It's Time To Celebrate Spring!

Not only is Spring finally getting underway, the Spring Schedule for Imaginary Trips has been posted!

We'll be going on "An Imaginary Visit to the Garden!" starting Thursday, April 14th and the Artful Journaling classes, Foundations and Explorations are starting on Tuesday, April 19th!

Come and join me, Laure Ferlita in the fun! For more information, you can visit the links above or visit the i•Trav•e•logue here.

Mirror mirror on the wall...

Mirror mirror on the wall ... made by a student of grade 4

You need:

1. piece of wood


2. mirror


3. bathroom tiles (ask a DIY market)


4. hammer


5. newspapers


6. silicone glue


7. painters tape


8. grout


9. plastic bags


10. cotton cloth


11. sponge


12. security glasses of old sunglasses

The fairy tale Snow White by the Brothers Grimm is the basis for this lesson mosaics.

Snow White tells the story about a wicked stepmother who is jealous of the beauty of the daughter of her husband. The stepmother tells a hunter to kill Snow White, but he feels sorry for her and let her escape. Snow White ends up with the seven dwarfs in the forest.

The stepmother finds out through her magical mirror that Snow White is still alive, and poisons her with an apple. The sad dwarfs  put her in a glass coffin assuming she's dead.

Time passes and a prince traveling through the land sees Snow White. He is enchanted by her beauty and falls in love with her. He begs the dwarfs to let him have the coffin. The prince's servants carry the coffin away. While doing so, they stumble on some bushes and the movement causes the piece of poisoned apple to dislodge from Snow White's throat, awakening her. The prince then declares his love and a wedding is planned.



In this lesson students are going to make the magic mirror of the fairy tale of Snow White. They learn the several steps to create their own mosaic.



Step 1

Determine the place for the mirror and paste it on the piece of wood. Draw a design on the shelf of leave it empty to create a free design later on.



Step 2

Breaking the tiles

Go outside. Choose the tiles you like and put them on a newspaper. Put on glasses to protect your eyes. Hit the tiles with a hammer gently into pieces. Choose the pieces you like and put them in a plastic bag. Put pieces you don't need in a container (they can still be used by other children).

Clear the table for the following student. 



Step 3

Go back in the classroom with your plastic bag. Paste the pieces of the tiles on the shelf, using silicon glue.  Plak de stukjes tegel met siliconenlijm op de plank. Leave 3 to 5 mm space between the different pieces. If the pieces have different heights, then use more or less glue. Remove excess glue and leave the work to dry for 48 hours.

Pasting the pieces

Step 4

Go outside if this is possible. Make grout according to the instructions on the package; it should be as thick as yogurt. Use a disposable container. Put newspapers on the table. Mask the mirror with painters tape. Apply grout with a sponge. Rinse the sponge regularly in a bucket of water and then wring out well. When ready, leave the work to dry for half an hour and remove excess grout away.

Sponging the grout

Step 5

Polish the stones and the mirror the next day with a cotton cloth.

Meat Loaf on the Move

SELLER: Michael Lee Aday, a.k.a. Meat Loaf
LOCATION: Calabasas, CA
PRICE: $3,200,000
SIZE: 7,142 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama recently received a communique from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who shined our rheumy eyes and celebrity real estate attentions on a hacienda-style house inside a gated enclave of 14-16 mansions nestled into the rugged Santa Monica Mountains above the suburban Los Angeles, CA community of Calabasas. The owner of the property, according the The Bizzy Boys and other online sources, is a gentleman named Michael (nee Marvin) Lee Aday. Mister Aday, who legally changed his first name from Marvin to Michael in 2001, is better known as the actor/epic rock and roller Meat Loaf.

Youngsters will be forgiven if they only recognize Mister Loaf because of a recent appearance on the gay gay gay hit tee-vee show Glee and/or as a contestant on the current season of hairrific "birther" billionaire Donald Trump's The Celebrity Apprentice where he's competing for charitable donations.

