Laici's Astrological Cluster

I met Laici last month outside of Penn Station, near the corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue. I was intrigued by this design on her upper right arm:

This design consists of several symbols from the Zodiac.

Laici explained, "My dad's a Cancer, my mom's an Aries, my sister and I are Scorpios, and my brother is a Sagittarius."


She designed this piece herself by combining the four symbols into a cohesive design:

The four elements combined on her arm to represent her family unit. It's a neat concept and it is executed rather nicely. I especially like how she combined the last two parts, Scorpio and Sagittarius, to form one fluid symbol that encapsulates her and her siblings together.

Thanks to Laici for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

The four Zodiac symbols illustrated above were linked from TattooSymbol.com.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Best Kind of Saturday

This past weekend was wonderful. And it wasn't just Father's Day that made it so great- Saturday we had another fun family day that still has me smiling. It was our town's annual Tsunami on the Square, which is an all-ages, outdoor performing arts and culture festival. It's always so much fun and there is a ton to look at, which was great for Henry. There were people on stilts, people in costume, fire eaters, hula hoopers, and live music everywhere you turned. It was truly a visual treat for Henry, and he spent most of the day eyes wide, staring at everything around him. 

It's days like this that make me fall in love with this town all over again. When I was younger I always imagined myself living in a big city, people and culture and things to do at every turn. But I somehow ended up here, in this small town, and I couldn't imagine a better place to raise a family. It's not for everyone, but small town living is definitely for me.

Here are some photos from our day. And for those who asked on the last post and via Twitter, I use a Nikon D60 and almost always use my 35mm lens. I also tried out a friend's Photoshop action set on these images that I'll share more about later in the week. I might say this for awhile, but again, I am SO happy I'm been bringing my camera out and about. It makes me so much more excited to blog, and so much more inspired to stop and notice all the pretty little moments in life that are so easy to skim over. 

Here are some bits and pieces from our Saturday:
 

Father's Day in Flagstaff

This year for Father's Day I decided it would be fun to take Hank and Henry on a mini-road trip up to Flagstaff, to enjoy some of our favorite foods and a change of scenery. Flag will always hold a super special place in my heart, as I went to all four years of college there (and graduate school too!), so no matter when we go, it's always a great experience. Some of the best times of my life were spent in that little town, and every time I find myself making my way up that way on the I-17 my stomach flips a little, in the most excited way. Flagstaff is definitely my happy place, and I love that Hank adores it just as much as I do.

We got up bright and early this morning and arrived in Flagstaff around 9:30am. Our first stop was Hank's favorite coffee shop, Macy's. He got a coffee and we split a "birdseed" treat, which is really just a whole lot of nuts and seeds pressed into a peanut butter base. Delicious. We spent the rest of the day walking around, enjoying the crisp mountain air that is so similar to ours but yet somehow so different, and eating lots of yummy food. Our favorite Thai restaurant Dara Thai was closed today so we decided to eat at an old favorite, Pita Jungle. Henry loves hummus so we knew it was pretty foolproof, and we had a great meal.  We arrived home later in the evening, exhausted but so, so happy to have spent such a fun day together as a family.

Here are some photos, mainly from my regular camera and a couple little collages from my iPhone. And on a side/related note- it's only been two days of taking my camera out more places with us and I couldn't be happier. Nothing's better than pretty photos to capture such special memories!

Happy Father's Day!

Our Anniversary/Hank's Birthday Weekend

This past weekend was the end of our birthday/anniversary celebrations, which always makes me half sad and half relieved. May and the beginning of June is the craziest time of the year for us. In just one week we have my birthday, Hank's, and our anniversary, along with the birthdays of a couple close friends throughout the month so it's pretty jam-packed with events and things to do.

This year was a little crazier than usual with my 30th birthday, and then this past weekend we also decided to do a little staycation of our own down in Phoenix. We chose to stay at the Scottsdale Hyatt. Neither of us had been there before, but at the advice of a friend and a million positive reviews on hotels.com we decided to just try it out. Hank and I are always in a weird bracket when choosing hotels for things like this because we don't drink (he never, me rarely) or want to be around people partying at the pool, but at the same time we don't want to go to a resort crawling with kids when we're trying to do our own thing. We thought the Hyatt was a perfect "in between." They had an adults-only pool, in addition to acres of others pools, fountains, hot tubs, a sand beach, and even water slides. Neither the hotel or the pool was crowded, which was a nice surprise since the last few places we've stayed at were full to the brim, even to the point of having no chairs available at the pool.

We spent Friday swimming and sunning and had a great time relaxing. Later that night we had our anniversary dinner at Le Grande Orange, which was amazing (when I die, bury me with their roasted corn pizza). With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, there are few things I treasure more than a long, leisurely dinner with Hank, and I was so grateful my parents watched Henry that night so we could have so much "us" time.

The next day we spent the morning shopping and I got to use some of my birthday giftcards. I got a few things at Lululemon (my favorite) and we grabbed breakfast at Counter before heading home to my parents. The rest of the day was full of family time- we made a Bahama Bucks run, then laid low the rest of the night watching basketball.

Sunday was Hank's belated celebration at my parents', so in their true fashion they made a huge deal, and of course got a huge cake for the sweet-toothed birthday boy. We spent the afternoon swimming and it was really just a great end to a great weekend.

Here are some pictures- all from my iphone because I just can't bear to bring my nice camera out and about to the pool and to dinner. It's so much easier to just snap a few photos with my phone and get those awesome mirror shots (I kid). I sometimes get sad I don't have super nice photos of times that are so special to me, but these little pictures make me happy too. About half of these were posted to IG, so if you're seeing double, that's why!