TiLT: January 2010!

You still feeling the crackles of magic in the air, bijoux?  It’s still there… real life is just clouding in the way.  After a rigorous and challenging month though, when I look back I can say there was so much to love in it!

• Little House Chippewa!  My wonderful and beautiful home, located in New Orleans’ Irish Channel.  While it’s not quite ready for pictures yet, it’s quickly getting there! I’m enjoying the opportunity to scout out new furniture (since I moved with about 25% of what I had), organize my house, and get things going… if I could find a great dresser, I’d be so much closer though! I keep forgetting I have clothes because they are all in laundry bags! D:
• Counting Down Days: until the Faux Beau arrives! I haven’t seen him since October, when I flew out to Denver to see him. He’ll be coming in for Mardi Gras (and hence a big reason why I will be missing New York Fashion Week this season, as they’re the same week).  I’m excited for a cooking and kissing partner, snuggles, dressing up and drinking, catching up on movies, and Lottie & I both seeing our Boy again.

bookcases & having them filled with my wonderful books and heartfelt trinkets; glorious AT&T service men who work for 2.5 hours for free to ensure my internet is working; dinner & drink dates with friends; Bar Tonique!; midnight movie series at the Prytania Theatre;  enchiladas at Tacqueria Corona; the arrival of heart products all over shops; shopping during football games & enjoying empty stores; warm, winter days & cool winter nights; watching students watch Shakespeare– I love hearing & seeing their reactions!; long hot baths, Lush Bath Bombs, and Lavender Bath Soaks; receiving my Hayden Harnett purse (after 4 months); buying photography books; my 12″ memory foam mattress (and having my own bed again!)– I was so excited I felt like a kid at Christmas and didn’t want to sleep on the bed.

Links I Loved:

• On Self Portraits & Shaming: a great look at artist Katie West, what it means to be a female photographer, what it means to take self-portraits, especially if we photograph ourselves nude.  I have mixed feelings, to be honest, on the subject, but it’s one I’m familiar with.
• Wendy B says Help a Blogger in Need.
• Ways My Roomba Attempts to Emotionally Blackmail Me is a hysterical, quick read and makes me want a rhoomba all the more.
• Two T-shirts in to a Dress Tutorial at Wicked Whimsy. I’ve coveted the style since seeing Jennine at the Coveted wear something similar, and now I can make my own!
• The Art of Living Mindfully at The Chronicle.  This has been shared a bit, but it’s a brilliant piece about breaking psychological boundaries, in life and in the field:

She is best known for her concept of “mindfulness”—a term that most researchers use in the context of meditation, but by which Langer means paying attention: consciously looking for what is new and different, and questioning preconceived ideas.

Doing that is more difficult, and more significant, than it sounds. Most of our actions, Langer has shown, are mindless. Mindfulness requires reconsidering everything we think we know. If we did that, she says, all of us could be more effective, more creative, and healthier.

Her research on the effects of mindfulness on physical health, in particular, has had such surprising results that, she acknowledges herself, it “teeters on the edge of believability for some.”