Welcome to my Holiday Tradition – my 7 th Annual Photo Alphabet.

I’ll be posting my annual photo alphabet in six parts over the next week or so.

I hope you’ll join me as I explore  a few of my adventures, travel, and life happenings from 2014 with words and photos.

A IS FOR AIR TRAVEL

Never a fan of air travel, I nonetheless took a high number of flights (for me) across the country this year. I’m happiest in an airplane when I have great cloud formations to photograph while flying and great people waiting to greet me at the end of my trip.

I am not such a fan when the Flight Delay sign shows up and doesn’t go away — though a friendly flight companion and a hotel paid for by the airlines goes a long ways to making the delay a tolerable way to pass an evening and a night and another day.

Tucson, Arizona; San Fransisco; Salt Lake City; Minneapolis; Orlando; Atlanta, Georgia; New York City; Asheville, North Carolina; Newark, New Jersey; Dallas; Chicago. And many take offs and landings at Madison, Wisconsin.

Meetings. An Ordination. Vacations. Workshops. A Baby Shower. A Grand-baby Arrival.

All good adventures!

 B IS FOR BOOK ARTS

I love creating books! I love creating pages of books on the letterpress! I set the type for my Desert Wisdom Cards on this 1940s letter press.

Love the metal type. Love the clickity-clack of the letter press as each page is printed using a cylinder roll and a hand crank!

I made books during the whole year. Many of them had a desert connection, like book about the road runner. Many were very simple — often accordion books — that could be made in a few hours. Most of the books had a naturalist focus so I could remember details of the desert as I discovered them.

C IS FOR CHIHULY

My favorite art show this year wasn’t in a gallery, but in a garden! I visited the Chihuly Exhibit held in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix not once, but three times last winter.

The Botanical Gardens are one of my must-see places whenever I get to Phoenix, but this year I was drawn to the gardens over and over — just could not get enough of those art glass sculptures set in the natural desert setting.

D IS FOR DESERT WISDOM

In October of 2014, after many more months of photographing the Sonoran Desert in the Southwest, choosing themes and cards that “spoke to me”, I created a new deck of  Desert Wisdom Cards – Series III.

As I have said before, it was not my original plan to create a deck of only desert-focused cards. I’d planned a set of cards with four nature themes – desert, shore, prairie, and mountain – plus a set of source cards the combined sets based on the template of a tarot deck. But I couldn’t let go of the desert, and so these cards complement the first 2 series and there are now 52 desert cards. (Information on obtaining your own set of Desert Wisdom Cards here.)

This was my big art project of the year. I think the desert is now complete!

E IS FOR EPCOT

One of my favorite things to do is to drop everything and go on vacation with one of my kids when they call and say, “Mom, do you want to go with me to _______?”

My answer is a resounding YES!

And so the allure of Epcot and the Annual Wine and Food Festival called to my youngest and I tagged happily along. Florida in September is…thunderstorm-y and wet — but only in the afternoon (and on a few select evenings!) We were there at the end of September so we not only enjoyed the Food Festival, but the Halloween Party was in full swing, too.

It’s a good thing to add fun and play to the year, and a trip that involved family, food and wine (and tequila), Halloween fireworks, and roller-coasters? Perfect for that smile factor boost!

—————

Coming up next: the Alphabet Part II — Fur Friends through Journey