Will Work for Food Project: The Ottawa Art Gallery Community Art Garden

I promise I’ll be back with more actual blog posts in the very near future (oy, my life right now!) but in the interim, I’m cheating and copying verbatim this press release from the Ottawa Art Gallery about an awesome new project they’ve launched: The Ottawa Art Gallery Community Art Garden!

I know, I love it too! Here’s the deets:

Will Work for Food Project: The Ottawa Art Gallery Community Art Garden is underway!

May 25, 2011—OTTAWA—Over the next few weeks, the Arts Court lawn at Daly and Nicolas Streets will transform into a lush, colourful, edible, community collaboration.

Jennifer Cook is one of two artists selected by a jury in February after a call went out for artists to propose how they would involve the community in growing food at the gallery. She has drawn up designs for a series of vegetable gardens, referencing culinary themes, colour combinations and the patterns of traditional quilts.

With the help of clients at Operation Come Home, Cook started seeds indoors, and is ready to prepare the garden site into which these baby plants and many different vegetable seeds will be grown.

The intention of Cook’s garden is to provide a site for the public to learn how to grow food, contribute their food-growing knowledge, and work alongside the artist throughout the growing and harvesting season. Workshops will be held during the summer and fall, and will cover both food and art-making activities.

Food from the garden will be shared with individual participants, The Ottawa Mission and Operation Come Home.

Cook is hoping the community will roll up their sleeves and dig in for the first stage of the garden construction – A Community Work Bee.

Community Work Bee – Soil Delivery Day
Friday May 27th

Ottawa Art Gallery (Arts Court)
2 Daly Avenue
9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

RAIN OR SHINE

Come by and lend a helping hand as we mound and shape the soil into garden beds. Bring your tools and gloves—donations of garden implements are welcome.

Food is being provided by the professional kitchen at The Ottawa Mission, thanks to Chef Ric.

The Ottawa Art Gallery is greatful for the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Community Foundation of Ottawa, without whom this project would not be possible.

IHF Challenge: Yellow

This week’s theme on the I Heart Faces photography challenge is yellow. I truly love yellow – I think it’s my favourite colour. I wanted to post this picture so I could play along. I’ve been following I Heart Faces forever, but this is my first submission — yay!

125:365 Puddle jumper

To see some really amazing contributions, as well as some great tips and tutorials – or to play along yourself! – check them out:

Edited to add: Wheeeee!! I won!! Well, actually, I came in second place, but with nearly 450 amazing entries, I’m pretty happy with that.

Project 365: A wet week with a sunny ending

I am on a picture-taking tear these days, so much so that I keep filling up the hard drive on our laptop and have to regularly pull the pictures off the computer and store them in a separate hard drive. And life has been so busy, while I’m finding the time to take the pictures, finding time to sort through them and edit them is proving a bit of a challenge. I can haz six more hours each day, please?

I already showed you Tristan’s soggy victory at the 5K race this week, but he earned a second mention with his stoic endurance! In case you missed it, he ran his first-ever race last Saturday in the cold and pouring rain. This is about four feet before the finish line, with an impressive time of just over 30 minutes.

142:365 Goode Run (1 of 6)

Lucas didn’t run any races, but he did enjoy exploring the worms that have been loving this wet weather. Every time we leave the house now, we go through the same litany:

“Mom, robins eat worms.”
“That’s right, Lucas.”
“And worms eat dirt!”
“That’s right, Lucas.”
“So it’s like the robins are eating dirt!” (maniacal laughter)
“Well, kind of.”
“But boys don’t eat dirt.”
“That’s right, Lucas.”
“And boys don’t eat worms.”
“That’s right, Lucas.”

I give it even odds that before the end of the spring, he’s tasted both…

144:365 Wormy kind of day

I haven’t taken too many TtV shots lately because — gasp!! — my contraption doesn’t fit properly with my new camera. I was out in the garden taking pictures with both this weekend, and while I didn’t like any of the flower TtV shots I took, I did like this one. I call it “the tools of her trade.” It’s everything I need to make me happy on a Sunday afternoon — coffee, camera, and outside!

