Brilliant Bundles Giveaway!

As you may have heard, the Brilliant Bundles project proposal is up on kickstarter! Now my future rests in your hands and with this amazing givaway, every body wins! Winner will be chosen at random on July 3^rd 2011 at 11pm EST

The lucky winner will receive a pre ordered Brilliant Bundles Presents Shapes! DVD package including DVD, soundtrack CD, interactive felt board and a set of flash cards!

GIVEAWAY RULES:

1)         Follow this blog

2)         Leave a comment telling me you did

3)         Pledge to the project or share its link on your FB, Twitter, or your blog and leave a comment telling me you did and show me where!

*winner will receive award upon project completion after goal funding has been reached.

Thanks so much for all your support!

A Kick Start

Hello, hello! I am back after a short hiatus. Production on Brilliant Bundles has been slowed for funding reasons, but that is all about to change! My wonderful brother recently introduced me to a website called kickstarter. I have just been in awe at how much support there really is out there for artists and their ideas! What a truly wonderful concept to applaud. Ever since I heard about this site, I have been working on one heck of a pitch video to submit. This is a segment from it that will showcase what a day is like in the life of a stay at home work at home mommy! Youll laugh, youll cry… youll be out of breath!

Filming a toddler for 12 hours, then condensing that footage down to 2 and ½ minutes was no easy task especially with having to rely on my outdated equipment. Initial pledges for this project will be used to purchase a more reliable video camera, still camera, color printer, and updates for my computer so that it doesn’t take hours upon hours to render a project! The remainder of the pledges will go towards all other production costs. Every pledge amount will receive something awesome in return! Ill let you guys know when its up and ready on kickstarter and until then you are always welcome to donate right here on the blog if you feel this project has as much potential as I do! Thanks for all your support <3 

Triangle Food and Late Nights

Its 1am. The house is quiet with the exception of an occasional cat chasing one of Lucy’s toys across the kitchen floor and the static from the baby monitor mixed with the faint melody of Rockabye Baby Beatles soundtrack. It’s the prime hours of the night when I can just be me, alone, and focused. Its where most, if not all my motivation and productiveness comes from. Now to construct the set.

Toddler activity picnic table with crayon scribbled everywhere that mommy was too tired to clean up: Check.

Tablecloth printed scrap-booking paper: Check.

Plastic plate from play kitchen: Check.

Handmade felt food: Check.

Blue poster board backdrop to cover up alphabet and butterflies on playroom wall: Check.

Completely lame, most low budget set design EVER: Check.

Its processes like these that make me love this project even more. (If that were even possible.) Iv grown up in a family where budgeting was always necessary and honestly, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It constantly forces me to be creative and to make whatever I have laying around, work. Thanks to the power of technology and program education, I am able to make very little, look beautiful.

Here is some test footage. This will be redone with better movements, lighting and then after will be edited to emphasize the shapes within.

ENJOY!

Handmade Production

Brilliant Bundles is all about creating handmade, and supporting handmade. As an artist this is very important me. Buying handmade means that you are supporting all the love, creativity and craftsmanship that goes into a piece of work and I think that makes it that much more special and meaningful. If you should need any convincing, take a peek at these 101 more reasons!

Production is moving along and I am enjoying every minute of it because I get to create MANY different artistic pieces and use a variety of different production methods.

Brilliant Bundles Presents… Shapes! Is the first of the DVDs to be released (hopefully within a few months) and I have started with triangles. I will be creating some stop motion animation scenes with this felt food I have made!

I wanted to include in every shape segment, a food reference because food is something that’s universal in a child’s every day surroundings and experiences. This is something that will add to the interactive experience by providing an educational reference to something they do everyday. When production is complete, these fun foods will become new additions to my daughter play kitchen J

Anytime Lucy watches something on T.V. the biggest thing that seems to grab her attention are the puppet characters. I took this into consideration when planning out my films and came up with a bunny character because one of her nicknames is Bunny J These DVDs and all my hard work and dedication are a direct result of the blessing that she is in my life, so I thought it only fitting. “Bunny” is also my way of supporting handmade. She was custom made by my good friend and former schoolmate Danielle of Danifo Handmade. I am so thrilled with the adorable result of Brilliant Bundles’ new main character. I will be using video to bring Bunny to life and to your television screens!

