a moment to be still

These are pictures from May... when the peonies were in full bloom, and it had just gotten warm enough to open up all the windows and have the ceiling fan on all day and night.  I'd been lying on my couch eating a coconut poscicle in a rare moment of stillness before my painting students were due to arrive, and I decided that after I finished the popscicle I would get out my camera and take some pictures to remember the serenity and happiness I felt while sitting quietly in the spring sun and shadows in my apartment.  Now it is late August, and the crickets have already started their nighttime singing, heralding the coming of Fall.  Here are some nice thoughts if you have a moment to be still:

"The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest of all the details of daily life." 

-- William Morris

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

-- Virginia Woolf

"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing."

-- William Butler Yeats

mariapace.com

I'd just like to officially announce that I designed and published a real website!  Please do check it out... and share it with others if you like it... and let me know if you have any suggestions... and please look at it again every so often because I'll be adding more photos and features (like an on-line shop) with time!

MARIAPACE.COM

Wednesday, mid-morning

What's better than having two great girls painting watercolors at your table, listening to ABBA with all the windows open on a summer morning that feels like fall???

food festival in Orange, 2013

The food festival is just two days away!  And I'm almost ready.  I'll be selling kitchen towels, cloth napkins, tablecloths, note cards and lavender sachets.  I'll finish a few more kitchen towels today, and then I can spend tomorrow doing all the fine tuning stuff... like getting change at the bank, making a final draft of my inventory list, and doing a mock set up of my tent so that things will flow more easily at 6:30 Saturday morning.  If things go like they usually do, I'll be so excited that I won't sleep very well at all on Friday night. Thankfully this has been a great year for cucumbers... so I can put some cold homegrown cucumber slices on my eyes on Saturday morning before leaving for the festival.

Hope you can come!  It's so much fun... lots to taste and see and hear.  Handmade cutting boards from the very talented Tina Boy, hickory syrup, local honey, incredible homemade popsicles, artisan cheeses, handmade sausages, pottery, cooking demonstrations, local fresh rainbow trout, plants, specialty cookbooks, mushroom growing kits, Virginia grown peanuts and grape juice, herbal teas... Blue Mountain Brewery and Albemarle Cider Works, local wine... grass fed beef, wood oven fired pizza... lavender lemonade... live music... How could you miss it??!!??

9 AM - 6 PM, August 10th
Taylor Park, Orange, VA

My post and some pictures from last year's food festival