Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

It's rainbow time! Since I featured black and white last week, which are both really sort of absent of color, this week I decided to do all the colors. :)

If you're new to my blog, these color posts started as an excuse for me to go through the many photos on my computer I'd never posted before and finally do something with them (or delete them to free up room for new photos). Grouping them by color has allowed me to evaluate them in a different way, see them with new eyes so to speak.

It's been a lot of fun going back through my photo archives over the past couple of months, but I'll probably take a little break from this series so that I'll have more time to share other things with you guys too. I'll still be posting lots of photos, of course, but not necessarily color-themed ones. I might pick it back up in a few weeks.

I can't believe it's Friday already! This week has really flown by. I probably say that every week, but it feels especially true right now. Wishing everyone a creative and restful weekend. xo, Mary

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

I guess this is a controversial "color" post as there are many theories about whether black and white are even considered colors at all. But for my purposes, they are colors, and very popular ones at that.

If anyone is curious about that "ICE" building, it's exactly what you think it is: an ice house. It was built in 1932 and served as one of nine ice stations in Alexandria until the mid-1960s. A few years ago, I read about plans to turn it into a small coffee shop, but so far it still looks unchanged and unoccupied. It's crazy to think that it wasn't that long ago that people didn't have refrigerators in their houses. I guess there are many parts of the world where they still don't.

That dog was the sweetest, fluffiest thing I have ever petted. And it's hard to tell from this photo, but he was really big...like my nephews could ride him big. One of these days, we are finally going to get a dog and maybe I'll stop harassing other people's dogs on the street. Probably not, but maybe. :)

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

Can you guess this week's color? :)

That teenage mutant ninja turtle doll was perched on the front of the little golf cart thing that they use to cart plants around at the garden. I guess he's an unofficial mascot for the grounds crew?  I have no idea why he has a pacifier on each arm though. My only guess is that they were left behind, and Michelangelo is holding them for safe keeping until the babies come back.

A lot of these photos were taken in the summer, and though we do still have some green left around here, the leaves have begun to change. We are actually hoping to drive out and spend a little time this weekend under some golden, orange, and red canopies. We had originally planned to drive toward the mountains south of us, but when we finally had time to do it, we realized we had already missed the peak. The peak in DC comes a little later as we are at a much lower elevation and close to the water, so we should still have a few weeks left to enjoy the color.

What are you guys up to this weekend?

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

I felt like continuing with a woodland theme this week so today's color is brown. I know I've posted lots of bright colors in this series, but I also love neutral tones. I'm a sucker for natural wood and brick, warm autumnal colors, and texture...especially the kind of texture that comes from age and use and hanging around for a couple hundred years (who knows how many generations of brick and stone are in that house in the 6th photo).

The 5th photo is a detail of a piece by Lloyd Schermer that hangs in the lobby of the Newseum. (He also has a similar one hanging in the American Art Museum.) The pottery in the 7th picture is from the Sackler Gallery, but I can't remember if it's Japanese, Chinese, or Korean. (If anyone knows, feel free to share in the comments). And the last photo is an art installation by Roxy Paine called New Fungus Crop at the Hirshhorn. (I blogged photos of a large stainless steel tree sculpture he made that stands in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden a couple of years ago, which you can see here if you're interested.)

All of these photos make me want to get outside and explore nature-y things. The leaves have only just begun to change here. I'm hoping we will have a few nice weekend days when the peak hits so that we can explore and take photos. It's been a while since I took any new photos, other than for my shop.

I'm not sure what this weekend holds for us. We might be hanging out with some old friends we haven't seen in years. We might be doing house stuff. I might be getting a badly-needed hair cut. Or we might not do any of those things and take a day trip somewhere. What are you guys up to?

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

This week's color is blue, of course, which is probably my all-time favorite color. I never met a shade of blue I didn't like.

Oh, if you're wondering what that thing is in the first photo, it's an old police phone box. You still see them around DC sometimes. They haven't actually been used as emergency call boxes in a long time. In 2000, the city started a program to refurbish the abandoned boxes, and some neighborhoods commissioned artists to paint the insides (you can read about the program here if you're interested). And if you want to know what they used to look like when in service, here's an old photo.

What are you guys up to this weekend? We've had a rainy week, and it shows no sign of letting up for the weekend, so I'm guessing we'll probably be spending a lot of time indoors. We still have projects to finish around the house, and I really need to finish items for the shop too, so maybe that's not such a bad thing.

But on the other hand, I might want to get out of the house, projects be damned, if for no other reason than to get warm for a bit. We are trying not to turn the heat on until November, but as I type this I'm wearing two sweaters, two pairs of socks, sweat pants, a knit hat, and a permi-blanket, which is basically just a blanket I refuse to take off. The lure of warm coffee shops and book stores is hard to ignore on cold, rainy days. I know someone out there knows what I'm talking about. :)

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

The color of the day is yellow! And the letter is F. And the number is 8. :)

I already know I have a few fans of yellow out there. I was actually surprised by how many photos I had of yellow things; I had trouble narrowing it down to 8! At first I wasn't going to include the sunflower photo because God knows I post flower pics all the time--I can't help it, flowers are just so pretty! But I decided I would include it anyway because it's just happy and sunshiny and a good way to start the weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, we will hopefully finish painting the hallway and maybe, possibly hang some curtains in between other things we have planned. The one big bummer of the weekend for me is that this weekend was my last chance to see an exhibit I'd been wanting to see for a while, and the shutdown means the museum is closed. I'm pretty sure the exhibit will be packed up and moved along before the museum reopens. That's really small potatoes compared to the rest of the craziness that's been happening in DC lately, so I'm not complaining. I just hope they get this mess sorted quickly.

So, tell me of your exciting weekend plans. I need to live vicariously through someone who will actually be leaving his or her house. ;)

Scenes from (a Colorful) Life

This week's color is purple! I think purple can be a somewhat polarizing color; people tend to love it or hate it. I don't really understand how someone can say they hate a color though. There's such a wide range of hues that fall within each color. Purple, for example, can change dramatically depending on it's tone and whether it leans more toward blue or red. Think about how different plum is from magenta, or from lavender, grape, periwinkle, or wine. There are so many possibilities within a given color family; I don't see how you could rule them all out.

I could write for days on color; it's endlessly fascinating to me. I never once got bored during all those color theory classes in school!

All of this "talk" about color has made me remember something I read about a while ago: sunglasses that can help colorblind people see color. The author of that particular article writes about trying a pair and being able to see a rainbow for the first time and being struck by wonder. He knew rainbows existed, of course, but he'd only ever seen a vague yellow arc across the sky before. How amazing is that?