It's Time to "Lay Out"

No, I'm not talking about sun bathing. Besides, I never know whether it's lie out or lay out (that tricky grammar). Nope, I'm talking about floor plans for the house in my WIP.


 I've found that whenever I'm writing a lot of scenes that take place in the same house, it's much easier to have a visual floor plan to go by, not just for the practical issues of how to get the characters to move from one room to the next, but also for more subtle imagery, like how the sun would light up a room at a particular time of day.

The house in my current WIP was not an easy one to design because it takes place in a grand estate in New Canaan. I've got floor plans for multiple floors as well as one for the yard and out buildings. 


Truth be told, I had a little too much fun looking through websites of New Canaan real estate while I was dreaming up this house. In fact, I fell in love with the house that I based the one in my book off of. Now I just have to come up with five and a half million dollars, and I can make it mine in real life too.

The Freakin' Awesome Winner

I know you've been biting your nails all day, wondering if you were the winner of the Freakin' Awesome Banner Contest. Well, I can now tell you that if your name happens to be:


Kristen Lippert-Martin


then you are most definitely the winner and better start thinking 
about what you want your new banner to look like.

The Freakin' Awesome Banner Contest

It's been a while since I had a contest and I decided it was time to shake things up a bit, so instead of having the same old boring contest for a gift certificate or one of my prints, I decided to do something Totally Freakin' Awesome (well at least I hope you'll think it is) and give you a chance to win a new Blog or Facebook Banner designed by yours truly. 


To Enter: All you need to do is make sure that you're a follower and then drop me a quick note in the comments section telling me that you'd like to be entered. 


Extra Entries will be given for those who spread the word. Post about the contest on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog and I'll give you an extra entry for each (just be sure to let me know in your comments).


Here are a few banners that I've designed to give you an idea of what you might choose from. Of course you can ask for something totally different. It's your style that we'll want to be showcasing so the image will need to be personal to you. The sky's the limit. 

The contest will end on my birthday June 6th at midnight and I'll post the winner on June 7th. 

This Summer Will Be Different

It's that time of year when I start gearing up with a long list of summer plans. Inevitably I'll ditch my grand scheme after the first week and a half, ultimately watching the kids fritter their days away vegging out in front of the television and making trips to the corner market. 


But like every year, I'll vow that this summer will be different. It will be educational, and productive. My children will flourish into creative, artistic, brilliant Einsteins. 


Yep, you all know how this story is going to end, but that won't keep me from dreaming big. Here are the high hopes that I have for this summer's activities.

• Indie Films- Yes, I'm hoping that while my nephew is in town my kids will write and direct a film. I have high, Oscar-worthy hopes on this one. After downloading some awesome editing software they'll finish off their films and we'll have the first annual Logan Avenue Film Festival (maybe it'll even be a red carpet event).
• Singer Song Writer- Those guitars aren't just going to sit around collecting dust. These kids could have a whole album out by the time summer is over. I've already promised my oldest daughter twenty bucks for every original song that she writes and I'm actually hoping to be out some big bucks come fall.
• A Novel Idea- Yep, I'm hoping that I'm not going to be the only one pounding out words this summer. I've got two novels lined up myself and I'm hoping that my oldest can finish the first draft of the awesome novel she started working on.
• Fashion Star- We've got some big plans to repurpose a bunch of old clothes into some fine swoon-worthy outfits. 
• Mais Oui, C'est Brilliant- We've already started our Rosetta Stone courses and the kids are really excited to learn a new language. Will we all be fluently speaking French by the time school rolls around again? Comment dit-on, I doubt it?

It sounds like an awesome summer to me. Maybe we'll even work in a few days at the pool.

A Monkey With a Stick

It's pretty obvious to me that my fatal flaw (besides being too beautiful and talented) is that I'm just a fickle filly. I don't mean to be capricious, but I have a certain lack of stick-to-it-iveness that I really detest. And it's time to find a way to break me free from this folly.

I admit it, I'm so easily distracted by pretty things: new ideas, flowers to plant, pictures to look at; that I have trouble following through with the actual projects that mean the most to me. Without an outside deadline, I could get lost wandering in the mist of countless lost days and weeks and months.

So how does someone like me, with such an obvious lack of willpower when it comes to time (and sweets), ever get anything done. I realize there are some things that work for me: I can sometimes respond to a good self-prescribed deadline, I like lists, and timers. But I've realized that I need to find a way to get back on track with the projects I'm working on and finally get some stuff done.

Any suggestions? I'm not opposed to hiring a monkey to stand over me with a stick.

300 Plates Show

I've wanted to do this show for years. Each May, Art Access puts on an amazing show in which they ask local artists to paint 300 plates (metal and fiberglass) which are auctioned off in an amazing event to provide arts programing to Utahns with disabilities. This is one of my two paintings and believe it or not, I'm actually really pleased with the way it turned out.

W is for Wish

I am a wisher. I work hard at it. Really. If wishing was a sport I would be one of those guys that has all the gear: the hundred dollar sweat-wicking undershirt, the helmet made out of titanium, the little gloves with the fingers cut out. I know it sounds absurd, but it's true. In a way I have made a sport out of wishing.  

I've been this way since I was a little girl, finding ways to wish on anything. Maybe it's partially a belief in something magic, or the hope that if we want something badly enough we must be able to influence the world.

And there's an abundance of things to wish on if you're looking: shooting stars, dandelions, four leaf clovers, numbers, candles, scraps of paper.

But lately I've been wondering what it might feel like to let those wishes go. I've always thought that hope was the greatest virtue, the thing you must hold onto until the end. But maybe there's more beauty and grace in the act of letting go.

I kind of like the image it evokes: 

My hand holds onto a string; at the end of it floats a big white balloon. With the smallest movement, I open my fingers and that ball of hope floats off into the sky. Gone. And here I stand, empty, but free.