(This thing? Goes into the Chateau Travolta Banish the Linoleum Fund. Ooh-rah, VTech. Plus I like their phones. Actual post is below this big box.)

I don't know if you do Twitter or Facebook, but if you are friends with me there, or read my tweets or status updates, you know that I like to spend a few minutes a few mornings a week on StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a site where people tag cool or funny or beautiful things and you just hit the button like a rodent and it rewards you with something interesting to look at that's been crowd-sourced by the masses. You hit a button to say like or dislike, and it finds you stuff closer to what you like the next time.

I use it as a mood enhancer. Totally Pavlovian, right?

I like to look for beautiful or cool or funny things in the morning to start my day off better. I do this BEFORE I look at news headlines, because -- as evidenced by my post yesterday -- they tend to be complete downers.

Here are my favorite stumbles from the last month or so:

2011 National Geographic Photo Contest

What I can only assume is a monastery on top of a cliff

Awesome paper roll collages

Art made out of words

If you see beautiful things in your travels online, please tag the #morningstumble so we can all enjoy. There's enough ugly out there already.