Mister Loaf's success and fame, however, go way back to the early- and mid-1970s. In addition to appearing in dozens of stage productions, television programs, reality shows and movies (Hair, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fight Club, House, M.D., Popstar to Opera Star ), Mister Loaf has earned himself a Grammy award and sold shocking numbers of records. His Bat Out of Hell album from the mid-1970s has, in fact, sold upwards of 43,000,000 copies making it one of the top three or five best-selling albums of all time.

What we're saying, kids, is that although the man goes by the name of a dinner entrée, too-frequently sports crystal-studded suits and is far enough past his prime that he's on The Celebrity Apprentice with a slew of former superstars such as the formidable weed-whacker Dionne Warwick, steroidal ex-pro baseballer José Canseco, exceptionally erratic actor Gary Busey and bossy attorney Star Jones he is none-the-less no less than a living legend in the entertainment industry who enjoys international super stardom. We do not tease, hunnies, this is the serious truth.

Property records show Mister Loaf and his then-fiancee now wife Deborah Gillespie purchased the somewhat remotely-located 10-ish acre spread in April of 2005 for $2,325,000. One listing we dug up on the internets says the property spreads across "approx. 11 acres." The same listing also reads "11.45 Acres" and the tax man's records show "9.9863." Whatever the exact size of the lot, Mister Loaf and his then-fiancee hired nice, gay decorator David Dalton to turn out the interior spaces and spent a few more big bucks having the kitchen re-done and a built-in barbecue center, swimming pool, spa and extensive resort-style landscaping installed. When all the work and renovations were completed, Mister Loaf's Calabasas crib appeared in the glossy pages of Architectural Digest's April 2008 issue.

At the risk of sounding more than a little catty–which is sometimes unavoidable–when Your Mama learned that Mister Loaf's house was featured in Architectural Digest it made perfect sense because the day-core of the main living spaces looks quintessentially like what Your Mama expected to see in the pre-Margaret Russell pages of the venerable if tired publication: Correct, without much quirk and not particularly, uhm, interesting. Miz Russell and her That Girl do, for those who don't read the mastheads of magazines, recently left her cozy gig at Elle Decor where her last title was the rather cumbersome "vice president and editor in chief of brand content" and scooted her boot over to the editor in chief's office at Architectural Digest. A.I.'s offices moved from Los Angeles to New York City and just six short months after she grabbed the weary wheel of the musty and fusty ol' grande dame of shelter publications, A.I. was re-launched with a snappier and sexier new look. So far so good.

But we're going off the rails, darlings. Iffin Your Mama wanted to yakkety-yak about the real estate and decorating industries we'd continue to prattle on about how Sotheby's International Realty here in Los Angeles is fixin' to hand back the once-plum listing for the entire W Hollywood Residences condominium project. Scandale! And we will discuss, but not right now. More on that juicy nugget to come.

Listing information for Mister Loaf's abode in the Santa Monica Mountains shows the two-story tile-roofed residence was constructed in 2004, measures 7,142 square feet and contains a total of 7 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.

A double gated motor court at the front of the house provides access to garage space for three attached garage spaces and the shy front entry that barely whispers, "Over here. You come in right here." The hotel-lobby-like formal living room has a fireplace, built in wet bar, Spanish tile floors laid on the diagonal and too-perfect cross-hatched wood beams and the formal dining room seats twelve in wing back chairs upholstered in what looks like a red silk brocade with riveting details.

Less formal spaces include a paneled library/media room with fireplace and a 105-inch flat-screen television set, a family room with fireplace and more too-perfect wood beams that's open to the well-equipped kitchen done up with two colors of granite (or marble or whatever), two colors of cabinetry and two matching multi-colored chandelier-style light fixtures over the center work island.

