definatalie.com

Enjoy the day and do something fun

It’s hard to escape some of the more cringe-inducing messages in the lead up to Valentine’s Day in the western world. It’s a day that was created to fete early Christian martyrs (yes, plural – Valentine was a popular name for martyrs!) for things that people forgot about long ago, and for reasons of sacrifice rather than actual kissy-kissy romance. Early Pagans held a fertility celebration called Lupercalia in February and it’s thought that the creation of the Valentine holiday was an attempt to Christianise Pagan celebrations (remind you of Christmas?) As time went on the myths and practices surrounding Valentine’s Day became more romantic and were intended to celebrate the romantic love between a man and a woman. People exchanged cards with ribbon and lace, and eventually some entrepreneurial sort came up with the idea of mass manufacturing these trinkets. And you know the rest.

There’s a lot to disagree with when it comes to Valentine’s Day. It’s a Christian tradition celebrating hetero-normative love bastardised from Pagan celebration, basically. For years I was a single girl wondering about love and Valentine’s was always a day that mocked my inability to find a partner. To find a little joy I would make cards for my friends, drawing and gluing to show my appreciation and love for the people around me. Some years I would take time out to spoil myself, with home-made facials and manicures. When I started going out with Nick it didn’t really seem important that he shower me with gifts, so we never really made a big deal out of the day and preferred to spend it with friends. I really appreciate this new tradition we’ve created and feel like it’s a lot more enriching than selfishly squirreling our love away (though if you’re a parent it’s probably a good time to score some time to yourselves!)

SOME LOVELY THINGS TO DO
For yourself and others

❥ Paint your nails a crazy colour. Or red. Or any colour, really. (Photo by lauren the zebra)
❥ Give yourself a face mask and put used tea bags on your eyes (I have no idea if it reduces puffy eyes effectively, but it feels nice!)
❥ Make cupcakes for your friends.
❥ Have a picnic in the park and nap in the sun (good if you’re Australian, maybe not so good if it’s still frosty in your part of the world!)

❥ Nibble your jam sandwich into the shape of a heart (I used to do this all the time) or you could buy a proper cutter (they don’t sell the above one anymore though!)
❥ Book a date with a new friend.
❥ Doodle sweet things on cards and give them to your family and friends.
❥ Take a grandparent out to the movies.

❥ Stand in front of the mirror and practice cute poses. Do not leave until you have smiled at yourself.
❥ Write yourself a Valentine and put it in a book (so you or someone else can find it years later).
❥ THROW OUT YOUR SCALES.
❥ If you live with someone and their scales are in the bathroom, blu-tac a positive message over the display.
❥ Do absolutely nothing all day.

If you’ve got any body-positive all-inclusive plans for Valentine’s Day let me know in the comments!

I think everyone picks themselves to pieces – even the most seemingly confident of people. Sometimes I think that my low self-esteem exists so that I don’t get too full of myself, and other times it really gets me down. I’m very guilty of comparing myself against other people (in terms of fashion, looks, professional skills, etc!) and it’s only this year that I’ve decided to become conscious of myself when I do it, and try to turn it around. It’s rather hard! I was stoked to see that Georgie Love, Frocks & Frou Frou and No More Mumus have started a mini-meme in the Australian blogging sphere, and they’ve answered the $64 million question, “What do you love about yourself?” So now I’m going to do it!

What I love about myself:

• I seem to be able to pull off nearly every hair colour.
• My sense of humour and general irreverence.
• My lips, which I used to be teased for!
• My height.
• I’m willing to give anything a go.
• I love that my hands create things.
• My drive to keep learning.
• My problem solving and resourcefulness.
• How one of my eyes is half brown.
• I’m nice.
• My eyebrows (over tweezing when I was 15 lead to low maintenance brows!)
• I’m willing to go out on a limb to make people feel comfortable or happy.
• My passion.
• Last of all! I love that I am a billboard for myself. I love that I don’t take myself too seriously. I am not afraid to express myself through my body, clothes, art, blog etc etc etc!

You are now under strict orders to blog about how much you love yourself! If you don’t have a blog, leave a comment

I thought I’d get off the video thing but yesterday I realised I hadn’t done a “video portfolio” and I wanted to see if I could top my old one, done in September last year. Because I’ve now got an iMac, I also have iMovie… so I’m able to do all kinds of rad edity things that I couldn’t do last year with Windows Movie Maker **gag** You might notice on most of the still frames there is movement across them – that’s called the Ken Burns Effect, and I might have abused it a little bit on this video because I just learnt how to do it. ha!

The music in the video is all Creative Commons licensed! Isn’t it awesome? Melissa Maples recently turned me on to CC resources, and I’ve been so impressed by the quality and the scope of music available. You can see who created the three songs I’ve used in this video by hanging out until the end, or just going to the YouTube page where I’ve also supplied links to the song pages on ccMixter.

Video has been intriguing me lately. I never thought I could do it – in the past I’ve attempted animation but the one thing that kept tripping me up was the dimension of time, and how to manipulate it while using all the other design principles that have been drummed into my head for two dimensional work. I am having heaps of fun experimenting with iMovie though, it’s definitely a less intimidating jumping off point into the world of video editing. I’ve boldly told Nick that I would like a video camera for my birthday, plskthx! (Though I’m fairly realistic about my small chances there… unless I pull some super huge fantastical commissions soon!)

I’m not sucking up at all (Hey Nick ILU pls buy me a video camera) but here are some photos of the beautiful bunch of flowers he bought me the other night. It is a HUGE bunch. There are literally 20 billions of dimensions of flowers in them!

They make me want to start drawing flowers more.

Do you have any requests for video stuff? It seems like there’s a whole world out there for me to talk about, but I don’t know where to start! Leave me some requests or suggestions in the comments or on my YouTube channel and I’ll do my best to get some new videos up!

I have discovered that a big part of what I do involves buttloads of time and love. People must think I’m crazy for spending hours drawing tiny lines or baking things from scratch, but it’s one of the only ways my primitive consciousness knows how to properly convey love and affection. A small part of me frets that people don’t value what I do – I worry that people throw away the things I make for them as if they were Hallmark products, but in the end I have no control over that. The only thing I really have control over is my love, and even if they did throw away my gifts I’d still spend time making them.

I have been incredibly busy lately, which is awesome, but I fell behind in making cards for Mother’s Day. So yesterday was spent drawing furiously… and making cupcakes. I finished icing the cupcakes and gluing the cards about half an hour before we left to have lunch at my sister’s place today… I was frazzled and half resentful because I feared how my gifts would be received. I needn’t have worried – my family always appreciate what I do, and I am so grateful for that because otherwise I’d be one bitter headcase

Thanks to the women in my life, including most of all – my Mum and Nana. You are brilliant, and my very limited vocabulary can not express how much I am indebted to you for helping me become who I am.

If you want to show someone you really think they are tops but you can’t express it in words, print off this recipe and make them some amazing cupcakes. They’ll get it