desimms clips 4u

Where I leave notes for myself on her current hair color(s). A mother has to keep up. xoxoam

Biltmore's conservatory.  What an indulgence it was for me to be able to take my time and just snap, snap, snap. Maybe these little souvenirs will hold you until you get the chance to see it yourself one day.  This is likely enough inspiration for me to draw pictures of flowers for at least a decade.  Sigh. Thanks for the workshop sellout that happened pretty lickitysplit today.  I am so honored that there is that interest out there, and I promise to be a good hostess to those of you joining.  I simply cannot wait.  If you missed this one, let me know, and I'll add you to an interest/wait list for the future. In other news: :: My husband can not stop making tofu scramble like this . :: I cannot stop watching/listening to this . :: Somebody help me. :: I can't get sick of it. :: Tofu scramble on the other hand.... xoxoAMoxox

I adore the nickname given to the Biltmore.  The structure is really quite stunning.  And it does seem to be a graceful lady of a house.  You feel permitted to love it as you tour the inside, because you learn of George Vanderbilt's legendary kindness.  So you can unapologetically love the beauty of it all.  Anyway.  I took so so many photos.  Not so many of the house exterior (you can't photograph the interior), but the several of grounds as I have for you below. I took even more of the conservatory and dozens of intoxicating greenhouse blooms which I'll share next. I could have kept snapping for another few hours. Above is me with mom, and Eleni, my sissy. Enjoy the rest. If you've been waiting for more in depth info about the fall needleworks workshop, here's a pdf: Needleworks Nashville The info pdf is also now located at the shop page where the event will be on sale Wednesday morning. xoxo, Anna

This past week amongst 7,253 things that I did, I asked my mom if she wouldn't mind going through our old family photo albums and pull any pictures that had anything that she made shown in the picture. As expected she relished in the task and a few days later I got this big manila envelope (in fact it blew right in with the tornadic weather yesterday) filled with some of my favorite photos, as well as some I couldn't remember ever having seen. What a joy to see. I'm working on a meaningful way to try and save some of them long term and also include in my upcoming book. It got me thinking about the documentation of handworks, especially as my mom remarked on the phone this morning that the process unearthed several memories of things she had made but couldn't find photos of. It made me thankful for this space, obviously, where I document small and large works. Today, after being begged since my waking hour, I sat down with the kids to watch an episode of Phineas and...

Happy Birthday to my Mama! If you and Dad are up to your usual tricks, sometime later today he'll ask you what he bought you for your birthday, and then you'll go get it to show him because you purchased it last week. I bought myself a macro lens for your birthday. I hope you like it. I took these pictures for you because I know how much you like flowers and stitching and because I forgot to put your birthday card in the mail on Saturday and because I need to practice with this new lens because I know how you always want me to do my best at everything that I do. Thinking of you this morning and the amount of stillness required to take these compared to my regular zoom lens brought to mind the years you spent trying to keep me still. I hope it was worth it, I remain pretty wiggly. I am thinking I might need to by myself a mini tripod as an early Mother's Day gift to you. I love you Mama, enjoy your day, you are to be celebrated. xoxoxo anna & fam

Just one more piece of nostalgia this month, as my first born just turned 20 a few moments ago. This is a mutually favorite photo between the 3 of us who were present when it was taken- Jeff, our photographer. Juliana was just a little over one and we were visiting friends in Sarasota, after having left the Ringling School to come home and become a family. Its nice now to think that I had attended school there to make art, but this is my favorite piece. Happy Birthday Juliana! I wish we were together. Hey peoples, want to come to California? I leave first thing in the morning for Palm Springs, LA, and Sacramento. I thought I would send some postcards along the way to share the trip with you..... But first I should get to bed, more soon! xo,AM

We tucked in on Friday, side by side, upstairs, busy. Quiet, working, drawing, laughing, ignoring, talking, singing. Then snow. Tiny at first. Then huge. She said we should take photographs. I rolled my eyes. But then she put on makeup. I got my coat. Froze my fingers. Click. After. Click. These pictures document the last of her dark hair for the now. She spent Friday evening trying to go blonde. Then I stayed up with her until almost 3am, helping her go blonder. Then she kissed me goodbye only hours later (her head, a little brassy) while Jeff warmed up the car. I slouched on the couch with Roman. And I was fine. Saturday. Fine. Sunday. Fine. This morning, I headed to her room to ask her to go out and buy some milk and juice for me becau ........OH. Not here. Right. So I texted instead. She couldn't go get the milk and juice right away. She's in Brooklyn. And then I looked at these pictures for about an hour. It was a good idea, as it turns out, to take them. ...

