Thankfulness/Share the Joy Thursday !

So much to be thankful and joyful about in my world these days!

I am feeling so very blessed !

I swear I have said “Life is so good…” to myself with a deep sigh of satisfaction at least once a day for the last week.

All that in spite of having a naggy little cold, feeling a little physically run-down and the fact that I still have a good chunk of Christmas shopping, decorating and baking left to do.

Loving this mellow, joy-filled, life-loving mood !

The lovely little gifties just for me from my Canadian Chickies Christmas Swap is adding to the joy.

Today is Day 4 and our gift comes from Kathryn.

Look at this gorgeous little decorated matchbox necklace she made!

Inside had this little note to store a treasure within the box.

I love the color so much ! Especially against the red and green of Christmas !

It even looks great with the new periwinkle robe I bought for myself for Christmas from Land’s End !

Thank you so much, Kathryn, for this lovely little treasure and all the creativity and beauty you put into it. ! I really love it !

***************

So yesterday, I had to make a trip to the post office.

Yes, about a week before Christmas.

The Rock Fairy had to make sure a few people got their orders of Rock My World rocks for Christmas gifties in time.

I had a feeling it was going to be a long wait in line so I prepared myself for that before heading out.

I had a fantasy about starting a flash mob of some Christmas Carol (it would never have been as good as this one !) in line to make the time more joyous…

While I didn’t have the guts to do that, I did bring a bag full of my Rock My World rocks and some candy canes with me and handed them out to people waiting in line around me,

to the very friendly post office employee who so kindly helped me out

and to the very last person in the line of about 40 people that were waiting behind me when I was leaving !

One lady who I connected with said in a very surprised tone “You are being so nice !?!”.

“T’is the season!” I replied.

But you know, her comment made me a little sad.

Even in this giving season, people are surprised by a little act of extra kindness !

It just shows how much the world needs more of it !

Kindness and joy spreaders will never be unemployed, that’s for sure !

And the payback for this kind of work is magnificent too !

Because whatever love you put out into the world,

comes back to you tenfold, Beautiful Ones !

It is an everyday miracle !

I think the rocks will come with me again today as I head for the mall…

Yikes, I have to go to the mall !!!!!

That’s okay though.

If I look for ways to connect to people and bring a little joy, the task will be a lot more fun !

And after all,

t’is the season, right ?

Spread some joy wherever you can too today, Beautiful Ones!

Big Love !

Head over to Meri's Musings for lots more joy today !

An Hour for Wonderful ME !

Today is Thankfulness / Share the Joy Thursday.

Love this combo.

Today I am thankful for the joy I receive in being inspired by the wonderful way others choose to live a creative life.

Man, there was a lot to choose from today ! Here are just a few…

Elizabeth at The Blue Lotus wrote about accepting that you are enough right in this very moment. I needed that reminder as I read about some successes that others were having and started that dreadful comparison thing !

My always inspirational friend, Judy Wise, wrote about the wonderful joys in her life that make her feel grateful to be alive, right in this moment. Plus she shared her unbelievably beautiful journal pages which always make my heart sing…

The talented and generous Michelle Ward, wrote about how she has scheduled in “art-just-for-me-because-it-feels-good-to-have-messy-hands “ at least weekly to keep her creative spirit alive in the midst of life’s busy-ness.

And then Miss Meri at Meri’s Musings posted about some wonderful things that bring her heart joy (including heart shaped rocks which you know I connected with !) and invited us once gain to share our own joys.

So I decided that I would take one hour in a busy day (craft fair final prep., housework as I have a house guest, Suzanne, arriving tomorrow, trip to the post office…) to let the inspiration from my amazing muses flow through me today ! I joyfully created this page in my slightly neglected journal :

Inspired by Elizabeth’s words about story and being enough…

Channeling Judy and using some of the techniques she taught me, and even a transfer of birdie image she gave me at Squam last year,

Relishing the India Ink on my fingers and my oh so messy art table like Michelle would want me to do…

I took that one hour just for me and found my joy, my bliss, my journal…

I found my “I am enough” moment.

Thanks for the inspiration, My Friends.

Big Love to you !

Touching Heaven…

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven. -Johannes A. Gaertner

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate this day !

As you

I hope you and your loved ones will take time to

for one another and for the abundance of life’s good things that we share.

And also remember that

Big Rockin’ Love to you and yours, Beautiful Ones !

