by Claudia Deneault
todays bird

oozey mess
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
almost home
$LAYYYTER
NASA

Janaina Medeiros
Cosmic Funnies
One Nice Bug Per Day
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

@theartofmadeline
Misplaced Lens Cap

pixel skylines

Andulka
Sweet Seals For You, Always
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Monterey Bay Aquarium

No title available

No title available
d e v o n
seen from Brazil
seen from Iceland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Iceland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
@teaabroad
by Claudia Deneault
im what the victorians would call a “vile, ill-tempered and thoroughly wretched little creature”
Welcome to Build-a-Frog!
Click here to enter
@sirwestaytay
Gwen Lee and Joan Crawford in, “Untamed” (1929)
Highland cattle calves are shorter than most, but still rock the show!
A faerie introduces himself. Then, holding out a hand, asks, “And your name, please?”
And, like a fool, you give it to him.
I got asked for clarification on this (but can’t reblog that particular post cuz on mobile), which I’m more than happy to provide.
In this post, a faerie is asking for ‘your’ name. The way he is wording it, however, and the accompanying beckoning motion, makes it seem as though he is asking for you to physically hand your name over. Which, because of how some faeries operate, he is.
In this instance, saying your name aloud to the fae would be literally giving your name over to him, the exact consequences of which are left up to the imagination–usually, a fae even knowing your name gives it some measure of power over you, but giving something your name would likely let it completely take over your life.
In this instance, the wording you want to use is something like “I will not give you my name, but I will tell you that it’s [name].” Alternately, you can just lie to him.
Might i suggest the less direct yet still name-preserving “you may call me…”? It dodges the request while still giving an answer of a name, which does not even have to be yours, but any name you feel like telling the fae they can use to refer to you. I would recommend “Ainsel”.
The first time he asks for your name is the first time you meet him. He appears as you walk by the færie ring, that you have not entered because your grandmother has repeated so many times not to do so, and, curious of your presence, watches as you jump when you notice him.
You recognize him instantly. It is the Fæ whose influence your village is under, the one the elders have told you and your friends to be wary about, for the people who have been seen walking away with him have never come back.
You don’t know what he does to them. The villagers have never dared to confront him about it, never dare to address to him at all. He is not evil: he sometimes speaks blessings upon the cattle, talks the horses to calm after a storm, ensures a good harvest for the farmers, makes the flower bloom in spring even when the weather is still too cold. He is, simply, a Fæ, whose ways humans cannot understand.
Keep reading
This is beautiful
Exquisite Photography Series That Depicts Dried Flowers and Tea Sets
Artist, wife and mother, Marina Malinovaya spends her leisure hours orchestrating extravagant photographic compositions using dried up flowers, leaves and tea sets.
Keep reading
settle this for me once and for all
is “chai” a TYPE of tea??! bc in Hindi/Urdu, the word chai just means tea
its like spicy cinnamon tea instead of bland gross black tea
I think the chai that me and all other Muslims that I know drink is just black tea
i mean i always thought chai was just another word for tea?? in russian chai is tea
why don’t white people just say tea
do they mean it’s that spicy cinnamon tea
why don’t they just call it “spicy cinnamon tea”
the spicy cinnamon one is actually masala chai specifically so like
there’s literally no reason to just say chai or chai
They don’t know better. To them “chai tea” IS that specific kind of like, creamy cinnamony tea. They think “chai” is an adjective describing “tea”.
What English sometimes does when it encounters words in other languages that it already has a word for is to use that word to refer to a specific type of that thing. It’s like distinguishing between what English speakers consider the prototype of the word in English from what we consider non-prototypical.
(Sidenote: prototype theory means that people think of the most prototypical instances of a thing before they think of weirder types. For example: list four kinds of birds to yourself right now. You probably started with local songbirds, which for me is robins, blue birds, cardinals, starlings. If I had you list three more, you might say pigeons or eagles or falcons. It would probably take you a while to get to penguins and emus and ducks, even though those are all birds too. A duck or a penguin, however, is not a prototypical bird.)
“Chai” means tea in Hindi-Urdu, but “chai tea” in English means “tea prepared like masala chai” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish “the kind of tea we make here” from “the kind of tea they make somewhere else”.
“Naan” may mean bread, but “naan bread” means specifically “bread prepared like this” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish between “bread made how we make it” and “bread how other people make it”.
We also sometimes say “liege lord” when talking about feudal homage, even though “liege” is just “lord” in French, or “flower blossom” to describe the part of the flower that opens, even though when “flower” was borrowed from French it meant the same thing as blossom.
We also do this with place names: “brea” means tar in Spanish, but when we came across a place where Spanish-speakers were like “there’s tar here”, we took that and said “Okay, here’s the La Brea tar pits”.
Or “Sahara”. Sahara already meant “giant desert,” but we call it the Sahara desert to distinguish it from other giant deserts, like the Gobi desert (Gobi also means desert btw).
English doesn’t seem to be the only language that does this for places: this page has Spanish, Icelandic, Indonesian, and other languages doing it too.
