Meandering 2.26.2016

"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."

I have a "thing" for office supplies. I love to walk into an office supply store and wander the aisles and ponder all of the new crisp papers and folders; the variety of planners and products to organize my life; labels, dividers, envelopes, pens, pencils - the list goes on and on. I don't exactly get what the appeal is, but I'm hooked! It is no great surprise then, that office supplies have made their way into my art practices. I shared previously that a stop on day one of our sisters road trip provided a wonderful supply of new and vintage office supplies. So once I was home I started playing and using these new found items in my art journaling projects. One of our great finds were two dusty boxes of old ledger paper. I had fun the other day stamping and stenciling on it.

Along with the ledger paper I have used some other office supplies in my art.

Hole reinforcements decorated with ink and paint

Mailing label, plus ledger paper as a background page.

These office supply goodies have made their way into my Etsy shop too. I now have a few Office Supply Ephemera Packs available here.

I have written posts about my recent road trip with my sister  here and here. I didn't get much of a chance to visit any parks and do any birding while on vacation, but I did see some birds. One of the highlights for me was on a walk on the trail behind my daughter's when I spotted an Eagle!

I saw a few birds that we don't have in Ohio:

Northern Mockingbird

Best I can tell this is a female Boat-tailed Grackle

And then it was just nice seeing some of the water birds again since they have migrated from the north for the winter.

Last Sunday after church Sai'Vion and I and my friend Rox went to the Window on Wildlife to watch the birds for a while. Sai'Vion is very interested in animals and is really enjoying birding. He is doing a great job of remembering the birds names and how to identify them. I, of course, am a biased god-grandma, but I'm pretty impressed with how engaged he is for a nine-year-old! We're ready for Spring to come and bring the migratory birds back to our area.

Well, that's all the meandering I have for today. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Winter Birding

I love watching and photographing birds. This past summer/fall I was reading The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer and got in touch with a practice she calls "breathing exercises". You can read more about it in this post. Simply put, breathing exercises are finding things to do that stimulate our senses and nourish our creativity. I found that taking photo walks fits the bill for me. In addition to stimulating my senses and building my creative energy, I found that the time spent on photo walks also restores my emotional energy and is a time of solitude and connecting with God. At that time I decided to fully embrace birding and started keeping a nature journal and learning more about how to identify the birds and their habits.

Other than putting up some feeders in our backyard I wasn't planning on continuing to bird watch through the winter. But then I stumbled on the Window on Wildlife areas (mentioned in Tuesday's post) in some of our Metroparks and winter birding opened up wide for me. I stopped at one of the parks after my budget meeting on Sunday. It was a good way to relax after the meeting and we had our first snow of the year, so it was a good time to see what the birds were up to.

Goldfinch and female House Finches

Finally got the quick little Chickadee in a photo!

Male Downy Woodpecker

Female Cardinal

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Tufted Titmouse

White-breasted Nuthatch (one of my fav's!)

Even the deer come over and watch the birds!

On my list of winter birds that I have not seen as a Junco. On Sunday I finally saw one. Then the next morning in my backyard a pair of them appeared!

Junco at the park

Junco's in my backyard

Some pages I worked on last month in my nature journal:

Enjoy your day and find some ways to "breathe" this week!