The main floor master suite features a fourth fireplace, private terraces, a tray ceiling with a very Architectural Digest-y Fortuny chandelier and a very large but far from excessive private head with soaking tub, separate glass enclosed shower, double vanity and a built in flat-screen boob-toob custom-mounted into the cabinetry where it can easily be seen by both Mister and Missus Loaf while they brush and and floss their chompers. A family/game room on the second floor conveniently services the four bedrooms suites some of which, it appears to Your Mama, Mister and Missus Loaf utilize as office space. Listing information shows there are some staff quarters somewhere up in there too but we don't know if Mister and Missus Loaf employ live-in domestic help.

The conventionally upscale interior day-core of the Mister Loaf's mansion isn't exactly what most would expect of a man who cultivates the persona of a slightly unhinged and hard-partying rock star. There are no bongs sitting on the coffee tables, nary a mirror dusted with white powder, no skanky hos lying seductively across a lounger by the pool and no cigarette burns in the carpets. A person must visit the fitness room, where Mister Loaf's many awards, accolades, gold and platinum records are hung cheek by jowl and floor to ceiling, for any hard evidence that this luxurious home is owned by an international rock icon.

Numerous French doors open rooms at the back of the house to a generously sized and Spanish tile-floored outdoor living area shaded by a striped twenty- by sixty-foot awning. Immediately beyond the covered terrace the swimming pool, spa and sunbathing terraces provide respite from scorching heat and weary bones. Beyond the cement pond, a rolling expanse of well-watered lawn stretches back to a terraced hills side with river-rock waterfall and what may or may not be some fruit trees. The nearby neighbors on either side of Mister and Missus Loaf's mansion don't block much of the expansive views of the scenic surrounding mountains peaks.

It's entirely unknown to Your Mama why Mister and Missus Loaf might want to vacate their totally customized abode but they do. In the above mentioned 2008 article in Architectural Digest, Mister Loaf stated, “I love buying and doing houses,” the singer admits, “trouble is, once I finish one, I want to do another. But we’ve lived here four years—a record. Maybe this time, this one’s the keeper.” Apparently not.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills South

Revisit: Reese Witherspoon's Country Spread and Wedding Venue

This morning, bleary eyed from a crappy night's sleep thanks to our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and too-many glasses of champagne with our boozy neighbors, Your Mama awoke to read an utterly absurd headline that read "Jake Gyllenhaal Did Not Attend Reese Witherspoon's Wedding." He, reportedly, went bowling with Maroon 5 lead singer and notorious cocksman Adam Levine and a model named Mini instead. Well, duh people. Did anyone really expect Mister Gyllenhaal to go to hop in his hoopdie and head on up to Ojai, CA to watch his ex-girlyfriend get hitched to another man? Pleeze.

Anyhoo, we also awoke to several emails from the children–thank y'all very much–that (re-)linked Your Mama to the 411 on the Ojai, CA ranch owned by Miz Witherspoon where she and Hollywood agent Jim Toth tied the marriage knot. Celebrity guests that did make the trek up to Ojai and attend the nuptials are said to include Renee Zellweger, Alyssa Milano, Tobey Maguire, Salma Hayek and Robert Downey, Jr.

Your Mama discussed Miz Witherspoon's 7-acre spread and its stunning Spanish Colonial casa back in March of 2008 when property records show she purchased the property for $5,800,000. The ranchette's main house was originally designed in 1923 for glass tycoon Edmund Drummond Libbey by noted California architect Wallace Neff with later French Country style additions and out buildings by Austen Pierpont.

The house has had a number of owners since 1923 including actor/director Harold Ramis and was most recently owned and fully restored by interior designer and textile goddess Kathryn M. Ireland. Before she sold the ranch to Miz Witherspoon, Miz Ireland–who is not the supermodel turned bizness baroness Kathy Ireland–allowed House Beautiful to snap some pretty pictures of all the rooms looking dee-voon, drowning in pillows and draped with a pleasing cacophony of brightly colored fabrics.

