Jessica replied with a link to this site about the Before I Die project. Boards are posted in cities around the world (there’s one in San Antonio, which I didn’t know) and people can walk up and write what they’d like to do before they die. When the board gets full, it’s wiped clean and then everyone starts over.

Jessica and I were talking about how cool it would be to do something like that during Fiesta. Sadly, we didn’t actually have the idea in time to make a giant board somewhere, so we decided to do little ones instead. “Viva Fiesta!” is San Antonio’s cheer during the 11-day celebration. That’s “Long live Fiesta!”, literally, but it’s also “Yay Fiesta!” “We love Fiesta!” “Fiesta rocks!”, etc.

Thus was born the idea of VIVA Boards.

I had a couple of blank canvases at home, so I took Jessica’s design request for her board and went to town:

My board, first round of paint.

Second round. Yay… I mean… viva! stripes!

Added the prompt…

Jessica’s board.

So, during Fiesta, Jessica and I walked around with our boards and invited people to Viva! things. It could be whatever they wanted, just something that they liked, or loved, or made them happy, or that they wanted to celebrate. By the last day of Fiesta, our boards looked like this:

Hooray!  Our boards make me so happy. (I wrote “Viva VIVA Boards!” on Jessica’s.)

It would be super cool if next year we found a space to put a giant, colorful VIVA board and people could just walk up and write on it during Fiesta. I have no idea what we’d do with it when Fiesta was over… but that’s a problem to be solved another day. In the meantime, I’m going to frame my board and either put it up in my apartment or at the office. A lot of my coworkers wrote on the board, so it would be cool for them to come visit it if they need a little pick-me-up throughout the year.

That’s The VIVA Project… a new Fiesta tradition!

The show.

The artist, pointing to his work.

A closer shot. (The orange thing is part of a piece in front of it. I didn’t want to mess it up by moving it.)

My parents’ neighbor (on the left), who is an artist and art teacher, my nephew, and his art teacher (on the right.)

The piece is called “Leaf Prints.” I’m totally biased, of course, but I think it’s great. I was big into art at his age (he’s in first grade) and still dabble with my paints every once in a while, not to mention the whole mandala thing. Art is fabulous. I hope my nephew continues to do it as long as he loves it. I hope outside forces don’t influence him to give it up when he doesn’t really want to. And I really, really hope I get to see what he can do as he gets older.

“Once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

~ from “The Velveteen Rabbit”  by Margery Williams

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Stef

Sheltering, watching,

casting light and shadow on

the stories below.

Happy National Haiku Day! Write one in the comments, will ya?

The scene. On Day 1, there are easily twice as many books.

I always look for authors I like or books I’ve heard of that sound interesting, but by bag day those are pretty much snapped up. My choices, then, are made by title alone. If it’s clever or interesting, I’ll read the blurb on the back of the book. If I’m still interested, I’ll buy. A lot of people aren’t as self-disciplined at used book sales because there’s so little risk involved. Even if you hate a book, you’re only out 50 cents. Not me, and for two reasons — 1) I have a stack of books from sales past that I haven’t even read yet, and 2) I’m inherently cheap.

Here are this year’s finds:

Chosen because of a quote on the back: “It’s so primal, so dangerous, it might be the most ingenious book I’ve ever read.” Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Chosen because I don’t have enough Twain.

Chosen because I generally enjoy contemporary re-imaginings of classics.

Chosen because the title sounds super appealing. My friend endorsed it, too.

“Today a new sun rises for me;

everything lives, everything is animated,

everything seems to speak to me of my passion,

everything invites me to cherish it.”

~ Anne de Lenclos

A co-worker’s mother-in-law passed away earlier this year, and as they were cleaning out her apartment they offered some of her furniture to anybody they knew who might be able to use it. I received a bookshelf. (Shocking that I would need/want one, right?) It was one of those cheap, put-it-together-yourself fake wood ones, so I decided to give it a two-day makeover. Check it out:

Day 1 materials: black latex paint, roller, brush, tray, sandpaper.

Before.

Two rounds of sanding.

First coat.

Second coat.

Third coat.

I let that dry on my patio overnight. You’re probably thinking, um… Stef? You missed a spot, or four. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the plan. For the backs of each shelf, I borrowed from my mom’s book of cleverness. See Day 2:

Day 2 materials: tape measure, pencil, tape, scissors (but I actually used a box cutter), wrapping paper from Target’s Dollar Spot, foam core board.

I measured and cut four pieces of board to fit against the back of the shelves, wrapped each one in the paper and…

Ta da!

The boards just sit in the shelves, so if I feel a major redesign of my bedroom coming on (right now it has a black-and-white thing happening), I can just take them out, find different paper and pop them back in. Easy cheesy.

Day 1 materials added up to $23; Day 2, $9 (boards and paper only; I had the rest). The shelf was free. So, for just over $30 and maybe 4 total hours of work, I have a spiffy bookshelf. Happy birthday to me!

“Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit.”

~ Unknown

xoxo,

Stef

“If I knew then what I know now, I still wouldn’t do anything differently. Sure, I could have saved a lot of time, trouble, and even some lives, but if it had happened any differently, the truth might never have been told.

The truth is, somewhere along the way this journey changed from a race to find a cure into a fight to save my family. And my family desperately needed saving.

The truth is, the way things happened is the way they were meant to happen. I have to keep telling myself that. Because as I watch the casket lower into the ground and see the grief on his family’s faces, it would be really easy to want to go back and change everything.”

That’s an excerpt from my book’s sequel, and it’s Shannon’s birthday present to you.