Mess has it's Merits

Okay, so I was watching my regular sunday morning news programs to get my fill of all things political and I hear Bill Geist, from CBS News Sunday Morning say "if I could see more executive offices that look this messy I bet we'd be a more productive nation"...and I sat up to listen.

Apparently mess is GOOD!!! who the heck knew! I constantly bemoan the piles of paper and magazines I have lying around my studio and the few in my bedroom. I stack mags by date with the latest at the top, papers are stacked as well. As the guest, David Freeman said, "Piles have a chronological meaning to them. And people know how many inches they have to go down on a pile to get so many weeks or months back in time, and that makes it very easy to find things."

This is ME!!!!!!

How wonderful to know that I am not just a messy person but a messy person with purpose. There's such a thing as "useful mess". Whoopee!! Halleuah!

Furthermore, Mr. Freeman has these thoughts:

"...Had Sir Alexander Fleming not kept such a filthy laboratory, penicillin would not have been discovered" (big one here folks)

"...employees with messy desks are 36 percent more efficient (tellthat to your bosses)

"...the bigger the salary, the bigger the mess ( yeh but I'm thinking those CEO's also have people to clean up their messes)

and lastly "...Albert Einstein said, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?" Mmmmh?

So some food for thought folks: mess ain't what it's cracked up to be. Go ahead be messy, feel good about it, more efficient production is right around the corner. YOUR ART IS WAITING!

See ya next time "In the Hayloft",

Designing Web Pages

I thought it would be fairly easy to design my own website (most of you really need to stop laughing at me now). So after days...okay so it's been a month plus but who's counting...of reading ,writing and lots of frustrated behavior I won't describe here, I finally have....a half of a page done!!!! Eh! I can see why people get paid good money to do this FOR you. But...

I WILL NOT GIVE UP, I WILL PERSEVERE!!!! yadda, yadda, yadda.

Actually I'm having a bit of fun reading the books I have, "HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elizabeth Castro and "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" by Jason Beaird. It's fascinating read believe it or not and I'm learning so much.

Like when I post stuff to this blog and then view it, why the picture of a fruitcake is over there by the description of my husband's best friend (disclaimer: my husband's best friend, who's name shall remain nameless, is not a fruitcake, I'm just using that as an example) or now knowing that the html language that I see on a page is not really some web page designer mouthing off, it really does translate into web text.

Alright, enough goofing off. Hopefully my website, RedBarn Studios with it's new logo (yippee!) will be up and running soon...suppose that depends on your definition of soon...or you might see more posts that aptly describe my frustrated behavior. I'm off to buy MORE school supplies (whatever happened to just the paper and a pen deal?) but that means they go back to school on Monday and I get my daytime hours back to myself again. I think I prefered year round school afterall.


See ya next time "In the Hayloft",

p.s. As I write this my 6 yr old is playing "bowling" with my beautifully beaded ball and my 24" long ruler propped up on a the drill case. So much for it being MY place for play.

Living Rainforest Finally!

I know I promised the photos of the Living Rainforest that we visited near Pangbourne in England. Here are just a few. It was facinating walking around because every corner you turned was another interesting and sometimes rare species of life that exist somewhere on this planet of ours.

We'll start with the Pitcher Plant. Its leaves form pitchers that lure insects inside. The insects are attracted to the nectar that is produced at the bottom of the pitcher.

There the insect is trapped and digested by the plant.


This second photo came at great peril I might add. Someone had to hold me by the waist as I leaned over to take the picture of the bug struggling near the bottom of the plant. You can see his poor spindly legs in the middle of the photo. I think he knew he was done for by then.



This next photo intrigued me. My daughter came running to me telling me I have to come see this. Well since the whole environment was like that and I took my time going over. She came back pulling my arm over to where she was and this is what I came upon. I was no more than one and a half feet away from this "flutterby" (as my 6yr old calls them) when I took this photo. There we at least 5 people in the area and the flutterby did not move a muscle to fly away.

The Swiss Cheese plant is aptly named. It's large leaves resemble swiss cheese, duh! It's upward climbing roots are used for ropes in Peru, made into baskets in Mexico and boiled to treat snake bites in Martinique!! I loved the way the leaves formed a canopy over our heads as we walked under them.

These roots were about 2 ft wide by 3 ft high.


There were so many different varieties of plants it's hard to show them all here but I thought the swirl one was way cool...my kids hate to hear me say that, they say it sounds "so not cool Mummy"... so I say it all the time anyway, hee, hee. Anyway, enough about embarrasing my kids. The leaves swirl in bunches so there would be 3 or 4 of them on a branch.

Can you imagine a few of these trees in your garden and the leaves just swaying back and forth? How magical it would look especially when lying down on a large white hammock with a cool drink nearby and someone feeding you grapes...oops, sorry I got carried away there for a moment!


One thing that was not very pleasant was learning the facts about a particular flower, the Madagascar Rosy Periwinkle. I'm sorry that the photo is not a better one. It's a native plant of Madagascar that has been horribly exploited because of the discovery of its anti-cancer properties by western pharmaceutical scientist.


Unfortunately the majority of the profits never made its way back to the country, one of the poorest in the world. Organizations are trying to rectify that but think of the millions lost so far (75 million pounds in profit for that industry) that the people of Madascar will never see. Shameful!


To end on a better note the other photo I have I really couldn't post here on the web. If you want to see a picture of it you'll have to email me and I'll send it to you. As soon as you see it you'll understand why. Whoa johnnie!



See ya next time "In the Hayloft",

Family Art

I had planned to upload pics of my latest project then thought you might enjoy this better. It all started when I said to the kids let's make birthday cards for Daddy this year, whose birthday was a few days ago. This is what they came up with. The red is by my 15 yrs old...can you tell she is into drama? Here's the front of the card. And lo and behold, this is the inside of her special card. Her Dad cracked up when he opened it (BTW, Git is a loose English term meaning jerk or sillyhead but in a fun loving way.)

Our 6 yr old loves to colour and draw...right now it's all about Superheros (that's his made-up superhero on the front). I speak "Connor" language so translation of the phonetically spelt words is "Daddy I love U (see inside Love) I am happy that you are turning 44". He had to pause at after he read it too. Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

What a gift...kids!

(Front cover and inside of card)

See ya next time "In the Hayloft",

The Year of Me

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own.
No apologies or excuses.
No one to lean on, rely on, or blame.
The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.

—Bob Moawad, Motivational Speaker

This quote spoke to me the instant I read it. I started out this year on a very positive note, saying that this would be the year of me, my beginning so to speak. It is known that if you say something often enough you believe it, well that has happened to me. I KNOW this is the year of me. Not in a stringent goal-oriented way (although I've put to paper all the goals I want to achieve for the year) but more that I will come out of my shell and GO FOR IT!

I truly believe that all who seek shall find...eventually that is.

See ya next time "In the Hayloft",