I am grateful for:

David, my sisters, my mom, my extended family, my dear friends, near and far, my furry kids, my bed, cotton sheets, my dad and all he taught me, a good cup of coffee, the ocean, my creative eye, my art, my on-line life, giggles and deep belly laughs, the release that comes with tears, my cozy house, chocolate, birds, tulips, Gerber daisies, poppies, fresh veggies and fruits, baked stuff, books of all kinds, smooth rocks, paint, LOVE, words, my camera, Katie, having been a teacher, meditation, shoes, cotton, silk, color especially purple, turquoise and green, oh and red, cereal with bananas, kisses, hugs, loving touches, massages,and…

life,

precious life.

(As well as Thanksgiving, it is Share the Joy Thursday. Check out the joys that other participants are thankful for at Meri's Musings ) )

Thankfulness Thursday : My Joy Library

Funny how things can change in one day, in one moment even…

Yesterday started of being all about anger.

As a person who is working really hard to make kindness her religion,

to walk her own talk,

anger is a hard one for me !

But I saw it through,

I journaled it,

I danced it out,

I felt it instead of reacted to it,

and now it is 95% gone and mostly peacefully resolved.

I am pretty happy with myself for that.

Now today, is all about JOY !

That one I can handle !

Meri at Meri’s Musings did a post about it, and will be celebrating it each Thursday now in a Share the Joy post.

I visited several other blogs that were all about noticing the small graces in life and celebrating them…(click on colored words for links)

and was inspired to celebrate my own joys today.

A library book card pocket set the stage for my journal page today…

My Joy Library…

with a sweet little spot for a card with a list

whenever I need to put one in or take one out and re-read it.

As I wrote the list today, I realized I could have filled many, many cards with things that bring me joy.

I think that is because once you start celebrating the simple graces and joys in life,

they seem to multiply and more and more of them jump out at you for their turn in the light.

Looking forward to filling up my Joy Library.

Life is so precious, my Beautiful Ones.

Let’s celebrate that.

Happy Thursday !

Thankfulness Thursday–Love Echoes…

The beautiful mugs featured here were a sweet, sweet birthday gift for David and me from my friend Patti Digh that arrived yesterday ! David and I love them. I was so excited about coffee drinking this morning ! Thank you so much , Writer-Lady Friend.

(The mugs are made by Rob the Potter in North Carolina and can be purchased at Patti’s 37 Days Shop)

David and I headed to North Beach in Hampton, NH around 5:00pm yesterday. The light was magnificent for rock gathering though it was pretty cold! Especially for the fingers, in spite of the gloves, and for our bums, sitting on those rocks! Chica came a long for the fun and had some ball throws on the sand. And yes, the crazy Yellow Lab went swimming !

Those rock hearts just keep finding me….the four pictured above jumped into my pocket at the beach last night.

Reminds me that I forgot to share this beautiful little book that I found when I was at R.J.Julia’s Booksellers in CT and asked David to buy for me as a kind of souvenir of the day…

Heart Stones by Josie Iselin is a complete and utter treat for Rock Lovers like me !

Today, I am headed to lunch with Susie, a fellow New Hampshire resident I met in CT at the Patti Digh event. We are Facebook friends and though I have only known her for a few weeks, she has made me laugh so many times in that short time ! I am thinking that laughter will be on the menu today !

Today, Thursday, November 4th, 2010,

I feel extremely blessed,

deeply grateful

and wonderfully happy.

Now, there’s one to mark on the calendar !

May your own love echoes fill you up today, Beautiful Ones.

Happy Thursday !

Thankfulness Thursday–Gifts of Friendship

Belated birthday gifts from my friend Kim, aka The Bodhi Chicklet. They arrived in the mail yesterday from Montreal !

The card has her artwork on it (gorgeous!) from a special day we spent playing at art journaling together. The paper clay heart and name tag where also made by my sweet friend, as was the mixed cd of “music to play by” ! What perfect gifts for this arty chick !

As part of my meditation process and especially when I am having a hard time falling asleep, I start making lists in my head of things I am grateful for. At the top of the list, every single day is my deep, deep gratitude for the wonderful friendships I have in my life and the many and varied gifts that those friendships bring me.

Some of my friends are there for venting to, listening to the crap that sometimes builds  up and has to be let go of.

Some of them serve as mirrors for me, showing me my shiny bright side when I have somehow become unable to see it for myself.

Some of them “get me” so well, it makes me feel so comfortable and at ease with being completely myself when I am with them.

Sometimes my friends serve as the person I turn to when I am in total awe with the beauty around me and look into their faces and see that awe reflected there as well.

Some of my friends need me deeply, which makes me feel so valued and privileged, to really be there for another person, to be someone’s angel once in a while.

And some of them know how to make me laugh my ass off, which is something every single one of us needs !

Whatever the gifts that they bring me, I am deeply, deeply grateful for all the friendships I have in my life. It is truly one of the things that makes this life so beautiful and so worth living to its fullest.

I am thankful for you, my Friends.

