pieces now!!

More Tulip Pictures

I went and took a ka-zillion more pictures of tulips at the Wooden Tree Tulip Farm.

The farm was a-buzz with people and their fancy cameras and cute babies. I couldn't help myself from taking a few shots of all the other people taking pictures. The site of these millions of tulips all bloomed at once is just really fantastic. Rippling waves of bright colors. Nearly everything was full bloom (the black tulips seemed to be the last to burst, they still hadn't) and there were plenty of orange tulips for me to photo!Afterwards we drove out thru Silverton to Silver Springs Falls... such beautiful countryside, happy cows and many many farm fields. I think Silverton is one of the cutest little towns in Oregon, its just so darn quaint. Oh and the Falls are so incredible. We went for a short hike and I couldn't stop taking pictures of flowers, they were popping up everywhere! Its spring! My camera was not co-operating at the falls though, it simply did not want to focus properly on all the little bitty spring flowers. Frustrating. But I took some 200 pictures at the tulip farm, so it was all good. :)

I took a lot of pictures of the various orange tulips. yummy orange.There were a few frustration-with-the-camera moments... I am getting anxious to use my new camera (new TBA photography equipment... oooooh I can't wait to get a powerful camera in my hands!!! by the end of the week I might not be dreaming anymore!)
This yellow and purple shot was my favorite from the day. I like how silky the purple tulip looks against the fuzzy background of yellow. That farm (the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm) is simply amazing. Rolling fields of color. Made me feel like I was in Holland. Its the stuff dreams are made of!

If you are interested in seeing more pictures I took, check them out on flickr(click here)

Two of my favorite things...

My Fat Cat that is oh so hairy.

I spent 1/2hour brushing him out yesturday and the day before I took a pair of scissors to his dreads.

And my magnolia tree - it blooms right outside my bedroom window. Spring is my favorite time of year, and this magnolia tree always welcomes the season so brilliantly... just as my daffodils start to fade in the front yard, the magnolia springs to life with pink and white.

Sunny Day at the Market

Yeah for sunny days! This weekend was the most beautiful weather in PDX. I felt lucky to be outside all day soaking up the sun and selling my artwork.

In the picture above you see the inflatable cow behind (to the right) of the one-arm-guitarist? I don't know what the deal with the inflatable cow was... I didn't get close enough to find out, he was standing out in the sun all day... I think panhandling for change, but for all I know it was some sort of activist or sumthin. Who knows.

In the picture below you see an activist that brought down her bike for a very unique demonstration:

I thought this "Bike for Affordable Housing" was really clever, and she posed for me very kindly so I could share her message here online.

Hope you had a great weekend enjoying this nice weather! I even got the chance to wash my car tonight after I got home, before the sun started setting. I love washing the car in good weather... watering my spring plants... and petting my cat.

Cute Little Monsters

I made these little guys today. Had a beautiful morning hanging out with my crafty lady friends, which I LOVE, and we played around with babies (Orson and Ayla were such a pleasure to see today - I especially enjoyed getting to dress little Orson - oh and Ayla's outfit was to-die-for) and we made clay monsters. I haven't played with this bake-able clay since I was a little kid. Oh the memories. I used to rock out with this stuff.

Tulip Festival

Today I wanted to take pictures of spring flowers. I love daffodils, they are one of my favorite flowers, and this year they were a little late to bloom here around Portland because of the cold winter. I found a daffodil farm not to far from home and called them up a few weeks ago, the website indicated visitors were welcome to come and pick flowers (or take pictures) but when I talked to them on the phone I was told that to wait till early April.
This morning I wrote down directions to the farm and Tim accompanied me out into the Oregon countryside to check out the flowers. It was a beautiful day and an incredible drive. I couldn't ask for better weather! And it was a great excuse to go out and soak up some sun.We were distracted by a sign on the road out in Hubbard that said "Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm"... the daffodil farm had turned out to be sorta quiet and didn't seem open to the public. So we turned around and went to down the road to the tulip farm. Suddenly we came upon a huge parking lot with a small fee to enter and a whole festival of tulips going on. Complete with a crafts show, sausages and curly fries, rides for kids and a couple of gift shops. And flowers - fields and fields of flowers. The tulips seemed to have begun to greet spring with all the sun that we got over the weekend. Some were open, although most of the fields were about to pop, looking green and ready. It would be neat to see this place in about a week, the rainbow of colors would be amazing I am sure! They are even having a photography contest with multiple categories to enter (macro shot, tractors and something else) so I just had a ball taking lots and lots of pictures. It was beautiful.
In the end I did get to see many daffodils as well - the tulip farm had quite a few, some on purpose and some seemed purely voluntary rebels, popping up in the meticulous rows of tulips, standing taller than the rest, saying "Hi Sun!"
In fact, in the fields that we drove past, many were wheat fields that looked like perfect grass fields, there were the occasional volunteer daffodils standing proud like little yellow flags. So cute.

I posted more pictures on my flickr account... I just had to share here on my blog as well. The farm (Wooden Shoe) is in Hubbard, Oregon. Not too far outta town and only $5/per car to enter the festival($10 on weekends). It was wonderful.

Orange Peeps

Did you know they make orange peeps now :) I bought some at the store the other day... mostly just cuz they were orange (I don't remember them in orange previously)

Check out this fun photo gallery of how peeps are made