The Metaphorical Magpie

Queen for a Day: Celebrating Susanna

We're having a blog party today to celebrate Susanna Gordon, the amazing artistic creator of the Winged Messenger and blogger at Susanna's Sketchbook. I am very lucky to call Susanna a friend and was so happy when I first got an email weeks ago about doing something to honor her. The buzz began to build as a group of bloggers who have been touched by her messengers began to work together, busy like bees coming back to the hive with honey. There have been volleys of emails, polls, wild and fanciful suggestions and most importantly a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation for what Susanna does.

It has been so hard keeping this blog party a surprise. Especially  because I'm having dinner with Susanna tonight! When she invited me last night I almost keeled over with the giggles. I can not wait to see her reaction to all the blog love today.

I met Susanna for the first time last year at a blogger's get together. She told me about her winged messengers project. I was so curious to see what they looked like and how she made them. A few months later, I had the opportunity to try out for a  spot to take a video training bootcamp. We had to submit a short video piece to apply. Remembering Susanna, I thought this was the perfect time to exercise my curiosity. When I got in touch with her, she generously invited me over to let me interview her and then she showed me the process she goes through to make the messengers. Finally, we went over to the local train station where I documented her releasing a few into the wild.

The concept of guerilla art based in kindness and encouragement for strangers was something I hadn't experienced before. Watching Susanna work, I was hooked.

Based on the tape I submitted, I was accepted into the video program. So it is thanks to Susanna and her messengers that I learned that skill. Unfortunately, that tape was never returned so I can not share it here. Over the last year, I've left my job as a journalist and moved into the culinary field. Susanna has been so supportive of me in the last year.

I try to support her and her art, too. Whenever we get together, I am always bugging her about new ways to spread her message. A book? A non-profit? A world wide winged migration?

It thoroughly pleases me to know so many more people have also been moved and inspired by Susanna's art and spirit. Please follow the blog roll to see the posts of the others celebrating today's blog party.

Thank you, Susanna for just being you.

What do you use to edit photos?

We're having some computer problems and I can't get Photoshop to work anymore. Hence the lack of photos around here lately.

I'm considering buying some new software like Photoshop Elements, Lightroom 2.0 or Aperture. My needs as a blogger are different than the days when I was professionally editing photos, so I think downgrading to a consumer product may be the way to go.

Can any of you that blog and work on your photos, especially the Mac users, give me some feedback on what programs you use and how you like them? Thanks, my little shutterbugs.

Testing, testing, 1,2,3

I mentioned a while back  that I'm developing a new food blog. It is still in its infancy like a little pea shoot but growing stronger day by day. Would y'all like to stop by for a sneak peek sometime soon? I'm looking for feedback on what size you like the photos, the content, the name (The Perky Pear) and whatever else strikes your fancy. Sweets designed this website and he'll be helping me with pulling together a new look for that one, too, sometime soon. I'm waiting on buying the domain name right now, which is why the url is kind of odd right now. That will change soon.

There are lots of planned regular or weekly features like kitchen tours, peeks at vintage restaurant postcards, book reviews, movie picks, Etsy loves, field trips, food news and of course, the recipes and adventures from my kitchen. Starting on Friday, I'll be doing a weekly Friday post relating to Julia Child as a countdown to the release of Julie & Julia in August.

Hope to see you over there soon.

Time for some shout outs

I've been very good about reading all my RSS feeds lately (which may explain why I've been bad about sending out posts of my own.)

Some days it just slays me how much coolness is going on out there in Bloggityville.

The New York Times ran a solicitation for readers' polaroids and got an astonishing 900 images in 48 hours. They've put up a gallery of over 400 polaroid submissions. Varying from domestic scenes, portraits, people jumping on beds and smooching, ferris wheels, feet, flowers and an amazing assortment of square shaped slices of life from all over the globs. 

Madness of Mad Organica has started a new blog, What's Mina Wearing Today?,  following her third gradde daughter, Mina's amazing daily outfits. I've been a fan of Mina's cuteness on Mad Organica for several years now and I'm happy to have her pop into my RSS feed every day. Today's outfit of a gold bolero and boots is an instant winner. 

This post by Holly at Decor8 about finding balance between your life and work. I can relate to her saying "...I often wonder what I left corporate for, you know? Like what was really the point of saying goodbye to the fat paycheck and benefits if I maintain the same stress level and frustration on my own?" Yet she tries to find the balance and good in her work. Speaking of goodshe recently snapped up the cutest instant camera that makes prints about the size of a business card.

The home of Ann Wood featured on Design*Sponge is somewhere I would love to spend a spring afternoon exploring with a giant window open letting in the breeze. Ann makes the most extraordinary, fanciful objects from vintage and recycled materials like castles of cardboard and pirate ships piled high with vintage wedding lace. Stupendously swoony digs.

