Express Yourself!

Daily Life

Just dropping in to say I am indeed back from my sister's house, but the day I returned Chris came down with the stomach flu!  So I've been pretty busy taking care of things while he's under the weather - so far I don't feel sick at all myself, thank goodness!  I'm at our store right now adding a bunch of product to our database and watching the counter, so I've blogged a bit at our store blog.  Hopefully after this weekend I can get back into the swing of things.  In the meantime, I've been browsing a few of my favorite blogs - Holly has reminded me that fall is about here, Alicia Paulson has been sharing some of her summer fun (including the Oregon State Fair), and Molly Chicken has shared another free tutorial that makes me want to cozy up and stitch away!

Halloween has arrived here at the store.  It is funny to watch people's reaction as they walk through the door - many come in frowning, with a pouting comment "fall already?!"  It seems nobody is ready for the summer to end, but then are we ever?  This summer sort of flashed right by me, waving "so long" as it went by.  Having a baby will do that, I think.  Benjamin is still a delight - it is fun to watch him consciously trying to reach for object so then he can put them to his mouth.  This morning I brought a new toy toward him, rattling it a bit from side to side, and his eyes were so fixed on it he jiggled his head side to side as he was watching it.  It was really funny.

This is Ben at 3 months with our friend Bobby Michaels.  He's been spending a lot of time with his grandparents while Chris is sick, so I have missed him terribly.  But hopefully Chris will be feeling well soon, and sometime after this weekend I can get back into the swing of things!  Hope you all are enjoying the end of your summer...

Checking In

Sorry I was gone longer than expected.  I had a wonderful couple of days off with Chris for my birthday, but we had several things come up since, including a death in the family.  The funeral is on Thursday, then Ben and I are spending the weekend with my sister down in Oregon, so my posts will be a little scattered for the next several days.  I will check in tomorrow, but wanted to let you know what was up.

In the meantime, I have been a bit more on the ball on The Weed Patch blog, and I also found a bunch of art photos I forgot I had (including the one above), so I updated my gallery on my website (or you could look on my Flickr too).

Hope you are all having a lovely week - until tomorrow, nighty night...

Store Blogging & Birthday

Hi all - sorry for being so quiet, but we've had a lot of fires to put out lately, and I've been at the store most of the time.  I am still thinking about my encyclopedia letters - I have C picked out, but so far no D or E.  But it'll come to me!  I probably won't pick up again until after this weekend, as for my birthday I get two whole days with just my husband.  I don't even want any presents, I just want to walk and drive around, holding hands, looking at things and talking about everything we love.  Likely we'll stick around Snohomish then, because I love this little town, and living in it hasn't reduced its charm.

I have been doing some blogging on the store blog, though, so if I'm quiet here, chances are I'm not quiet there, and vice versa.  I think it might take me some trial and error before I strike the right balance between the two blogs, as much of what I want to share on the Weed Patch blog I would also love to share here, but is it tacky to cross post?  Oh, I'll figure it out.

Anyway, these are photos of a trip we took to Snohomish before we moved here.  Ever thought of even moving here.  In fact, I don't think we were married yet in these photos.

Two sets of lovebirds...

Have a lovely weekend, Happy Birthday to me!

B is for Ball, Birthday, and Benjamin

This has been a pleasant week so far - a good mix of productivity at home and at the store, one-on-one time with Ben, some visits with friends, and some artsy stuff done too. I always forget day to day what I've done, and thus can't recall what progress I've made on my to do list, so consequently I've started keeping a weekly to do list - each weekend I write up a list of things to complete during the following week. Sometimes in the morning each day I'll highlight what I'd like to get done that day, to help keep me focused, but I mostly like to keep things open because with the store, a baby, and the nature of life in general, you never know what kind of a schedule you'll have.

