Fashion Fridays

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Okay, so some blog pages are just for a guilty pleasures and this is it. Here in Fashion Fridays we’ll be looking at fashion in all her guises.

What about fashion intrigues or interests you? Is it to follow trends and make sure you look your best with the lastest styles and dos? Do you watch fashion and Wall Street and see how the two correlate? (There’s lots of discussion about skirt length and DOW Jones Industrial trends!)

Me, I’m a sucker for studying fashion through the ages and how that relates to the socio-political and even religious ties of the time.

Today I want to just share a links:
http://www.costumegallery.com/
This is an absolutely awesome site with more drool factor than should be allowed. Penny has done a fabulous job and keeps updating the site regularly with more and more information and fun.

Next week, to stick with the spirituality side of the fence, we’ll look at liturgical embroideries!

Talking Table Thursdays

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Happy Thursday Everyone!

Growing up as a kid we could talk about anything at my Mother’s kitchen table. You had to keep it civil, and you had to defend your position, but open debate and frank discussion were strongly encouraged. We’re considering Table Talk Thursdays to honor and continue that legacy. We’ll be choosing topics from current events, happenings, what people want to talk about and issues in the news/world to discuss. If you have a topic you’d like to see covered, please post us a comment and we’ll add it to the discussing.

Today it’s the power of a smile. My husband and I are fortunate enough to live near Glacier National Park where we like to go hike as often as we can. While much of the time we have the trails to ourselves, as the season progresses there are more and more hikers on the trails. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we’re all stacked back to back like the miners heading to Alaska going over the Chilcoot Trail! But there are more people than in the early spring.

When we hike I have made it a point to smile and say hello to everyone we see on the trail. It’s been a fun little experiment and I think my husband has had more fun with it than I with it because he got to see more of the reactions from people than I did. What did we find? Some people got it and smiled back, many that smiled even said hi. However, more would give a hesitant smile and from what husband reports more often than not the people would turn and look back at me after they had passed me. I found in fun that a simple smile and hello could be received in such a wide disparity of ways.

I’d love to hear how it turns out for you to try your smile experiment! I strongly recommend doing it with another person who can observe the people you have smiled at once you are out of their sight. That’s where the fun comes in! Besides, what’s it hurt to share a smile?

Feel better, share a smile today!

Wyrd and Wonderful Wednesday

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Howdy and Happy Hump Day!  It’s Wednesday and at noon the work week is official half over for those on the 8 to 5, 40 hour a week clock.

Today we are introducing our new Wednesday forum – the Wyrd and Wonderful. No, it isn’t about some role playing game, and we aren’t going to play wizards and warlocks. What we are going to do is look around the net and find something within what we call the “wyrd and wonderful.” This was a phrase a bunch of us used to use back in the mid-70s for all those interesting happenings. Things like crop circles, alien abductions, ghosts, omens and more. If you have an experience, we’d love to have you share it with us here! Whether it is a prescient dream, a goosebump, or a shiver, c’mon by and tell us about it.

For this week, we’ll talk briefly about spirit signs. Now, don’t get too caught up in the venacular. That is just a label. Here’s what we mean by “spirit sign”:

For several years I was lucky enough to get to ride around most of northwest Montana with my husband while we were doing deliveries. This is a very special place of the country where wolves, bear, elk, deer and big horn can all be seen easily from riding in the car. This was a special treat for the both of us because it allowed us to have time together and to see some wonderful stuff at the same time.

Since we work out of the home, escaping in just about any way is a big treat. A few years ago we were going through a difficult time and decided to take a short “brain break” by visiting the east side of Glacier National Park.

We went out for a ride over to the east side of the Great Divide, visiting the Many Glaciers area of Glacier National Park. We had an awesome day in the park, a short hike up to Josephine Lake and we had gotten to see a lynx at the lakeshore, big horn were above all over the slopes, and the eagles that live in that area were not being shy about showing themselves.

We did our traditional drive through the campgrounds and parking areas, using binoculars to look at the sheep doing their thing on the high alpine slopes. Needless to say we were both awestruck and thrilled to have seen such a variety and quantity of wildlife on the trip.

As the day was starting to wear on, we decided to head for home. As we were pulling around one of the blind curves that opens up into a sloped meadow Sam said “It sure would be nice to see a whole herd of elk.” We come around the corner and. lo and behold, there in the meadow on the upper side of the road is a herd of about 60 elk! I would leave it to coincidence if it had only happened once…but that is not the case. My dear Mr. Sam (referred to as “oh he who makes the elk appear”) “commanded” the elk numerous times…and still does.

It may not seem to be the biggest in the realm of wyrd and wonderful, but it sure was one of the more fun ones for me. The real kewl part of it was that for quite some time after that, there weren’t a lot of problems with business and things turned around and were heading in a positive direction in a matter of days! The elk, a member of the deer family, was letting us know that we needn’t be worried and that everything was fine. And, well, they were right.