Happy Thanksgiving

It's chicken for me today, but I will certainly pretend it's turkey.

I am grateful for many things in my life, and one of them is being part of a great blogger community. A big thanks to all of you who read these lines and often take the time to leave a comment. I appreciate that very much.

Happy Turkey Day!

Goddess

Lately, I received a lovely note in the mail along with a gorgeous keychain. The note read:

Birgit,
Thank you again for being so sweet!

Now I want to say exactly the same to Rain who was so sweet to send a wonderful goddess keychain to me.

Purple is one of my favorite colors, so this is perfect! Rain doesn't just have an interesting blog aptly named Rain Sews but also two Etsy stores which you find here and here. In the latter she sells the very goddess keychain she sent me as a gift. From the website:

"Keys represent many important parts of life: home, work, transportation and security. Here's a talisman to protect your keys, and therefore to protect all the things that keys represent."

Rain, you couldn't possibly know that, but I was actually thinking of getting a new keychain, so the timing and choice of gift couldn't have been better. Thanks so very much -- you are such a sweet person!

We Love Digital Art

Beverly invited to another round of pink fun for Pink Saturday. I made a digital collage for that, using the photo below. Yup, this is the original, unaltered photo showing mainly black. I took it on New Year's Eve shortly after midnight when fireworks were blooming all around. Here I caught a moment inbetween.


Don't delete such photos right away -- they may be perfect as background for a digital collage or scrapbook layout. Just use your graphic program of choice (I used Paint Shop Pro 9). If you don't have any graphic program on your computer, go for the free GIMP. By adjusting the curves for input and output you can see the hidden colors and shapes.


Since the image was very grainy, I removed some of the digital camera noise, ending up with a smoother image which still had the slightly grainy quality I wanted.


I then added two other images, blended the layers, used a couple of filters, and added a frame. So here's my finished collage with pink accents.


I hope you like it -- and if you are now eager to learn more about digital art, be sure to visit We Love Digital Art. It would be lovely to welcome you there.

Happy Pink Saturday!

The Pink Gorilla of Austin

A couple of years ago I had the chance to meet a dear friend in Austin, Texas. We had gotten to know each other through an email group dedicated to a TV show we both like. Soon enough we started to correspond by email, seeing a kindred spirit in one another. When I visited her and her family in Austin, we came across what I call The Pink Gorilla of Austin. Gotta love that guy! Isn't he just perfect for Beverly's Pink Saturday?

Happy Pink Saturday!

H is for Help

Once again coincidence is the reason why I chose Help to be my H for Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday. On Wednesday, I received an email from a snack company that my photo of a squirrel had been uploaded to their online gallery and that it is now ready for voting. They also wrote that I should invite friends to vote for my photo. Normally, I don't even bother to enter such photo contests. I am not registered at Facebook or Twitter, so everyone who has a few hundred contacts there can easily get many votes -- often enough no matter how the photo looks like. Thus a couple of photos already have nearly 100 votes after just one day.

Anyway, the topic of the photo contest was to show a photo which is genuine as in genuinely beautiful or or genuinely crazy or genuinely whatever you can come up with. I decided to upload a photo I took in Sacramento, CA a couple of years ago. The cute squirrel -- genuinely cute or echt süß in German --, seemed to pose for the camera. The little guy lived in the park in front of the California State Capitol.

If you think the squirrel is genuinely cute, please help me get a few votes, so that I don't stick with a modest one vote -- my own vote that is. You could even vote once a day until December 15. Click here to help my squirrel move up on the voting scale. You just have to click on the red button which says Stimme geben (which means vote). That's it. Then my squirrel can start its march to the top and could win me an Apple iPad or Apple iPod Nano or a packet of snack products.

A click a day makes my squirrel squeak hooray!
(And me, too.)


Edit on 11/13:

Thanks for your votes -- they have meant very much! However, I don't stand a chance against people who can rally hundreds of people who vote for them day by day. In just a few days, a couple of photos have nearly 1,000 votes. Well, it was worth a try, but next time I will definitely pass taking part in "photo" contests which are in fact popularity contests.

Hats and an award

It has been a while that I made a postcard for Sunday Postcard Art. The current challenge was inspiring though -- Hats'n Crowns. I had great fun going through my collection of vintage ladies wearing fancy hats, ending up with this digital collage:


Earlier this week, Wendy from The Year of the Cats was kind enough to pass on an award to me:

Now, that's always good to hear -- thanks Wendy! I am supposed to pass the award to ten other blogs I enjoy. I won't do that though -- there are by far more than ten blogs that I love to visit. In fact, I am even thinking of removing the list of my favorite blogs from my blog's sidebar as it's not nearly completed, and some dear friends might feel left out. I have so many wonderful blogs bookmarked and just haven't gotten around to add more links to the list of blogs I love to visit. Anyway, please feel free to take this award, too -- I am sure you deserve it!

