Crazy Beautiful on Mt. Hood

Tim and I took a hike up on Mt Hood this last week. It was most beautiful, truely incredible: fields of rock and small glaciers, meadows of blooming high altitude flowers.

This is Timberline Lodge pictured above (the view from above the lodge) which previously I had only visited in the wintertime to go snowboarding. Timberline is an awesome snow park location and the lodge is a masterpiece of old massive timberframes, big fireplaces and panoramic views out the many windows. It was built back in the 1930s as a WPA project during the Great Depression, fell into disrepair as a government owned building, and then was bought and restored by the Kohnstamm family. Today it is a beautiful tourist attraction and my delight as a local Portlander. Its only about a 45minute drive from home and an absolute pleasure all year round! Although previously I had only seen Timberline under over a dozen feet of snow!

sidenote: Timberline Lodge was used in the movie The Shining for the outside view of the hotel in the opening scene

Alright, enough about the lodge and the fact that its summertime so most of the snow is melted.

There are many trails that lead up and around the area- we hiked a section of the Pacific Coast Trail that passed thru to the Zig Zag Valley. Only about 4miles round trip and some of the most awesome views I've ever seen from Mt. Hood. It was really amazingly beautiful. I took many many pictures, posted some of the on flickr.

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There are more pictures on my Flickr site... the beautiful Red Breasted Hummingbird was a special request - I love how it turned out. Evidently it was quite quite the eye-catcher at the studio this week!

Chakra Circles in my Etsy shop!!

Okay, the small size is there... I still have to take pictures of the large size. :)

And I have a great new description of the Chakras (thank you Aimee! You rock!) that will now be included with the purchase of this design of mobile! Yeah for that! Heres a condensed version to give you a taste of goodness:

The Chakras - Short Version

Chakras are the energy centers of the body. Imagine them as whirling wheels of light and color -- each charka relates to different emotions and systems in the body. They have no physical structure and can shift around the body, but are most often visualized running down the midline of the body.

There are seven primary chakras:

• The root chakra -- muladhara -- is represented by the color red. This chakra is located at the base of the spine or the groin. It governs the sense of the body and our connections with the family we were born to and/or raised in.
• The sacral chakra -- swadhisthana -- is represented by the color orange. This is the sexual and creative center.
• The navel chakra -- manipura -- is represented by the color yellow. This chakra governs digestion, both of food and of life experiences.
• The heart chakra -- anahata -- is represented by the color green. This is where the physical and spiritual halves of the self meet. It is also where strong emotions (like love and hate) reside.
• The throat chakra -- vishuddha -- is represented by the color blue. This is the chakra of communication, both spoken and unspoken.
• The third eye or brow chakra -- aina or anja -- is represented by the color indigo. Located on the forehead, this chakra governs vision, insight, and intuition.
• The crown chakra -- sahasrara -- is represented by the color white. It is located at the top of the head. This energy center connects us to a higher power.

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Amazing Pictures

I went out to pick peaches on Sauvie's Island on Thursday with my friend Poe. The rain stopped, the sun came out, the fruit were plentiful (and gorgeous!) and

little bitty froggies were jumping around everywhere!

Affraid of stepping on them, I walked carefully and took lots of pictures. This little guy was honestly just hanging out in a beautiful fusia pink dalia.

The local variety of Dalias are in full bloom. Everything from pink pom-poms to black spikey florals. Both the frogs and the bumble-bees were hanging out in the dalias. They have good taste.

The peaches are ever so yummy and the blackberries were all-out-insane.

Last week we had a few relentless days of extreme heat (sorta late summer heat wave for Portland) and this week it was cold and raining, so the fruit seemed to be drinking up all the water and happy as could be. I was very impressed. Now I have to make pie.

So far we've made some more peach salsa. Oh my its good!

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Portland Independent Artisans Cooperative

I am so proud to be part of the Portland Independent Artisans Cooperative. So exciting. I do believe this is the very first Etsy street team to go legal. We are a full on co-operative, able to open a bank account and whatnot that is so necessary in this world of group advertisement campaigns and the funds that are necessary to integrative marketing tools.

Anyhow - check out the PDXIndie site http://www.pdxindie.com/
find out more information about what is going on locally, who is working in the crafty scene here in Portland Or., whats going on with the local street team. etc...

Its a great site - I tip my hat to the ladies behind this powerful site. I like it. I like it a lot. I gladly paid my due and look forward to the sheer potential of this team.

thanx ladies for all the hard work!

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Woops!

My website is back up! And my email works again :)

Apologies to anyone who tried to email unsuccessfully... my bad entirely.

I woke up this morning and realized I was down. Completely, no email, no website (www.LeahGlass.com) sheesh. Dotster has been emailing me for months telling me my domain name was going to expire, I knew it was coming, but I am in transition to goDaddy, and between sheer procrastination and ineptitude, topped with a strong resistance to picking up the phone (even if it means solving my problems) my website expired, which shut down my email as well. Oh how I roll my eyes at myself. Here I am still paying for hosting, and I already paid for a website domain name transfer, but yet my sh*t is down and I felt so stupid. One phone call this morning got it all worked out, no problem. Good customer support over there at GoDaddy. I must say - top notch.


A little back info on the story: I manage and create my website myself. Oh I don't necessarily do a goood job, but the fact remains, up to date I have always done it myself. And I am now in a period of transition... got a little awkward there for a couple of days evidently. I am sweet-talking my brother to possibly take over the website design work - won't that be sweet! But for now - I am just happy to be getting emails again and having a website that works.

heres a picture of me and my big brother back in 1983 in Cleveland Ohio.

It makes me laugh that back in the day, in the early 90's I was a little kid computer dork. I went to a computer camp in the summer. Me and my friend Cristina were the only girls in the whole camp. One year we were counselors. My brother and father would make computers in the basement and I was logged online thru the local college in Cleveland back when internet connections were established by putting the phone on rubber cups. I really used to consider myself pretty knowledgeable with computers, not anything amazing, but somewhat impressive background. Well its been decades now and I move like a turtle in a world where the progression of computer and internet technology improvement has evolved like a rabbit. So now I am soooo ignorant and incompetent with computers and web design. But I make do. I know how to use Dreamweaver to some extent. I can read the html to some extent... but for years I have been using very simple software from Yahoo that has enabled me to create my own website extremely simply. I definitely recommend Yahoo for anyone that doesn't know how to make their own website, but wants to do it themselves. Its so easy, its great for kids too. Gives you lots of statistics and bar graphs and whatnot. I like that. I am switching to GoDaddy though, I am stepping up to the challenge, with my big brother's help :)

just a little hic-cup. woops. my bad. hopefully no one noticed :)