Big Love!

Don’t Push the River…

These postcards are the only art making that I have been doing lately.

They were inspired by my friends Corrine and Lyle, who have a lovely mail art correspondence going on, as well as my gorgeous friend Paula, who sent me one of her own postcards as a surprise by mail during the summer.

I think I am enjoying the quickness of them. The instant gratification.

I have been using all the cardboard from boxes of cereal and dog biscuits and such for them.  They also make great use of all of those small but precious scraps of papers I have gathering in zip lock bags in the studio. Fun to recycle this way.

David asked me why there were all of a sudden a bunch of snipped pieces of cardboard in the recycling bin rather than whole boxes.

Now he gets it. ;)

I have even gotten out of the practice of doing daily or almost daily journal pages.

I worried about it for a minute and then let it go.

My art is essential to me now but so is the time in between, where I go with the flow and wait for the current to pull me into action.

I can feel the creative itching coming though !

Maybe it is Fall, my most active and inspired season.

I am an October baby after all !

I have some fun creative endeavors coming up.

A week away in Cape Cod with my Arty friends ( I leave in 8 days !!!).

I will be sharing my art journaling techniques with them. My pal Colleen and I will be helping them all make a journal like Teesha Moore shares in her great YouTube Videos. And then I will help them fill some of the pages up.

I am excited to learn all the cool stuff that the other ladies are sharing too ! Some sewing, some writing, some work with wax…plus the ocean, a beautiful house for ten and a lot of great food and cocktails ! ;) Lucky, lucky Queen !

I also have a craft fair in December that I need to prepare for – not so arty but still creative…

And I am joining my wonderful Canadian Chickies for a Christimas Giftie Swap (yes, I just used the “C” word – I am sorry !) as well.

Plus I am starting a part time job at a Halloween Store for now through Nov.1st to finance all my fun ! ;)

The current is coming, Baby ! I can feel it at my back…

But for today,

and planning to make the most of this one precious day !

Big Love to you, Beautiful Ones !

Thankfulness Thursday from Montreal...

Today is Thursday, August 19.

WHAT?????????

I really can't believe this is where we are already but there you go.

We gotta BE where we are, right ?

Well, I am in Montreal right now, lucky to be staying at my sweet friend Suzanne's house while she is away visiting some other Quebec wonders.

David headed home to NH with Chica yesterday.

We had a lovely time at Kim's cottage up North though the weather was a mixed bag. Spending time with my man in such a beautiful environment was a real treat !

Lots of reading, napping, dog swimming, a little Queenly swimming and basically just absorbing the lovely nature of the Laurentians. (I will share a couple of photos when I get back home to my own computer !) We got a little time with the beautiful Kim and her wonderful son, Riley as well as a rainy but cozy visit from my sister Kristina, her hubby John and the kiddos, Thomas and Katie. You know I was loving that !

Today, I am having lunch with Andrea and Darlene, close and wonderful friends that I don't see in the flesh often but keep in close contact with anyway. Girls do lunch...

Then supper tonight with the Bodhi Chicket herself and my Mom.

I am thrilled that these two lovely ladies with their big hearts are going to meet. They live about 15 minutes from each other and I would so love to know that they could hang and be friends up here in the hometown.

So as you can see, I have so very many things to be thankful for - I have been surrounded by love and beauty for an entire week, and it just keeps going...

Speaking of beauty that just keeps going, do you know that Se'lah's Gift of Jewels project starts tomorrow ? Sharing and offering love - what could be better ? You may still be able to join in...go check it out !

And last but not least, tomorrow is the day that I will announce the 4 winners of my own 400th Post Giveaway ! Leave me a comment on the original post if you haven't already and you could be the lucky winner of some juicy Queen of Art's prizes ! Yay !

That's the scoop for now, Beautiful Ones !

Missing Blogland but oh so glad to be soaking it all up here in the real world...

Big Love !

Thankfulness Thursday - Buried Treasure - I Have A Choice

Today is July 15th and I am participating in The Buried Treasure project organized by Seth at The Altered Page. We are revisiting a favorite post from the past year and offering it up to our readers to check it out a second time.

This post was originally from February 2010 and I decided to re-post it as I like the mix of Queen of Arts philosophy, Rock My World love and the lovely bits of art making towards the end of the post.

It is a Thankfulness Thursday post too which works kind of well !

I hope you enjoy revisiting my little treasure from the past !

Happy Thursday, beautiful Ones!

****************************************************************
I Have A Choice...

Any of you who know a Libra,

or who know me in particular,

are aware that making choices isn't always easy for me.

But I have to say that

I am always grateful that I have a choice.

In each and every minute

of each and every day,

I have a choice.

You do too.

