Bella Wish

Instagram love

Are you on Instagram? Let me know who you are so I can see what you see. I can be found @stacyanne

Do you love the Instagram photos you see but don't have an iPhone? Daniel Box has recreated some of the filters from Instagram into Photoshop actions. You can dowload them here.

Love these! Thanks to the ever lovely Susannah for the fun link.

It's felt like forever since I have updated my Posterous site. What started out on my life list as 1000 Hipstamatic photos fell flat when the Hipstamtic app (that I love) crashed my iPhone each time I launched it rendering it useless to me. Alas, I have well over 1000 iPhone photos using a variety of photo apps, so I have decided to continue to update it using only my iPhone photos that I truly love.

Here is a sample of what our July has looked like so far:

wide open spaces

can you see the first photo above? the one where mia is crawling right off the square of the camera frame? this has been my view for the past month- chasing after a curious baby as she is off to explore the world and all there is to discover around her. i often laugh as i find myself, somewhat vainly at times, searching for the balance of filling her need to roam freely with my need for keeping her safe and in my line of sight.

this part of babyhood is new to me. isabella had only a vague interest in crawling which lasted about a week and even then she didn't travel too far away, preferring to stay close to me. Mia, as most second babies i imagine, is having quite a different life experience so far and started long distance speed crawling about a month ago - which coincidently (or not at all) is the last time i posted here.

she is simply bursting at the seams to run freely alongside her sister through wide open spaces.

this both fills me with incredible warmth and challenges my old bones

in this past month i find myself exhausted and blessed

expanding and retreating

releasing and connecting

listening and learning

rediscovering roots and stepping far outside my comfort zone

falling down and standing back up

climbing a ladder of truth and acceptance

honoring mother earth and respecting her power

paying close attention to all the beauty that is right in front of me

wanting to share and spill and write.... but also feeling limited in my time while navigating the demanding needs of two tiny humans, finally accepting that I am finding the most peace by simply stepping back, deeply listening, being quiet and soaking in all that is happening in the now.

as i strive to find a bridge between this wide open space of sharing and silence i wonder where you are.

i have no idea if anyone even visits here anymore, but if you do please share with me something good in your world today.

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Reading about all of your lovely momentsin the comments fills me with gratitude. Thank you so much for being here and sharing these with me. xo

so very merry

iPhoneography

Miss Mia taken with CameraBag for the iPhone ~ Silver filter

I recently decided to organize my iPhone by using the folders feature for all my apps. My iPhone is three (four?) years old and nowhere near as awesome as the iPhone 4 so I admit that I didn't even know folders were an option until very recently. Each time I use Jimmy's iPhone 4 for something I'm amazed at all the things I am missing on mine, but I digress.

Now that everything is organized, I discovered that folders are a good gauge for where my interests lie in so far as iPhone apps. My photography apps take up two folders on my iPhone (almost 24 apps in total); I think this means I am officially addicted to iPhoneography.

And while it's no secret how much I love the Hipstamatic app, I am equally loving some of the other iPhone photo apps that are also available.

Sidenote: This is the part where I feel somewhat compelled to defend mobile photos briefly as I know there are people who hold strong opinions on cell phone photography and tend to want to dismiss it as not actual photography. There is so much to say and everyone has their opinion, but my take is simply that it's another tool to use in the vast medium of digital photography. My heart belongs to my Canon,  but I will also add that as a mother of two active little ones that if it weren't for my iPhone I wouldn't be able to capture most of the photos I do have of them. For that alone I am grateful.

With that said, I wanted to share some of the photo apps that I find myself going to the most and ask that you share what your favorites are as well.

Hipstamatic (I love this app so much I started a Posterous site dedicated to my hipsta photos)

Toy Camera (I especially love the tones that the vintage warm and black & white filters produce)

Instagram (fun and FREE)

Camera Bag (The silver filter was used on the photo of Mia above. I love that you can also layer the filters to create different effects)

Pocketbooth (it's like having a photobooth with you at all times)

I recently came across the work of photographer Paul Redmond and was immediately drawn to his style. He is a local Silver Lake photographer who shot a series of photographs around this area. What I loved about them was they weren't the obvious landmarks one would identify with this part of Los Angeles but rather captures of the quiet spaces of life happening within.

These images were all shot with his iPhone. It reminds me to cultivate awareness and keeping my eyes open to the everyday world around me - seeking out the beauty in those spaces that are often overlooked and (hopefully) honoring those spaces in a way that is different and interesting.

Please share in the comments if you have a favorite iPhone app and/or know of any iPhone photographers who are inspiring you currently.

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Speaking of Silver and photographers who inspire, please head on over to my friend Irene's blog to help support a beautiful documentary and enter for a chance to win the new PX600 Silver Shade UV+ Film and more!

a couple of life list updates

#40 and #99 on my Life List both involve the number 1000. As in take 1000 pictures & discover 1000 new songs.

While trying to figure out how to organize both of these items I thought the best way would be to create online homes for each.

The ever lovely Susannah introduced me to Posterous and I am in love.

