It's my Etsyversary!

I love Coney Island
Originally uploaded by brightnewthings

Yep, I almost missed it! BNT has been a photo sellin' entity for one year and two weeks. I'm not exactly a house hold name yet, but feedback has been good, and the sales I've made have been from people who seem to really enjoy my work. I suppose you have to, if you are gonna put it on your wall, right? And I appreciate deeply every single person who has purchased a print, hearted my shop, or dropped me a convo to tell me how much they like my work. Nothing makes me happier than when my work touches someone.

To celebrate: from now until March 11th, buy any print in my shop and receive free shipping (refunded through Paypal after you have completed checkout and payment.)

And a very special thank you to all of my friends who have featured me in blogs or treasuries or by word of mouth and helped me land each and every one of those sales. You guys are the raddest.

Early Taste of Springtime. At least, in my house.

Springtime in the San Fernando Valley can be elusive. I like to describe our weather like this: on a normal year, we have 6 months of hellishly hot weather, followed by three months of smoky, hellishly hot weather (thank you, wildfires,) followed by a month of extremely windy, hellishly hot weather, followed by a month and a half of overcast, surprisingly chilly days. If it's an El Nino year, make that a month and a half of flash floods. Spring, then, is a dreamy blink of an eye that lasts as long as it takes the blooms of the Jacaranda to appear and then drop in a rain of purple flowers.

I love Springtime and always try to prolong it's visit here by trying to grow things year round in my kitchen garden window. Most of the year is a failure for everything except basil, my aloe, and a few other things that seem to thrive in the heat. This year, that included a little pot of bell peppers I grew from seed. I don't know if it was the pot, or the soil, or the seeds, but none of them got bigger than a golf ball.

The El Nino rains also brought my usually brown and dry back patio to life: lavendar, nasturtium and Oxalis Shamrocks are growing like weeds. Which two of them are. But still. Nothing is blooming yet, it's still too early. At Imbolc I brought in some clippings to Spring the joint up a bit.

What a change it made to my mood, to be surrounded by lovely green things. Happy Springtime to you, whenever it gets there!