Something is Cooking :)

Dear friend,

Here is a little secret for you: I am cooking something :) I will give you some clues: It is unexpected, it is for you because I would have never thought about doing it if I didn't know you. It is not something that you can eat and I am so excited about it. I am working on it and I cannot wait to share it with you when I am ready. Yay!! Let's keep the mystery because that way is more fun. I don't think that you're going to guess what it is but you can give it a try if you want :) Yay!!

Lots of love!!

Elsita :)

The Sense of Smell and a Little Confession :)

I have a list of BIG resolutions for this year and also a list of tiny resolutions. One of the resolutions in the tiny list is:

*Enjoy those little pleasures of life that involve you sense of smell :)

That's why I got these soaps and solid perfumes from dennisanderson on Etsy. They smell sooooo nice! It is amazing the power that smelling has in our brain. I love beautiful fragances because they transport me to the most amazing places. Fragances could be as visual as anything that we can see with our eyes and they could also be a great source of inspiration for any creative person.

Now a little confession: my very favorite smell in the whole world is the after shave cologne for men. Any kind, they just make me happy and I don't know exactly why, there is something extra-special about that kind of smell :)

I want to send a HUGE THANK YOU to the person who invented the after shave cologne for men. What a great invention!

Have a happy Tuesday!

Elsita :)

Message from Elsita :) And a very tiny giveaway!

Dear friend,

This post is to say good-bye for a few weeks. Life over here is calling for a blog brake and I am listening to the call because as I wrote in this post we should try to be good listeners :) Fortunately this will be only a temporary good-bye because I will be back on MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2008 YAY!!!! In all these weeks I will be doing one million things family-related and work-related. I have to say that I am very excited about my to-do-list, I will share everything with you when I am back. Right now we 're getting ready for an important meeting about our little man el Diego. We are going to meet his shadow for the first time and we are so excited for him. This will be the person that, as the word explains, will become Diego's shadow when he starts school in a few days. She will be with him every minute during his school hours and she will have an important impact in his life. Diego doesn't have any sense of personal safety yet, he would run to the street if he could, with all the cars passing by and he doesn't realize how dangerous it is. His shadow will make sure that he is safe but also she will teach him many new things. I am crossing my fingers for Diego! You now how we all have a natural shadow and it comes out the way it comes out and there is nothing to do about it but in Diego's case it is important that he has the perfect match as a shadow :) It will make a big difference in his new life. Please send us lots of good energy, I am taking a purse with a big pocket on the outside for all the good energy. I wish you lots of good things in these weeks, and the best health possible to deal with a month like September. I will be back with good things to share with you, including how Diego and his shadow are getting along.

Lots of love and see you on Monday, October 6, 2008!!!!!!
Elsita :)

But before I go I want to introduce you to mini-bunny :) This is one of the tiniest papercuts that I ever made and it could be yours. Mini-bunny is 1 1/2" tall and it looks sooo cute in person! If you like him just leave a comment in this post and I will announce the winner as soon as I come back on October 6.

Little Things :)

When life seems too big the best thing is to focus on the little things around us and enjoy them. I just got these two miniature vases (they're about 1 inch tall) and I am in love with them. They are on my desk right now, reminding me that little things can make a whole difference in your day. If you look at the mouth of these vases you will see how they are saying: I loooooooove Youuuuuu :)

Have a great day my friend!
See you tomorrow!

Elsita :)

Good-Bye Ring...

And Good morning my friend :)
Today I want to share something with you that is going to sound a little sad: I lost the engagement ring that Bill gave me in 2002 in a lovely lunch at some Japanese restaurant near his old office. I don't know if I will ever see it again. The ring has been missing for a couple of months now. I thought that I was going to find it but I am not sure about that anymore. It is possible that Diego or Natalie took it from my closet. I have never seen two kids more attracted to jewelry than Natalie and Diego.

I have gone through a whole rainbow of feelings since I realized that my ring was missing: First I was sad, then I was mad at myself, then hopeful (because I thought that I was going to find it) then later I felt so sorry about Bill who gave me something so special and in the end I felt really guilty because I thought that I should have placed it in a safer place. Fortunately I tend to be my own therapist so I gave myself a couple of free private sessions to recover from this loss and now I can finally say that I am fine.

I spent lots of time thinking about how we turn objects into meaningful things, at the point that loosing them makes us experience emotional pain. Objects are just objects but what makes them meaningful is US. An object is as special as we think it is and what we think about objects is always connected to human feelings, memories, dreams, legacy... etc, the meaning is basically something that we build in our mind. I have a dear friend who lost all her personal objects in a fire. I remember having a conversation where she said that immediately after the fire she experienced an unexpected liberating feeling. She realized that the most important thing that she had was herself and her memories and both of them were intact after the fire.