I love lists. I love to cross things off a list, even if it is "take a shower." The list for this week had a little bit of everything, like take a walk, vacuum, enter products onto The Weed Patch's website, crochet some flowers, play with Ben, cook dinner, etc. B is for Ball, because I crocheted Ben a ball to play with (see photo above). It is just plain Red Heart verigated rainbow yarn I have leftover with something else, but it crocheted up into a really nice big ball. It has a bell inside to give a little jingle, and I didn't fill it too full, so then he can grasp it. Earlier this week I had picked up the unfinished project to move it out of my way, when I noticed his eyes following it. He really stared at it! So, I finished it right then and there and gave it to him to play with. He grabbed it and put it in his mouth (well, not the WHOLE thing, as it is the size of a pummelo).

B is also for Benjamin, of course. I couldn't possibly do a B entry without including him. What kind of mom would I be?

This is Ben having a bath in our kitchen sink, about a week ago or so. I think these are all a week or two old.

This is him chillin' with Grandma at the family reunion two weeks ago. He does that a lot. Just chillin'.

He attended his first birthday party this last Saturday. Our goddaughter Elise turned two this last Friday, and there was a big fat party for her - with a Curious George Theme. Andy describes the party rather accurately and amusingly, so I'll let him tell the tale.

It occurred to me at the party that within a few years, if things go on as currently planned, our casual get-togethers with our two best friends are going to be just like that - a dozen children running around to keep track of. As there were about that many children at this party, and all under kindergarden age, it gave me a little taste of reality. I liked it, fortunately, but whew! Am I going to be tired. And BUFF.

But happy. :)

A is for Armadillo

 

Well, A is for Alphabet. I love the alphabet - what a great invention! Symbols that stand for certain sounds, that when you put them together in a myriad of ways, you can communicate with people. How cool is that? I wouldn't be able to blog otherwise, let alone share in the knowledge of peole I'd never met, except for whatever memorized stories had been passed down from generation to generation.

 

This alphabet card is part of a set that I received as a baby gift for Ben. I love them! The illustrator is Melissa Sweet - she does darling works that mix fabric collage with watercolor. I especially love how broad the animals for each letter are. C isn't for Cat, but for Camel; D isn't for Dog, but for Dragonfly. How fun is that?

 

 

 

 

Ben also has an alphabet quilt, courtesy of his aunty Holly, which I unfortunately haven't been able to hang yet. I knew she was makingme a quilt, but had not expected this - it just amazed me. She appliqued one object for every letter of the alphabet, with Dick & Jane and ABC fabric quilt blocks making up the rest. Some of the letters are what you'd normally expect, such as A for apple and B for ball. But with other letters she was even more creative. I found N is for Night, and Z is for Zipper to be among the most unexpected. A nod to the guys was T for Trogdor, a Homestar Runner character that they like, and Y is for MX + B (which is a mathmatic formula that eqals Y, which you probably recall fom high school). W is for Weed Patch, our store, and she appliqued our logo. I love this quilt. What a gift!

 

 

 

 

This is a letter A that I started in pen and colored pencil - I was going to do a whole alphabet, until I realized how long this A was going to take and I gave up for other things. I would love to do an alphabet book, in felt, like a touch and feel book, for Ben. I saw something like what I'm thinking on Flickr once, but now I can't find it at all. Oh well.

Encyclopedia of Daily Life

I have gotten a little behind in reading the blogs I enjoy keeping up with, and today I read a lovely blog from Bella Dia, who shared a wonderful idea for a series of postings. She calls it Encyclopedia of Me Meme - I have no idea what Me Meme is, so I'm just calling it an encyclopedia of daily life. Here's how she explains it: Starting tomorrow, August 1st, I'm going to make a post each day of the month beginning with 'A is for...' and on the 26th day, 'Z is for...' My posts will be different random topics that somehow relate to my life and at the end I should have something similar to Amy Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. "

I think this sounds just wonderful! I love questions and prompts like this, I always write better that way. I'm afflicted with this awful problem where I think of all kinds of interesting things when I'm out and about, no where near a writing instrument, but when I get to the computer or journal, I can't think of anything useful to say whatsoever. Or, if I can think of something interesting to say, I can't think of how to write it, so I sit there and stare at the screen or blank page. That's why some of my favorite books are those where the author has written about topics I think about, and I spend the whole time pointing in my head and saying "yes, I know exactly what you mean!"

