Forecast: Best Holiday Season Ever with Tori Around

Picture in the booklet for Midwinter Graces

I'm bowing down to whomever thought up the idea for this picture and executed it brilliantly. Tori Amos in a vampy red gown, casting light on a fallen angel - is he dead? Asleep? Under her spell? Most likely all three, but who cares!! It's beautiful and mystical and mysterious: all the things I LOVE!! ♥♥♥

It also means that, for the first time EVER, Miss Amos is soon to release a holiday album and when you mix Tori and Christmas together all sorts of magical lyrics and music can happen and I'm sure will. Last year I was ecstatic when the new holiday albums by three of my favorite artists came out: Enya, Loreena McKennitt, and Sarah Brightman. However, to me, this is the ULTIMATE Christmas gift the music industry could bestow upon me, (as I'm sure they were thinking of ways to top last years plethora of gifts).

Robert Schrader from the Austin Internation Travel Examiner recently was able to hear the album via phone from a friend who happened to receive a promo sampler. Lucky him. Anyway, you can read all about it in his article here.

You can also pre-order either the deluxe version or regular album by clicking on the links in my left-hand sidebar at the top. I cannot wait to get my hands on this!

The other reason this holiday season is going to be extra wonderful is that I will be hand-making most of the gifts I give this year. The reason is 4 fold:

1. Money is tight and I already have most of the materials.

2. I recently opened up my own Etsy shop so I'm big into supporting hand-made creations.

3. A hand-made gift is always more special than a store-bought one. You can't ever go wrong with a gift made from the ♥.

4. I always tell myself I'm going to make all my gifts year after year, but always run out of time. This year I sorta have to so I'm looking forward to using my witchy craft and creating fun items for friends and family.

Will you take the hand-made pledge with me?

Don't you think it will be fun?

You can craft away or browse the array of Etsy shops surrounded by songs of the season by Tori. I can't think of better holiday bliss than that!!

Book Give-a-way: Izzy the Dizzy Dragonfly-Winner Announced!

Picture from Google images

Dragonflies hold a very special place in my ♥.

Ever since I was little, I've had an obsession with faeries and often searched for them in my backyard. A few summers after my family had a built-in pool put in, God sent me my faeries in the form of dragonflies. They would buzz around our heads while we were swimming and I discovered if you held your finger out and were ever so patient, they would delight you with dainty perch on the tip of your finger and sometimes stay there for minutes on end.



I would talk to them and memorize their wing patterns (so I would recognize them if they came back). They would tilt their heads as if to listen intently, clean their "WWI Flying Ace" eyes like a cat cleans it's ears, and smile at me with a friendly, segmented, exoskeletal grin. =)

Picture from National Geographic Explorer

Imagine my delight when I heard from a lovely lady who had just written a children's book about a dragonfly and wanted to do a give-a-way? It's just perfect, saith I! So I am super excited to introduce you to Izzy the Dizzy Dragonfly and it's author, Teri Gurule.

Izzy, being the dragonfly she is, likes to zig and zag through the air, but her flights of fancy can sometimes upset her friends. Will she have to stop flying the way she loves just to please them? In this sweet tale, children learn how to show respect and kindness to others while still being themselves.

Teri Gurule is from Albuquerque, New Mexico where she lives with her husband and 2 sons. She was inspired to write this book when she spotted a dragonfly one day while on a nature walk with her boys.

The book is for sale by 3 different online book vendors:

Tate Publishing

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

However, you could win a free, signed copy with matching bookmark from Tate Publishing just by entering this give-a-way!

Just follow these simple steps:

1. Blog, tweet, update your facebook status or myspace blog about this give-a-way with a link to this post. With each way you post about this give-a-way, this will enter you into the drawing.

2. You MUST make a comment under this post with a link to wherever you have posted about it. This comment is your ticket into the drawing and you must make a comment with each different way you post about it, or include a link to each all in one comment, if you are going to enter more than once.

3. Only one entry per method per day. (i.e. don't tweet about it 50 times in one day) For example, you can blog about it and tweet about it on Wednesday, then tweet about it and post about it on FB on Thursday, etc... get it? Each time you send it out to the webverse make a comment so I know to enter your name in the hat again.

4. The last entry will be taken this Monday 9-14-09 at midnight PST and the winner will be announced Tuesday, September 15th. Good luck to all!! I wish you lots of happy dragonflies!!

*•_•*•_•*•_•*•_•*•_•*•_•*•_•*

Update! Winner was chosen today using random.org and the winner is:

evrythngzen!!

Congratulations! Please send an email to me at feyavanya@pacbell.net with your name and address so I can get you your darling book. =)

For those of you who would still like a copy of Izzy the Dizzy Dragonfly please visit one of the book seller links above. You can also become a fan of the author, Teri Gurule, and see what other projects she is up to on her facebook page.

Thanks to all who entered! Teri and I appreciate your support. ♥

Catherine Answers My "Edward's Wings" Question!

Last November 25th, a few lucky admins and contest winners from various Twilight fansites were priviledged to participate in a live online chat with Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. We posted our questions and the chat moderator chose them at random and asked Catherine the question. I think there was about 50 of us in there so it was crazy and to try and get a question in was a bit difficult because everyone was posting at once. It was a small miracle but one of my questions was chosen! It took me a while to find the transcript online so that I could get the exact answer copied down, but here it is!

You all remember my little observation of Edward's wings in this post? Well, I decided to ask her about that because it's one of my favorite scenes from the movie (you know anything with wings will get me).

My question: Whose idea was it to place an owl behind Edward so it looks like he has wings?



Catherine's answer: Okay, the set decorator came and she had all these cool birds, you see all birds in the scene and an armadillo, the Texas state animal, you know, I am a Texan. Anyway I saw that owl and I remembered there was a beautiful art exposition one time where an artist took a photograph of ashes in the snow and nothing else and while the artist took the picture an eagle was flying by and the photograph was taken at the same time (snaps fingers), it was really cool with the wings right behind it, so when I saw that owl and I thought this could be kind of cool, so we worked it around.

YAY!

The whole chat was quite interesting because there were some very unique questions that were asked and answered that haven't been duplicated in any of the other interviews with her I've read so far. Leave it up to the Twihards to come up with some awesome questions! You can read the entire transcript of the chat on the Twilight Lexicon here.

Happy Friday!

p.s. I know I promised to post my pictures from People Magazine and Life & Style -Patience, my friends. I'm still working on that and will try to post it Monday.