Listing information from the time of Miz Witherspoon's 2008 purchase shows the historic and pristine property includes a 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom main house that wraps around a central courtyard. The Arcadian wonderland also sports includes two guest houses, each with fireplace and private facilities, gatekeeper's cottage with bath, a four-car carriage house garage, a smithy (for the blacksmith) and a walled-swimming pool and spa ringed by twisted and gnarled (but well- laced and trimmed) old-growth oak trees.

Since late 2003 Miz Witherspoon's primary residence was a 6,956 square foot house with 6 bedrooms and 9 poopers in a gated enclave in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles that records show she bought for $4,725,000. Since 2005, the actress has also owned a 6,462 square foot residence in Nashville, TN with 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms.

In late 2010 Miz Witherspoon, one of the highest paid actresses in all of Tinseltown, spent $6,900,000 to acquire a 2.53 acre estate in the rustic Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles from the incredibly bizarre actor/producer/musician/writer/martial artist/reality tee-vee star Steven Seagal. The property does not appear to have been on the open market but according to the Los Angeles County Tax man the main house was erected in 1937 and measures 6,125 square feet with 7 bedrooms and 9 poopers. Also on the property detached garages, stables, a riding ring and swimming pool.

listing photos: Crosby Doe Associates

International Fake Journal Month Is Almost Here!

If the embedded video doesn't work you can see a flip through of my 2009 Fake Journal here on YouTube.

It's almost April and that means International Fake Journal Month (IFJM) is about to begin.

IFJM is the celebration of fake journals. Every year in April I encourage people to keep fake journals for the month. (April is the obvious choice right?)

If you don't know what a Fake Journal is, let me explain: A fake journal is a journal that is kept by a character of your creation. It is kept day, by day, as any other journal would be. The entries are dated with the date that it actually is when when it was written, i.e., today's journal entry would be marked 3/27/2011. What is fake about the journal is the fact that the character is not you, and the character is not writing about your life.

You can read more about Fake journals, as well as Historical Fake Journals and Faux Journals at the Official International Fake Journal Blog.

Each year I set up a prize drawing for participants and you'll find information on how to enter the 2011 contests in the right hand column of that blog under "Contests for 2011."

I've kept fake journals off and on my entire life. It seemed a natural outgrowth of my daily journal practice and my slightly odd sense of humor.

And I have found the practice informative and helpful, in many of the same ways that I have found my real journal keeping to be.

Just some of the ways fake journaling can benefit you include: new strategies to shut up your internal critic; new proficiencies with media; discovery of creative ruts and ways to get around them; and of course play.

Creative play is always good. It helps us get back to our real work.

If the idea of a fake journal intrigues you I invite you to check out the links to the Official International Fake Journal Blog and read more about the process. You'll also be able to view a couple of my past fake journals, as well as the fake journals of past participants. You might concoct a way to take a vacation from your journal WITH your journal, or explore issues of interest in a new way.

If you are new to journaling (written or visual) I recommend that you not keep a fake journal until you have firmly established your own journaling practice. But in the meantime there is no reason you shouldn't enjoy the posts about fake journaling and be entertained by the work of other artists trying this out.

Most of my posts on fake journaling are really about journaling in general, or rather real journaling—I'm just trying to give you some options, some ways of seeing something from a different angle. Something that you can take back to your regular journal practice to make it deeper and more satisfying because it comes from a place of epiphany.—Roz

Rapunzel

Made by a student of grade 1

You need:

1. drawing sheet A4 size


2. fine black marker, waterproof


3. watercolour paint


4. brushes


5. jar with water


6. wool


7. cutter


8. cutting mat


9. scissors


10. magazine


11. glue

Rapunzel is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont, originally published in 1698.