So I'm really looking forward to this, although I'm hoping I can commit to it. Normally I wouldn't worry about it, and would just write as it comes to me, but she started this on August 1st and my birthday is on the 26th, so if I keep up that means I'll have a whole alphabet of life to look back on. I am also afflicted with a remarkably poor long-term memory (when it comes to my life experiences - I can remember numbers and what products we sold at the store two years ago, and things like that, relatively well. But I couldn't tell you what my childhood lunch box was, or what trips we took every summer as a family. Sheesh!), which is why I took up journaling, and now blogging, in the first place.

I don't really know what A is going to be tomorrow, or what any of the other letters are going to be, but I'll just go with the flow and see what happens. Let me know if you are participating, I'd like to read what other people are doing. Its not too late to join in!

I like this guy.

"In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running." - Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder

Breakfast in Tub

I had a nice morning today. Well, at first it wasn't so nice - I kinda feel like I'm coming down with something, and I did something rotten to my neck because I can hardly move it. So I took a bath to see if I could loosen it up a bit. Aaaaahhhhhh.... I haven't taken a bath since before I had Ben. (Well, I've bathed, I just haven't taken a bath. So, here I am in this gloriously yummy water, complete with orange and peppermint essential oil, when Chris brings me my favorite tea, then proceeds to make me breakfast and bring it to me in the tub. He hands me this mess of eggs and veggies, which really didn't look all that good, but it was GOOD. Really good. He just brings it in, and says he hopes it tastes good, then "oh, and I took photos for your blog." That was the best part, it cracked me up. Now he's taking photos for my blog. I love it.

It's kind of hard for me to remember to take photographs of my life, which is especially unfortunate as I never seem to remember much of anything unless I have photos to remind me. Blogging has been a wonderful way for me to start taking more photos. So has having a baby.

We've been pretty busy around here, but pleasantly so. We're starting our most difficult and exhausting, but fun time of year - converting the store to fall! Within about two weeks we should have all the fall stuff out, and it is so much fun. I don't know what it is about September and pretty much the rest of the year - it's like a universally loved season. I really enjoyed spring this year. And I am thoroughly enjoying summer. But autumn....oooo, I can't wait...

Back again

 

We are back from the family reunion. It was an extremely pleasant time, as usual, and thankfully not too hot this year. It seems that people tend to dread their family reunions (at least that is what I hear most often from folks), but we look forward to our annual get-together with great anticipation. Although my family is rather large (extended family in the 3 digits somewhere), there weren't as many people in attendance this year. Sadly, this is due to a number of health issues. I hadn't realized just how many of my family are down for one reason or another. An aunt is likely soon to pass away due to complications from failed kidneys, a young cousin is fighting a brain tumor for I think the third time, and another cousin currently occupying a nursing home bed for 6 weeks awaiting a second hip replacement. Last year one of my sweet uncles, the first of his generation, passed away from Alzheimer's (and now an aunt is showing signs of it also), and the year before that a cousin lost her battle with lung cancer. Another aunt is currently dealing with a body that won't process any nutrients from the food she eats and is thus very very weak and frail.

I always thought of us as such healthy folk, with little to no complaints or major stresses in our lives. Now, as I tally them up, it hits me that we are going through a lot right now. Family is so important to me - I can't imagine not having all my aunts and uncles and cousins. I often lament the fact that I was born the last of my generation, and thus came in to things with everyone already advanced in age. I won't get to enjoy them as long, and my children may or may not remember most of them. And they have so much to teach us.

