Why I Travel

I found this picture during one of my hour long pinterest fixes. Okay, let's get real...it was more than an hour. But I loved the quote and picture and it just fit me so well so I wanted to share it with you. It's my new motto now. This is why I travel.

Falling for Fall.

Can you believe it’s the end of September already? It seems like just yesterday when I was making my New Year’s resolutions. And now it’s time for me to listen to Christmas music again!!! Hahaha I know you’re thinking it’s a little early for that, but every year like clockwork I get that Christmas itch and I gotta scratch it…preferably with the awesome Christmas station on Pandora. Anyways…back to September…it’s also the start of hunting season! I haven’t seen my little brother for weeks. Usually he’s out hunting til dark, and if he is home he blends in around the house with his camo and face paint still on.

 

I have been out with him a couple times now to help him “spot” deer. But it’s more like a free ride to take billions of pictures. He knows all of the prairie trails and roads to nowhere…to stuff I’ve never seen before! These prairie trails are more like cow trails but he’s driving so I won’t be the one in trouble when the pickup falls apart. How did pioneers make it in covered wagons? If I had made it this far west and came upon the badlands, I’d drop everything and build my soddie right there.

 

But they do lead you to magical places!

 

We’re always out when it’s later, because I have to be an adult and actually work. But I do get to capture a lot of sunsets so that’s okay.

The clouds never disappoint in ND.

I was supposed to be watching for a buck...but the sunset was a little more interesting to me...oops!

He off-roaded up a hill so I could take this one. What a good brother.

 

Pretty soon my pics will be filled with snow! And everyone else will be listening to Christmas music too! Ahh winter how I love thee…I will see you soon.

Inspiration in the Weirdest Places

Tis the season of change! Man-oh-man have things been changing! It’s finally cooling off around here and the leaves are turning gold! I think the Manfriend is sick of me going off about getting to wear scarves and boots again. At least his level of patience hasn’t changed yet haha…

My family will also be moving soon, into a much bigger house on a much bigger piece of land that’s surrounded by a MUCH BIGGER range of landscape for me to explore and photograph and be inspired by. My little business is doing well and I’m super excited to have my first ad in COWGIRL Magazine this month! Yeedoggy!

One thing that hasn’t changed is my addiction to traveling. Holy buckaroos do I go. I just got back from a GIANT 10 day trip with my Mum and aunt and two cousins. Let me show you a map of where we went:

 

Yes we trekked from little town North Dakota all the way down to Santa Fe, NM and back again. And we survived. And even got a little turquoise along the way. Yeah, I’d say the trip was a success! There’s so many things to tell you about what we did…it would take forever! So I’ll just show you some of my favorite things in pictures…

Our cabin we stayed at near Antonito, CO

They have humming birds all over down there!

Grand scenery everywhere you look!

Ate lunch at the Historic Strater Hotel in Durango, CO

We saw a UFO Lookout Tower and all the cattle signs had something extra!

Taos was really cool! I don't have any pics of Sante Fe :(...I must've been in awe and forgot to snap any!

My favorite part of the trip was finally getting to see the ranch that my cousin works at. Rainbow Trout Ranch, Antonito, CO. Beautiful!!! I even got to use it as a backdrop for another photoshoot. It was perfect...

Gosh the Southwest was so amazing...I got so many ideas for things to make! I even snapped pictures in the bathrooms I was in. That sounded weird. But I had to! I think I will have to make an "Outlaw" jewelry line inspired by these two pics I took in random bathrooms:

Hard to read (darn phone camera!) but it says "When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free"

Who doesn't love vintage Indian portraits? AMAZING!

A handful of pretty pics...

Has this summer gone by fast or what? It’s almost August for Pete’s sake! I try to think back and remember what I’ve been doing but it’s a blur! There’s been crafting and weddings and parties and more crafting. And HEAT. This is about the time where I start wishing for winter. I want to wear my sweaters galdangit and throw a couple (hundred) snowballs!

But then I stop myself because I know wishing for time to go by faster is a major no-no. I’m usually the one spouting off about relishing small pleasures and living in every moment. But I guess I tend to forget that more often than not. Luckily I have a great Manfriend that allows me to divulge in my random spurts of “living in the moment”. This time I got a bug to start taking photos again, and he abidingly agreed to drive me around to find some hidden landscape treasures.

