Athena Dreams Design

The Dream Big Award: Nominate Someone!

Is there someone in your life who has consistently inspired you?

Is there someone in your life who has inspired you to dream bigger?

Is there someone who inspired you so much that you
put that dream you'd been hiding in your back pocket into motion?

Nominate him or her for the Dream Big Award!

Beginning this week, with the Dream Big Award, the website CreateMixedMedia will host a series of 3 more awards all centered around Christine Mason Miller's book Desire to Inspire. (see below) Each award corresponds to a chapter in the book, and each week, Christine will share a bit about the chapter and how the award links to the book.

• The DREAM BIG Award (boldly making one’s dream a reality)
• The MOUNTAIN CLIMBER Award (overcoming great challenge with a positive perspective)
• The MAKE-A-DIFFERENCE Award (inspiring us to be of service to others)
• The LIVING IT FULLY Award (offering a beautiful example of being present in every moment)

At the end of each week’s post, you are free to nominate your special someone, by leaving a comment explaining who you wish to nominate and why. {Please include a link to this person’s blog or website if they have one.}

Each week, everyone who comments will be entered to win a copy of Desire to Inspire, and then on March 15, the winners of the four awards—who will be selected by a specially appointed panel from CreateMixedMedia—will be announced on Christine Mason Miller's site.

Haven't you always wanted to nominate someone for an award? Well, now's your chance!

For ALL the details: you can visit Christine or CreateMixedMedia.

A Book and A Pack of Girls = Gathering

Serendipity, happenstance, fortuitous-ness, stars aligning – all of these were in abundance when we  began gathering that first afternoon for Christine's book release. We (read we to mean a pack of girls) walked past these letters on the sidewalk, left no doubt by someone who was changing the marquee at the movie theatre, but letters left without a sitter, are letters that WILL be rearranged. And so the week of the book release begins.

A few highlights for me:

• gathering with old and new friends to celebrate what Christine has created
• a spontaneous hair cut on Venice Beach
• travelling with a pack of girls at all times for 4 days

• feeling perfectly and beautifully imperfect within a circle of friends
• getting dressed for the Event {with a pack of girls}
• standing at the Event, and feeling really and truly honoured to have contributed to this amazing book, with an amazingly gifted group of women
• a spontaneous and exuberantly prepared late dinner after the Event
• the after party gathering that turns into girls night, with one, very well-adjusted man with a really really good sense of humour in attendance

• going to West Hollywood to a friend's Open Studio and buying The perfect painting for my guy for Christmas (oh and one for me too!)
• coffee every morning at the kitchen table, reviewing the day before and planning the day ahead {with a pack of girls}
• planning the next visits and the next times we'll see each other, and being grateful I'm a girl with friends that fill my life with as much joy and honesty and vision as I can hold.

One More Thankful Day

Thank You to everyone who has ever purchased my work.

Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to tell me what my work has meant to you.

Thank you to all of you who have travelled some part of this life path I am on with me.

Thank you for all the opportunities and for the support I receive from near and far.

This life as an artist and a creator couldn't happen without you – all of you who have touched my life in some way or another.

Thank you = Everything is 20% off in my shop when you use the coupon code JOY20.

Sale ends at the end of today, Monday 28 November.

 

 

create . explore . discover . the afterparty

• Drove through Donner Pass with snow coming down hard, and arrived in Truckee to sunshine and amazing spirits, ready to teach, to create and to explore and discover.
• Got to spend some quality time with our amazing hostess Sarah Stevenson and learned that she is deeper, funnier and a woman with a BIG vision when it comes to both women and the arts.
• Taught two classes. In the first one we created images for our pendants, and in the second we prepped and poured resin to create art pendants. Thank you to all of you who participated, you are all SO very creative and gifted.

 

• In the moment, I was, well, in the moment, and now, of course, wish I had taken my camera out a bit more. But the memories are with me, and will be for a long time.
• Got to reconnect with one of my favourit-est girls in the whole wide world: she is a treasure in my life.
• Met the newest treasure in my life, and now have to figure out how to move Utah just a wee bit closer west. Any thoughts on how to do that?

• If you are making a trip to Tahoe, I highly recommend the site of the Create Explore Discover retreat Cedar House Sport Hotel. They took such good care of us. The rooms! The down quilts! The meals! The land! The smell of piney woods and bread baking in the kitchen! Yup, pretty much Heaven.
• AND further to that, make the trip there next year when Sarah will host the second annual Create Explore Discover retreat.

• Did I say the food was stupendous?
• What a treat this weekend was, all the way, through and through:
  
  • We created.
  • We talked about making it in this world as artists.
  • We laughed.
  • We went deep.
  • We taught.
  • We had poetry written just for us.
  • We shared our experiences.
  • We shared (a very few and an appropriate amount) tears.
  • We created some more. 
  • We learned. 
  • We visualised.
  • We shared bits and pieces of our loves.
  • We went back to create.
  • We laughed more. 
  • We created. 

Perhaps "The Girls" would want to include Creative Girl, Explorer Girl or Discovery Girl in their next line of socks!?!

A huge thank you to Sarah for putting this all together, and giving me my very first art retreat teaching opportunity. Big hugs and hand holds to Marisa and Denice. And more huge thank you's to all of you who arrived for a weekend of creating. Here's to the first of many more create . explore . discover retreats to come.

Home Again, Home Again

You arrive to the woods, to the lake, to happy voices down on a dock and quiet pine needle strewn paths and old friends that you may not have seen since last year at this time, and to new friends you always knew were out there and just hadn't yet met face to face, and your Squam experience begins.