I have been asked on many occasions, since I had Ben, how many children we plan on having. A rather person question, but I haven't minded answering. We always said we'd start with one and see how that went, then go from there. We've never been parents before, we had no idea what it was like, so how would we know how many kids we'd want to have? Now that we have Ben, Chris' answer to that question has lately been 12. Of course I have no intention of bearing that many children, but I most definitely want more than one. I love the idea of being surrounded with family - I'd like my kids to experience what its been like for me to enjoy such a large extended family. So, God willing, if we are able to (physically, financially, and of course mentally!), we'd like several. Although, I've never had to care for more than one child at a time, so I guess we'll move on to two, and again go from there. :)

So, not that anyone is really interested in that much detail about how many kids I want to have, but that's just part of what I got to thinking about when musing over my weekend. I really just intended to pop in for a quick hello before heading off to bed. My brother and sister-in-law are watching Ben for the day tomorrow, so I'll have several hours to myself to get our house back in order, and hopefully get a few more things in my shop.

Nighty night for now...

 

Happy at Home

My time at home on maternity leave has whizzed by so far. Today Benjamin is 10 weeks old, so I'm halfway through my leave time. It is interesting how different I am at home than I am at work (at least, how different I feel). I've been puzzled by this for the five years since I first noticed it. It occurred to me the other day when I was taking a walk outside how good I feel when I'm not indoors. Everything about me inside brightens up, my brain is more awake, and I think and see things more, and...I'm just...happier! Maybe that is what is effecting me at work? Until I got my job at the hospital, I had spent every day of my life with a significant portion of my time spent outside. In every school I've been to, I had to go outside to walk from class to class - elementery school, high school, and college. We lived about 12 miles outside of town on 10 acres in the country, so there was always stuff we had or wanted to do outside.

Once I started working at the hospital seven years, I spent every day all day indoors. Being inside all day long, especially when I can't even see through a window, makes me feel like I'm very slowly dying - kind of like a flower wilting due to insufficient water and sunshine intake. Whenever I feel down, I always feel significantly better almost immediately upon walking out the door, no matter the weather. It just feels right.

I must admit that the thought of going back to work really does not thrill me. It's not the work, or the people - I do enjoy it, for what it is - but the whole corporate life, being inside all day, looking at numbers and figures, just does not appeal to me. It is not my passion. It makes me feel like I am missing life instead of living it. It is interesting to me how much women have shunned, some quite emphatically, the stay-at-home lifestyle. Our mothers worked so hard to make it into the "man's" corportate world, to be considered as equals in all ways including the workplace, to be seen as more than "just" a housewife and mother. This subject comes back relatively often in my conversations with my great friend Holly. We love being mothers, wives, and homemakers. I love to spend time with my family, care for my son, be helpmate to my husband, clean the house, cook delicious meals (or try), create beautiful things for the home or as gifts for loved ones, and everything that goes along with all this. I even enjoy laundering and folding my son's little outfits. We eat healthy homecooked meals, spend more time with our family and friends, get more exercise and fresh air, and are more involved in each other's lives. I love this. It makes me feel alive. Now, why haven't I felt this way for the last 7 years in my job? Do I have a bad attitude about my job? Do I need to make better use of my time, be more organized, work harder, or make better choices day-to-day? Or was this job really only meant to be temporary?

All people are made deliciously different. Which is wonderful. It is the spice of life. Some people want to work full-time in a job and setting like mine. But right now, I just can't imagine wanting to do that. And I guess that makes me feel guilty sometimes, like "not everyone gets the priviledge of staying at home to work as a wife and mom, somebody has to work at these places so they can run properly and provide the services the community needs, so I should just work and be grateful about it." But then I think that perhaps some people do not find what I do all day very appealing either. Let's see, today I have done several loads of laundry, washed our dishes, fed and changed my son multiple times, cooked dinner, picked up the house, wrote thank you notes, fed the cat, said hello to a neighbor, taken Ben for a walk outside, and a number of other related tasks. I was on my feet for probably 11 out of the 12 hours of the day. My own meals, personal hygene, and other needs went on hold, as my son's came first. Many folks might find this to be a completely dull life. But I absolutely love it. It makes me happy. It makes me feel at home, that I'm doing what I was made to do. Home, God, family, and creating are my passion. So why do I feel so guilty about it? Its like if I'm happy, then I must be not be doing what I should be doing, because toiling to earn a living shouldn't be fun - treating myself, playing, is fun. Not being productive. Work and fun are mutually exclusive, right?