Now that I lost my engagement ring I realize that more than the ring the most important thing is Bill and I as a couple and how we stay together and strong in the difficult times and in the happy times. So today I want to say good-bye engagement ring, wherever you are right now you should know that I will always keep a special place for you...in my mind :)

I hope that there is some virtual place out there in the universe for all the special lost objects. If you ever lost something special maybe it will find its way to that virtual place and together with my ring they will be happy knowing that we still love and remember them for what they meant to us.

Now I wish you a wonderful Friday, a wonderful weekend and I will see you on Monday!
Elsita :)

My Hidden Identity!!! :0

It is amazing how sometimes you don't really know who you are...unless you ask Wikipedia! You know how Wikipedia has all the answers to your questions so I asked Wikipedia about the word Elsita (which is my nickname as you know) because I wanted to know more about myself AND IMAGINE HOW EXCITED I GOT WHEN I FOUND OUT THAT I AM A MOTH!!!!! Seriously!! The proof is right here! Did you see it? It clearly says: Elsita is a genus of moth in the family Arctiidae.
Yay!!!! HOW FUN IS THAT? I can't wait to meet my new Arctiidae family, where have they been for all these years? Down here you can see an illustration about how our first meeting is going to look like. You can see me on the left and then on the right are my new relatives (or a very small representation of them because wikipedia tells me that the Arctiidae is a large and diverse family of moths with around 11,000 species found all over the world and with 6000 Neotropical species). Now I have to say that that's a little scary, I hope that they don't visit me all at the same time. Anyway, on the positive side and looking at the illustration I think that I am going to get alone so well with the one with both arms up, the one looking straight at the camera. He must be my oldest brother! Hi there brother!!

Now I literaly have to fly, that's the best thing about being a moth!!
But I will fly back tomorrow!
Have a great day!
Elsita :)

Part 1: Winner of the buttons and part 2: UNEXPECTED SURPRISE from Friday!!!

PART 1:
And the winner of the little buttons is Amy Karol!!! Yay Amy!!!! Congratulations!! !This time I asked Natalie to open the book in order to find out who the winner was and she went directly to page 138! Thank you Natalie and thank you sooo much to each one of you for participating in this game!!! There will be more coming!

PART 2:
SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE!!!!
Oh my friends! I have something wonderful to share with you about my birthday on Friday! Remember how I told you that Bill and I were going to have our special dinner at night at my favorite restaurant? Well, what I didn’t know is that a SURPRISE PARTY was waiting for me at the place!!!! I could not believe it!!! Bill invited four couples, each one of them is special and unique and I just love them so much!. They all have very busy lives and putting everybody together in the same room was like a miracle. Imagine how I felt! I could not stop smiling, I was sooo happy!

This is the second most special birthday that I ever had in my life. In order to understand why this SURPRISE party meant so much for me I need to go a little back in time. Growing up in Cuba I never had a birthday party, not when I was one or two or three… and I never got presents because we just couldn’t afford it. As a little girl my birthday was never a special day so I grew up that way and it felt like the most normal thing ever. Birthday parties are a celebration of life and I imagine that because we had a hard life then we didn’t have a lot to celebrate. I became a teenager: 13, 14, and then 15!

In the Latino culture turning 15 for a girl is an important event and even the poorest families try to put together a party or something small for the birthday girl but I just knew that we were not going to be able to afford it and I was absolutely fine with it. And here is the story of what happened next:

The day when I turned 15 I just went to school as every normal day and I even forgot to tell my friends that it was my birthday. We had our Math class, then Spanish class, everything was completely normal and then OUT OF THE BLUE EVERYBODY GOT UP AND STARTED SINGING HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. I was absolutely in shock! I didn’t know what to do other than cry. But that was only the beginning! Immediately after the happy birthday song and in a perfect coordination my classmates moved the tables and the chairs around and created a big circle in the classroom, then like pure magic there was salsa music and a big cake, I didn’t have time to process what was going on, it really took me like 15 minutes to understand that they had put a surprise birthday party together for me. What the teachers and my classmates didn’t know is that that was my very fist birthday party ever since I was born. I can’t even describe you the huge impact that this celebration had in my life. All the love that I got from my friends and teachers that day turned into a special fuel that gave me enough energy to go through my teenage years.

Having my second surprise birthday party 22 years later after my first one, under completely different circumstances was something so meaningful. I was telling Bill the other day that right now I am going through one of the most difficult times in my life because everyday is a challenge. But on the other hand I find myself surrounded of so much love and this makes a whole difference, all this wonderful energy gives me the impulse to get up everyday and do my best as a mother, as a wife and as a creative person. I feel like the luckiest girl ever and all I want is to give all that love back in every possible way, being this blog one of them. I want to say thank YOU for all the beautiful birthday wishes in my Friday post and THANK YOU for taking the time to visit this place because it means the world to me.

THANK YOU to my beautiful friends for coming to the dinner celebration and a very special THANK YOU for my dear friend MARGIE because what you did for my birthday was something that I will absolutely treasure forever!!! Much love from the bottom of my heart to everyone!

