Tag Archives: 2021

Celebrating the Holidays!!

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Well, we’re into our second pandemic Holiday season, and pretty much everyone is doing their best to make it through the day. It’s a good reminder to all of us that everything on this planet we call home is connected… certainly not a new idea, but one worth remembering.

As we enter the first full day of winter (here in the northern hemisphere, at least) we’re also entering the period where the days begin to lengthen once again. More light, more trust, new beginnings. It’s a choice each of us gets to make in every moment, so if you’re ever unsure how to react in any situation, be kind. It’s good for you, good for the other person, is non-fattening, doesn’t cause cavities and helps to make the world a better place, even just for a moment. And, sharing kindness is often contagious! Pay it forward. 🙂

From our house to yours, we wish you a Safe and Happy Holiday season! May 2022 find you safe, healthy and surrounded by Love. 💗

“Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.” – Barbara De Angeli

Whether you celebrate Christmas or Festivus, Solstice or Saturnalia, the arrival of Sinterklaas or Grandfather Frost, Hanukkah, Mawlid Un Nabi, Yalda, Pancha Ganapati, Bodhi Day, Kwanzaa or something entirely personal, we send you love. Create an amazing 2022!!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. The image above is one made by Marcia during a recent visit to the Royal BC Museum here in Victoria. The image is iconic in that the 3rd floor of the museum, including the Old Town displays, will be closed on January 2, 2022 while the museum undergoes modernization and updating of their exhibits. Therefore, this is the last Christmas display there as it is now.

 

Happy Holidays!!

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Well, it’s been a year, to put it mildly. Ironic perhaps that in many ways the very things that have kept us distanced have brought us closer together. We’ve learned that while we see this planet as a huge place, it’s just a tiny blue ball in the vastness of space, and yet all of our loves and losses and hope and history are caught up on the surface of that little blue ball. In David Suzuki’s book, ‘The Sacred Balance’, he asks us to imagine a sphere the size of a basketball. Lay a sheet of tissue paper over the ball. All life on this planet of ours exists in that layer of tissue paper. As the Lakota people say, “Mitakue oyasin”: we are all related. The coming year promises to bring its own share of joys and challenges, but together we can build something beautiful.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or Festivus, Solstice or Saturnalia, the arrival of Sinterklaas or Grandfather Frost, Hanukkah, Mawlid Un Nabi, Yalda, Pancha Ganapati, Bodhi Day, Kwanzaa or something entirely personal, we send you love. Create an amazing 2021!!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. So much of Christmas seems to be about gifting. We offer two thoughts from others on what gifting really means:

from Burning Man (click the image or the caption to go to the article – image © Jane Hu (2018)):

from Robert Lee Fulghum: The Orange 🍊

2021 Photo Calendars

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

This is the eleventh year now that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before, we’re also making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested. For our calendar we’ve used images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2021 was made in May 2020). Because 2020 has been what it was, we didn’t do any significant travel off of Vancouver Island this year and 11 of the 12 images were made in and around the Victoria area. We did manage to trade Victoria for Tofino (on Vancouver Island’s wet coast) for a bit in October, and the image for that month was made in Ucluelet.

click on the image to access the .pdf file for download

I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity Photo or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the graphics stuff is below that. I used MS Word 2016 to make the template and saved it as a .docx file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:

Continue Reading →