Mind Wide Open

Mind Wide Open

Join in the fun at Gail's web contest Mind Wide Open, it's the most fun I've had just seeing the entrants and the winners of this wonderfully creative contest.

Army of Women

Our revolutionary initiative has two key goals:
To recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all.
To challenge the scientific community to expand its current focus to include breast cancer prevention research conducted on healthy women.
"Breast cancer has been around for decades, but it does not have to be our future. We can be the generation that stops breast cancer once and for all by figuring out what causes this disease and how to prevent it!" "Sign up for your sister, mother, daughter, granddaughter, best friend, and the woman you met last week. This is YOUR chance to be part of the research that will end breast cancer."
Army of Women : You can click on the title of this blog Army of Women to go directly to their page.
https://www.armyofwomen.org/getinvolved

Welcome to the Love/Avon Army of Women, a revolutionary movement to bring women and researchers together to eradicate breast cancer.
As a proud Army of Women member, you will regularly receive emails from us that announce new research studies as well as other Army of Women activities.
You will need to login into your account in order to sign up for any research studies or participate in our Town Hall.
The Army is dedicated to representing ALL women in research so that the research results will apply to ALL women. This means we need you to help us recruit women of all ages, ethnicities, sizes, and shapes. We need women who have had breast cancer and women who have not. We need African American women, Asian women, white women, Latinas, and lesbians to be involved.
You can do your part to help us spread the word about the Army and reach our goal of one million women by:
Emailing an invitation to your friends and family members to join the Army. Send an email today!
Inviting your church, school, professional organization, social group, or sorority, to join the Army. Email us for more information about group affiliations.
Using our “Share/Send to a Friend” feature to let friends or family members know about information we have on our site that might interest them.
Forward emails you receive from the Army to family members and friends.
Talk to your friends and family members about the Army and the studies you take part in.
Link to http://mailing.armyofwomen.org/rd/9z1zsvaf1usiuqaip7spgf396u0i2rpb8amafgego40 from your social networking page, website, or blog.
Thank you for joining the movement to go beyond a cure to eradicate breast cancer.

"PRINCESS PINK"Her name is Princess PinkWhat else could it be?She prefers the color pinkIn everything she sees!No matter where she's goingOr what it is you thinkOne thing you can be sure ofShe's always wearing pink!-donna "cookie" gotlib
I haven't had a giveaway in a while so I decided that this is a good time to have one. As most of you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I've decided to give away a hand signed 8 x 10 matted and framed copy of my original illustration and rhyme "Princess Pink".
HERE'S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO WIN: Notice the Princess Pink button on the sidebar of my blog. Please post that on your blog, then create a post on your blog letting your readers know about my giveaway. Once you have done this, return to my blog, locate this post and leave me a comment letting me know that your Princess Pink button is up and your post has been published. I'll list your name on my sidebar with a link to your site then stop by and leave you a comment to let you know you've been included in the drawing. On November 1st, my nephew Mike Hopper and I will do another video drawing and we will announce the winner!
Cancer.org says "For information about breast cancer, please visit www.cancer.org/breastcancer, or call us toll free at 1-800-ACS-2345, anytime, day or night."

http://cookiesunshine.blogspot.com/2008/10/give-away-for-breast-cancer-awareness.html

Creative Souls Group
A diverse gathering of creative souls~ artists~ music~ writers~ creative people
This month's featured artist winner is..... Bernice Wagnitz!!!!!!


I would like to thank those of you that truly feel this honor should be bestowed upon me.
As I mentioned to Izabella, I have not been published, my art has not been in any galleries or even sold on etsy or ebay. My art is my own expression of my inner feelings bursting with the excitement that this new medium (digital) has brought me.
I have only been doing my digital works for a mere few weeks. I don't have the newest programs and aids that would allow me to take my art further. What I do have is a very old program that my computer seems to think is a virus and wants to destroy. LOL
What my digital art has done for me is to allow me to finally create after such a long time of not doing any art. It's been 11 years since I last did a painting or a sketch. The joy my art once gave me left me suddenly with the loss of my family. It has been a long road back and not an easy one.
Joy left my life along with the joy I felt in creating and for too many years it brought sadness instead of joy. Sadness because I associated so much of the joy with my daughter, my muse, my biggest supporter and the reason I kept doing my art.
The digital art, being so different from what I had done in the past brought back that joy I had once felt. It excited me and gave me my voice back; it allowed me to shout with color and expression again.
I am an artist, these words don't come easy for I am just learning that to be an artist one doesn’t have to be published or have their art hang in galleries. To be an artist one only has to do what comes from the deepest feelings they feel inside. The need to create, to take the feelings and give them a medium to express themselves. I do my art because I feel my art and for no other reason. It is an outward expression of what my inner feelings are.
Bernie

Creative Soul page~ http://creativesouls.ning.com/profile/BerniceWagnitz
ZNE~ http://zneiscrafty.ning.com/profile/Bernice97
Myspace~ http://myspace.com/berniceanthologyofart

Donny Osmond and Weird Al Nerdy N White

Pure Energy 40

Find more photos like this on Creative Souls

Pure Energy

Photobucket Album

In Loving Memory of My Brother Bobby

For My Jennifer

If I could blow that dandelion
And make my wish come true
I'd wish the very nicest things
In all the world for you
I'd ask the fairies please to leave
The stardust in your eyes
And not disturb the shinning dreams
You hope to realize
I'd ask the shadows not to cross
Your pathway to the sun
And then I'd ask
That you'd always be blessed
Little One.
MOM

My First Blog Award

I was thrilled to receive this award from my friend Donna Cook
Donna is one busy lady, she donates her time to several causes and she always has time for her friends. Check out her blog and see what she's up to now.
http://bonniebluedenim.blogspot.com/2008/07/brillante-weblog-award.html#links

Here's all you have to do.....if you "win" this award!

Here are the rules for accepting this award:

1) Put the logo on your blog.

2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4) Add links to those blogs on yours

.5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blog.


I'm nominating

http://www.bonniebluedenim.blogspot.com/
http://heartcollective.blogspot.com/
http://www.krishubick.blogspot.com/
http://rowandevoe.blogspot.com/
http://mandalasoulportraits.blogspot.com/

I Walk In The Shadows

I walk in the shadows of what was and live in the fog of what is. A place where time doesn't exist, a place where the years are tallied by "when Jenny was alive and after Jenny died.
The emptiness I feel is real, I know if the doctors looked closely they would see the large gaping hole in my heart. The place where my daughter used to fill.
I grow less tired of my mask; it is now a part of who I am who I've become. Beneath it lies a face marked with grief and turned old too soon. This is who I am when I'm alone with myself.

When I'm with all of you the light shines in and a safe place opens for me to enter. Here I find friends, people I admire and I'm shy to say admire me.
Strong, not me, you haven't seen me in my grief, alone in the darkness of my sorrow. Or beating the walls for the life I had to come back again.
I am all of this, My name is Bernice and I know the path you walk.

"Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living."
~Bertrand Russell~