What You Might Have Been

Have you ever had a thought or feeling or dream or wish that rattled around in your head, and wouldn't leave you alone?

One of my favorite quotes ever is pictured above, "It's never too late to be what you might have been." How can you not love that? Missed opportunities can drive you crazy if you let them, but the thing is, more opportunities open up every day. You can miss eighty in a row, but there will be another one coming along today, so hop on and ride it hard!

So I love the quote, and a couple of years ago I was in my Mom and Grandma's gift/home decor shop, and they had just gotten in a new shipment of little signs for the garden - and one had George Elliot's words on it. I had to have it! And when I moved here, I put it up on my deck, between my two big rattan arm chairs. It looked lovely and I was happy to have a place for it. End of story! Or not.

I started to hear this rattling in the walls - especially at night - and usually in the bathroom. Was it the pipes? It's an old house, could be. Was it an animal? I've had a couple of raccoons way up on my second story deck and a bird's nest on my light fixture - so that could be it too. Could it be a ghost? I kind of liked that possibility! I finally figured out it was the wind causing the sign to rattle against the house. I am on the second story in the tallest building downtown, so I get better breezes here - but also stronger wind. So I took the sign down, a little regretfully, and everything was quiet.

But you know what? I didn't like the quiet. I realized that I liked the rattle - so the sign went back up. It's an aural reminder to grab those slippery opportunities. It's so easy to just exist and live day to day, and rarely move out of your comfort zone - but if you have a dream, a vision of what you'd like be, and do, and see, and accomplish, then you have to grab those opportunities. Who wants to think about what might have been? Bottom line, it's never too late. So I'm embracing the rattle in my walls - and in my head!

Iconic Portraits: Part Two

Yesterday I blogged about an iconic image - an image that I created - that defines me as an artist. It's an image that defines my art, my business, and my style.

But I'm not always the one taking the photograph...

I think that everyone has a favorite image of themselves. I have several! And I want to share them, because if I have one wish for my business it's that I hope to give my clients images they love of themselves as much as I love and treasure these images of me. Everyone deserves that! Everyone deserves a little magic - and the right photograph can give you that.


This first image is in my opinion, the best image ever taken of me! It was shot by one of my closest friends at the time - the incredibly talented Kevin Mann during his first semester in a beginning photography class. We were in my backyard, it was dusk, he had a cheap clamp-on lightbulb, and he insisted on spraying me with a hose. I thought it was a little nuts! But he believed firmly in what he was doing - and he was right - and he shot a magical portrait. He printed it huge, and it still hangs on my wall in my bedroom. When I think of myself, this is the image in my head.


This next image is my first real headshot - from my hugely successful acting career in LA. Not really... I took lots of classes - from a well-known teacher who had published a book on acting - he was the real deal. But auditioning in LA was very different than auditioning in San Diego, and I was just not ready. So I decided to take a break, moved back and started to study photography, so that I could shoot other actor's headshots when I went back to LA. But I fell in love with photography, and never went back to LA. It was not the plan, and I never would have guessed I could love something more than acting - but I did and I do and I have no regrets. But I still love this headshot! It was shot by Willa Burns in Oceanside and I was 22.


And this one was shot by me! With a plastic camera, a big fan, a tiara, and some BBQ tongs so I could trip the shutter - really weird setup, but I love the results. I shot this in 2004 as part of a whole series of self-portraits - but this one is my favorite!

So those are the three iconic portraits of me. Everyone should have at least one!


This last one is not iconic - but it is fun! I found it as I was looking for my first headshot, and wanted to share it too. It was shot at the very end of my big acting career - right before I started to study photography. I wasn't very happy as an actress at that point - and I think you can see that in my face. I just look a little off. But you gotta love the hair!

My Diet Coke addiction is no more!

Thank heaven! As of today, it's been three weeks since my last Diet Coke, and the headache is gone, and I finally am starting to feel good again. Caffeine withdrawal does not cause a particularly bad headache, it's relatively minor, but it hangs on for days and days, and the days turn into weeks. I shot the images below on Day 10, and you can see it in my eyes - you can tell I have a headache just by looking at me!

But the good news is that's finally all behind me, and I feel so much better!







The last image I included just because I like it!

Gingerbread Boy Day

When I was growing up my favorite Christmas tradition - other than getting a ton of gifts! - was Gingerbread Boy Day! But it started long before I was born...

My grandmother, Sophia Spelts, in the early 1950's when her children were small, was heartbroken when she learned that the children in an orphanage in San Diego often didn't receive anything at all for Christmas. She was an excellent cook and baker - in fact she worked in a bakery as a young woman - so I guess it was only made sense to her to try and fill that gap by baking! She would make dozens of Gingerbread Boys, decorate them with frosting and candy, back each one individually with a sheet of cardboard, wrap it up, and tie it with a big beautiful bow. And for some of those children, it was the only gift they got that year.

When her own children grew up and got married, she brought the new spouses into her tradition. On a Sunday before Christmas everyone would come to her house and decorate cookies for her to deliver to the children.