My heart knows this is emphatically untrue, but my head is having a hard time with it. I seem to be one of those people that is only happy when they are miserable, because I tend to make things so darn difficult. Silly me! I see this is something I'll have to think and write on more over time.

Enter the strawberry. Don't ask me why in the world a jar shaped like a strawberry the size of a soccer ball appeals to me, but when I saw it, I knew it belonged in my kitchen. I don't collect strawberries, and didn't particulally need a cookie jar. But the thing just makes me happy. Every time I see it in my kitchen, it makes me smile. Happily, the price was within my budget, so I purchaed it. And now it is in my kitchen and makes me smile every day. That's all. And I'll just leave it at that!

Except of course for the usual photo of Ben.

Sigh. I am happy.

Labels: baby, Home Sweet Home, ponderings about life

Rainy Day

Ahhhh...it is raining. We here at the Tindall home love the rain - especially after all this hot, humid, muggy weather. I never used to love rain until I met Chris, who REALLY loves it. There's just something about it. All my senses seem to be heighted during and after a rainfall - all the smells seem more fragrant, all the colors seem brighter, that sort of thing. Its like the rain washes all the dust off everything and leaves it glistening. And since no one likes to be out in the rain, it is always so still, with the just the pleasant white noise of the drops saying "pitter patter, pitter patter" (except a lot faster than that). We like to get in our car and take a drive with Loreena McKennitt playing, and talk about our dreams and the things we love.

I'm sitting here at the computer with Ben on my lap and the cat at my feet. One thing I'm discovering about being a wife and a mom is how much demand is placed on my attention. In the last year I've gone from one person (husband), to three people (husband, baby, psycho-cat) needing me to pay attention to them. Someone always needs or wants something. Now I am not complaining at all, as I love the fact that I have three different personalities that love me and want to be around me and need things from me - some people don't have anyone. I just find it interesting how different my life is - how I think, what I do, my priorities, even how I talk have all changed, and are all geared around the juggling of priorities: baby, husband, cat, self. I'm starting to believe that to be a wife and mom you need a degree in office coordination, time management, housekeeping, counseling, event planning, cooking, and multitasking to name a few. Not to mention a boat load of patience! Every day is an adventure. It is challenging at times, but I am taking such joy in my son. It is so important to have an attitude of joy, or you miss out on so much in life. I may be juggling 50 things at once, Ben may be sitting in my lap filling his pants, but when he look up at me and gives me his big toothless grin and a gurgly giggle, everything is perfect.

Trinkets and Treasures

Day number 2 in my first official week as full-time wife and mom and everything that goes along with that. We had a lovely day, full of feeding, playing, and cleaning. I don't mean that to sound as sarcastic as it does in print - really, it was a very nice day. See, while caring for Ben, I am also attempting to tackle the unpacking from a month long road trip, plus finding homes for the fifty trillion wonderful gifts we received from a couple baby showers. Ben received all really nice thoughtful gifts, but then you get it all home and realize once you've cut off the tags, washed all the clothes, broken down the boxes, and saved all the ribbons, you have to then put all the stuff away, which of course means rearranging everything else to make homes for all the new stuff. A lot of work, but kind of fun too. I still think I've made a bigger mess than I've cleaned up, but I suppose it is always worse before it is better.