Thankful

I would like to introduce to everyone, a site like no other. Wish Upon a Hero is everything I aspire to be and more. It’s how I believe real change can take place in the world. There are truly no words great enough to express how I feel about this community but I am going to try.

      WUAH is an online social community that exists for one reason: To help people. Members can post a wish that is then published for the entire community to see. The wish can be for anything. You are asked to specify if it is a “need” or a “want” wish. Need being “I need food for my baby” and want being “I want to meet Madonna”. The majority of what you will see are the “need” wishes. Members can comment on your wish and they can offer to grant or partially grant it. The wisher then must accept or decline such offers. If you accept, then you can PM the person to give them the information they need to be able to send you what you need, or you can even put up a paypal button on your wish so people can donate towards what you may need. With anything that asks for your address or any other personal information, you should always be careful and cautious. The majority of the time, you will see that this community is there to help not harm. Trust your instincts. I had an incident a while ago where I had wished for a hero to help me buy flowers to send to my grandmother when my grandpa had died and I was unable to be there for the funeral, but could not afford the flowers when I needed to buy diapers. Within 3 minutes I had an e mail telling me that someone had offered to grant my wish. I was filled with such thankfulness and it was like a weight had been lifted off me. She told me shed buy an arrangement online and send it to my grandmother and asked me what I wanted the note to say. I gave her the information and then days passed. I e- mailed her, asking if everyting was ok but didn’t get an answer. Weeks passed.. nothing. I had been promised something so important in a time of need and then that promise was broken. I had even told my grandmother that these flowers should be arriving… and then they never did. I saw this “hero” commenting almost a year later on others wishes after being MIA for so long so I wrote her again, telling her how I felt about what she had done, but I never did receive a response. Like I said… be cautious.

      Wish Upon a Hero keeps score for you. It tells everyone how many times you have been a hero and people can look at what wishes you have granted. It also tells everyone how many wishes you have been granted and what they were for. My favorite thing about the site is the search option where you can type in key words for the kind of wishes youre looking for. This helps me because If I have something that Im looking to get out of the house, I can just look to see if anyone needs what I have, like baby clothes (which I will be sending to a single mom in need this week) and it makes it so much more personal to me. I would rather send someone something personally than just drop off a bag at good will (which I do regularly anyways) but I want to know that iv helped someone with a story.. someone who really needed it.

      I was helped this week for something really big. With the Brilliant Bundles DVDs I am working on, Iv been trying my best to find grants to fund it but to no avail. Like Iv said in an earlier post, it wont affect the quality of my work if I don’t get the grant, it would just take me longer to complete the project. I posted a wish asking for 100 DVD cases (specific ones from a site) and 2 extraordinary heroes chipped in and I was able to purchase them within an hour of  posting the wish! 

 It really is remarkable how people come together in this place to help one another out. My request didn’t solve world  hunger or stop a war, but it was meaningful to me, and I am thankful beyond words. I highly recommend this community to anyone who enjoys helping people. 

Picky Trickey

It was nice to have a less frustrating food day with Lucy yesterday and today. It seems that every couple weeks she goes through these stages where when she once loved cherry tomatoes, this week she wont touch them! I try my best not to show my frustration around her cause I don’t want her to feel like Im disappointed that she wont eat certain foods. Iv started showing her all the things that will be going in to her lunch while im making it, and have at times given her a plastic bowl and a wooden spoon sometimes with a sprinkle of flour in the bowl and tell her she can help me cook J She loves it so much and I think it’s a wonderful sensory activity she can do while im preparing food and have to concentrate on a little more than just her at the time. Im looking forward to when shes a little older and can really help me in the kitchen. One of my top priorities as her mom is to help her develop in mind, body and spirit and nutrition and healthy eating plays a huge roll in that for us. There have been times Iv been made to feel like im obsessive or “mean” for limiting or all together restricting certain foods from her diet (mainly meat, cows milk, and corn syrup or excessive sugary foods) because I don’t believe in their nutritional values, but then I look at how happy and healthy she is and all those things go out the window. I think that every mom has the obligation to do what they feel is right for their own children and to each their own.