In the tale, an enchantress separates Rapunzel from her parents and puts her away in a room at the top of a tower in a remote part of a forest. The tower has no door or stairs and only a window. The enchantress would climb Rapunzel's long braid of golden hair to visit her. The enchatress would call out to Rapunzel saying: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair". One day a prince hears Rapunzel's beautiful singing voice and wants to meet her. He secretly observes how the enchantress is able to visit Rapunzel in the tower. The prince climbs in the tower, meets Rapunzel and they fall in love. The wicked enchantress attempts to separate them, but eventually they reunite, and live happily ever after.

After telling the fairy tale, students start to make Rapunzel's braid of wool threads. Then they draw a tower with a top hatch, using a waterproof fine black marker. Colour it with waterpaint colour. Cut the sides of the hatch (teacher has to do this!!) and fold them. Cut a picture of a woman of girl out of a magazine and paste it on a piece of paper. Paste the braid on the head. Paste the piece of paper behind the hatch, looking carefully to get the woman's head in the middle of it and hanging the braid through the hatch.

Made by students of grade 1

Kathryn Jackson Takes Her Grandbabies to Calabasas

LESSEE: Kathryn Jackson
LOCATION: Calabasas, CA
PRICE: $26,000
SIZE: 12,670 square feet, 7 bedrooms 10 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Many denizens of suburban Los Angeles, CA have a thing for master-planned gated developments where the streets are lined with startlingly similar semi-Mediterranean-style tract houses sold with varying but usually limited degrees of customization. Although Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter feel these communities too often have a soul-less cookie cutter vibe, for many they represent a long lusted after acquisition of the so-called "American Dream" of home ownership.

That "American Dream" gets an extra layer of Vaseline over the lens when a quasi-custom tract home sits behind electronically controlled security gates and the juices of desire really get flowing when the security gates are operated by on-site security personnel who are not, in the vast majority of cases armed, which means that the only real responsibility of these security gate operators is to flip the switch that swings the gates open, smile nicely, wave residents and their guests on through and to call the real damn po-po if there is any real trouble.

The pinnacle, the apex, the real estate climax–if you will–of these master-planned communities are exclusive gated enclaves within gated developments where homes are typically larger, more highly customized and far more expensive than most others in development. Not only do these enclaves carry the cachet of exclusivity but they also provide an extra layer of (real or imagined) security. Out in L.A.'s hot as Hades northwestern suburbs, nestled into the rolling hills of Calabasas, CA one of those highly-prized double-gated enclaves is called The Estates at The Oaks of Calabasas.

Since its inception, the The Oaks has been popular among those with a penchant for privacy, the desire for security and the deep pockets to pay for those things. Current residents–or at least current property owners–include Rage Against the Machine's Brad Wilk, right-leaning San Francisco Giants pitcher and Woodland Hills, CA restaurateur Jeff Suppan, tattooed rocker Travis Barker, "Dr." Phil McGraw's son Jay and his wife Erica Dahm of the famed nude modeling Dahm Triplets.

Eddie Murphy's ex-wife and baby momma Nicole has had her large and lavish spread up in The Oaks up for sale since August of 2007 when she put it on the market for $9,995,000. In December of 2010–after at least two deals swirled down the real estate terlit–Miz Murphy made another of many karate chops to the asking price, which brought the price tag down to a substantially lower $5,950,000. As of the 18th of March, ex-Missus Murphy's 9,214 square foot mansion is once again in escrow. That sounds like it should be some relief to the financially-strapped ex-Missus Murphy but when Your Mama digs a little deeper into the property records we discover that ex-Missus Murphy–who took a one time payout of $15,000,000 when she divorced Eddie Murphy–purchased the property in May of 2006 for $7,500,000. We don't even need to flick a single bead of our punctilious and bejeweled abacus to see that even with an unlikely full-price sale, that's a pecuniary gut-punch of more than 1.5 million buckaroos to her already depleted pocketbook. I-chee-why-why!