143:365 The tools of her trade

I continue to take a lot of pictures in the garden. Whomever planted it had a wonderful sense of colour and design, and we’re reaping the benefits. These tulips are standing on guard to catch the fading light of a lovely day on Friday.

148:365 Sunset tulips

Speaking of lovely days and fading light, remember how all of a sudden Mother Nature seemed to flip a switch around 4:30 last Thursday afternoon and we went from early spring to full-on summer? I took this picture that day, as something about the light and the composition evokes everything I love about summer… light, flowers, sunshine, porch. Ahhhhhhhh.

147:365 Blue bottle

Through all the trouble we had with the house last fall and winter, I kept my sanity by anticipating how great it would be in the summer. (And, luckily, I was right!) I think the thing I was looking forward to most of all was the smell of these lilacs, completely surrounding my private bedroom porch and drifting in through the bedroom window. I added a bit of texture to the picture, just to give it a bit of character.

145:365 Lilacs

And finally, my favourite picture of the week. The dandelions have completely taken over our yard despite hours of diligent plucking. And yet, despite the fact that he’s really only propagating the problem, I can’t help but love this picture of Tristan making a wish.

146:365 Wish

If you could make a wish, what would you wish for?

Help me choose!

You ever notice how people who love to take pictures seem to hate having their picture taken? Couple that with a deeply embedded aversion to change, and it becomes a huge ordeal for me to even think about changing my online avatar. Further, I think it’s good personal “branding” to have one picture across all the same social media channels you use — there have been a few times when I didn’t realize someone I was following on twitter was the same person I was also following on Flickr or their blog because the pictures were different.

Aside from a really fun evening, the nice thing about a playdate in the park with a bunch of talented photographers with nothing to shoot but each other is that you get some really great new pictures of yourself. Kym posted her 100 Strangers post featuring me and our photofest with Justin, Younes and Amanda this week — check it out!!

So now I have not one but four pictures I really like and am considering. I’ve been agonizing all week between a few of them that Kym and Justin took, and honestly, I simply can’t decide. Will you help me choose?

Thanks! 🙂

A Spring into Summer giveaway from Fisher-Price!

Late in the afternoon yesterday, after eight solid years days of rain and clouds, the sun came out, the temperatures shot up, and just like that, it felt like summer. Yay!

Summer is my favourite season. Bring on the heat, the humidity, the bugs — just let me get out and enjoy it. I get giddy in the seasonal sections of the hardware store, admiring the BBQs and the lawn furniture. I love to browse in the garden centre. And I am a sucker for outdoor toys.

Oh how I love outdoor toys. From swings to sidewalk chalk, bikes to bubbles, I love them all. My friends at FisherPrice.ca offered this perspective from Dr Kathleen Alfano, Ph.D, the Director of Child Research at Fisher-Price.

“Play is so important. It’s the way children learn about the world around them.” says Dr Alfano. “Playing actively outdoors also increases flexibility, fine and gross motor skills and is related to the development of a wide variety of physical skills, including those involved in sports. Toys that require balance and coordination, such as skates, scooters and bikes, teach children new skills, encourage the development of self-confidence and satisfy their interest in exploration.”

To celebrate our mutual love of outdoor toys, Fisher-Price and I are happy to offer a fun Spring into Summer giveaway: a Barbie Tough Trike, perfect for your favourite little girl aged 2 to 5 years old!

Barbie Tough Trike

To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment below telling me about your favourite outdoor toy. For a second chance to win, tweet this message: “Did you see @DaniGirl is giving away a Fisher-Price Barbie Tough Trike? http://tinyurl.com/3qoqkt6 #playpanel”

Here’s the fine print:

  1. You must be a Canadian resident to enter.
  2. To enter the draw, leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite outdoor toy or tweet the message above.
  3. The giveaway ends Monday May 30, 2011 at noon EDT. One winner will be chosen from all entries using random.org.
  4. One entry per person for a comment, and one entry per person for a tweet, to a maximum of two entries per person.
  5. The winner will be announced on June 1.
  6. You must be willing to provide your shipping address to a representative of Mom Central Canada if you win the prize.

Thanks to Fisher-Price and Mom Central Canada for a fun giveaway opportunity!

