A Little Something Special

This is the chandelier that hangs from the ceiling in the middle of my dinning room.

I think its darling.

But what is really special about this chandelier is every morning when I open the blinds the sun shines through the window and pierces each little crystal. This causes tiny rainbows to flood our entire down stairs!

The first morning this happened you would have thought we all discovered a treasure chest of rare gems!

This morning I sat at the kitchen bar eating breakfast and drinking my coffee. All the while enjoying the fabulous prisms that slid across the walls of the house. As the sun travels up in the sky the colors dance around into different places of the walls. I had a huge oval rainbow under my chair, and Steve had one right in the middle of his shirt, makes it hard to walk away.

As we all sat there enjoying the fleeting phenomenon, my Emma said, "This is really something special that happens at our house." And I agree.

My sweetheart, Steve sent me this cell phone picture the day he discovered the "happening" Of course he knows what I love!

Alexandra Elizabeth

Alexandra is my first born daughter.

She is four months away from turning 18 and venturing out into the real world. Next month she will graduate from high school and enter the world of higher learning, making money and paying her own bills, sort of.

She has been a blessing to me since the day I found out I was pregnant with her. Together we have been through good times, bad times, hard times and easy times. We have sung, danced, cried, and most of all laughed together. She turned from Allie into Alix (which I'm told is how the last Queen of Russia spelled her name) and became a clever hilarious adult at some point when I must have been looking at something else.

Over the last 17 years I've watched my little "Hootsie-Tootsie" grow from a little powerhouse in dress-up clothes with unlimited energy into a strong and determined young woman. I'm not going to lie and say it was always easy and these teen years have almost killed me, but we're making it.

Alix

Alix is an artist, writer, dancer, and humorist.

When Al was 15 she enrolled in OCC's photography program. She was the youngest student in the program and got an A in the class. This was all film and darkroom work. Since then she was taken graphic art in photoshop, and digital photography.

Below are a few images she took of her sister Amanda and Chelsea, her best friend since 5th grade. Her assignment was to use filters and photo editing tools. I thought they were pretty cool images and wanted to share them. I really like that she shoots and edits differently than I do. I like that we have always been so much alike and so very different all at the same time.

I'm super excited to see what happens in Alix's life over the next 17 years!

I love you Baby girl!

"Kelley, Please report to the Disneyland information office."

Disneyland!

When I was a little girl I was quite the daydreamer. That probably wont come as a surprise those of you who know me. I spent so much time dreaming and looking for tiny treasures among the everyday things that I many times, never heard anyone who was talking to me. My Mom would call me several times before she could break the spell of my imagination, and always said I was somewhere lost in Fantasyland. We had a family joke about it. When I was busy daydreaming my big sister would say, "Kelley, please report to the Disneyland information office!"

It was no less than ironic that just after graduation from high school I was hired at Disneyland. Even funnier, I was hired to work at a restaurant in Fantasyland! It was the sweetest job ever. Disneyland treated their employees great and I had a gazillion friends. As an employee, I only fell deeper in love with the Magic Kingdom. I've been in love with the park for over 40 years and as a mother we visit Disneyland no less than once a year.

So, in attempt to show you Disneyland from my point of view, here are the pages from my hand made book titled "Childhood." I only made 5 of these books in attempt to create a portrait of a place that holds a very special spot in my heart.

When I sent this book to my Mom, she said the most wonderful thing about it was that she was finally able to see what it was I was looking at all those years...

Here are a few pics or what four of the books look like.

Here is what's inside:

Childhood

Childhood, sweet and sunny childhood,

With its careless, thoughtless air,

Like the verdant, tangled wildwood,

Wants the training hand of care.

See it springing all around us

Glad to know, and quick to learn;

Asking questions that confound us;

Teaching lessons in its turn.

Who loves not its joyous revel,

Leaping lightly on the lawn,

Up the knoll, along the level,

Free and graceful as a fawn?

Let it revel; it is nature

Giving to the little dears

Strength of limb, and healthful features,

For the toil of coming years.

He who checks a child with terror,

Stops its play, and stills its song,

Not alone commits an error,

But a great and moral wrong.

Give it play, and never fear it -

Active life is no defect;

Never, never break its spirit -

Curb it only to direct.

Would you dam the flowing river,

Thinking it would cease to flow?

Onward it must go forever -

Better teach it where to go.

Childhood is a fountain welling,

Trace its channel in the sand,

And its currents, spreading, swelling,

Will revive the withered land.

Childhood is the vernal season;

Trim and train the tender shoot;

Love is to the coming reason,

As the blossom to the fruit.

Tender twigs are bent and folded -

Art to nature beauty lends;

Childhood easily is moulded;

Manhood breaks, but seldom bends.

- David Bates

KAIZEN

I was given this quote by two of my wonderful teachers, Rick Steadry and Walter Urie. I have to remind myself of this all the time.

In every other art medium the artist makes something out of nothing. The painter with his blank canvas and the sculptor with her mound of clay, each creating an image from their own vision. Photography is the only medium in which we search everything to find the one thing we want to show our viewer. The face of a child from the crowd of a wedding party, or the tear of a mother in the middle of calamity. As photographers we take from the world to show to the world what we see. It's our job to show you something you didn't see before. Seriously, just think about that.

A little inspiration for all of us!

Kaizen

It involves looking at everything one wants to describe

long enough, and attentively enough, to find in it some

aspect that no one else has yet seen or expressed.

Everything contains some element of the unexplored

because we are accustomed to using our eyes only with

the memory of what other people before us have thought

about the object we are looking at. The least thing has a bit

of the unknown in it. Let us find this. In order to describe

a fire burning or a tree in a field, let us stand in front of

that fire and that tree until they no longer look to us like

any other fire or any other tree