I have a confession to make….I used to live in a trailer. When Mr. Indie Fixx and I moved out on our own, (I was only 16) we lived in a trailer for a couple of years. In the city, people live in cheap apartments with 5 roommates, but in the more rural areas of the US, people live in trailers when they 1st move out. Even though we lived in a trailer, it was fun being out on our own &  having our own place. I fixed it up all nice…well as nice as we could afford anyway. Our trailer days are long behind us, but we still have reminiscence about those times and remember a certain fondness for our 1965 Fleetwood Mobile Home.

For those who read Readymade magazine, you may have already seen this, but when I 1st saw the February/March cover I flipped. Featured on the cover was El Cosmico, a concept lodging destination in Marfa, Texas in southwest Texas. El Cosmisco features renovated vintage trailers, reinvented yurt structures called eco shacks, a traditional 22 ft. diameter Sioux teepee & and a number of tent campsites for visitors. It’s designed to be more than a just remote getaway too, with workshops and retreats ranging from sewing to cooking to art classes & writing workshops. Plans are also in the works for a series of art creation spaces as well. Some of the trailers are really stunningly renovated and it’s now officially one of the places Mr. Indie Fixx and I want to visit.  Especially since our friends want us to visit them when they move back to Alamogordo, New Mexico!

Take a look and see if your image of trailers isn’t modified some!

{{{{image from El Cosmico}}}

{{{{image from El Cosmico}}}

{{{{image from Readymade magazine}}}

{{{{image from Readymade magazine}}}

{{{{image from Readymade magazine}}}

Today’s my day in the Blog It Forward Mash-up. You can read more about the Mash-up on here on the sfgirlbybay blog. Victoria coordinated this whole thing, which came out of a spontaneous twitter conversation amongst a bunch of the participating bloggers. The idea for Mash-up is to share what inspires us in a blog post as well as support our bloggy brothers and sisters by blogging it forward.  So before I get started with what inspires me, I want to mention hound – grainline, who blogged before me yesterday, and ink and wit, who will follow me tomorrow.

Now what inspires me? This is a question I get asked a lot and it’s never an easy one to answer. Inspiration is such an ephemeral and fleeting thing, almost magical, and it’s often difficult for me to pinpoint specifically what inspired me at any given time. That said, there are lots of things that ‘call to me’ though. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s difficult to describe exactly, but when something calls out to me, I have an overwhelming feeling to look at, use, listen to, feel, capture, savor, enjoy, create, spread whatever that thing is. To me, this calling to me or inspiration feels like butterflies in your stomach or that feeling you get when watching a kitten or a sappy commercial, but there’s also an intellectual thoughtfulness as well.

Maybe an example will clarify my meaning. When I see a Dixon Ticonderoga pencil, the pencil calls out to me, “Write, Jen. Use me to write something. Whether a mundane list of things you need to do or your life’s opus. Just use me to create something.” Now more often than not, I do not use the Dixon at that time, but that feeling is stored away and at some point in the future my fingers will get itchy to hold a pencil and I will write. This happens with both the mundane (like the pencil) and the sublime (like the sunset) and it doesn’t always lead me to write, but sometimes to do other things. Things like photography, painting, learning more about a subject, a spur to action, a change of outlook, maybe a bit of self reflection and more.

For my Blog It Forward post, I thought I would share some of those things that call out & inspire me. Then you can share what inspires you in the comments. You know, one of the things I am inspired by is you and I love to read what you have to share!

The best pencils in the world!

Magazines!  I love magazines. Here are some recent purchases & some I recently received in the mail. House Beautiful, Bon Appetit, Vegetarian Times, Living, The Surfer’s Journal & Organic Gardening. What magazines do you get or buy at the bookstore?

I love Central and South American arts, crafts and culture. Here’s one of my molas.

Food inspires me!  I love nothing better than having a whole bunch of vegetables that I have to figure out what to do with, it’s my art!

If this dish looks good, here’s the recipe. Also, you can read about both my garden and cooking if that kind of stuff inspires you.

Paper! I love paper and making things with it. I cut out snowflakes, do origami, make paper garlands and more.  Indie Foxx Garland template can be found here.

‘She Read Until Her Eyes Grew Weary’ photo from slgdesigns.