      Recently, in regards to Lucy’s spontaneous picky-ness I have been making her different kinds of shakes and drinks. Today she had a shake with coconut milk (original) ½ a banana, 2 medium sized strawberries, plain yogurt, ½ a tsp of vegetarian brown rice protein powder and a tsp of live acidophilus culture. I also make veggie drinks that she adores with fresh baby spinach, mango, flaxseed oil, (or sometimes cod liver oil) and a little apple, orange, or pineapple juice. Today she had a full cup of freshly made carrot juice with about 2tbs of apple juice in it! Iv been giving her just one or the other of these once a day and its amazing not only at how much she loves them, but I feel really great about all they have in them, working their way into her little body, functioning to help her be wholly nourished. Im an avid researcher when it comes to nutrition and am in love with sites out there like Weelicious, Chef Ann, and Holistic Moms.

These are some links to some nutritional information I also follow when considering Lucy’s food!

Information about flaxseed oil and children

Corn syrup- free multivitamins

Information about Cow's milk and Children

List of some common foods I give Lucy:

Ripe black olives and kalmata olives. (good source of antioxidants and polyphenols)

Okra (High in folic acid, vitamin A, C, and B6)

Cherry tomatoes (high in vitamin C)

Flax, fish, olive, and coconut oils  (excellent for brain development and healthy colons)

Beans (great source of clean protein and just about every other mineral you can think of!)

Whole grain breads, oatmeal, and seeds. (pumpkin and sunflower seeds) as well as homemade almond and walnut butters.

Carrots, sweet potatoes (beta carotene) 

Beets (high in vitamin A, potassium, and amino acids.)

Coconut milk (her main milk source. high in lauric acid.  The only other abundant source found in nature is in human breast milk.)

Brown rice (good source of fatty acids, fiber and vitamin B complex) I also supplement her milk with vegetarian brown rice protein. 

These are just a few of the regular things she loves and eats. I do everything I can to introduce her to any fruit and veggie I can! We just tried cactus fruit for the first time this week :)

A good rule I follow with her food is COLOR. The richer and brighter the color, the more nutrients the food will have. I try to make her meals ROYGBIV. Think of it as a spectrum...the most intense color is violet. (blueberries, plums, eggplant...) 

If anyone has the same passion for their kids nutrition and has any other information Id love to hear your ideas and research!  

Icemageddon

This past Tuesday evening, people in my area who have AT&T lost cable and Internet around 7pm. I remember thinking “this sucks, now I cant get any work done, and Lucy wont get to wind down to her goodnight show on Sprout”. Ahh…we have a DVD player. Lets make it a relaxing movie night instead. Wait…I attacked the DVD player with a knife trying to get a disc out last week and it hasn’t worked since. Cross that out. Ohh! We have an old VCR player we got at a yard sale for $1 this past summer! Lets find some old tapes and give that a try. We found in the garage a box of old VHS tapes, mostly home movies of me figure skating in competition when I was 10 years old, and then some old Dinosaurs shows. (“NOT THE MAMMA!”) Does anyone remember those?! Haha.

Anyway, I got very excited about all these old movies, so we threw one in.. and… nothing but a fuzzy black and white image! By now it was time for Lu to go to bed so I went up to read her bed time books and sooth her to sleep. Just when she was almost out, we lost power. I knew as soon as it was gone that it probably would not be back on that night with the huge ice storm that was going on so I took her into my warm bed with the plush sheets and down comforter and we stayed fairly warm all night. We made it into the next day, and through naptime before the house reached about 50 degrees and we could no longer stand it and went to a hotel around the corner with my mom. Thank the universe for that hotel room! It not only had the heat we needed but also a full fridge, stove, kitchen filled with pots and pans. Truly a lifesaver. Only down point was that the “queen” sized bed they said it had was the same size if not smaller than my full sized bed at home so fitting myself, my mom, and little Lucy in the middle for the night was tight and uncomfortable. And that little stinker was so over stimulated by all the excitement that we couldn’t get her down til about 12:30am. She even woke again at 5:30am, climbed out of the bed and started playing with all her toys and talking to what I believe is her imaginary friend. Craziness. Thankful nonetheless. Left this morning to come home and our porch light being on was a sight for sore eyes. De-icing my car and trying to get it out of the driveway this morning, on the other hand, was not fun. If California wasn’t going under the ocean, id move there!

      Anyone else go through major power outages?