One Little Word March Review

So far this year two practices are working out well for me: participating in One Little Word and focusing on getting healthy by adding or changing a habit each month. So far this year I have focused on adding more vegetable servings in January, more fruit servings in February, and adding an exercise habit in March. My intent has been that in adding something for 30 days it would help that practice become a habit. So far it is working well! Since I was down with the flu for so long in March and didn't get started on the exercise habit until mid-month, I decided to make this my April focus as well. Plus, it's a big habit to make a regular part of my life and a big change for me, so an extra month of focus can't hurt!

I'm finding that the habit of focusing on a word for the year is very beneficial in my journey of getting healthier. My word this year is REST. I chose it for many reasons. I thought when I chose it that it would be mainly about further developing a Sabbath type rhythm of life - and that is one of my focuses for maintaining my health emotionally and spiritually. But one of the other reasons for choosing this word has actually become foundational in getting healthy. I'm choosing to rest (depend on, wait on, lean on) God as I try to become healthier physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I find that it is this habit and focus that is enabling progress and success as I try to change bad habits and add healthier ones. 

Ali Edward's prompts and exercises have really helped me, not only focus on practicing my word for the year, but also in focusing on the practices to help make healthy practices become lifestyle habits. March's prompt was to create a vision board using magazine clippings which I wrote about a few weeks ago here. I took a picture of my vision board and added it to my OLW binder as well as adding in some other pages to record my journey.

March divider 

I continued using last month's practice chart.

I have joined an online exercise community called Daily Burn which enables me to participate in an exercise program at home rather than going to a gym. I am really enjoying their True Beginner program with instructor Justin Rubin. This program is helping me build strength and mobility as I try an exercise program for the first time. Justin has a lot of sayings that he uses to encourage us so I included some of them in my binder.

The top one - "If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you." - fits well for all of the areas I'm trying to get healthier in.

Hoping you all have a great week!

A Little Art Journaling 2016

I am so glad I decided to participate in Ali Edward's One Little Word group this year. Over the years that I have selected a word to focus on I have gone up and down in my experience with it. Some years engaging in activities with my word has resulted in that word having a significant impact on my life. Other years have been lackluster and my interaction with my word has been sporadic, and thus the impact has not been great. This year I find I am fully engaged and experiencing change in my life as a result of it. Now, I'm not going to say that choosing a word changes one's life, like there's something magic in the process. But I will say that the process of focusing on a word that you then connect activities and introspection to help you set yourself up for improvement and change. This month our challenge was to create a vision board connected to our word and goals and to do this by cutting out words and phrases from magazines. This project started out slow for me. I started leafing through magazines and tearing out pages with words and phrases that spoke to me, but as my stack of pages grew things just didn't seem to connect with my intentions for the year. I pressed on and started adding background papers to my canvas and then images from magazines. Then I started cutting out the words and phrases and playing around with them. I cut out many more than I actually used and in the process I discovered that it was a part of the process. As I shuffled words and phrases around things just started falling into place and the result was a vision board that really seems to fit where I'm at right now and where I want to go. (I wrote some about my word and why I chose it here.)

The thing lately that has really been challenging me is getting out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to change habits and get healthy in different areas of my life. 

My favorite magazine is Art Journaling by Somerset Studios. I look forward every month to its arrival in my mailbox and I save every issue and comb through them again and again to gather inspiration. So when I received the new issue in the mail this week the only thing out of the ordinary was that its arrival was a little early. When I opened the plastic envelope, however, is when I got the surprise.

I've had the thrill and honor to be published in this magazine twice now, but both of those times I knew about it in advance. This time it was a total surprise! They have a feature in each issue called "The Written Word" where they highlight different ways artists use hand lettering on their art journal pages. It was in this section that they used one of my pages from a previous issue. It's so exciting seeing something I made in a magazine and something I never would have imagined would happen to me.