How lucky and blessed are we

that we are made this way ?

Now, do we always make the "right" choice ?

No way !

But you know what is great ?

In the next minute, we could choose again !

So awesome.

This morning I am grateful for choice.

I chose to start my day with a big glass of water and a bit of stretch.

I chose to start my day singing a song of Thankfulness .

I chose some of my Rock My World Rocks to set my intentions for the day.

In short,

this morning,

I chose joy.

What are you going to choose ?

(For another great post today about Choice, check out my lovely Seeker friend Kelley's blog, Dragonfly Reflections.)

And now, I hope you choose to look at these amazing sewn papers I created yesterday !!!!

I am so in love with them !!!!

I was inspired by my friend Corrine at dosfishes , who showed me her own crazy sewn papers at Squam last Fall, as well as a post on IHanna's blog about sewing striped papers.

I needed some awesome stuff to create my postcards for the Postcard Swap that Hanna is hosting. (Still a little time to join in ! Imagine getting postacrds from all over the world in your mailbox !)

So I got out the gel medium, the painted paper scraps, and some regular old photocopy paper

and went to town gluing random shapes of the painted papers onto the photocopy paper with the gel medium.

Then I left it all to dry for awhile, fearing what the damp gel medium would do to my sewing machine !

Then I chose black thread for the bobbin and the top thread and went for it !

My final step was to take my Caran D'arche water Soluable crayons and fill in the grout lines, if you will, or the space between the cut up pieces, smearing the color in with some water on a paintbrush afterwards.

On the striped piece above I also took my black and white Elmer's paint Pens and added some scribble writing.

I am so in love with this sheet that I think I may just frame it pretty much as it for a gorgeous piece of art! Too pretty to cut up !

That may be my choice. :)

Or I could always choose to make up another batch for the postcards and keep all of these lovelies for me !

We shall see.

Don't you just love the possibilties ?

May you find the strength to choose joy today, Beautiful Ones !

Happy Thursday !

(Check out the Weekly Gratitude Blog to see what others are doing for this year long project )

Couple of Bootcamp Days & Thankfulness Thursday

Creativity Boot Camp
Day 3

What are your "creativity buzz kills" ? What inner and outer things interfere with your creative process ?

Random word prompt - multi-layered"

A multi-layered journal page with a list of creativity buzz kills hidden under a little door:

Page with door open - click to enlarge and read the list.

The evil creativity killer...

going after the brave Artist-Bird with her wonderful wings...

This part makes me laugh ! Hee, hee !

________________________________________

Creativity Boot Camp Day 4

What inspires you ? Take a walk, take a ton of photos and then examine what themes reoccur, etc...

Random Word Prompt - Heavy Metal

Art journal page : What Inspires You

I started listing all the things that inspire me and came to the conclusion that it may be easier to say what doesn't !

I see the world through the eye's of an Artist and for that I am sooooo grateful.

The unusual, the beautiful, the inspiring just kind of finds me. Whether I can translate what I see and feel into my own art is another story...;)

Here are some of my favorite shots from my discovery walk.

I had read the prompt before I left so "heavy metal" was kind of the theme of the walk too.

(gorgeous little flower fence in white metal)

I have also been in a red place all week.

It came out in my journal pages as well as in my meditation on Monday night, where we did some work with chakras and color. It was my first time really examining things with this kind of focus. It was very pretty interesting, a little intense and gave me a lot to think about in terms of how we can help heal ourselves with so many different tools.

It made sense that then, that the fire hydrants with their reds, bright or dulled, and wonderful rusts popped out at me as I walked. I love putting a Rock My World rock on top of them. Some cool contrasts in color and I love to think of someone seeing the rock out of the corner of their eye, balanced there...

Look at the paint and patina on this incredible alarm box on a pole...

Double open...

My favorite shot and one of the ones I shared with the Creativity Boot Camp group on Flickr.

So that is where I am at in terms of the Boot Camp activities. It feels like a challenge to get to each activity every day but I am feeling a sense of accomplishment already as the pages in my journal fill up and the files of photos do too !

I woke up angry, PMS-y, crabby, sore-backy this morning.

On our morning phone call, my Mom asked me what I was going to do today.

I replied :

"Make it through the day."

I could have added :

"Try to keep from biting anyone's head off."

as I feel like every thought in my head is an angry one waiting to be expressed by my tongue with the sharpest words possible.

So I think I will lay low...

Maybe read a little or watch a movie where I can be gone from myself for a few hours...

Today is Thankfulness Thursday though so I will say that

I am grateful for this day and the freedom that I have to just wallow a little.

It makes me so much more grateful when I get back to the other side of

my Self...

See you later, Beautiful Ones...

when it is SAFE. ;)