He knows all the little back roads and prairie trails so he’s basically the perfect picture taking chauffer. He even minds my sudden STOP HERE’s and the occasional BACK UP THREE INCHES commands. Yeah I’ve got it made…and I know it…because I don’t take anything for granted…riiiiiiiight…

Anyways I want to share some of the photos I snapped while on our little expedition. Enjoy these little moments (with a vintage twist!) frozen in time...

Love wild sunflowers...

I try to imagine what this schoolhouse was like when it still had kids running around...I wonder how many could fit in there?

Pretty waves

So cute...

Pretty sunset to end the day...

A Walk in Pictures

A little while ago I got to go on a walk to Birnt Hills Overlook. I still think North Dakota has some of the most beautiful sunsets! Here is my walk in pictures, so if you haven’t been here you can see what it looks like! It was a perfect and still night…

Cattle on the road to the Overlook

Trailhead

And you're off! It's a quarter mile walk to the point.

And this is what you get to see at the end...

Lake Sakakawea

This little guy bid us farewell...

Inspiration is everywhere...

Happy June! My how this year is flying by! The weather here in Western ND is finally clearing up and being nice to us. Besides a few hundred rain storms…we’ve now got sunshine and tweetie birds! Inspiration is all around me outside during this beautiful time of year. Except…wait a minute…I’m not outside! My job requires a desk and computer.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job but sometimes a girl just has to roll around in the grass and run wild and do ballerina jumps over logs. Well…what I picture as ballerina jumps anyways…

So, getting to my point…since I’m sitting on a computer all day long and not able to ramble about in the wilderness, I have to find new places for inspiration. Inspiration for my jewelry of course!

One day I stumbled upon a natural light photographer whose horse photos immediately caught my eye. I got even more interested when I saw that it was taken in ND!!! Her name is Aimee Schirado and she owns Wildflower Photography.

I actually found her picture on Wrangler Western’s page. They had us all posting western photos one day and hers stood out to me more than any of them.

Isn’t it just lovely?!

The colors and composition are what dreams are made of! And I can’t get over the beautiful mustang. How can you not be inspired by this wistful moment captured on the ND prairie? And inspired I was!!! I had to create something that could remind me of that photo. Something that would give me those same dreamy feelings when worn.



So here is my Nakota Mustang Necklace brought to life...



I used bluegreen turquoise nuggets to represent the sky and grass.



To represent the pretty mustang, I used silver and pyrite beads.

To represent the horse more I added a little "horse tail" at the bottom of the necklace.

This necklace will be in my booth at Art in the Park on the 22nd.

Inspiration is everywhere you look…you just have to open your eyes!

Thank you Aimee for sharing this photo! I'm so happy I found it. Visit Wildflower Photography to see some more amazing photos!

Photo-Shoot Fun!

I hope everyone has that cousin, the one who is basically a sister. The one who is close to you in age and shares her million Barbies with you. I have a cousin like that. We practically grew up together.

You could usually find us sleeping in a tent in the back yard, or playing Tomb Raider on the PlayStation. Well…she was playing the game, and I was screaming about the giant Yeti or bear or wolf that always came out of nowhere. Or we would be making home movies of Bounty paper towel commercials or a cooking show about how to make a summer sausage sandwich. Yes we were awesome.

Now that we’re older, we have to live far apart. But when we get together we still have a grand ol’ time. Like last weekend. I had asked her if she’d like to be a model for my new jewelry and she was coming home so it was perfect!

Of course she did her part of bringing her boots and rope and clothes. But I, on the other hand, was lucky that my camera was already charged! So we gathered everything in my little car and we took off in search of some photo-shoot worthy scenery.

Of course we ended up at an old barn! Which turned out to be a perfect setting to snap some slightly cheesy but fun photos. Of course it’s hard to be serious when it’s just you and your cousin…

She's going to kill me.

But you can't just show the chic serious photos...

You've got to laugh at the behind-the-scene shots too!