Disclosure: I’m part of the Fisher-Price Play Panel and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

147b:365 Drawing together

174b:365 Drawing together by Dani_Girl
174b:365 Drawing together, a photo by Dani_Girl on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Tristan often copies drawings from his books, in this case a Pokemon book. I was absolutely charmed this morning when I found Lucas had gone into his room and pulled an Elmo book off his shelf to inspire his own drawings, just like his big brother. These are the perfect moments in my life. 🙂

Ottawa social media scene heats up this July!

Are you interested in Ottawa’s social media scene? If you are, you’re going to want to clear your calendar for the month of July! There are at least two don’t-miss events happening, and they’re both promising to be fantastic experiences.

First, we have the perennial and amazingly fun Blog Out Loud Ottawa (BOLO) on July 7:


Blog Out Loud - July 7, 2011

BOLO is one of my favourite social events of the year! Would you like to be one of the 20 bloggers who takes the stage to read a favourite blog post from the past year? Here are the deets from the official BOLO blog:

Here’s the basic idea:

* There’s a due date for declaring you want to read – Friday, June 10. If you’d like to read, I need to know the exact blog post you have in mind – please don’t send me an email saying you want to read, but you don’t know what. It should be something from the past year (or so) and should be able to be read aloud in less than five minutes. Pick something you really love, that represents who you are and what your blog is about – and that will be sure to come across when you’re standing at the microphone.

* All entries received by June 10 will be read and enjoyed by me and a panel of bloggers (who are not submitting a post for reading). Our favourite 10 entries will be selected for reading at BOLO.

* All other entries will go into a random-draw pot and the final 11 readers will be picked at random.

If we have 21 people or fewer interested by June 10, then you’re all in, and that would be fantastic. I’ll definitely announce it when all the spots are gone, so if it’s after June 10 and you haven’t heard anything, and you’d still like to read, we probably have spots left.

If you are interested in being on my judging panel, please let me know. Note that if you are on the jury, you can’t submit a post for reading.

I’ve thrown my hat into the ring, although I’m not sure I could top last year when I exposed my innermost soul and my favourite bra to a packed and sweaty house. 😉

And!! As if that weren’t enough excitement for the Ottawa social media scene, there is a fantastic new social media “learnathon” that will be the other don’t-miss event of the summer: the Social Capital conference, taking place on Saturday July 23:

If you consider yourself a social media ‘buff’, then Social Capital will be the place to be in Ottawa on Saturday July 23rd! Social Capital is your opportunity to learn from and network with Ottawa’s most connected and knowledgeable people! When it comes to social media, this is the conference you won’t want to miss.

Ottawa has an active and passionate social media community. A community that is craving opportunities to learn, continue to grow and to share knowledge. Social Capital is a one-day conference that will fill this need.

Participants will have the opportunity to meet and network with like-minded social media enthusiasts. A combination of panels, roundtables, and single-leader sessions will cover topics of interest for newbie and experts alike.

I really like how they’ve devised three potential streams of sessions, one for fundamentals, one for more experienced users, and one for business. Whether you’re a social media noob or an old hand, whether you’re a dabbler or a business owner, I think you’ll find something useful in the proposed lineup!

I think the organizers have done an amazing job of making this an accessible, affordable event jam-packed with interesting presentations and speakers. And I don’t say that simply because I’ll be one of them! 😉 Come on out to hear me, Lara Wellman and Vivian Cheng talk about choosing the right social media tools for your business.

That’s a lot of excitement to pack into one month. July is going to rock Ottawa’s social media scene!

I should have thought of this years ago

I used to hate bringing the boys for their swim lessons. The swimming lessons themselves are a good thing — I see them less as weekly exercise and more as a fundamental survival skill. Swim lessons are not really an option, they’re a necessity. And I didn’t begrudge the time, the cost, or the shuttling them back and forth to the community centre.

What I really hated were the change rooms. I hated the fact that the alternate use (aka “family”) changerooms were always so crowded. I hated trying to yank dry clothes onto damp, wriggling boys in tropical humidity levels. I hated the fact that the tiled floors and walls made even the slightest noise an echo chamber from hell. I hated the fact that I never came out of the changerooms without being damp and sweaty and cranky.

