We keep trying to get pictures of us with the puppy so we get some perspective of how small he is now. I like taking portraits but I don’t feel that they are my strong point, so I need more practice anyways.

I love this picture of Adam with the puppy. I usually have trouble getting him to smile for pictures.

This is the best one I’ve gotten of myself with the puppy.  I don’t really like the angle at which it was taken.  It makes my huge shoulders look like an extra large Football player with oversized shoulderpads. Cooper looks cute with his eyes closed though.

Cooper and I have been doing lots of training walks lately because he’s quite shy with strangers so we are trying to have him meet as many as possible. So I brought him on a photo adventure on Monday night. I’ll have more pictures later, but I wanted to show a few of them now.

Several of the Art Journal Blogs I follow seem to use Moleskine Journals.  What is so impressive about these journals?

I just bought one because I wanted a small durable journal that I could watercolour in.  But it was expensive, I think I paid more than $17 at Barnes and Noble and it’s tiny.  The journals come in all sorts of different kinds including some that are pretty much just every day writing journals.

It seems like it’s a nice quality journal and I look forward to using it, but if you have a Moleskine Journal why did you get one? What do you like about it? In your opinion has it been worth the cost? Is it worth the cost for everyday art journaling too?

I loved living in Boston when I went to school there. I loved rowing on the Charles. So on occasion I love to go back, watch some rowing races and walk around Boston. I get to see the views I saw daily, but never stopped marveling at. Such as the view of the skyline from the river.

One of the things I like are the many buildings of various styles and types. I enjoy photographing them.

I prepared this post for my Tumblr initially but I decided to expand on it and make it into a blog post.  So my apologies if you follow both.

Sometimes when I’m sitting around bored thinking that my life has no excitement in it, I start going through my picture archives. I’m often astonished by how much I have lived. I may not be rich, popular or famous, but I have been to beautiful places, and in not so pretty places, my lens has caught small astonishing sights that others may have missed. I’ve known people who have touched my life for better or for worst. I’ve explored many parts of my personality with my appearance, the crowd I kept and the activities I did. I’ve hiked, rowed, horseback ridden, painted, swam, raced, climbed, partied, and goofed off in numerous places and with different people.

I hope that someday when I am gone, those left behind will look at my pictures and question “how can one fit so much living into a lifetime”.

Pictures are my instant pick me ups. My pictures remind me that while I may have sad days, bad days, boring days, the days I have enjoyed have made my existance worthwhile. Even pictures of ex-boyfriends remind me of the good times I had with them, and the reasons I am glad to have found my husband.

So go out, take pictures of everything you love and everything you hate, on a regular basis. Because all those small things are part of your history and in the end, hopefully, you will be able to see how amazing and full your life has been.

I used to fly
Erin was at my house when I did this journaling. She told me it was a depressing message. Like losing something incredibly important to you. To be honest the layout started with me wanting to use the Vellum to put wings on a girl. The message has several meanings to me. Some are sad. But one is mostly nostalgic, the feeling of flying I had when rowing. The exileration of the perfect harmony of muscles firing, sweat, wind, timing of oars, power, pain and speed. It’s a joy you can’t understand unless you’ve experienced it, and you can’t really explain why it was so perfect for you. It’s why the girl is smiling a tiny secret smile. Her thoughts are not of the sadness of losing something, but of the amazing exhilarating joy of flying when she got to experience it, no matter what the context had been. When she thinks of it, it still makes her happy that it happened at all.

I still don’t know if I should have coloured in the girl.  Sometimes I’m completely satisfied with how she looks, sometimes I want to add a little colour, and sometimes I want to colour her in completely.

Materials: Pen, acrylic paint and Vellum paper (of course glue too)

“There once was a girl who didn’t want to change your flaws… Maybe that was her flaw”

I think this statement is a little artier than something I would put in a regular journal, so I put it in my art journal.

Post it.

The girl is just a girl I scribbled on a post it.  I decided to glue leftover paper scraps on the page of the journal.  Then I thought, why not stick her there.  I still like how it turned out.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures from the Laconia Sled Dog Championships on February 15th to my Flickr tonight. I still havn’t played with them in Photoshop but it let me explore Picnik a little more. I like a couple of the results.

I’ve been playing with Flickr’s Picnik Feature.  It’s kind of fun. I like editing in Photoshop, but when I don’t have time to Picnik seems to be a viable option.  Here’s a recent try out.  The first is the Original, a trail sign I took in 2005 in Acadia National Park.  The second is a quick edit I did in Picnik.

What do you think?

Maine Coast, originally uploaded by mbarsalou.

I took this picture over a year ago on the Maine Coast. I just had the film developed. I’m a little disappointed because I think the 30+ year old Pentax K1000 I used needs cleaning. Now this camera is a family heirloom of sorts. It’s the camera my dad used to take all my childhood pictures, and he bought it when he was in college (and broke). The most recent roll of film has shown that I definitely need to bring it for cleaning in because the shutter isn’t closing properly.

Anyone know of a good camera cleaning shop in New England?

Here’s a couple other other shots from the same roll of film.