Around here the birds are starting to sing in the mornings. We see Robins and red-winged blackbirds...all signs that Spring is just around the corner. Spring is my favorite season. Everything is fresh and new and each day brings changes to the scenery. Happy first day of Spring!

My One Little Word 2016 ~ Rest

It's the middle of March already and I haven't really shared much about my word for 2016. Selecting a word to focus on has been a valued practice for me for a number of years now. Some years my word has really impacted my life and other years my word has just kind of been in the background not doing much. I made the decision that this year I would throw myself wholeheartedly into having this be a year where my word has a big impact on my life. This means I am taking my time and letting the prompts and exercises steep like a good cup of tea and I'm not being driven by the calendar.

Flip-side of my January divider page

A good quote to start the focus this year.

So, why did I choose REST as my word this year? There's a lot encompassed in this word for me. First, and foremost, it is about resting in God and trusting Him. I want to live wholeheartedly and that can only come as we walk in step with God and what He has for our lives. I'm resting in Him to focus on getting healthy this year - changing how I eat, exercising, looking at emotional and mental health, and keeping away from things and outlooks that cause burnout for me. This year I am intentionally slowing down in order to focus. In fact, I am focusing on four areas: spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. I'm setting goals in all of those areas. My focus this year is to try and change or add a new habit each month and then build on them for health. In January I focused on adding more servings of vegetables to our diet - I've gotten really creative with adding spinach to many dishes to increase the vegetable intake!

Definitions, synonyms and a Scripture verse to support my word.

There has been a lot happening surrounding my focus on Rest in the first few months of the year and it feels like a really good start.

February divider

Flip-side of Feb divider

My Intentions & Goals this year

Following along with Ali Edward's prompts and the OLW community help me stay focused and keep creative ~ creativity is one of my emotional ways of staying healthy! I highly recommend her class.

Tracking my February practice - eating more fruit

February begins the practice of Lent

Each year I embark on a journey, but this year the word "pilgrimage" seems to fit my direction better. A pilgrimage is a journey to a holy place ~ that holy place for me is called REST. What journey are you on this year?

New in my Etsy shop, {found on brighton}:

Have a good weekend. I am off to our staff retreat this evening and tomorrow.

Art Journal Plans 2016

 I am participating in a number of groups this year to help inspire my creative juices. Last year I really missed joining in with One Little Word (OLW) and The Documented Life Project (DLP) due to my busyness with the His Kingdom Come community. This year I am already enjoying slowing down and spending time on projects that foster reflection and changing habits, life planning and documenting memories. This is what these two projects bring to the table.

One Little Word is led by Ali Edwards - you can learn more about her on her website here. Ali offers a year full of prompts and ideas to incorporate with your word for the year. The Documented Life Project is a year long project done in a planner that uses prompts and technique challenges to record daily life throughout the year - you can learn more about their project here.

 

Originally I thought I would combine my different art adventures into one, or maybe two, journals. But as time progressed and I got involved in the plans for each group I decided on separate journals. And I decided to actually use the journals each group was offering their members. But then, just because I love making my own journals, I added an altered book journal in which I sewed the signatures and bound them into the spine of the book. I found this wonderfully worn German book at a book sale and the pages were literally falling out of it. It's worn cover and beautiful red spine were calling to me to be made into a journal and I intend to use it for miscellaneous art projects and classes throughout the year. In addition to that I made a small pamphlet style booklet to use as a travel journal on my upcoming road trip with my sister (I made one for her also!).

Here are some glimpses of my various art journals:

One Little Word:

OLW January divider page with my word circled: Rest

The Documented Life Project

Altered Book Art Journal:

Sisters Road Trip Travel Journal:

I will still do art and make recording from my photo walks in my Nature Journal. Who knows what else I'll get involved in this year. I'm just going with the creative flow!

:

Meandering 1.12.2016

"Meandering: adjective; the act of following a winding or indirect course. Ramble, roam, zigzag, circuitous. A blog post about a variety of things; a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

Today my meandering is about recent discoveries.