Every since I 1st started to read, books have been my special friends. They have been such an integral part of my life that I even wound up working as a librarian for a time and where my favorite thing was to help patrons discover fiction titles.

I read a least one book a week & often go through periods when it’s more like 6 or 7 a week. Recent reads have included The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan & Factotum by Charles Bukowski. I read by non-fiction and fiction, but prefer fiction and devour everything from James Joyce to T.C. Boyle (just picked up The Women yesterday, in fact).

Music posters for Andrew Bird, Peter Bjorn & John & The Decemberists from Spike Press.

Music!  How could I live without music? I’m listening to some right now while I type this? Want to know what I listen to, then check out my Pandora stations.

Organizational storage boxes inspire me. I don’t know why, but I just know that I want to fill them up with things! Kassett boxes from Ikea.

Ok, chocolate isn’t so much an inspiration as a handy thing to have when inspiration strikes. Brownies are from Whimsy & Spice.

Image by konaboy

Before I start, I want to clarify something…I don’t surf, never have & I’m better off sticking to body surfing…but I love surfing. Have loved it since I was about 9 and I read Gidget for the first time. The Big Kahuna was so cool! Seeing The Endless Summer cinched it, I was hooked on surfing. It’s my goal to, at some point, see the Big Wave surfers in Hawaii and other spots. It’s a glorious thing to see a human harness the power of the ocean and create art with it.

The image above is of The Point at Cape Henlopen from our vacation last summer.

Nature is a really big inspiration for me as well. I know that’s cliche, but it’s true. Nature is awesome…and I mean that in the awe-inspiring way, not the totally rad kind of way.  Three of my favorite nature spots in the world (haven’t actually been to very many places in the world, I must say) are Cape Henlopen in Delaware, Key West Florida & Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I love and am inspired by illustration and illustrators. Firefluff (Lisa Evans) is just one in a very long list of faves. If you love illys too, then read more here, download here and see stuff here + here.

Image by hvhe1

The woods and all woodland creatures in them are one of life’s joys for me. Someday, I want my own cabin the woods to run away to and I want to talk to the animals like Snow White.

Image is of me and my peeps (Mr. Indie Fixx and Indie Fixx Jr.).

I could go on forever about my inspirations, but in the interest of ending this post today, the last & most important thing that inspires me is love. All we really need is love.

Last night, while looking through my Flickr Contacts’ photos for inspiration, all I saw were faces. And expressions. Ranging from both smiles and frowns to those of being deep in thought or being entirely in the moment. People always say that I wear my emotions on my face and I never know why they single me out, because I feel like we all do. Our faces are a window inside our heads and a view into our souls and whether it’s in real life or virtually via flickr browsing, I always seem seem to be enthralled with people watching.

Here are some of the images I came across from my Flickr contacts that stuck with me.

by pikepineblog

by .sarah.kraly.

by somethings hiding in here

by buttonarcade

by HOLLi*

by haeshu

by laura dye

by the purl bee

by *lalalaurie

by indiaromeo

by Dolan Geiman

by missamyo

by tielsk

Yesterday, I shared my new office with you. And as you can see in the image below, I am still in need of some curtains. I’ve decided to make my own and thinking that cafe curtains will work best in the room. It’s a small room and my desk is right in front of the window, so I don’t want big heavy curtains.  Just something light and visually interesting…of course, that means I want a patten. But what pattern? I’ve been looking at fabric for weeks now and I am going cross-eyed. Worse than that, I’ve become indecisive in the face of the tremendous possibilities out there.

I’ve narrowed in down to 15 possibilities and I need your help in deciding.

Take a look at all the choices and choose what you think would look best or offer up a different suggestion. The color on the walls is Behr’s Reflecting Pool. It’s Gray with a purplish tint.