After the shoot we really didn't think we got any good photos. But when I went to edit them, there were some really good ones...some even showed my jewelry haha...(I had a hard time focusing on the actual jewelry...I wanted to include the entire landscape, you know?!)

It turned out to be a great shoot and a fun day! This weekend we might be having another little shoot so look for more pictures on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/hangitontheline (You can see the rest of this shoot's pictures there too, plus new projects I'm working on!)

So even though we're "old" now and we live far apart we can still have fun like we used to. That's what family is for! We'll always be those little girls playing Lara Croft and Natalie Danger Mudd and running around our grandparent's huge pine trees and breaking tree swings. Oh wait...that last one was me. I'm still scared of swings hung by ropes...

When I grow up...

When I was little, I was a huge rock collector. Anywhere I’d go, if there was a gravel driveway, I’d be out there bent over and picking up any little pebble and stone that caught my eye. I even thought I was going to be a geologist when I grew up. It was intense. I guarded my rock collection like a mother bear guards her cubs. If my little brother even tried looking at my rocks I’d hunch up and hiss then slink away. Okay I wasn’t that bad…maybe…but you get the idea.

One of my favorite memories about rock collecting was going with my dad to check on wells. Not to look at gauges with him or to observe the stinky black stuff pumping out of the earth, but to stare at the pink rock that made up the location. Scoria. North Dakota is filled with it and it is amazing! When you first glance at it, it looks pretty boring. It’s not sparkly or spotted like granite and it doesn’t have beautiful colors and designs like agates. It’s just chalky and pink. But when you’re only 3 foot something and you love rocks, none of that stops you from hunkering down and digging into the long dikes surrounding tanks. And I found something magical! Unbelievable! Something I had only seen in museums!

What was it you ask? Fossils! Fossils and fossils and more fossils. When you first start looking it’s hard to spot, but once you know what to look for, you can just walk along and pluck up the ancient impressions. I had ziplock bags full of scoria with all different types of leaves on them. I even found a dragonfly fossil once. That was a day for the history books!

It’s funny how things like that mean so much to you when you are little. I try to channel that kind of enthusiasm now but I still find myself sitting on the couch sipping my ginger ale with a straw. Where has my passion gone? I blame responsibility. I have no time to collect and categorize my rocks…I have to go to work and I have to wash my car and I have to comb my hair. Absurd! Haha but lately I have been trying to channel my long lost inner child.

Last Friday, my family and I were out at our new house location planting trees. And it just so happens that our new road is made of that beautiful pink, chalky rock. SCORIA! YIPPEE! So while my dad was waiting for me to bring him a fence post to string our planting line, I was lost in that familiar world…overwhelmed with curiosity and a need to find something to fill another page in my history book.

That little dot is my father...waiting for another fence post...responsibility, schmonsibility.

At first I was dismayed…have I lost my touch? Was I just imagining those delicate veins and stems pressed into the hard stone when I was 5? Maybe this batch of scoria is leafless.

But alas! A shape caught my eye…and sure enough, as I dug the chunk of scoria up, I could see the faint impression of a leaf carved into the surface. The familiar feeling of victory was back. And I had to find more!

After my fourth fossil, I felt I’d better go help the family plant trees before I got disowned. But for a little while I got to be 5 again, giddy with excitement. I think I’ll bring my inner child out more…but don’t worry…I’ll still comb my hair.

If I could ride the clouds...

Happy May Day! I just love the month of May...besides it being my birthday month (Yahoo!)... it's when I can really tell that warm weather is here to stay and there's no more dreary winter days to put up with. May just gives me the travel bug and makes me want to get going!

Last weekend the manfriend and I made a very quick trip to Bozeman, MT. I wanted to see the mountains so bad, and since it was raining he couldn't farm anyways. PERFECT TIMING for a road trip! It was so much fun to get away from the busy oil boom and to see the glorious Rocky Mountains. Those dang mountains do something to me...there is so much inspiration radiating from every little teeny tiny pebble, I can't stand it! When I was looking through some of the pictures I took I couldn’t help but stare at the clouds. I think clouds make a picture. So…I had to write a little poem to show my love for those fluffy formations. Don’t pay attention to the bad grammar (my writing is terrible), just let your imagination take you for a ride on the clouds…

If I could ride the clouds,

I’d never leave the sky.

