a surprise gum ball

I was having one of those blah days yesterday. I was just not feeling myself and things really weren't working out right. But, then something great happened, like when you were a kid and you ate one of those ice cream cone-shaped cups from the ice cream man with the bubblegum flavored ice cream and just when you thought you were finished, a surprise bonus gum ball is waiting for you at the bottom of the cone!

So anyway, later in the day I tried some retail therapy and out to dinner at CPK (one of my favs) with my Momma (which I must admit, helped for the time being). My Mom got a stylish, winter down coat, gloves, a scarf, a pair of shoes and a vest! She never spends money on herself and especially with everything going on with my Dad, I think she enjoyed a bit of retail therapy herself! Then I got home and I was back in my funk even while watching my favorite show "Parenthood". I was looking thumbing thru emails, Facebook news feeds and Twitter posts on my iPhone and I found out that there was a "whole" blog post about my illustrations on FLOR's Musings blog. A-FREAKING-MAZING! Talk about a surprise gum ball! Not just a post of one of my images, a whole blog post about my work! Woo-hoooo! I'm taking this a sign from the big guy upstairs -- keep going... you're doing a great job and people are beginning to notice your hard work so keep it up! Some days like yesterday, I kinda needed some reassurance that I've been doing the right thing and going in the right direction. I think especially when you're doing something creative where you put your heart + soul into what you're doing it's nice to have a "sign" once in awhile.

Now you may be wondering what is Flor? Okay, only the most brilliant idea in modern carpet squares! There's every color, texture and pattern that you can imagine and styles that would fit any home's decorating style and palette. I love them so much I have two rugs in our home (and I'm always trying to find another place to put them too). The most current one is in our kitchen that we have been working hard on remodeling into a more swanky, modern atmosphere that is more our style. The other is in our basement in my art studio. This one, at one time was also in our kitchen for oh, I'd say maybe 6 years. I loved it and still do and it's still in amazingly, great shape for being walked on by two humans and two dogs every day in the heart of our kitchen so it got plenty of high traffic. I had no idea what I was going to do with it when I had the new plans for the kitchen, but didn't want to just pack it up and then it dawned on me.... heeeey, this will work out great in the studio too! The colors and everything!

Their blog is all about design findings. Four gals contribute to writing the blog all of which have every unique creative backgrounds. A big thanks goes out to one particular gal, Miriam Bradford who owns her own Social Invitation design site, LimoncelloSTYLE for writing the blog post on my work! Thanks so much, Miriam!