Languages tend to use a lot of repetition to make sure that things are clear. English says “John walks”, and the -s on walks means “one person is doing this” even though we know “John” is one person. Spanish puts tense markers on every instance of a verb in a sentence, even when it’s abundantly clear that they all have the same tense (”ayer [yo] caminé por el parque y jugué tenis” even though “ayer” means yesterday and “yo” means I and the -é means “I in the past”). English apparently also likes to use semantic repetition, so that people know that “chai” is a type of tea and “naan” is a type of bread and “Sahara” is a desert. (I could also totally see someone labeling something, for instance, pan dulce sweetbread, even though “pan dulce” means “sweet bread”.)
Also, specifically with the chai/tea thing, many languages either use the Malay root and end up with a word that sounds like “tea” (like té in Spanish), or they use the Mandarin root and end up with a word that sounds like “chai” (like cha in Portuguese).
So, can we all stop making fun of this now?
Okay and I’m totally going to jump in here about tea because it’s cool. Ever wonder why some languages call tea “chai” or “cha” and others call it “tea” or “the”?
It literally all depends on which parts of China (or, more specifically, what Chinese) those cultures got their tea from, and who in turn they sold their tea to.
The Portuguese imported tea from the Southern provinces through Macau, so they called tea “cha” because in Cantonese it’s “cha”. The Dutch got tea from Fujian, where Min Chinese was more heavily spoken so it’s “thee” coming from “te”. And because the Dutch sold tea to so much of Europe, that proliferated the “te” pronunciation to France (”the”), English (”tea”) etc, even though the vast majority of Chinese people speak dialects that pronounce it “cha” (by which I mean Mandarin and Cantonese which accounts for a lot of the people who speak Chinese even though they aren’t the only dialects).
And “chai”/”chay” comes from the Persian pronunciation who got it from the Northern Chinese who then brought it all over Central Asia and became chai.
(Source)
This is the post that would make Uncle Iroh join tumblr
Tea and linguistics. My two faves.
Okay, this is all kinds of fascinating!
Quality linguistic research
One Year of Traveling and Drawing Captured in One Magazine
I spent the last 18 months traveling around the world, and tomorrow marks the last day of my journey. After a whirlwind year and a half of adventuring, I’ll fly home to Los Angeles with endless stories to share, but no travel photos to accompany those stories. No snaps of colorful sunsets, bustling street markets or exotic meals. Not even a single selfie. Why? Because before I left for my trip, I decided to challenge myself with a project called No Photos Please. In a world of smart phones, selfie sticks and sharing anything and everything that we do, I assigned myself this creative (and personal) challenge: I would forgo taking travel photos for one entire year, instead choosing to document my journey through my sketchbook.
While the constant drawing practice improved my technical skills, the most important lesson I learned was this: the less you have to work with, the more creative you have to get. Since I couldn’t take conventional photos of my travels, I had to use my creative skills to capture my sketchbook drawings in an interesting way. I learned to get inventive with backgrounds, textures, and props, and I always looked forward to sharing my travels with my friends & followers in a unique way. Some wondered why I’d put a restriction on myself like that while on the trip of a lifetime. I guess I’ve always liked challenging myself, as most creatives do, and it seemed like a unique opportunity to test my creative boundaries. I knew that traveling itself would test my physical and emotional boundaries, so why not push myself creatively too?
To commemorate the end of this project, I partnered with Blurb again (remember that beautiful hardcover book I made last year?) to create a printed collection of all the images from my sketchbook - this time in the form of a lovely magazine! Since I’ve only ever posted the drawings online, it was really special to see everything come together in one beautiful, printed piece. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to create; all I had to do was download the handy Blurb plug-in for Adobe InDesign, choose my book size, and drop my files into a template. When I finished, I was able to upload the file to the Blurb website directly from InDesign (woohoo!). I clicked a few buttons to check-out, and my magazine was on its way to me in Australia in a matter of days. One of my favorite things about Blurb is that once your files are ready for print, you can easily list your book for sale online. How cool is that? I listed my No Photos Please magazine on the Blurb store, so a copy of my adventures can be on its way to you too!
Now my trip is coming to an end, I’ve finally had some time to reflect on the year. I spent an afternoon sitting at a cafe, flipping through the drawings, and re-living all of those wonderful memories in my head. I can’t wait to fly back home with this printed book of my trip already in my luggage, ready to share with my friends and family as soon as I land. Thank you so much for following along with my global adventures! It’s been such a delight to share my story in a creative way, and I’m already looking forward to sharing the next chapter with you.
And a special thanks to Blurb for sponsoring this post and helping me bring No Photos Please to life. Have you ever thought of creating a book or magazine of your work? What kind of book would you create? I hope this post has inspired you to create one of your own. Can’t wait to see what you make!
x Lauren
This is amazing!
Words To Live By by Anna Kendrick
No reason. Just wanted to unwind.
My tea set
More consignment finds! Wouldn't these look adorable with some paper straws? There were two of the Mickey's bottle but someone grabbed one. I hope they cut off the top and use it as a tumbler.
Found these at the antique/consignment store by my house. They're Louisville Stoneware 12 Days of Christmas Punch and Party Set. I thought they were absolutely adorable! Each one was stamped on the bottom. They were a great price but I couldn't justify the purchase.
I had to buy this.
Yum!