My 1000 iPhone hipsta photos will all eventually be housed there. I've had the button over on my sidebar for a while and have been meaning to mention it. Did I also mention how much I love Posterous?

My 1000 new songs will all be living on the posterous blog Melifluous. (sidebar link coming soon). I literally just started this new blog moments before I posted this and there isn't much there yet. With a thousand new songs to discover I have a long way to go.

Do you have a song that you think I should know about? Please share with me! I am wide open to receiving your recommendations. My only rule for these 1000 songs is that each song has to be, well, melifluous and while it needn't be a new song it does need to be new to me.

I won't be posting on Posterous everyday, but will be updating both blogs pretty regularly. I'm having so much fun with both already.

Thai massage*

 
meditation room next to The Raven Spa

I was introduced to Thai massage about 3.5 years ago. The difference that three short years can make is astounding - the body and mindset I had walking in to this sacred and beautiful space this past Wednesday was not the same body and mindset I walked in with three and half years ago. I don't think I fully understood how much giving birth to two children and not sleeping a solid eight hours in almost three years had physically changed me.

That first Thai massage three and a half years ago found me folded up like a pretzel - twisted, popped, realigned, achy, sore but ultimately feeling good, and dare I say even amazing afterward. I remember telling Jimmy later on that I wanted him to have one so he could experience what it was like. At one point when this tiny yet powerful monk was twisting my torso halfway around my body I saw a blue light connected from the middle of my forehead to somewhere off in the distance. In that moment, I was trancended.

I was also sore and felt beat up afterward, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. After my hour had ended I met my friend who was visiting for the week in the resting area. We lounged lazily on recliners and replenished with warm tea and dates talking about what the frack had just happened to us. This was unlike any massage either of us had ever encountered.

I remember her describing her experience as almost sexual. I would have laughed if I weren't so spent and sore and recall thinking to myself at the time What kind of freaky crazy tantric sex are you having? but thought better of asking the question. I just wanted to drink warm tea and be still in that moment. I knew she didn't mean sexual in the literal sense, but more in the sense of experiencing perhaps some heightened senses, deep relaxation or feelings of euphoria after the fact. It's quite physical for both people involved.

My friend left to go home about a week later and I found out very soon afterward that I was pregnant with Isabella. When I backtracked and did the math I realized the very beginnings of her being were embarking on the journey down my fallopian tubes at the very time I was having my Thai massage. Part of me always wonders if all the forced yoga and blue light of that day somehow helped to guide her way to a safe place for her to implant snuggly and grow for the next nine months.

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When I walked in for my second Thai massage last week I was admittedly hesitant. My sweet husband had given me this gift for our anniversary, recalling my former experience. But this time around my thoughts of massage were focused on more of the kind with soft and warm touching, lavender essential oils and Enya playing in the background. The type of massage you fall asleep to while it's happening and feel like spaghetti afterward while sweating it out in a steam room. Relaxation and pampering. All things that Thai massage are just not.

Still, I went. I needed the break. My mom was visiting and I had the time for myself. I needed something to work out two years of babywearing and to be pampered in some tiny way for a bit. I walked in this time weary, a bit anxious and filled with the kind of mama aches that come with taking care of everyone's needs but your own. A different state of mind and body then I had three and half years prior.

The tiny woman who was assigned to fold me up in countless ways immediately told me I was holding too much tightness in the left side of my body, the side where I carry my babies. Trapped toxins she called them, hard to release through massage alone. For the next two hours she tried to release these toxins much to the dismay of my muscles and tendons and there was no blue light this time. No heightened sense of awareness. No softness. No Enya and certainly no sleep or euphoria. Just 120 minutes of continuous deep tissue manipulation and stretching as a way to release these toxins I have been holding onto since giving birth as I was told by her.

Despite drinking tons of water afterward I woke up the next morning feeling like I had been repeatedly thrown to the floor by a Sumo wrestler. Whatever she had done I guess worked. The toxins had been freed but were now releasing from my body in not so nice ways. I now had the flu. The kind that kicks you hard in the bum. The kind that doesn't care about your to-do list or your shop orders or your daughter's school schedule or your teething baby. I was feverish and freezing. Flu achy on top of achy from Thai massage. Sniffling. Sneezing. Coughing. All I wanted to do was sleep but sick days aren't an option when you are parent and self-employed.

Finally around 6:30 that night I begged Jimmy to come home from work. He did and I immediately went to bed and slept twelve hours straight. I can't recall the last time I have slept that many consecutive hours in a row. I was still sick but sleep was helping tremendously. Then over the weekend my face started to break out. Tell me how it's even possible or fair that I am experiencing teenage breakouts at 42 years old. That's just rude, no? More toxins releasing. The icing on the cake now is that for the past two days I have also lost my voice. I can't speak above a whisper.

I can only listen to and bear witness to all that is taking place around me and within me. And this is where I began to understand and connect the dots.