I discovered 2015bestnine.com, a website that will generate a collage of your nine most popular pictures on Instagram for 2015.

Last month I discovered a way to continue my bird watching/photography hobby in the cold winter months. We have an incredible Metropark system in the Toledo area and six of our parks have Window on Wildlife locations. A Window on Wildlife is an indoor room lined with windows that overlook an area that has been set-up as a bird refuge with feeders, water and plenty of trees for shelter. The glass in these rooms are tinted so that the birds don't see you watching them. I discovered the first one on Christmas day. The weather here was 50 degrees. Highly unusual for late December in the upper Midwest! So I decided that day to go to the park closest to my home and take a photo walk. At the end of that walk I peeked my head into the Window on Wildlife and was pleasantly surprised to see so many birds visiting the feeders. I discovered this to be a great way to continue my weekly commitment of getting outside and taking pictures as a way of nourishing my emotional and creative energy. I plan on visiting all six locations over the next few months. So far I have been to two.

Female Downy Woodpecker

I discovered that the male Goldfinch changes color in the fall and winter.

Tufted Titmouse - my first sighting!

White-breasted Nuthatch - I can watch these little guys for hours!

This past weekend one of my god-grandsons asked me if I would help him with a writing and art project he was working on for school. Sai'Vion just turned nine and loves animals and nature so I decided that before we dug into the project I would take him over to the Window on Wildlife at Wildwood Park. We discovered that he really enjoys watching the birds also. He made a list of the birds we saw as I took pictures. He even worked a bird into his report and drew an impressive picture of a Blue Jay. I printed out some of the pictures I took, made a binder with drawing paper in it and place to keep his photos and gave him a bird book to use as a guide for drawing birds. I discovered a nine-year-old who now can share interests in birding and art with me! His story for his writing report was about encouragement. He made up a saying for it that said, "Keep calm and believe in yourself."

Sai'Vion's picture

His model

My birding and art buddy, Sai"Vion

I discovered my word for 2016: REST. I was originally thinking my word would be solitude, as it is a spiritual practice that I want to embrace more. But the more I thought about it I felt like solitude was a part of a bigger picture of a rhythm of life and rest encompasses that picture more fully. I'm not using the word rest as in "I just need some more sleep", but rather as a mindset of developing a rhythm of life that works to better balance all areas of my life: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational. My job in full time ministry can get overly busy and stress-filled at times and I have been trying for years to find ways to rest in the midst of the busyness in order to keep burn-out at bay. I've discovered in the past few years that the busyness and resulting fatigue and burnout rob me of energy in all areas of my life and I have been developing practices that help refill that depleted energy. So this year that is my focus.Last year I added to my already busy life by taking on being a part of the founding team of the His Kingdom Come faithart community. It was a great experience and one I totally enjoyed and am happy that I participated in. But it didn't help me build a healthier rhythm of life, in fact it just added more to the busyness and that was pivotal in my hard decision to step down form the foundation team. So this year I am slowing down as much as is possible. I am re-engaging in two practices from prior years that I gave up last year in order to make time for my HKC responsibilities. I am once again participating in Ali Edward's One Little Word project which helps me stay focused on my word throughout the year. And I am joining in on the Documented Life Project again this year. I missed being a part of these projects last year and am looking forward to engaging in them in the year ahead. I'll give just a glimpse of what I've done in each so far.

My One Little Word (OLW) binder:

The quote I found about fatigue really sums up well why I need to embrace rest this year!

My Documented Life (DLP) binder:

January divider

Week 1 calendar page

Week 1 mementos 

What I missed about DLP last year was how the practice of keeping memories about my days and weeks kept me more present to the happenings of daily life. It is also an easy art practice that keeps me creative without having to do a lot of planning.

Well, that's it for my discoveries recently. I'm looking forward to the journey ahead this year and what I will discover as I dig into my word for the year and as I document my daily life.

What discoveries have you made recently?