I want to know you

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.

Ryan O’Connell, I Want To Know You 

via...that kind of woman

WTC Tallest Building in New York

Yes! EarthCam released a time lapse video showing construction of the World Trade Center from 2004-2012.




via...andrew sullivan

Steve Jobs....1955-2011

Wow so hard to believe he is gone. One of my husbands favorite visionaries ever. If you lived in my house you heard about Steve Jobs often. I was slow coming to Apple products but one of my very favorite materialistic things I own now is my iPhone. It is hard to believe I can do so many things with one little phone. It is like my right hand and I would have a very hard time living without it. He was much more then his products though and an inspiration to so many.
This is one of my favorite quotes from him. Excerpt from his Stanford University commencement address, 2005. His entire moving speech here.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -Steve Jobs


photos: New York Times

inspiration

But I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.    Olivia Wilde

inspiration

cardboard box birthday party

This is one of the most unique and fun ideas I have seen for a birthday party from Hello Lucky. It is really perfect too, as we all know one of the favorite things toddlers like to do is play in empty cardboard boxes. The mom got the inspiration for this party when she saw her twin boys playing in a Huggies box. I thought about this mom being inspired when next coming across this great quote via Marvelous Kiddo.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

- Chuck Close

via: makingitlovely

obsessing

I need to frame this and put in on my desk so I can stare at this and remember it when I start obsessing about negative stuff.
via: petitesunday

change

via: astrongaesthetic

friend

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.


~Edith Wharton

via: {whimsicalities}

egypt

I have been riveted by the coverage of Egypt in the last several days. This video of a young protester sums up well what the people of Egypt are trying to obtain in their country. Watching all the masses of people protest to gain basic freedoms {that we tend to take for granted in America} is inspiring. The government has shut down their internet and doing everything they can to make them miserable but nothing is deterring them. They will not stop protesting until their leader Mubarak leaves the country and they are allowed to vote in the next election for their own leader, not a fake election where Mubarak always wins. Christopher Hitchens {one of favorite writers} wrote a great article in Slate today on why people are driven to rise up against dictators as the Egyptian people are doing now. This is my favorite passage from it....

"People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama's better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory."

aware

From here

quote

mark twain

A great Mark Twain quote that is a favorite of Jon Hamm's from Mad Men. This and some great pictures from behind the set at Mad Men via Rolling Stone
via: say yes to hoboken

life is precious

I read about Marija a design blogger on facebook this morning via Erin. It is so sad. I had never read her blog but wish I had. I did read several of her posts today. I loved reading about her wonderful family and enjoyed her interesting writing and design thoughts. Her husband wrote a beautiful post about their life together here. It really reminds you to treasure life and our loved ones every day.

missing you

via: i can read

toms

I need to buy a pair of Toms. I love them. When you buy a pair they give another pair to a child in need. This cute pair of Toms was bought by a girl who as you can see decorated them and sent them back to give to a needy child. So sweet!

sweet stories

via: thebedlamandbeefy via: trufflegirls

moving on

via: great-quotes

lost love

via: teresca

inspiring words

"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out." Roger Ebert

Esquire magazine has an amazing story out about the famous film critic Roger Ebert and his battle with cancer and how it has affected his life. So inspiring it made me cry, not out of sorrow for him but in awe of him.