If per-chance you need to escape all the heat and settle down in a cafe and pretend it’s autumn I suggest you go grab this beauty first:

Or take it to the beach.

On a picnic.

AAAANNNDD certainly take it on an airplane!!!

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Words like:

Being,

Fertile,

Fly,

Movement,

Organic,

Raw,

Reunion,

Seeking,

Tribe…

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 These are the words you find embedded in the images and stories of artists featured in this months issue of Artful Blogging.

It lights me up to delve into this.

To sink into the stories of other souls like mine.

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I am pretty much freaking out that I had the deep privilege to be apart of this amazing magazine!!!

I have gawked and gandered at Artful Blogging for years, wishing one day, oh maybe one day I will be apart of it…

And I mean WHAT my name is on the cover??

It was such a lovely surprise to see when I opened it early on one perticularly bad August morning.

It gave me a deep sense of gratittude.

All the silent sewing into my passions leapt forth in a moment of shining brillance.

I have always been pretty shy about my work, because it is always so deeply me.

That to see my real life played out in these pages,

to see my words asking, willing, nudging those to seek the little bits of joy they can pull out of all the ordinary we see.

Gave me a new vigor for my voice and truthfully to begin AGAIN taking my own advice.

BE-deep within ALL the doing.

I am making less excuses and cherishing a little bit more these days.

So writing this was just as much a reminder to me and it is to you.

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We ate pears and large chunks of cheese as we drank our warm red wine and smoked cheap cigarettes.

We laid under pine trees, like the ones I played in as a child and Ari sang to us while playing her acoustic guitar.

Everything seemed simple then.

I wasn’t in full swing grown up mode quite yet.

It was a spacious evening in a Tennessee vineyard surrounded by lovely ladies and one token  man.

IMG_4037IMG_4026Take tiny pleasure trips: Write about the very simple pleasures all around us!

Escapee into the open: Write about what you really wish you could show or say to everyone.

Shake up your familiar scenes: Write about your morning routine with fresh eyes looking closely at its beauty.

(The images below are some amazing artists that I discovered in this issue. I swooned over the layers and colors in their art and stories.)

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Glia Alena

(This painting made me long for Asia.)

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Aziza Mirtalipova

 (The vividness of her images!!! Seriously gaze upon the beauty!)

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 Claudia Casal

(If I didn’t already want to take all that I have in savings and blow it an a massive traveling experience, NOW I REALLY WANT TO JUST PICK UP AND GO!)

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You can purchase a copy HERE, read more about the above mentioned artists and MANY more down right ahhhhhhmazing people!

Tea photographed above is from the ever lovely Lindsay Luna. Best tea I have ever had and she packages it in the most magical way.

More images from when I visited Tennessee Here.