I’d wake up every morning,

And watch the birdies flying by.

I’d touch the tips of mountains,

And with the wind I’d sing.

I’d dance with the Northern lights,

How much joy that would bring!

I would call to the wild horses,

And they would whinny back.

There would be no hurry,

No time to keep track.

At night I’d soar up high,

And count the stars all around.

Then catch some fireflies,

As I drifted back down.

If I could ride the clouds,

I’d never leave the sky.

I’d live my life in peace,

Knowing angels were nearby.

A Wild West Weekend

It must’ve been a sign, me talking about my brother in the last post and his obsession with trapping. Because this weekend, things got even more extreme!

It was a normal Saturday, I was up watching a little Pride and Prejudice (of course) when I got a call from my bro who was ‘out in the field’ trapping. When he started talking I remember thinking to myself…he hasn’t been this excited since he was 5! (He’s a teenager now you know…can't show emotion.)

“You’ll never guess the luck I had on my trapping line! I caught a coyote AND a mountain lion!”

Now when we call western ND the ‘wild west’ we are usually referring to the recent influx of people but I think we need to start including wild animals! There have been many sightings of big cats around this country but I never thought I’d see one. So I was very excited to get the chance to be up close and personal with such an allusive beast!

Of course, trapping mountain lions isn’t legal in ND so we had to call the game warden. But first we had to get the cat out of the bottom of the coulee so he could come pick it up! Haha you should be glad you weren’t there to see that struggle…it seems my brother and I are always in these awkward situations!

I also want to state, that once you climb that hill out of the coulee, you are right by my parent's new house they are buildling. So basically this means when any of us go hiking we will be packing our pistols. And large dogs. And maybe some chainmail. I guess it's something you have to deal with to get a view of the Badlands out your living room window.
 

 
After about half an hour we made it out of the coulee to the pickup. He weighed a ton! Well, it felt like a ton and I'm still sore!
 

 
The mighty hunter had to pose...boys (insert eye roll)...I definitely wouldn't want that kitty hunting me. I also forgot to mention that we went to the movie The Grey the night before this. Yeah...that did not help at all carrying that cat through the trees. I swore I heard howling...

A foxy fable: Fur real or faux?

Do you have a little brother? I do. Sometimes we are the best of friends and sometimes we are at each other’s throats. Usually when we aren’t out to get each other, we go hunting. Or I go with him to check his traps. My bro is an intense trapper. It’s his ‘job’ he says. In truth he just likes to pet anything made of fur I think.

Packin' all his trapping gear



Lure doesn't smell that bad...



OKAY! Maybe it does...

He has tons of movies and books on trapping. Movies that even I’ve seen at least three times…that’s how much he watches them. And the only way to get him to read is if it’s a book on how to catch any little furry critter under the sun. One night he told me a story from one of his trapping books, about a fox who was being hunted.

Apparently this fox climbed atop the back of a sheep and rode on it to safety, leaving behind no scent or tracks for the hunters and hounds to follow. Now me being an ‘adult’…completely took the bait and believed the story! How smart is that fox!?!

If you have seen the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox, you should believe this story too. (If you haven’t seen it, get to it! So good!) I couldn’t get that clever fox out of my head, real or not, it’s such a cute story. That night I had to draw a little visual for myself…




Today I was looking through my phone and saw this picture I took of my sketch. So I decided to make something that I could look at all the time and remember the fable.

Time to bust out the polymer clay again! Here is my little DIY clay figurine of the fox and sheep…a fun little project for kiddies or yourself--if you're an 'adult' like me!

To make the texture for the wooly sheep's body, I rolled the clay on the kitchen's textured wall.

I decided on a black faced sheep, they are my favorite! Poke holes for the legs, makes it easier to attach them.

I had to mix some clay to get the right color for my foxy.

This pic shows skoring. To make a strong bond between two pieces of clay, scratch both pieces where they are going to touch and then attach them.

They are ready to bake @ 250 degrees for 15 minutes.

I made some grass for them to bound upon, trees would be fun in the background too!

Here they are, baked and glued to the wire and ready to escape the hounds!

Now I can always remember this foxy fable, true or not...it's still a fun story!