Picking up the pieces...

If compliments paid my mortgage and kind words soothed my heart I would be flying.
But they don't, and its been a stretch since I have been able to find the time and the desire to return to this blog. Losing Maggie ran me off the proverbial road and I have been trying to find my voice and return to my routine and the gratification that this blog has given me since my last post.
I started working for Young at Heart publications in January, creating display ads and upgrading their marketing materials. At the end of March I was hired to redesign the newspaper and take over design and production. Having a number of additional creative projects has been helpful and rewarding and I have felt truly blessed by the work.
This months production just wrapped up and it has been an insane two weeks. I hoped to get off to the coast with Dave the past two days but the weather has been seriously stormy and its looking like the end of the week instead since sunny days and warm temperatures are returning.
The Southern Oregon Guilds'gallery, which was renovated as part of the RCC building project opened the past month and it was fun to see the transformation from the raw space we were assembling display cabinets in this past January, to a light bright open space filled with art and now awaiting the final touch, carpeting. As a member of the Guild, I have been pro/bono, working on redesigning their logo, website and print materials over the past two years, and was anxious to see the banners I designed for the outside of the building and road. It was a challenging project to get so much copy condensed and designed all into a pleasing vertical format.
We went out to Kerby for the opening and evening festivities and we toured Its a Burl, right down the road. Despite driving by numerous times over the years I had not been in there but one quick stop 12 years ago. I wanted to take some pictures since I was writing an article for the Young at Heart paper on exploring the Illinois Valley and road tripping up to the Oregon Caves, which turned out to be our spontaneous destination on Easter Sunday. It was a fantastic maze of burl art galleries and awesome pottery. Music was happening on the porch, dogs lay around in the dust and I loved meeting Joy and Harvey the owners while we were there. I took a lot of pictures (what else is new) making it so difficult to pick only two for the article.
This past week Jamie and Paul came up from the Bay Area, Jamie has a cabin in Wimer she bought years ago and spends a month or two a year escaping to, and Paul being the avid cyclist he is has a new hybrid road/mountain bike and enjoyed the local scenery and thankfully had no encounters this time with the local rednecks.
We went up there on Sunday and it was a sweet time. We left feeling grateful for making the call to do the hour drive to get there. As crazy as things have seemed lately, theres something so soothing and spiritual about feeling surrounded by tall trees and walking on pine needles with friends while the dogs run wildly through the woods.