HO HO HO ... Well Christmas is nearly here and I have a couple of messages for you all. Firstly THANK YOU to all the Hearts and Minds Art supporters out there who have spread the word, bought the product and visited the stall. Appreciate it! Secondly MERRY CHRISTMAS and a safe holiday break. Give all your loved ones a big hug and kiss. My gorgeous boys are in Melbourne but I'm thinking of them every minute. Love Julie X

DREAM - BELIEVE - INSPIRE. May your minutes be full of trust, your hours full of wonder, your months full of joy. Your years full of laughter. A lifetime of fulfilment and love.

Okay, so it's still November, but Hearts and Minds Art has started its festive season. Check out our marquee at South Bank Lifestyle Markets (Brisbane) each Friday night, Saturday and Sunday as well as Eumundi market on a Wednesday. We have lots of new images, peg frames, movable art photo jewellery, magnets and brooches (fantastic for Kris Kringle or stocking fillers at only $4.95 each!). I also have an expanded range of my inspirational Tree of Hearts frames - thank you to Harry R. for purchasing one of these on the weekend for all his nurses, and I hope you are feeling AI again very soon, and ready to return to Goondiwindi. HO HO HO!

If you are unsure which rambling road to take,
if you feel so very alone.
If the fog is taking over, and you cannot open your mind,
just ask.
The gate will open, the embrace will be offered.
Your soul, once again, will take flight.
(Julie Holland 2010)

One of my hats is as a proofreader. In the past this has been restricted to the corporate world (in-house magazines, school yearbooks, property brochures etc), but over the last few months I have been having a wonderful time proofreading two novels.
First of all, Bud Higgins's first novel AFRICAN EULOGY - what a privilege it was to be involved in this wonderful story that spans South Africa and Australia, and is dedicated to Bud's son. The other book, Ann Rickard's sixth novel, is called THREE IN A BED IN THE MED - lots of laughs amidst the beauty of France, Italy and Greece.
Both novels were launched in great style in Noosa (Queensland) last week so hunt them down in your local bookstore.

Sometimes you just have to walk down the other side of the street - who knows what you'll see and learn, who you'll meet or happen upon. I don't usually take this kind of image (lack of a macro lens for a start, damn it!), but saw it, took it, liked it. And really, how more Aussie can you get than a fly on a barbed wire fence with a bit o' hay wisping in the wind. Feels good to try something different.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "A good photograph is knowing where to stand" (US photographer, Ansel Adams www.anseladams.com).

As I have mentioned before, it gives me such a buzz when my words or my images touch people in some way. Maybe make their life a little bit better somehow. Last weekend a lady visiting from Singapore bought one of our pegframes that contained four images of water and piers. All the images were taken near where I live, along the beautiful Noosa River (Queensland). She said she had quit her job to take the holiday to Australia to visit a friend, that she wanted a new start and that the images were a message to her to look forward. I hadn't looked at them like that until she shared her feelings. Thank you.
On the cruise ship of life, does your deckchair point to where you are going or where you have been?

NOT SO STILL LIFE: I decided to try a bit of still life photography (oh for a macro lens)so collected a pile of these orange fruits that fall from our palm tree and muck up the front lawn. I quite like this shot - it looks like they are just waking to the dawn, almost like quivering little chickens about to hatch. I feel like I should almost give each a name. I'm not sharing the other still life efforts yet, but for other images of mine please visit www.redbubble.com/people/Julieholl. Would love your comments.

TRAVEL ... VENICE...is there a more exotic, fascinating city? A postcard arrived from Kimberley (step daughter) today and the memories flooded into my kitchen with it. The Fenice Theatre brought to life in John Berendt's 'The City of Falling Angels' makes you go, to experience its magic:The silver-haired stranger who whisked us to our tiny hotel in his wooden outboard then rescued us during the water transport strike, getting lost in the endless winding alleyways, devouring crispy calamari in a different campo every night,lusting after a fortuny light but having no room and less money, experiencing the silence of a gondola ride with only the gondoliers' calls echoing in the distance,being aghast at the advertising erected around the Bridge of Sighs and sighing at the stunning Collezione Peggy Guggenheim...and so much more. Heaven.

If you were a rainbow, what colour would you be? A slice of yellow sunshine or a girly summer pink. Perhaps you are a 'greenie' or a menopausal purple. Maybe we should try to be a bit of everything. Not to be "all things to all people" but to have a beautiful balance, the satisfaction of being "a little bit this", "a touch of that".. and then we can be true to ourselves yet colour the world around us. Bring the heat of red to those feeling the chill of loneliness, to be the bluebird of happiness to those who are sad. Let's all reach out tomorrow, cross that rainbow of dreams and help colour someone else's world.