It's easy to complain about all of the woe is me stuff and throw a bit of a pity party when we aren't feeling well but that is not why I share this story at all. I am telling the story of my second Thai massage because I am reminded of that line about not always getting what we want but getting what we need. I am also reminded that the Universe has quite the sense of humor at times.

What I wanted was the soft and gentle escape that a Swedish massage provides. An hour to be covered in essential oils, relax into a pair of warm hands and eventually return to life as I knew it. What I received was the deeper request I was secretly longing for: Rest.

Resting of the mind, of the voice, of the body.

My friend Jess calls Thai massages forced yoga. For me they are forced rest. And while I won't be actively seeking out having a Thai massage ever again (from here on I seek only the kind that include essential oils, gentle touch and perhaps a hot stone or two), I will say that in a round about way, it has given me exactly what I needed right now - pathways for these trapped toxins to exit and permission to allow my mind, voice and body the rest they so badly need and crave.

The kind of rest we all need and crave sometimes.

I'm starting to get the message to slow it down a bit and listen to what my body needs.

Funny how things work out sometimes, yes?

 

west

I've been working one too many late nights on a silent and live auction fundraising event for Isabella's school while simultaneously fighting some strange sickness since Sunday evening. Foggy doesn't begin to describe how I'm feeling.

I decided to take the day off today to play on the shoreline with my girls and enjoyed the view with an old friend.

It was a beautiful day here.

Wishing your day was filled with beauty as well.

randomness

Hipstamatic Sunflower

I currently have the beginnings of eight posts saved as drafts. I have much to share but can't find the energy to build the sentences. Coming here to write has been feeling overwhelming the past few months, it's easier to not show up here at all it seems.

My friend Denise started to make lists on her blog. It seems she is in a similar place of tangledness and I realized in her listmaking she has put a name to what I am able to offer right now.

Inspired by her lists here are some very random things going on in my life:

• I am helping put together a fundraiser and silent auction for Isabella's sweet nursery school.
• I have never done anything like this and it has taken over my life in some ways.
• This is also the busiest time of year for Bella Wish orders.
• Mama tired.
• My 9-year wedding anniversary was Tuesday.
• Jimmy and I normally don't exchange gifts.
• I try not to have any expectations on celebratory days such as birthdays, holidays and anniversarys,  but I find I still do.
• I then get dissapointed when my expectation, however low it may be, isn't met.
• Jimmy exceeded my expectation this year.
• It reminded me how much he truly does love me.
• Not because of what he gave me but because he truly heard me when I shared with him that celebrating key dates in our lives is important to me and that I have a strong want to celebrate these times in our lives more.
• But I do really love my gift.
• Mia is sitting up by herself.
• She wants to grab hold of anything and everything within reaching distance.
• She is learning to drink out of a sippy cup by watching me do it first.
• She says "dada"
• She has the best laugh in the world.
• Babies are amazing.
• Isabella is starting to express her feelings verbally.
• She tells me when she is happy, sad, scared or missing her Daddy.
• She weeps when her favorite television and movie characters are sad.
• We are creating a book for her called Isabella's Big Book of Feelings
  
• When we completed one of her stories last night she hugged me and thanked me for allowing her to "draw it out"
• I realized I am teaching her to keep an art journal at two years old.
• I think that's awesome.
• I want to read Portia de Rossi's book The Unbearable Lightness
• Watching her very honest interview on Ellen was a bit unnerving because I felt so much of what she shared.
• I was anorexic and bulemic in my late teens.
• I know to some it seems like you can't be both at the same time.
• But you can.
• I haven't told many people this.
• Not even my family.
• Though I am pretty sure they knew but just never said anything.
• It's scary to write that.
• Because my family reads my blog.
• I have a much healthier relationship with food and body image now.
• I believe sharing our stories is what heals and connects us.
• By us I mean all of us.
• Today I received a package in the mail.
• It was filled with the scent of Nag Champa and colorful rocks painted with beautiful words.
• One of those words was Asshole.
• It made me laugh
• Another one of those words was Embrace
• I heart mermaids
• I wore a long black wig on Halloween.
• It made me realize that I miss having long hair sometimes.
• It also reminded me to keep fun alive every day of the year.
• Nothing brings me more happiness than spending time with Isabella and Mia.
• I truly embrace being their mom.
• The two of them epitomize joy for me.
• Even the occassional moments when they are making me crazy and have me wanting a cocktail at 10:00 am.
• I feel quite blessed.
• I may make more lists.
• I have many more random thoughts to share.

 

hipstamatic saturday morning

 

p.s. thank you for sharing your stories so openly in my previous post. i am collecting and holding all of your wisdom and insight into how injuries really do affect us more than just physically.

twenty seven weeks

Absolutely loving the new Mission Hipstapak for the iPhone in all it's pink-y, blurry, washed out, dusty yumminess, though not as much as I love Mia's sweet and juicy chunky monkey legs.

Thanks for the heads up, Susannah.

*****

On a sidenote, I am looking for a way to organize my 1000 hipstamatic shots. Does anyone know of a free service for posting photos besides Flickr?