The cakewalk dancers were a group of African-American slaves originating in the southern plantations of Florida about 1850. The idea came from the Seminole Indians. These dancers would walk a straight line and balance buckets of water on their heads. Over time, the dance evolved into an imitation of the mannerisms of the white, upper class ballroom figures such as dignified walking, waving canes, doffing hats, and kicking grand promenade.  read more »

Ethnic photography originally began as "objective" photography. Early photographers traveled to exotic lands, studying the people and their environments, giving the everyday person a new photographic view of worlds, previously only known through paintings. This also gave researchers a chance to perfect the negative-positive photographic process. Little more than 100,000 ethnological studies were produced in the period between 1870-1898.  read more »

For those of you who haven't heard - Bernie Berlin's wonderful animal rescue organization, A Place to Bark - has entered Parade Magazine's Giving Challenge. This is a national competition, and the winning charity will receive $50,000 for their cause. This amount would be an incredible boost to Bernie's efforts. In order to win, she needs donations at a $10.00 minimum from as many individuals as possible. SO - if you haven't yet donated, please do so now! If you have already donated, please let your friends and family know and encourage them to donate as well!  read more »

To see how the top ten badges are doing in the challenge, click here: http://www.sixdegrees.org/Top.aspx

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Who would have believed that I'd be designing banners for shoppes on Etsy?  Certainly not me.  All the requests so far are by word of mouth - and each time the shop owner has been thrilled with the FIRST design I've presented!  How cool is that?  read more »

While Christmas is generally for kids, and with a 2-1/2 year old this year was no exception, I did, however, receive 3 awesome gifts that I am thrilled with!

• From my husband – a collage class with a professional artist!

Exploring Collage - Saturday, February 2, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.  read more »

I have been wracking my brain trying to come up with a great idea to make MOO cards that I could use. I finally thought of a great idea - Christmas Gift Tags! I had a lot of fun creating, cropping & uploading 100 different images for my gift tags this year. Here's a quick slide show of the images I used:  read more »

I took the homemade pledge along with over 7,600 other people! Here's a snippit from the website about why you should take the pledge too:

Why buy handmade?  read more »