Why Rainbow Coalition?

Photo by No Blondes! Photography

Like anyone you meet, I have a very colorful family, but that isn't why I chose that name for my blog...well not exactly. I have a lovely one month old daughter, Michaela.  My little brother, Casey, saw the pictures of her from the hospital, and he said, "Your family pictures are going to look like a meeting of the Rainbow Coalition."  That's just his type of humor.  Let me explain  I'm biracial (Caucasian and African American...really Jamaican American, but more on that some other day). My husband, Alfred, is a Hispanic Caucasian.  We both have dark hair. My eyes are brown and his are hazel. When our first beautiful daughter, Lilah, was born, we could see a little bit of all of her many backgrounds in her appearance.  She was definitely a mix with dark hair, light brown skin, brown eyes, you know gorgeous in a Princess Jasmine sort of way.  When my second daughter, Michaela, was born, she was also beautiful, but as different from her sister as could be.  She had blue/gray eyes, light skin and light hair. She's Aurora to Lilah's Jasmine.  Casey isn't the only one who has remarked on how different we all look from each other, but I liked the implication that we all somehow fit despite the differences in appearance.  That's how I think of my little family now, as my own little rainbow coalition.

One Little Word

I've been reading about people doing Ali Edwards One Little Word project for a few years now.  I've always been intrigued about the idea that instead of making a specific new year's resolution that's practically impossible to achieve, you could designate a word for the year, keep that word in your heart and on your mind, and improve your life in subtle but important ways.  This year, my one little word is humble.  I think of myself as being pretty smart, and I know that I often underestimate the people around me.  I want to spend time this year trying to have more humility in my interactions with people.  I want to make sure that I'm appreciating the people around me in a way that I haven't before because I'm so busy interrupting with some anecdote of my own or rushing their stories along.  I'm going to try not to roll my eyes at my husband so much, and I'm going to try, try not to be so bossy. The goal is to write a post here once a month on how I'm doing and how focusing on the work humble has influenced my life.  Even if I'm not perfect by the end of the year, at least I'll be a little bit better.
Here  is the cover of my OLW album for the year.  I decided to make it a hybrid layout.

I printed the title directly onto my kraft background.  I used one of the pictures that my brother (No Blondes! Photography) took of me at my house while he was visiting for the holidays.  It probably isn't one of his favorites, but I like that he caught a candid moment of me concentrating on something.  I'm usually the one behind the camera at my house, so I don't have a lot of pictures of myself that aren't pretty well posed because I have to use a tripod and timer.  The embellishments are from the Fact & Fiction collection from BasicGrey.  The circle tag originally said "Enjoy the Journey," but I didn't really think that was appropriate, when my word is humble. I just wrote the word absorb on a scrap of cardstock and cut it to fit over the word enjoy.  the 2013 in the title was done using another one of my new favorite things, the picket fence distress marker by Tim Holtz.  It's so fun to watch the words develop as the ink dries, and it's great that I can use it to write on black cardstock.