Forcing Branches.

It's getting close to time to buy some pretty forsythia and "spring" up my house. I have been thinking about "Forcing Branches" a lot lately. Turns out I've been remembering it wrong. The real title was "Forcing Spring" and it was the very first post I read by Habitually Chic.

What is especially weird is that when I woke up this morning, after my shower and during my first cup of coffee, I thought about it again. I decided to search the site for the post and to my surprise it happened to be from exactly ONE YEAR AGO TODAY!

My friend Ruth had chatted me the link. I went right out the following weekend and bought forsythia branches (after learning that's what those pretty yellow flowers were called). Then I took a picture of the little set up I'd made in my "entry" and Ruth said, You should send it to her! We laughed. I didn't.

There's a strange significance to this "anniversary". It was through this nonchalant passing of a link that I was inadvertently introduced to a whole new (to me) community of bloggers, and subsequently unlimited amounts of inspiration.

I love it how one person can lead you to another, to a new artist or exhibit, to flickr pages and etsy shops, to blogs about art and life and projects, to studios, apartments and homes. I love getting lost in the links. I especially love when you arrive back at a place you've been before from a completely different path, and I love learning and seeing new things all the time.

It is crazy to me how many people share my similar interests. "Forcing Branches" seems like an appropriate way to describe what happened to me through all this. Among other things I've been reminded of things within me that had been lying dormant. The "world wide internets", and the people out there contributing to it, sort of reconnected me to my own interests in a way. And, it's opened me up to many more I didn't even realize I had. It's funny how once you're inspired one way, how it can lead to answers and solutions in others.

I'm totally babbling, but do you see what I mean? It's been a year now I've been reading Habitually Chic as my morning "news", along with a two other regulars I rarely miss, and subsequently about two dozen more that I've bookmarked under "Inspirational" and also check often-ish. Not to mention all the great new ones I'm finding all the time.

And, I now have a second set of branches in my place. Why do I love them so much?

Anyway, don't you think it's crazy that I looked up that post on the anniversary of the same day I found it in the first place!?

The first one is from Domino via Habitually Chic. The second un-styled blurry one with the dust, uh, let's say "Unknown".