I was the first grandchild, and I remember vividly my first time at the table with a big butter knife and bowl of pink frosting and getting to decorate a cookie - although I think by then the orphanage had closed, and so that part of the story had ended - but Gingerbread Boy Day lived on as a family tradition. And the number of cousins participating grew and grew. I remember my Grandma had a real thing about monsters. If the decorating didn't pass her standards, it was labeled a monster. Most of the boys made monsters! But the monsters tasted better - they had gumdrops for eyes, and big chocolate chips all over and maybe even coconut and red hots - all on one cookie. So yeah, not always very pretty, but definitely tasty!

Because I was the oldest and artistic, Grandma would always make one special cookie for me to decorate - usually it was a big tree, large enough for a small family to share - and I'd spend half the day making sure that special cookie was a masterpiece. I was also the first to put a paper skirt on a Gingerbread Boy, making it a Gingerbread Girl. I took a stiff napkin, pleated it, and used some frosting to glue it on - and it was cute!

After my Grandma passed on, we kept up the tradition, and through the years the frosting colors have strayed from her preferred pastels to darker more garish hues - she'd shake her head if she could see how bright the yellow is now! But I think she'd be thrilled to know that 23 years after her death, new family members are joining in, and that a tradition she started nearly sixty years ago is still going strong!



Getting started is always a little overwhelming. So many colors, so many choices...



Here's a helpful hint in cookie selection! Make sure you grab the cookies with no visible flour on the surface. Flour is ugly! The only solution if you get stuck with a cookie with flour on it, is to cover the whole cookie with frosting. Thicker cookies usually taste better. And look for a cookie with a nice shape - one that's waving one arm, or has a jaunty angle to his head is always good!



Josh showing off his work!



I think Nathan loaded this one with so much good stuff, it's face is about to slide off...




Nathan watches my Mom stack finished cookies.



Hint number two! All Gingerbread Boys need a Gingerbread Girl... She has a little flour on her leg - obviously I wasn't quick enough at grabbing the good cookies!



Josh is the artist in his generation. Whatever he does, it's always beautiful.



You can see it in his hands as he works...



And here's the finished product! I think this was the cookie of the day!

Movie Night!

My big fancy LCD TV was delivered a couple of months ago, and I got the mounting apparatus hung on the wall, but when it came time to actually lift the TV up onto the mount, there was just no way I could go that by myself. So my brother Michael came over with my two nephews and got it up on the wall for me. And I promised my nephews that we'd do a movie night really soon!

Well it took two months, but we finally did it tonight! My mom took them to Blockbuster to rent the movie of their choice - they picked Elf with Will Ferrell. And I decided that since it's the only time I'll be entertaining this holiday season, I'd break out the pretty glasses and the fancy food!



Here is the table, moments before they arrived. The glasses were filled with pink 7Up and rimmed with flavored pink sugar - and those are mini chocolate eclairs from Bavaria in the center of the table.



Two of the guests!



Stuffed Greek Pinwheel with fresh spinach salad. The butcher at Major Market does all the preparation, and all I have to do is pop them in the oven for an hour. And they taste soooo good!



More food... Kettle Corn dribbled with dark chocolate.



And finally, the movie...

It was a fun night!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was just a month ago we were evacuated, and wondering if we'd ever see our homes and town again - and now here it is Thanksgiving, and we're celebrating all the reasons we have to be grateful. It was a very special Thanksgiving for my family. I hope yours was just as wonderful and special!

For more from our Thanksgiving, click here!

After the Fires...

I used to love the Santa Ana Winds. It wasn't so much that I liked the wind itself, but I loved getting a few days of really hot weather and bright blue skies in the middle of fall. Santa Anas cause the bluest, prettiest skies of the whole year. In Coastal Southern California, the beginning of summer is often overcast, so for me summer starts late, and I love it when summer seems to last well into fall. So yeah, Santas Anas were something to look forward too.

But in recent years when I hear the words Santa Ana my first thought is fire.

In 2004 I was forced out of my home for over a week, and the fire was so hot and furious that 100-year-old oak trees exploded from the intense heat. And the entire landscape was scorched - it looked like a blackened moonscape for miles and miles. And two months later, I moved. Before that I loved living out in the wilderness. I had a mother and baby Mountain Lion climb the tree by my front door. I saw foxes and raccoons. I saw a jack rabbit racing across the open field across the street once - have you ever seen a jack rabbit? It looked like a mini kangaroo! But my love for living in the wilderness changed after the fire. I was extremely lucky - people all around me lost their homes - and my home survived unscathed. But still, my feelings about living on the edge of civilization had changed. It was suddenly scary.

Since then I've lived in the center of Fallbrook, and I've recently moved into the very center of downtown. So I had to be safe now. Right? I mean, if a wildfire got to here, it would have had to have burned through thousands of other homes before it got here - so not likely, right?