Glorious November sunsets

Beverly's Pink Saturday is the perfect chance to show you pictures of the glorious sunsets I have already seen this November. All Saints' Day ended with a sunset which made the whole world look pink. It was a special moment for sure -- you could feel the difference all around.

November 4th ended on another pink note.

The pink intensified the lower the sun sank.

The mixture of colors was just wonderful.

Normally, I would expect such fiery colors somewhere in Africa.

Happy Pink Saturday!

Comfortable & Spooky

The last two topics at From All Corners were Comfortable and Spooky. I had chosen the latter one -- most likely because of Halloween. Anyway, here is my contribution for Comfortable:

I took the photo in Bad Wörishofen in early October. Bad Wörishofen is a spa town, so the photo of the Frog Prince enjoying his bath seemed very appropriate.

The spooky photo was taken at my place. It was eerie how the red shadow showed up on my black place mat. Well, not that eerie though -- it's the reflection of a plastic pumpkin! Anyway, I still think the photo is a bit spooky.

Be sure to visit From All Corners to see the photos of the other girls.

G is for Gothic

I had pondered which word to choose for the G for Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday. Thus it was a lucky coincidence that I received a little package in the mail today with a true gothic treat. Voilà -- G is for Gothic!

In the beginning of October, I had stumbled upon a giveaway organized by Willow from Confessions of a Country Witch. Her friend Jenny had offered a $ 10 gift certificate for her Etsy shop AgonysDecay for the lucky winner. I looked through all the gothic goodies and quickly found a favorite -- a hairclip with a glass tile showing Jack Skellington on a bed of maribou feathers with a yellow glass bead and a graveyard charm. Now guess how happy I have been when Willow announced me as winner of the giveaway! So here's my great new hairclip:

The bead seems to glow from within.

Jack looks somehow melancholic here.

The maribou feathers are incredibly soft.

Jenny sent the hairclip in that neat plastic bag. You surely don't find anything like that around here, so even the bag was a treat for me!

Aww -- isn't that sweet? Jenny, I will certainly enjoy wearing this hairclip -- and not just on Halloween!

Jenny also sells soaps in her Etsy store and was kind enough to send along a sample of her frankincense and myrrh glycerin soap in form of a tiny skull. It smells just wonderful!

I like how Jenny puts stickers on her plastic bags -- everything is so organized and neat.

Thanks so much, Jenny -- I just love the soap and hairclip!

Beauty

Many of you surely know the principle of word of mouth marketing. While it's certainly more common in the USA, it is getting bigger in Germany, too. I am a member of trnd, a company which is an official member of WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association). I am one of the 3,000 lucky testers of the new perfume BEAUTY by Calvin Klein. You might have seen the TV spot starring Diane Krüger. Anyway, it was certainly exciting to open the package, finding the white and golden package of BEAUTY inside.

It's not just the package which is elegant -- the flacon design is also superb.

The perfume has a golden, warm color -- very inviting to try it out. The fragrance is a new interpretation of the calla lily. As the natural fragrance of the lily can't be extracted to create a perfume, three fragrance notes were combined to bring the beauty of the calla lily alive in this new perfume.

The top notes are ambrette seeds, the middle note is jasmine, and the base note is cedar wood. The result is one my the most elegant perfumes I have ever used. I really enjoy wearing it.

Maybe you can try out the perfume at your local perfumery. I received a couple of samples to hand out to friends. If you happen to come to Munich in the next few weeks, you are welcome to contact me, and I will gladly give you a sample of BEAUTY, too.

Please let me know what you think of perfume flacon and also of the fragrance itself if you had the chance to test it. How do you like the TV spot starring Diane Krüger? What is your favorite perfume?

Time

I stumbled upon a new challenge blog titled "Take A Word." From the website:

"The list of challenges which welcome all types of art seems to be shrinking so here's one which may fill in a gap. Each week, on Mondays, a one word theme will be posted. There are absolutely no rules, no rights and wrongs. Just take our weekly word and allow it to send you off into into your imagination."

Sounds great to me! I had fun with challenge # 1 -- TIME -- and ended up with this digital ATC:

"For a dreamer,
night's the only TIME of day."

From the song "Santa Fe" from the movie Newsies

More of Munich's Botanical Garden

In March, I visited Munich's Botanical Garden. I have already posted about that here and here. Anyway, it's high time to post some more photos taken in various greenhouses. I really like the variety of cacti at the entrance.

There are some turtles in one of the greenhouses which can roam about as they want. They definitely get a lot of attention.

Such a handsome fellow!

It's turtle paradise!

The scenery resembles a jungle -- and the turtles obviously love it.

Such beautiful orchids.

The colors and shapes of the plants are so varied -- there's something to discover in every corner.

Such a deep blue...

... and then this red!

I also loved the plain green ones.