Housekeeping notes

I just switched over from Feedburner to Google for my RSS feed. If any of you that subscribe find a problem with the new feed, please let me know.

If you're not already a subscriber, this would be a great time to add me to your RSS reader. Yes? (nodding head excitedly)

Now I'm off to feed my tummy after I've stoked the blog's belly.

News from the blogosphere

Hello, funny faces.

I had my nose to the grindstone last week. Yesterday, I spent the entire day in my pj', read the second half of the House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, watched a film, ate a gargantuan amount of cheese and basically regrouped and recharged. While I find myself busy, busy, busy and not documenting it, I would like to note so are some of my favorite blogger people out there posting up a storm of  goodness. Some of the exciting things going on out there deserve some link love, so here goes.

Stephanie Congdon Barnes and her husband, Jack, have started a new blog, Shelter. Combining their creative forces as an architect and designer duo, they will be sharing about the remodel of their home and the homes that they design in the greater Portland, OR area. Any project that Stephanie works on is immensely interesting and inspiring, so I have already added their new baby blog to to my RSS reader. I would also like to call your attention, to the launch ofthe latest incarnation of collaboration at 3191 Miles Part, between Stephanie and MAV. After their previous collaborations on a year of daily photos of their mornings and then a year of  their evenings, the ladies are back with a new concept that incorporates photos and text in weekly posts on Fridays. The content of their posts will continue to not be discussed beforehand but these ladies have such an unusual sense of synchronicity that I regularly delight in seeing that they are thinking the same thing and interpret it quite differently. When Stephanie stopped writing at Little Birds, it was a devastating blow for me. I loved her words. I'm happy she and MAV have found a new home for their thoughts on "food, life, home, family, books and the like." The first week's post included reciped for chocolate beet cupcakes (swoon) and chocolate brownie hearts.

The Congdon clan is very busy, Stephanie's sister, artist and illustrator, Lisa Congdon, has also begun a new blog, Things, a photographic exploration of singular things. Chronicle Books has released a notebook with one of Lisa's Birch Tree illustrations (one of my favorites)  and will launch a notecard set of her work in the spring.

If you haven't seen this magical collection of photos by Susanna Gordon, please take a peek and prepare to feel a smile creep onto your face and stay there for quite a while.

Have an inspired week, my lovelies!

Pretend poppies

I spend many happy hours browsing through seed and catalogs ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the possibilities that can be planted. The site for the movie Coraline is offering an applet that lets you create your own flower variety. I chose a ruffly poppy with blue seed pearl type accents. I would love to see this baby pop up it's head between the two new white poppies I planted last fall. Shannon and M.Heart have created new flowers, too. Won't you join us in the virtual garden?

Buy this coat!

My darling, most dearest, vintage fashionista friend, Cyndemouse,  has an enormous collection of vintage clothing and accessories collected by herself, her sister, mother and aunts over the last 50 years. When I say enormous, I am not exaggerating. The Smithsonian may show up one day with a moving van and acquire the whole lot. I have spent countless happy hours cooing over each and every fabulous item she pulls from the closet.

Lucky for you, she has launched her very own Etsy shop, Re:Finery Designs. The inventory there is growing every day. An absolute show stopper in her collection is this fur trimmed green wool coat with brass buttons. It's absolutely gorgeous in person. Unbelievably it still has the original tags hanging on it. I think it would make an Irish lass' perfect St. Patrick's Day coat. Or any gal giddy  with it's happy hue.

In her coat department, you'll currently find an assortment from the 60's through the 80's. This purple faux fur number has to find a good home with someone with a personality big enough to stand up to the coat's fierceness.

Over in dresses, this 1980's  turquoise sweater dress with white heart pattern would look terrific layered over a tissue tee and leggings with a wide belt and boots.

Most of the things in her collection are small sizes. So skinny girls rejoice and start shopping. There are also plenty of one size fits all accessories like scarves and fedoras. Those boots above, alas are too big for me.

Looking for something specific? Convo her. She just may have it in her stash.

Cyndemouse is another casualty of the collapse of the newspaper industry. Like me, she views her departure from news as a chance to pursue her passions. Opening this shop is a dream long overdue. I hope you stop into her shop and support it and her.

Sweet beckonings

Periwinkle posted this video by Amy Krouse Rosenthal entitled 17 things i made. Intrigued after watching, I delved further and watched the one below. Which made me sit at my kitchen table and cry for it's sheer loveliness. Please watch.

Now, stop sniffing, find a hanky and go visit Amy online to find out more about how you, too, can participate in her project, The Beckoning of Lovely, which will create a film made of content of by people like you and me making the things we make. Guerilla goodness gets me every time.

Amy is the author of the book  The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life and a long list of childrens' books, odes to cookies, life lessons, mothering and more.

I'd like to bake her cupcakes.