So what do I do when I have piles and piles of stuff accumulated on every possible surface? I hang a shelf. Then arrange pretty things on it. I find the whole house environment, as well as my day spent tackling it, is rather worthwhile when at the end of it you have something lovely to look at. My mother-in-law picked up this shelf at a garage sale for $5, then my mom refinished it. It is hanging in the kitchen right at eye level when you walk in the back door, and has a few of my treasures on it.

The top shelf has some of the Portmerion dishes I picked up from the factory where they make it in England, a place called Stoke-on-Trent (I'm sure I butchered the spelling). They have a shop full of "seconds," where if one little tendril of one little leaf isn't perfectly straight, they mark it down considerably. They had some marked down even more with flaws that were more noticable - those they send to America, as they say we don't know any better. And usually we don't. Anyway, the second shelf has a few of my peach lustre Fire King cups and saucers. Don't ask me where I picked up a liking for this set, but it struck my fancy about a year ago. I had a mind to pick up some black dishes then have a festive set to work with in the fall. The bottom shelf has three pink depression tumblers I got on sale at an antique store during our recent (well, only) trip to Fort Collins, CO. I don't even collect Depression glass, but they were SO pretty on their shelf, they looked like they belonged on a cover of a magazine - like on a white wicker table and chair set out in the garden with a pitcher of pink lemonade with fresh mint inside. The cup and saucer is the Autumn pattern of Royal Daulton's Brambly Hedge - the illustrations look just like Beatrix Potter, but I don't think they're related at all. I absolutely love it. This cup I found for $10 at the Goodwill, of all places. Then the covered glass dish thingy was a gift from my mom - I threw her a tea party last year for her birthday, where she and a bunch of her friends drove up and when antiquing for the day while I prepared their meal. She came home with this for me, which I typically keep full of some kind of candy.

So that's the story behind my shelf. I'm not sure that anyone really cares what each item on my shelf is or where it comes from, but it felt good to tell it anyway. I only arranged all that stuff on here because I thought it looked good, but as I got to writing about it, I realized each piece has a personal story and memory. I tend to not like decorations for the simple sake of decorations, I like them to mean something to me in some way. I didn't think I was being that meaningful when I put the shelf together, but now that I think about it, there's a lot of memories on there. Maybe that will inspire me in some way tomorrow when I start tackling the dishes with a sink whose hot water nozzle won't turn off (if you can even get it on in the first place). Again. Sigh.

Chris says I need to blog

Chris says that I need to blog, so here I am blogging. The problem is that whenever I'm really hit with good thoughtful, interesting things to say (well, at least I hope they'd be interesting), I'm nowhere near a computer, and by the time I get back in the studio to write, I have either completely forgotten everything I so brilliantly thought of before, or I have so much to write about that I'm completely overwhelmed and don't know where to begin, so I don't write anything at all. Adding a third complication to the mess, I just read the blogs of a couple of my bestest friends in the world, and although I had so much fun reading through all the entries (they are talented writers and gifted storytellers, which I am not), I am feeling not only forgetful and overwhelmed, but now also really boring. Yet here I am writing anyway, so I suppose that is a start.

This week I juggled work, a class and exam, unpacking and settling back in after a 9 day vacation, and packing up to move in one week - all in the midst of the afterglow effect from Artfest and Coupeville, of course. All very good things, but in happening all at once, it does feel a bit stressful. But just think, in one week from today, I'll be in a new home of our very own (well, via a lease, at least) with a door that doesn't open into a balcony or hallway, where all 4 walls (plus the ceiling and floor) are ours and shared with no one else. Instead of rush hour traffic and noisy neighbors, we'll hear the distant sounds of the train, the mill, and the river. And I'll have a studio - oh, I'll have a real live art studio! With a sink. And a walk-in closet. Sigh.

Every time I sit down to write or do art, all I ever seem to have on the brain is the house, and I just keep reliving it in my brain, room to room. So, I apologize if this is like the 50th time I've mentioned all these details, but I'm just very very excited.