At the beginning of this most recent session of swim lessons, I noticed the sign on the wall outside the family changeroom at the community centre. “This changeroom is for the use of parents with opposite-sex children under the age of seven.” Hmmm. Simon is seven, Tristan is nine. I’ve noticed this sign before, but always justified my willful ignorance of it on the fact that at least one of the kids was under the maximum age.

The idea of sending them into the men’s changeroom unattended made me uneasy. Would they be okay? Would they comport themselves in a manner fit for public consumption if I was not there to glare them into obedience? And, on a more practical level, would they be capable of drying themselves off sufficiently to get themselves dressed? Would they have enough attention to the task at hand to come out without leaving their bathing suits, towels and/or pants behind?

Faced with the choice between willfully ignoring the family changeroom policy for yet another three months or giving the boys the benefit of the doubt, on the first day of the session this year I sent them into the changeroom on their own and hoped for the best. (This seems to be how I make most of my parenting decisions lately. Perhaps this is a blog topic we should explore soon.)

Who knew swimming lessons could be so pleasant? Turns out the boys are entirely capable of getting dried and dressed without me shepherding them through every stage. Swim lessons are now the highlight of my week, a chloriney oasis of serenity in the madness of daily life.

We show up at the pool and I hand over their bathing suits, pointing them toward the men’s changeroom. I meet them on the pool deck, and minutes later relinquish them to the care of their instructor, while I sit quietly and read, or play with my iPhone, or stare at a place somewhere in the middle distance and breathe for minutes on end. Some days I even have time to chat idly with a friend.

At the end of the lesson, I meet them as they come dripping out of the pool and tousle them briefly with a towel before sending them back into the men’s changeroom. I then retreat to the hallway and await their transformation to moderately dry and fully dressed. WITH NO INTERVENTION ON MY PART WHATSOEVER.

This has been a transformative experience. They don’t need me to do stuff for them? They’re capable of not only behaving but staying on task for up to five solid minutes? This changes everything!

The cruel irony in all of this is that Lucas is about to start his own swim lesson journey, and my reprieve from the sweaty, damp and overcrowded hell that is the family changeroom is to be short-lived at best. But I’m thinking by the time he hits preschool, he’ll be drying his own bits and pulling on his own drawers. This mommy has had a taste of the cool, dry air of freedom, and there’s no going back now!

Mothership Photography is on Facebook (please like me!)

I‘ve mentioned before that although I’m an early-adapter on a lot of social media platforms, I’ve never really warmed up to Facebook. I signed up for an account when it was first opened up, but aside from an early addiction to Scrabble when I was pregnant with Lucas in 2007, I never really found a lot of reason to spend time on Facebook. I’d even set up a page for the blog back in 2009 or so, back in the rush when everyone was setting up fan pages for everything, but I never hit the publish button as I really couldn’t see the point of having the same content in two places, especially when I was already pushing my blog content through my personal FB account.

Even at work where I manage our Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube accounts, Facebook was always my problem child, the one I knew we had to deal with but just couldn’t warm up to. Until now, that is. Cuz apparently I need yet another place to spent time on the Internet.

Oh dear. I’ve discovered Facebook.

It started when our school council decided to try setting up a Facebook page to communicate with parents. (At first I was cool to this idea, thinking a FB page for an elementary school seemed somehow wrong, but it’s the school council’s page for communicating with parents, not the school’s page. And I found some really excellent examples out there, and almost no reasons why we shouldn’t go ahead.) I’d set us up a blog earlier this year, and we’re using Constant Contact for e-mail news distributing newsletters, but Facebook is such an easy way to deliver quick and concise messages to a wide audience.

As I was setting up the FB page for the school, an idea was percolating in my obsessive-compulsive brain. A Facebook page for a blog seems a little too meta for me, but a Facebook page for a photography business — now that makes more sense! And let me tell you, it was waaaaaay easier to set up a FB page than it was to set up my portfolio website.

Ta da!

One of my mantras in the presentations and courses I’ve given on social media is that you should match your social media tool to your goals and your audience. Facebook works really well for my intended purpose of sharing my obsessive quest for more! more! more! information about all things related to photography.

I see it as a place not just for potential and current photography clients, but as a hub to share quick photo tips, articles I find on the Internet, and other things that may be of interest to other photographers or just people who are interested in taking better pictures. I’ll still post longer articles here, but Facebook is perfect for quick shares and conversations about links and other treasures found online.

