Blog-It-Forward: Inspiration

Victoria over at sfgirlbybay has organized a little blog mash-up wherein we all share a little bit of what inspires us. Anna of the baker's daughter took a turn before me (you really should go see out her beautiful photographs) and Stephanella of The Creative Identity will share her inspirations tomorrow.

These days, most sources of inspiration fall into one of two of categories for me. The first category is something that strikes me as inspiring for our home, our yard or construction. Neither of us are professional builders or have experience in construction and so our ideas are spurred by something we've seen or frantic scheming. These ideas can come a mishmash of places: walks around the neighborhood, campgrounds with surprisingly attractive bathroom buildings, old magazines, drives through the hills on rainy days, steps in a state park....

photo of Ken Meffan's fantastic home in Dwell

The second category of inspiration is more what gives me a kick in my daily life outside of days spent with a hammer or garden shovel. These days the two categories are finding funny ways to overlap. What inspires me in a cookbook is suddenly influencing what I plan for our vegetable garden. Images and color ideas that I collect for a painting have me thinking about the space where that painting will be created. And not to throw the cheeseball alarm into overload here but I'd have to say that, happily, one of the strongest influences/inspirations in my life these days is my favorite German. While I'm not a risk-taker, he's the first to scramble up a rock to jump off the edge.When I pick up a paintbrush he starts collecting windows for my future art studio. Last June we sat in the dirt on the hill and talked about how lovely it would be to have a real place to sit up there. Last weekend we watched the sunset from the platform he built in that very spot. During the summer when we had a (glorious) heat wave, he began researching how to build a pool.I'm happy to dream about big ideas but this guy likes to make it a bolder dream and then get busy making it happen and really, that's all the inspiration I need.

**all images are by me unless otherwise noted