It is likely just me, but today I feel like anything is a better thing with some hand stitching. I have been cross stitching for days now on a very exciting design, but all on black Aida cloth, which is a challenge on the peepers. I've spent a lot of time on my flickr groups the past few days looking through everything that was made over the past year with my fabrics. So. Much. Beauty. You guys are amazing. I looked through, too, lots of shots of things that I made- searching for my favorites- from market and then some. I just keep going back to this one. Its just a detail of my velveteen Bonne Nuit quilt, but I love it so very much. I really didn't have time to stop to notice it, hurried as I was before market preparations to get it done. I knew I enjoyed it but it was hardly a relaxed, easy going creation, it was all on fast forward, and lovely, but fast. Now, though, those earnest blue stitches, working their way around anything in their path, activating the space ...

Hullo there. I meant to get photos from quilt market uploaded, edited, flickred and blogged yesterday but the heavens opened, shining rays of unspeakable light on my sewing table and told me I should quilt instead. So I obeyed. (Seriously look! I never get those cool sun flare shots.) For real, I did have the house all to myself for a solid 6 hours so I moved my sewing machine downstairs next to the design wall and patched and patched and patched. And as it happens its a new quilt pattern for my Janome projects called Patchwork Prism. Hmm. hope you're having a sunny weekend, xoxoAM

On my walk And on my lap. I guess you could say this is my case for only visiting New York but living in Tennessee. have a lovely weekend, Anna (who is sorta kinda reluctantly managing to barely like her phone camera. some.)

I have good and bad and worse and makedo to report. GOOD: I just spent the most wonderful 4 days in NYC with my two little girls, my mama, my MIL and my big college student girl for our Spring Breaks, which luckily coincided. BAD: On the very first cab ride from LaGuardia to our hotel in Brooklyn, I left my camera bag (as in THE camera) in the cab. WORSE: I did not get a receipt from the driver, and therefore have been placed in camera-loss purgatory as far as the city of NYC and the cab service is concerned with regards to ever finding it. (And yes I have taken every other measure possible to find it, thanks for asking....but maybe there's one I still haven't thought of, like looking on Craigslist to possibly buy it back. ha.) MAKEDO: I took lots of pictures of our trip with my phone. This is not one of them. But this hug within a hug photo that I found on my desktop is making me feel like its all going to be just fine. The NYC-vacation-by-phone (a very expensive vacation, ...

Two bros yo. This is my handsome husband, Jeff (left) with his little, adorable (still) brother Jason, taken I think around spring of '77. Yesterday my mother-in-law, Bette, sent this jewel to us. Many of us have photos that look like this. The pose, the clothes, the vintage coloration, and those bubba faces are priceless. I can hardly stand it actually. Those ties? Uhhh! I want to squeeze both of those faces! And after birthing six of this man's children (just that man on the left there) I feel like I've seen these same faces over and over again. That expression just seems to run through all of them. I love it so much. Cherish it, actually. Like I have to close my eyes now, I've been looking at the cuteness too long. Coincidentally, before Bette sent these to us, Jeff and I each spent some time yesterday morning searching a few hard drives for a (huge) batch of our own family photos, that so far we haven't been able to turn up. I'm talking years o...

Humidity - This heat and humidity makes my camera lens fog up! So if I need accurate shots I have to let my camera rest outside for about 3o minutes before I begin shooting. However, as shown above, taking a shot through the foggy lens can have a sort of beautiful result too, especially in early evening sunlight. Humidity + A most definite plus to the humidity is watching the golden headed boy turn into a curly headed cherub once we're outside for more than a minute or two. As if I needed another reason to dote. And I sweep him up and kiss the sweaty nape of his blonde curly neck. He must wonder why he gets kissed in the dreadful heat like this over and over again. Sorry I slipped away without a "hey I'm slipping away" note. If I could add tags to my last week or two with a few keywords they would be the following: New York, TopShop , Balthazar , Purl , Brooklyn , Pratt , Williamsburg , Knoxville, fireworks, honey whiskey , family, cousins, swimming, sunburns, f...

A shower, one last nursing for the night and then I'm calling it. goodnight, anna

A rare moment alone and uncuddled. We spent the day with my friend Angela today, which is a good thing to do when you have a new baby and loads of kids around. Roman was very cooperative and we got so many beautiful shots- even one of the whole gaggle (see new summer banner above-see, see!). I find the prospect of getting a photo of 6 children who are related to each other tends less on the challenging side if their mother is not the one taking it. Angela is amazing. (You need to see more of her gorgeous and quirky and clever baby photos here !!) And believe it or not, we were working too. I will confess that the word "work" has taken on a strange and weird new reality these past few (almost 3!!!) weeks. But for reals. Some of what we did with this little baby counted as work towards a very exciting project thats been underway here for several months. More on that soon enough!! Thank you for continuing to drop in here and coo with us. I'm thinking of that day wh...