But on Sunday night, when the wind started to blow, I was concerned. It's not just about my home and my possessions, it's about my town and all of San Diego county. On the TV news they were reporting fires in other parts of San Diego, including one just east of Escondido. None of the TV stations cover Fallbrook with any regularity - we're just too far north of San Diego for them to know we exist, so I turned to the Internet and news sites and local bulletin boards. And there was activity. Lots of activity.

When there were reports of a fire in Fallbrook, just 2 miles from my home, I started packing my car. I'm a big advocate of having a list of what to pack in a situation like this. When an emergency hits, most people tend to make bad decisions. "Oh, I don't need that photo album, I'll just grab this one." Or "Oh I don't need enough clothes for a week - I'll just grab some sweats." But if you have a list, then you don't have to think or make decisions. You don't have to decide if Grandma's china or your TV or the computer is more important - you'll just follow the list! For me, after I get myself and my cat out, it's about saving my art - which means my negatives and for more recent work, my digital files. Then next most important is getting the things I need to work - meaning cameras and computers. And then next comes the things I'd need to survive a week on vacation. If you can survive a week away from home, then you could survive forever. But if you can't even brush your teeth or get dressed or have a pillow to sleep on, it's hard. It's hard if you're evacuated for a week, or if you lose your home to the fire. Either way, you need to pack for a week. No matter what. Then next for me is sentimental things and the things that I love - my father's baby book, old family photos, my antique sewing chest, and great-grandma's gold thimble. If there's something you can't replace, that you love, and it would fit in your car, put it on your list! Don't rely on your memory at the time - it's tough to think of everything, when you only have a half-hour to pack and get out. And if you still have any room in your car after all that? Go grab your bedding and the rest of your clothes. If your house burns down and you have to go rent a new place to live, you'll be grateful for the bedding, and replacing all your clothes would not be fun. So if you have room in your car, why not?

So I packed that night, and when the word came the next day that we under mandatory evacuation, I was ready to go. My family met here, since I was downtown, and I led a caravan of four cars through Deluz, to get to Temecula. At one point there was a car in front of us, and I could tell he'd never driven the road before - it's a narrow little road through oak groves and there are a lot of sharp turns, so it wasn't hard to figure out he didn't know the road. And where it Y's about nine miles out, I just knew he was going the wrong way, and I wanted to honk, because I knew! But I didn't honk, because it's silly to think I knew where he was going. How could I know? So I didn't honk, I just kept going, and then a mile or so later, my mother started honking, and pulled over convinced that I'd taken a wrong turn, and I explained to her how often I take this road - it's one of my favorites! And yeah, it's a long way, but it's absolutely beautiful and I knew exactly where we were. And while we were pulled over, a car came up behind us and just waited for us. And I wondered why they didn't just pass us - until I realised it was the car that had taken the wrong turn! And he was waiting for us, probably because he figured we could lead him out. And then another car pulled up behind him and didn't pass either. And I realised that people were just trying to get out of town, and they were taking roads they'd never taken before, and they didn't have a clue where they were. It was a sobering thought - among many that day. Once we got to our destination, we heard on the news that the official evacuation route had been through Camp Pendleton, and that it had taken people four hours to get from Fallbrook to Oceanside - a trip that under normal conditions takes 20 minutes. So we seriously lucked out when we chose to go through Deluz. Before we started we tried to stop and get gas, but the line to get into the station was so long we gave up. And later we heard they ran out of gas. Can you imagine? Four hours in traffic to get to Oceanside, and no one could even buy gas. It just really proves to me that it pays to be prepared. I knew there was a chance we'd be evacuated the night before, and I got packed up then, and if I'd needed gas, I would have bought it then. But then again, I've lived though another fire...

We spent the next four days at my Mom's house - she's currently in the process of moving back to Fallbrook, so her house was half-empty, but it was a perfect place to stay while we were evacuated. And the day we got to come back home? Heaven! I've never been so happy to see my home!

And as for my thought that a wildfire would never reach my home in Fallbrook, because I was in the center of town, and it would have to burn through thousands of homes before it would ever get to mine, and that would never happen? Well I was wrong. I never realized how far embers can be blown. On the day I got back I saw a home in the center of town that burned. The garage was gone, and the burned shell of a car was all that remained. The embers flew for miles. I always thought of fire as a thing that surges forward in a line and burns everything in it's path. And that was the case with the fire in 2004. But this fire was very different. I know that the main reason it was different was that Fallbrook was named the priority on the worst night - which meant we got more resources than the other fires around us. And it makes perfect sense when you realise how close the fire was to town, and how many houses were at risk, and how few roads out of town there are. But still with so many fires raging that night, it's amazing that we were named the priority - but it saved our town. If you drive around in the burned areas, you can see where the firemen took a stand and stopped it. Fire doesn't respect lines - it burns where it wants. But the firemen contained it, and diverted it away from structures. It's a beautiful sight to see, when you start to realise why certain spots were spared. It wasn't luck, it was hard work by the firemen.

We lost 200 structures. I say we, but as I sit here in my beautiful comfortable home, I realise that I got lucky once again. And my heart aches for those who lost their homes.