I put the page together over the course of a rainy weekend, and was instantly gratified to see a few “likes” piling up even before I’d told anyone I set up the page. (And let me tell you, for an approval-seeking ENFP, there is NOTHING more delicious than having overt confirmation that someone “likes” your project. You like me? You like me!)

I hope you will both like and “like” my Mothership Photography Facebook page, especially if you’re interested in taking, sharing or discussing how to take better pictures. I’ll try to keep the duplication of content to a minimum, and I’m even considering some Facebook-only promotions.

Do you have any experience (pro or con) in setting up a Facebook page? Any tips to share or pitfalls to avoid? Suggestions for me to keep my online empire from imploding? What say ye, bloggy peeps?

Tristan’s race

A couple of weeks ago, Tristan came home with a permission slip for the running club at school. It said they were preparing for a 5K race in Osgoode, and the kids would be working their way up to the 5k during lunch hours over the next few weeks.

Tristan loves to run, and I am always in favour of finding new ways for the kids to burn off energy, so this sounded like a great idea to me. I have to admit, even when I signed the permission slip, I had vague ideas of backing out of the actual race by the time it came around, but the more Tristan talked about the perks (a t-shirt! a MEDAL!) the more I realized I was firmly committed and should make peace with the sacrifice of a Saturday morning to the run.

I was a little less enthused when a note came home about a week before the run saying that the school couldn’t be responsible for overseeing all the kids during the actual run, and parents were at all times responsible for the supervision of their own kids. Suddenly I was faced with the idea of actually RUNNING the 5K instead of simply spectating it. And I was not amused.

In the days leading up to the race, I resigned myself to donning my trainers and hoping that my weekly trips to the gym would be enough to keep me from embarrassing myself too thoroughly. However, in passing I spoke to one parent who was also spouse of an organizer of the run, and I was assured that he would need no supervision, that the runners were on a closed pathway (the newly minted multi-use pathway in Osgoode) and in fact out of sight for only 10 or 15 minutes. And really, does my lightning-quick 9 year old really need his lumbering mother like a ball around his ankle, slowing him down?

That’s how we found ourselves in Osgoode on Saturday morning, just Tristan and me, in the pouring rain.

Here he is at the starting line, twitching to go. He’s number 52, in the blue jacket.

Goode Run 2 of 6

Did I mention the rain? Not just a sprinkle, either. Driving, cold rain.

Goode Run 3 of 6

They were out of my sight down the path within minutes, but it seemed to take hours for them to run the kilometer or so to one end of the course and turn around. They’d run past the start, run another kilometer or so in the opposite direction, and then back to finish at the same spot they’d started. I peered up the path for what seemed like hours watching for him after the first turn.

Goode Run 4 of 6

He really doesn’t seem to think the whole run thing was such a brilliant plan anymore, does he? Once he saw me, though, he kicked his little engine back into gear.

Goode Run 5 of 6

I’m sure a week passed, maybe two, before the runners made the final turn of the circuit and headed back to the finish. I was wet and I’d been hiding under an umbrella. As the first runners crossed the finish line, I peered up the path watching for Tristan and staked a strategic spot for myself at the finish line. When he finally approached, I was so excited for him I almost forgot to take a picture. This is about four feet from the finish line.

142:365 Goode Run (1 of 6)

I honestly thought my heart would burst from pride. It’s one thing to run on a warm sunny spring day, but this was the most sucky day imaginable, and his determination never wavered.

Goode Run 6 of 6

He crossed the finish line in 30:52. Was it really only half an hour? Because it seemed about five times that long. He was wet and dirty, red-cheeked and sweaty, but rather than beaming in pride, he was rather stoic about his accomplishment. Between you and me, I think it was way harder and way less fun than he’d imagined.

He’s the introvert to my extravert, but he’s got his mother’s need for external validation, and when I realized that there were no medals to be had, I thought we were in real trouble. No medals? The only reason he ran was so he could get a medal. Lucky for me, he’s also got his mother’s short attention span, and a medal was easily substituted by the promise of a stuffed yellow Pikachu he’d been coveting. He certainly earned it.