Insta-Friday. The Day I Found Charm City Charming.

As a friend of mine's sister once said, standing at the edge of the harbor, "Don't you just feel like you're living in a movie?" Well, yesterday, I did. Unheard for February weather. Sunny and warm. Visit from my sister that I don't get to see often enough. Baltimore showed us her best and most charming side. Like everyone, she has her moments. "Charm City." I get it.

Linked to: Life Rearranged, InstaFriday.

Presidents, Failures, Cleaning and Instagram Projects

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Happy President's Day! I was watching CBS Sunday Morning yesterday and was confused at first. Is it just me, or are there sure a lot of stories about presidents this morning? Then it occurred to me. Duh, it's President's Day weekend. Not a morning person.

I had a project all ready to post today. But it failed on me twice. Yes, twice. What I would have thought as a simple craft went horribly wrong. It involved what I would have hoped to be my spring/summer tote. The perfect one found at Hobby Lobby. Nice and big. With pockets! I searched many, many hours for the perfect artwork on-line to turn into a heat transfer to decorate it. Everything was going fine until the actual transfer part. It went really poorly twice. On two separate bags. (Luckily, they were only $4.99 a piece.) Sad. I'm using the really bad one for storage in my closet. I'm still trying to decide if the 2nd one could pass for looking "distressed." Not the look I was going for. So, no fun project to post today. I do have one more transfer left. All printed, cut out and ready to go. I am considering buying a plain white tshirt to apply it to. But have a major bad taste in my mouth about the whole idea now. Perhaps another day.

What else have I been doing on during this super-sized weekend? I have been cleaning and organizing. Not exactly fun, but very fulfilling. I have a major sense of accomplishment. I have two visitors coming this week. (Yay!) And there is nothing like the threat of visitors to make you clean up your act. And your bedroom for that matter. You see, I have a dirty little secret. My kitchen and bathroom-I manage to keep clean. The rest of the place, it's hard. I read a lot (books and magazines) and work on projects (aka crafts) a lot. I also have a lot of clothing and not enough storage. Not complaining, by any means, but this can lead to a whole lot of clutter. I am happy to report, that it has significantly been reduced! I also made a huge trip to goodwill this weekend. Does anything feel better than a good purge?

Since I am still sad about not having a project to share, I thought I would share something I learned. Because that I what I love most about blogs and blogging, all of the cool stuff you can learn. I love Instagram. If you aren't familiar, Instagram is an app that you can use to turn regular, everyday pictures that you take with your iphone to turn into something really beautiful or interesting. It has all of these cool filters that you can apply to your pictures. And then you can share your pictures, through facebook, through Instagram, etc. I love it! Here's the new stuff I learned. You can use your instagram pictures and make them into stuff! I just read about this on eighteen25. They wrote a great post about it here. I had no idea that you could print instagram pics, turn them into postcards, magnets, iphone cases. Check it out! (I can't figure out why part of my text is centered. Sorry! I am a terrible blogger. And blogger can be temperamental.) (P.P.S. Now that I did fix the text centered issue (I actually rewrote a little bit of the html!) I now am having issues with the text spacing. So I give. Clearly I have a lot to learn.)

Insta-Friday! Hometown Edition.

I don't participate in Insta-Friday as often as I'd like. Unfortunately, I'm usually shackled to my desk on Fridays. But my workload lightened ever so slightly today. Just enough to have time to go out to lunch! I headed with friend to the north side of the harbor (by water taxi) and we ended up in the Fell's Point neighborhood. We came upon The Agora Market, in the lobby of The Inn at the Black Olive. Such a fun really restaurant! Super friendly staff, very healthy, fresh food. I'm definitely going back. I forgot to take a picture of my lunch... a lamb gyro. They even baked the pita right there! Delicious! We ate lunch at the counter, there was this huge tray of black walnuts. Also at the counter was this huge amaryllis bloom. I got a nice close shot.

There is a huge statue of Frederick Douglass's head right on the dock near the water taxi stop. Here's a little history for you. It happens to be the sight of the first black owned shipyard in the US. One final shot before I boarded the water taxi and headed back to work. A shot of the industrial side of Baltimore. It is alive and well.

I've linked up to: Life Rearranged. Insta-Fridays.