Until early 2011, The Oaks' most internationally prominent resident was pop music icon Britney Spears. In early 2009–or maybe it was late 2008–Miz Spears leased a 10,300+ square foot architecturally mixed-up faux-French Provincial-mock-Tuscan Farmhouse/Spanish Hacienda style sprawler in The Oaks called Chateau Sueños. The single mother of a couple of young boy recently packed up her two tater-tots and high-tailed it out of Calabasas to the celebrity-choked and guard-gated equestrian community of Hidden Hills, CA where her new neighbors include Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, lesbo-rocker Melissa Etheridge, Bruce Jenner and Kris Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony who only recently acquired a 17,000 square foot mansion in Hidden Hills but Your Mama heard (but can not confirm) through the celebrity gossip grapevine already want a different house.

Just as Miz Spears packed up her moving truck in The Oaks another crew of internationally well-known residents unpacked theirs and prepared to set up house. For the last thousand years or so the Jackson family homestead–we're talking the Michael Jacksons, puppies–was Hayvenhurst a privately situated estate on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, CA that Big Daddy Joe Jackson bought in the early 1970s. In the early 1980s ol' Joe got himself into a bit of a financial pickle and his youngest son Michael helped to bail him out and bought bought Hayvenhurst. A full-scale renovation, directed by the increasingly eccentric Michael Jackson, added "a Japanese koi pond, a movie theater, and a six foot-tall Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs diorama."

It was here, to Hayvenhurst, that thousands of hysterical and teary fans flocked after Michael Jackson died of an overdose of Propofol inside the lavish confines of a rented estate in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles in the June of 2009. It was also to Hayvenhurst where Michael J's three children–the seemingly sweet and charming but somewhat ridiculously named Paris, Prince and Prince II–were taken after their father's death and where their care was turned over to Michael's agéd mother Kathryn who had become the queen of that castle in the late 1980s when Michael moved to to his (in)famous Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, CA.

Unexpectedly and somewhat mysteriously Big Momma Kathryn Jackson recently piled her trio of young wards into her Rolls Royce–we just imagine she has a Rolls, we don't really know what sort of car she drives or is driven in–and decamped Hayvenhurst for a large leased mansion inside the gates of The Estates inside the gates of The Oaks of Calabasas.

Listing information Your Mama acquired with an helpful assist from our always helpful pal Babbling Babette shows the 7 bedroom and 10 pooper palace had been on the market with an asking price of $10,995,000. The very same listing information indicates a lease was signed around the middle of November 2010 at a hefty rate of $26,000 per month.

The mock-Med mansion was built, according to listing information, in 1988 and includes a main house that spans 12,670 square feet and a guesthouse/pool house with another 633 square feet. Listing info also shows the 5-car garage has 1,548 square feet and that there are 2,671 square feet of covered patios and balconies.

The iron and glass front doors open into–surprise–a double-height entry with limestone floors and two curving staircases. The living spaces include a double-height formal living room with hickory wood floors, fireplace and glass doors that slide back into the wall, a formal dining room and an open plan gourmet kitchen and family room area with another fireplace and more glass doors that disappear into the walls. There are also a paneled study/library, custom theater room, a loft/game room, a wine room with refrigerated booze storage space and wet bar.

The mansion's seven bedrooms include a massive master suite with fireplace, sitting area, dual bathrooms, private patio and a gigantic custom-fitted walk-in closets. The fully customized but very, very beige mansion is equipped with a steam shower, sauna, elevator and a Crestron home automation system that–presumably–controls and operates the window treatments, lighting, security, heating, cooling, sound and audio-visual systems.

The large house sits somewhat tightly on .88 acre grounds that include the aforementioned guesthouse/pool house, swimming pool, spa, expansive terraces, a putting green–blech!–and a view of the master-planned community and surrounding mountains over the roof tops of the recently built mansions that line the street below.

One wonders if Big Momma Jackson is gearing up to sell Hayvenhurst or she's just going to turn the compound over to the various members of the always-expanding Jackson family that continue move in and out of the house like it was a damn hotel.

listing photos: Prudential California Realty