Elsita :)

Do what you love and love what you do :)

Bill and I had the privilege to attend a concert by Keith Jarrett who is a remarkable American Pianist and Composer. This man plays the piano in such a unique way, I haven’t quiet seen anybody like him. His piano and him become one and the music is so amazing, almost visual. As he played the piano I got to “see” different shapes and colors coming out from everywhere, I saw little drops of water in the air, I saw the wind, I saw tiny pieces of colored papers flying around... This man enjoys so much what he does, it is contagious. So while I was watching him perform my mind started navigating through all those imaginary channels that we have in our brain, I started making connections and going from one link to another (like on the Internet) until I saw my Dad. My Dad? How did he get in there? Well, I have the explanation:

For several years my Dad used to drive one of those big trucks that go around picking up the garbage. At my school that was considered to be the worst and most embarrassing job that anybody could have so I didn’t tell anybody what my Dad did. (Sometimes kids could be so cruel to other kids). When someone asked what my Dad’s profession was I said: Professional Driver. Because this is exactly what my Dad had considered himself since age 18 when he first got his driving license. (He is seventy now). At age 18 my Dad got a job driving a big bus, that’s when he met my mom so we could say that they met though the public transportation system (she was his favorite passenger). Later in life he drove so many different types of vehicles, being the huge ones his favorite! He proudly says that he can drive anything and he has all the permits to prove it. My Dad had survived two mayor car accidents (not his fault). The Doctors said (both times) that due to the emotional trauma he wasn’t going to be able to drive again and both times they were wrong. He just couldn’t stop doing it.

As a Professional Truck Driver there was a whole set of non-written rules that all of his friends with big trucks strictly followed. I will mention only the three most important ones:
Number one: You need a big mustache. My Dad had the most amazing mustache ever; he was pretty popular because of it.
Number two: You need to wear a shirt with no sleeves and a V-neck followed by 5 buttons. My mom used to sew these shirts by the dozen for him.
And number three: you need huge sunglasses, big enough so they could cover about 45% of your face.

As a Professional Truck Driver if you didn’t have these three elements put together you were not considered to be the real deal. My Dad was always on the top of his field and he enjoyed his job so much; from the noise that his truck made to how he claimed that giant machine in order to sit behind the steering wheel... As I look back into my life as a child I realize that my Dad taught me a great lesson, which is: Do what you love and love what you do. So is there anything in common between Keith Jarret the virtuoso Pianist and my Dad the truck Driver? Absolutely: they were both born with a talent for making beautiful music. Keith makes music with his piano and my Dad makes music with his truck.
My Dad is now retired in Cuba and he doesn’t drive anymore but all of his dreams are truck and car related. In one of my last conversations with him he described the truck of his dreams in such a detailed way that I could almost “see” it (the same way I “saw” Jarrett’s music). That’s why I say that he is still a Truck Driver and he will always be even when there is not truck involved anymore.

See you tomorrow!
Elsita :)

Quick Report :)

Good Morning my friends!
The Producers Guild of America dinner last night was amazing with lots of interesting people. Tomorrow I will be posting a picture of two of them from a book that we got at the event. Their faces may not be familiar to many of us but they are the creators of something that we all know about...just a little surprise that I will reveal tomorrow. I will also post a picture of myself with the Anthropologie outfit that I was supposed to wear to the Golden Globes and the jewelry by Megan Auman that a lot of girls noticed; I got the nicest compliments about the necklace! Thank you sooo much again Megan!!!

I also wanted to let you know that yesterday I started cutting the dress for the Oscars and I am so excited about this project! And today we will be having a fun family day with the kids!
Have a wonderful Sunday and see you tomorrow!!!
Elsita :)

Emotional World :)

I magine the emotional world as a box containing an invisible landscape. Each one of our landscapes has an unique flora and fauna because every human being is different. Now, there is one thing that we all need in order to stay alive and that it oxygen. If we close the door to our emotional world we will get limited amounts of oxygen and breathing will become hard and our invisible flora and fauna will suffer a lot. But if we open that door and share our little landscape with other people we will instantly feel better. I am always looking for ways to keep the door to my emotional world open and I do this specially through my art. Having this blog has been also one of the best sources of oxygen in my life. Many of us are afraid of sharing our feelings with other people because we don’t want to become too fragile or vulnerable but the truth is that there are lots of great human beings out there in the world who are sensitive and who have a lot to give to you. I do the best I can in order to keep my fears away from my self-expression. Keeping everything for myself won’t make me a better person anyway. Now if we feel shy or prefer privacy we just need to be creative; sometimes with a little bit of creativity we can say the most difficult things. And as long as we keep expressing ourselves we will never run out of oxygen.
Let's keep breathing!!
And see you tomorrow!
Elsita :)

Little gift:
I will be sending a tiny card with the illustration that you see up there and the text of this post on the back of the card to 5 of my blogger friends. If you want one of them just let me know here with a comment and then send me an e-mail with your address :)