Well, the more I write, the less interesting this blog seems to be, so I'm chalking it up to having wrapped china and packed boxes for 10 hours today and then I'm putting myself to bed. Have a lovely Saturday evening, world.

Art Journaling on a Deserted Island

This week in my artistsjournals Yahoo! group, someone asked a couple of good questions: "If you were on a deserted island what journaling supplies would you have to have with you? Now could you answer this question with limiting yourself to just three items? How different do you think your journals would be if you didn't have the outside contact and eye candy available to you?"

Assuming the journal itself is a given, my three favorite things would be a black drawing pen, like Pitt or Micron, a nice watercolor palette, and a set of prismacolor colored pencils. I would hope I also had a way of sharpening the pencils and a brush to paint with, so I suppose that's five things instead of three, but those three mediums - watercolors, pen, and colored pencil - would make me happy on a deserted island.

I think most things in my life would be completely different if I wasn't around other people to compare myself to and find new and creative ways to criticize myself and seem unworthy to do art. Actually, I did grow up in the middle of nowhere, and while there, I don't ever remember having a problem sitting down to do art, deciding what to do, and knowing exactly what I had the ability to do. It was when I moved to the city that I started second-guessing myself. Not like it was the city's fault, or that the city makes me feel insecure, but it can be both very encouraging and intimidating to be surrounded by so many talented and diverse people.

One thing about being in the middle of nowhere is that its just you and nature all around you, and you just don't pay so much attention to what everyone else is doing - you just marvel at creation and digging your hands into the stuff of life, quite literally sometimes. Plus, you get to walk out of the shower in the morning, wrap your towel around you, and walk out accross the lawn to the street to get your mail if you wanted to, because no one is there to see you or care except for the trees and birds. How can you do thinks like that and NOT have great things to write and art about?! :)

So, without anyone to compare myself to, without deadlines to pressure me or hubbub of the world to complicate life, I'd like to think I'd do my best work. Hmmm....are there any available deserted islands anywhere????

Art, Ideas, & First Loves

I was reading over an old issue of Somerset Studio today during my lunch break at work. There's really just something about those back issues that I love - they tend to have some really great articles that refer me back to more formal mixed media art, some that is much simpler, clean, less busy. This particular issue got me thinking of my first loves that I haven't tapped into in quite a while, I guess because I've been too busy trying to be what everyone else is being. I love to read the wisdom and insight shared by the artists in these articles - they have truly thought things through, learned and grown. I was humbled by the artists in this issue, as I realized that I simply do not take the time to stretch and challenge myself anymore, because it won't create things fast enough for me to feel like I've been successfully productive. I am tantalized by my first loves of colored pencil, handmade papers, simple sculptures of wood, paper, and light, oil paintings, and detail drawings. It has been too long since I've shared a project with them, and I miss it.

I definitely think way too hard about all the wrong things. Again, I don't seem to stop long enough to allow myself to formulate my thoughts. I can never think of the right words for what I am trying to express, and I work way too hard to force meaning into what I'm doing. The meaning should be the starting point driving the project, not something I force feed in later. What can I introduce into my life to exercise these muscles again? Some of these things I may have already recently started, things I prayerfully chose to pursue or refrain from during the Lenten season - delving into those things that remind me of who I am and make me feel the most me. Slowing down, in general, would be good.

I wish I could take time to do art and journal every day. How do I focus without becoming legalistic with myself? I blossomed while at school, always did so well in each assignment, testing the limits and boundaries of each project given to us, finding ways to make the ideas mine. I think the main point here is that the original idea really wasn't mine, so the scope was automatically narrowed down to considerably and I did not become overwhelmed by all the possibilities. It's not like I can't think of my own ideas, its that I can't seem to manager them. Too bad they don't teach us in school how handle our ideas ourselves, running with them instead of being run over by them. Can anyone relate to this?

Anyway, just some thoughts, stuff running through my brain this week. I'm feeling a big motivated to whip out that art journal again…