Thursday, June 17, 2010

Being 31





I turned 31 this last weekend.
It freaked me out a little bit because I still remember my 21st birthday pretty clearly.

My 21st birthday wasn't anything exciting. No trips to Vegas. No crazy forgotten drunken nights. I rollerbladed in a church parking lot at midnight after having my first and only cocktail (which I thought tasted sour and bad).


A decade later, I am 31.

I feel good being in my thirties.
I know who I am, what my goals are, and have started to establish my gifts in the world.

The world tries to make me feel paranoid about having babies, (is a biological clock a real thing? that is for a blog in and of itself), getting married, owning a house. Just in the last week I have known four friends that have walked down the aisle. And they were all about seven years younger than me.

At first this fact really freaked me out. Orange County men typically like women in their twenties. I am definitely past that place. Beautiful women with the perfect liposuctioned bodies run around Southern California. I have natural curves that do not need a silicone insert.

I started seeing wrinkles around my eyes this year..and the skin on my face is definitely not as tight as it used to be. The media tries to tell me I will end up alone if I don't end up settling down soon!


But you know what.... I feel like I am about 24 years old.
I was on the beach with a bunch of twenty somethings last week and they referred to me in a conversation as "People our age................"
I smiled inside.

The key to my youth is love. I feel love for my friends, family, and anyone who has ever entered my life. I don't hold on to bitterness or anger. I may hold a grudge for a short timeframe, but then I let it go. It's not worth it. I watch my three year old niece and try to pattern my mindset after hers. She is all about happiness, color, taking time for tea parties, and love. Maybe that's why she and I have such a great connection. I allow the little Amanda to survive forever. Take time to create a tea party even if I have to create the imaginary tea cups. Even when my skin gets wrinkly, my inner little girl will still dance playfully in her new skin.


I hope that every year I will collect a new sparkle to add to my eyes.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

My Paintings :)



I don't know why I have ignored painting for so long.
It's something I have always loved to do.
So I've made a promise to myself now to start painting again!
This was my first painting.
My art teacher at FIDM had told me my paintings
reminded him of Gustav Klimt's work..
So that is the artist I used as my inspiration for this one.
It is a mixed media collage.
The hair - pasta noodles.
The paint-metallics and acrylic.
The silver-believe it or not, it is silver plumber's tape from ACE Hardware.
I etched swirly fun shapes into the plumbers tape with a sharp object.
I also had a ball at the craft store finding all kinds of fun metallic accents to add to my painting.

This was fun. I am going to do it again :)