1. Scene in Lavender by Etsuko Furuya at Phat Fabric
2. Turquoise Hive by Patty Young at J Caroline Creative
3. Andrea Pink from Wonderfluff
4. Grassy Plain by Etsuko Furuya at Phat Fabric
5. Ivory Fiona Floral by Anna Griffin at J Caroline Creative
6. Totem by Summersville
7. Field of Dreams in Sky by Lecien at Hawthorne Threads
8. Lace Fans in Robins Egg by Ink & Spindle
9. Woodland Creatures in Blue by Etsuko Furuya at Hawthorne Threads
10. Spring Flowers by Kobayashi at Purl Shoho
11. Anniko Metro by Daisy Janie
12. Colt Circles in Sand by Skinny Laminx
13. Mum Mustard by Swanky Swell
14. Butterfly Jubilee by Mod Green Pod
15. Bye Bye Blackbird by Kokka at Hawthorne Threads

Which one do you like for my office? You can choose more than one fabric.

poll by twiigs.com

Remember back here I mentioned that we recently moved my office to an upstairs room as part of our home remodeling project? Well, I am finally ready to share some pictures with you of the finished product. It’s a much smaller space than I had before, but I think I made it work (after getting rid of quite a lot of clutter).

The space is not completely done, I do still need to put up my art, but I just can’t decide what to put up. Moving from a much larger space to a smaller space I have way more art pieces than can fit on the walls, so I need to make some difficult choices about what to put up and what to keep in storage. I’m thinking I may need to just rotate, since making this decision is like asking me to choose which one of cats is my favorite…they are all my babies.

I also need to add some curtains. I plan on making my own, but more to come on that later.

So, what do you think?

My desk , bulletin board and the view out the window.  I know the paint looks blue, but it’s not. It’s called reflecting pool (from behr), but it’s gray with a purplish tint.

Here’s the closet with my paper fox garland. I took the doors off the closet, because it’s much more practical to me withour the doors. The black accent wall is actually blackboard pain, which I intend to mark up as soon as I get some chalk markers!

My little crafting table. My sewing machine and other supplies are downstairs in another room.

Image by D Sharon Pruitt

I’m in a bad mood today….woke up to an hellacious email problem that is still unresolved. I am still getting my email copies via Gmail, so it seems I’m not losing any mail, just not able to download it via Thunderbird, which is what I use to store and organize my copious amounts of email. So frustrating, ugh! I really don’t feel like dealing with this today, or ever for that matter. Can you hear that? That is me banging my head on the desk. Anyway, that’s enough about frickin’ email! This post is actually about snail mail and not email.

We all love to hate email, right? I spend so much of my day, sending and responding to emails. On an average day, there are hundreds of emails making their way into my Inbox and almost as many replies. But, even though I’m communicating with people, I feel so disconnected from them. There’s usually not enough time for niceties, greetings and questions about health & family. I know I’m not the only one with this email volume problem or the only one who feels email is so impersonal, I think it’s just a reality of our times.

That said, I’ve decided I want to bring back snail mail. I want to return to the long-lost days of letter writing, penpals and handwritten thank-you notes.  There’s something so special about going to the mailbox and seeing a letter in there amongst the bills and sale fliers. I know you know what that feeling you get when you see a personal piece of mail, it’s like validation that someone loves you! So, I’m making a point of sending thank-you notes and not thank-you emails. I’ve also lined of a few penpals with whom to trade letters.

How about it? Want to a penpal and help me bring back snail mail and the lost art of the letter? If so, leave a comment on this post to express your interest in being a penpal. Also, introduce yourself a bit,  list some of your interests and your email address in the comment. That way, folks can find other folks with similar interests and contact them to trade snail mail addresses.

I’ll start….

I’m Jen. I’m a blogger and I like cute things. I have an obsession with woodland creatures, bags, jewelry and drinking orange pekoe tea with local raw honey. I am a vegetarian, love to cook & garden. I like to make stuff from yarn & paper, do embroidery, make jewelry and really all sorts of artsy craftsy stuff. I love all kinds of music ranging from Miles Davis, surf music & the Allman Bros to The Pixies, The Unicorns, Sufjan  Stevens and Iron & Wine…plus too many more to name. I have all kinds of stationery that I never use and  I’d love 2-3 more penpals. My email address is: jen@indiefixx.com.

So, if you want a penpal, leave a comment on this post or contact someone else who has already left a comment that you’d love to swap mail with. And if you want to bring back penpals and letter writing like me, help me spread the word about our paper-based revolution and link to this post. You can use this logo or this banner if you’d like.

I look forward to some mail!

P.S. If you like this sort of thing, you will probably also like the Letter Writers Alliance.

P.P.S. If you decide to become a penpal, or just want to read more about others doing it, be sure to follow the twitter trend #thepenpalproject.

Image by sarijk

Image by chrisinplymouth

Image by Kasaa

Image by by ohhellofriend