Four-story rainforest dome
My brother and his family were in town for Spring Break, so I spent the day with them at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. What a gorgeous day to be in the city! The sunshine and clear skies had me missing when we used to live within walking distance of the park.
My absolute favorite part of the museum was watching the huge, beautiful butterflies flutter about the rainforest dome.
I couldn’t believe how up close and personal we could get to these amazing creatures.
I saw one land on a guy’s shoulder. It was soooo cool!
The 3-D bug movie was cool, too. Unfortunately, I felt some motion sickness during the planetarium show, so I took the opportunity to take a quick nap. 
One of the amazing things about this museum is that it is an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum and rainforest all rolled in one. We got to experience the wonders of the earth, sea, sky and beyond.
View of the DeYoung Museum from the living rooftop
I couldn’t get over how clear it was. All I remember when I used to live in the Richmond was fog, fog and more fog.
The living rooftop is covered with 2.5 acres of native plants.
All in all, it was a great day spending time with nature and the family! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend.
Britt Bravo tagged me in a meme called “five-a-day” which was started to encourage mental wellbeing.
Here are my top five things to do every day (or every week) to stay mentally healthy:
- Yoga. Yoga is an amazing stress reliever and helps to clear my mind, too. Can’t beat yoga bliss from Sean’s class at Namaste Yoga and Laura’s class at Monkey Yoga. Or simply do what Larry Schultz from my It’s Yoga teacher training calls the “minimum daily requirement” – five Sun Salutation A’s and five Sun Salutation B’s (which fits nicely with the “five-a-day” theme!).
- Getting up without an alarm clock. This has been one of the biggest benefit of working for myself! I feel so much better mentally and physically now that I wake up according to my own rhythms. On those rare occasions when I do have to get up early, I use my BioBrite SunRise Clock.
- Surrounding myself with beauty. One of my core value strings is Beauty / Creativity / Creating Beauty / Style / Inspiration / Self Expression / Uniqueness / Emotions. I feel so much better when I take in the beauty that’s all around me – whether that be admiring nature while I’m walking my dog, reading a touching story, appreciating inspiring artwork or creating art of my own.
- Reflecting on what I am grateful for. This always helps me put things in perspective. I usually include something I’m grateful for when I journal in the morning.
- Reading. Learning and personal growth are also core values of mine. So, I’m always reading a self-help and/or business book and something inspirational and creative.
I’m tagging:
- Jamie Ridler
- Leah Piken Kolidas
- Jennifer Moore
- Ananda Leeke
- YOU!
Now off to yoga class! Namaste.
While walking Emmett this evening, a tree caught my eye. The golden leaves looked so stunning against the midnight blue of the sky. That inspired my art for today.
I recently finished Keri Smith’s latest book How to be an Explorer of the World and enjoyed her simple suggestions for appreciating the beauty all around us in our day-to-day lives. She encourages us to pay attention to our senses. As an “N” (Intuiting preference) on the MBTI, I tend to notice patterns, themes and meaning – more of the intangible qualities. What I got out of reading this book were ideas to cultivate more “S” (Sensing) ways of taking in information like observing specific, concrete details and literal data.
I gathered fallen leaves and then took them home to do crayon rubbings. I practiced my sensing muscle by trying to describe specific details like color and texture. I look forward to more exploration of the world!
Who knew that I had a wild blackberry bramble in my backyard?! Well, my next door neighbor did. This weekend, she was trimming some of the vines that had grown over on to her side of the fence. She had a large basket full of branches brimming with berries and she offered me some to me.
As I picked the luscious, dark jewels from their prickly stems, I was amazed that this succulent fruit was right in my backyard (hidden behind a big Camellia bush to be exact!).
I enjoyed a handful of the berries on my yummy waffle breakfast!
This impromptu harvest of delightful berries reminds me that there are often juicy surprises just ripe for the pickin’ right in front of us if we’re willing to look.
I know it’s not officially winter yet, but the chill is in the air, the wind is blustery and so many people I know are coming down with colds. Winter slows us down. Gives us time to hibernate. Reflect. The colder nights remind us to take care of ourselves. To bundle up and to protect what we hold dear. It’s a time to integrate all that we’ve grown and harvested throughout the year.
I’ve been feeling slower and more tired and I tried to capture that in this piece. I used gray and black oil pastels. As I was blending the colors off the corners of the pages, I saw this cool shadow effect on the paper underneath. So, I tore up scrap paper to smudge a shadowy outline of a tree. That’s how I’ve been feeling the past few days – a little fuzzy around the edges.
[tags]National Blog Posting Month, NaBloPoMo, Art Every Day, winter[/tags]
