Cheesecake and a history of diaries

I’ve been toying with making completed visual diary pages and sharing them. Inspired by Helen C. Stark, my latest art crush.

Visual Diary No. 1: Geraniums and Lamp

So here is Le Weekender Visual Diary for this week. It is a mixed media jumble.

A fun time lapse make one feel very proficient:

Both the geraniums and lamp have been haunting me… begging to be painted. Sometimes I wonder why I get hung up on drawing and painting. Other people just walk through life with nary a care for how to present it artistically. I can’t seem to fully behold something beautiful because I just want to draw it afterward. So every beautiful thing becomes a project.

It’s a problem. But I’m working through it. Completing one thing and sharing it might help. Crossing fingers.

Another gorgeous scene I found in a parking lot. A weed against a faded wall. This already looks like it has brush strokes.

I’ve been at Substack this week trying to figure out how to be amazing at it. No pressure. Please follow me there for daily pretties.

Every few years us bloggers need to upgrade.

1. I started with BLOGGER. In 2010! It was so simple. So easy. But ugly.

2. Then I moved to WORDPRESS when my books and mail club became bigger. Needed a fancy pretty situation. Then it got glitchy.

3. Moved on to SQUARESPACE because I wanted to give people an option to automatically buy one letter a month for my mail club. This is working. Thank goodness. But the blogging area isn’t as fun. Remember when you could bounce around and read old posts with ease?

4. So now I’m adding SUBSTACK to the mix. I love the playful bouncing around blogging atmosphere. I love the quick notes and the longer essays. I love how Newspaper-Gazette-like it is. So we are giving it a-go. Please join me. It’s free.

I almost forgot the cheesecake! This was from the Tacos & Cheesecake festival.

Now that you’ve beheld the beauty… and likely want to make a painting of it… I can tell you it was pretty but tasted a lot like greasiness. She’s pretty but she can’t dance.

I love this photo I took in error after taking a photo of the cheesecake. It says so much about this summer. Bumming around a beach town with friends. Eating snacks.

This is my wish for you, dear reader, that you can bum around a fun town with friends and snacks.

-Janice

PS If this felt like a letter from an old friend, you’d probably like a real one. Join the Cottage Letters Mail Club and I’ll send one to your mailbox every month. Two ways to buy:

1. BUY AT ETSY

2. BUY ON MY SITE

This was the letter for July:

And this was me on delivery day at the post office. Summer freckles!