The first afternoon is spent settling, reconnecting with friends and with yourself, and listening to all that space that is yours to dream in, to create in, to build in, to hear your own voice, and remember again, that you believe in that voice.

For me that first afternoon, was about solidifying some changes that I have been trying to make in my life. Changes about how I relate to my work, and how I see myself in relation to my work. The changes need to happen, and yet I have found myself going back to the old routine, the old ways of thinking, like a wheel rolling on a very rutted road. Time to try that other path and move off the old road.

And then it's time for dinner, and the evening and loons calling on the lake, and flashlights blinking in the woods, and a fire in the fireplace . . . 

And then you get up on thursday and you're off . . . classes, talking, thoughts, walking, laughing, learning, sharing stories, re-learning, eating, writing, some wine on an evening, more laughing, and so it goes and so it goes.

Before you know it, it is Sunday morning, and you are tired and happy, and sad, and saying good byes, and packing your things, and driving away. You are refreshed and renewed and remembering why you inhabit this body, at this time, in this place, and you remember who you truly are, you have re-met yourself, again, and it is wonderful and amazing and bittersweet and remarkable.

And as you drive away, you turn around just one more time to remember. Hold it close, know that you know exactly who you are, and come back to this moment again and again over the days and months to come. This time away in the woods at Squam is a talisman for your year ahead, for your life down the road, for all the moments that you might forget who you truly are: You have seen yourself, and you know.

The Holiday of Love

I know that there are a lot of people that feel that Valentine's Day is a Hallmark card invention, and more about commerce than love, which may be partly true, but according to an article this week in the Telegraph, its origins are most likely traced back to ancient Rome, among other places. 

Apparently in the days of old Rome 13-15 February was a pagan fertility festival called Lupercalia. And, OK, so it seems that the main part of these festivities centered around young men running naked in the streets using goat or dog skin whips to smack young women's bums in order to improve their fertility, but you know, it was a festival, and, all festivals usually include some wild aspect... uhm, haven't we all been to Burning Man, or heard the stories...

So, more history in a nutshell for you (PLEASE NOTE: irreverence ahead): in the very early years of A.D., there were several martyrs with the name Valentine or Valentina, who probably perished in some unspeakable ways, and then the Catholic church came along and called the 14th of February a saints day, no doubt to upstage those naughty pagans. Fast forward quite a few centuries and Chaucer comes along to write something naughty (again) in old english about the engagement of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia (mm-hmm). Now, fast forward another century and we have the first Court of Love, in Paris (of course), which deals with legal matters of the heart, and ya da ya da, and now onward a few more centuries to Shakespeare mentioning Valentine's Day in his play Hamlet - a long soliloquy by Ophelia, before the drowning.

So, that's probably more than enough to give you the idea, that the symbols and beginnings for Valentine's Day were around long before Hallmark opened their doors, I guess they saw a good thing and jumped on board, so to speak.

I want to say too, that I know there are people who loathe this day because they are single. For me - someone who has spent many a Valentine's Day without a true-love - this day has always been less about romance and flowers and having an "other", and so much more about carrying along that tradition begun in elementary school of giving a valentine to any and everyone that you love or even just like a lot. 

I loved the day of the Valentine at school. We would tape paper bags to the sides of our little desks, and everyone would put valentine's in each others bags. Most were handmade and handwritten, some the hallmark variety, but all of them were so very sweet. Did you all do this too? I remember coming home with all my Valentine's in my little paper bag, and sleeping with them under my pillow, until they got all ratty and bent, and my mother probably whisked them away.

And so in the tradition of my elementary school experience, I give you a Valentine, along with an envelope for you to print and use to your heart's content. You can download it here: Download Valentine Gift. Or leave me a comment here and I will send the file directly to your in-box. It is a 3 page document, one page for the card, one for the envelope and a page of instructions for printing and cutting and pasting. 

Happy Valentine's Day, and may all your heart's be full to overflowing.

PLEASE NOTE: This card is for your personal use only, please do not re-sell, change or modify the artwork in any way. Thanks.

Give and Give . . .

   The Garden

Late green day.
 Here's happiness with its edge of frost.
Winter's in.

The sky thins out.
 The world tightens, like a walnut.
I can count most things.

The plum trees are taut on their hill,
the mornings bitten off, like a twig.
The earth will give and give.

-Nina Bogin

Pictures to Tell a Story

Sometimes pictures tell a story just as it should be told, and just as it should be heard. And so, some pictures to tell a small piece of the story of CORE: art & design of the torso. Words to come later in the week.

 

 

 

(I love this person's reaction to Outi's piece)

Paper Mango Gives it Away

Visit Paper Mango and win!
(Do I sound like a car salesman? hopefully not...)

BUT seriously: yesterday Orglamix, mineral based eye shadow, I don't wear eye shadow, and yet, I want some, it looks so yummy. And today, your choice of a 8.5 x 11 print from moi.

So go celebrate the season of falling leaves and warm fires and blue blue skies with Melanie at Paper Mango.

Squam Bound

Morning Mist on Squam Lake

I am packing up my warm socks, some paint, a few scarves, and my painting apron, and departing for the wilds of New Hampshire. In the midst of some life changes, with my home pretty much all in boxes, and walls being painted and flooring being torn up in our soon to be home, I am doing a runner. Yes indeed. And spending some time with old friends and new friends, with the muse, with some song, and with the lap of water against the underside of the dock is just the thing to settle the nerves and loosen the shoulders.

Back next Monday... Looking forward to seeing many of you by the lake, in the woods!