SPSH 2018 - June link up

I'm joining in with the Seasonal Photo Scavenger Hunt hosted by Mary-Lou over at  Patio Postcards.  I'm a little late in getting started and busy with work, so just these two entries for today:

For #20 - Mellow Yellow.  These are blooming right now in my front yard flower bed.

 
If you have pollen allergies, keep your distance!

#11 - Pretty in Pink.  Potted Cala Lily plant on my back deck.

May Wrap Up

Better late than never, right?

 May was a pretty good month.  I stuck to tracking with Weight Watchers most weekdays... not so much on the weekend because I'm not usually sitting at my computer and I'm just not that great with the app.  I exercised more than usual, even if it wasn't 5 times a week.  I hit my 5000 steps goal 17 out of 31 days.  And I did some decluttering around the house.  Creative time suffered a bit.  But then, there are only so many hours in a day!  So while far from perfect, this is still progress.  And I'm good with it.

 Our May assignment for FIT was to track the "Good" in our day.  Which for me was pretty much the same as my gratitude journal, but I kept it both ways for the month.  And of course, there is always a LOT to be grateful for!

As you can see from my May fitness tracker, I had three days this month where I went over 10,000 steps in a day! That is a LOT for me, so that was exciting.

 One of the highlights of May was a family trip to New York City - one overnight - to see the 911 Museum, the Statue of Liberty (up close and inside!), and Ellis Island.  It was a great little mini trip, but I didn't manage to take a single photo (well, to be fair, it was raining most of the time!) and I haven't yet pestered my daughters to send me their photos.  Need to get on that!

How do you feel about not taking photos on a vacation?  Ever done it?

Exciting News for Summer!

I have something new and exciting to share for June...

Let's start with the facts.

I haven't done any digital scrapbooking since April of 2016.  Two years.  I know, right?

I missed it terribly but between work, the shop, and just life ... well, I know you get it.

On Sunday, June 3rd, one of my favorite digital artists posted that she needed a few new members for her creative team.  It was sheer luck I even saw the post that day.  I pulled together an application and went looking for my best layouts using her products.  Not easy given that I hadn't done a digital layout in over two years! 

On Monday, June 4th I hit "send" on my application.  Then I saw her blog post saying she had received tons of responses and had added 4 new members to her team.  So I figured I was too late.  But at least I tried!

On Tuesday, June 5th I drove to Rockville MD for work, arriving late afternoon to my hotel.  I set up my computer, connected to the Internet, and was SHOCKED to see an email from Kim asking me to be on her team!!! 

So.... I'm on a new creative team for Kimeric Kreations at The DigiChick!!!  So excited!!!

 This  layout was created with Kimeric's kit All About Attitude.  I needed a new chore list and this just seemed to fit the bill!

And this one features her newest kit - For The Love Of Summer

I hope this means that you'll be seeing a lot more scrapbooking shares from me now!

PLAY - Life Book 2018

Sorry to say that I'm a bit behind in this course.  I'm still creating, but I have a lot of projects in various stages of completion and haven't started anything from the most recent three weeks of classes.  But hey, I haven't given up and packed up my brushes either!  So I suspect the creativity will all come in due time, right???

Here's what I've been up to:

 This is my art for Week 15.  The teacher was Christie Dranak and she wanted us to draw a self-portrait of our super hero.  Of course, with a LOT of artistic license... here's my inner super woman... in power pose... wearing the red dress that's hanging in my closet but doesn't fit me ... just yet ... I'm working on that!

And this is my Sacred Dream Bowl from Week 13 teacher Nanda Boukes.  We were supposed to make a bowl from clay, but sculpting just isn't my thing, so I found a ceramic bowl at a thrift shop for 49 cents to use as my base.  I finished with a white pearlescent paint that muted the colors a bit more than I preferred, but for a first attempt at this kind of 3D art, I'm still happy with it!

April Wrap-Up

I'm definitely sensing a pattern here... each prior month's wrap-up and review seems to be getting done in the middle of the following month.  Which at least means I'm posting monthly, so I'm going to call that a good thing!

Spring has finally arrived in full force in my neck of the woods:

These photos were taken May 3, 2018 when the Kwansan Cherry tree was in full bloom.  Normally this tree is the late bloomer for Spring, following about a month behind everything else.  But this year nothing bloomed in normal succession... usually we would get the early flowers (daffodils and crocuses) along with the forsythia, followed a week later by Bradford pear trees, the the dogwoods, plums, etc.  And finally the cherry trees. And the whole process would take a good month or more.  But this year... everything bloomed in ONE WEEK.  It was kinda nuts.  Last week I read a newspaper headline that said "Particularly Chilly April Brings Extreme Pollen" - yes, extreme because last week my house, my car, everything around here was covered in yellow/green pollen dust!  When you see this happen you have to wonder about the perhaps-less-enlightened people who believe that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

April's assignment for One Little Word was a sticky note exercise to explore what our word means to us.  I have to admit, I didn't "play" along.

The FIT class creative prompt was a vision board.  I was ahead of the curve on this one and had created and shared mine in March.  You can see it here.

Between work travel and a particularly bad fibro flare at the end of the month, April was not a stellar month for me.  I didn't get in nearly as much exercise OR play as I would have liked.  That said, there was still a lot of good in the month and a lot to be grateful for.

Let me close with a couple of playful intuitive vision boards that I made just for fun:

 

PLAY - Life Book 2018

I am truly enjoying this course!  Trying to keep up with the lessons is keeping me engaged in art so much more often than I might be on my own.  And let me tell you... art with no purpose other than the sheer enjoyment of the process... it's like soft serve ice cream on a hot summer day ... cool and sweet and oh so enjoyable!

 This is my garden fairy (actually our Lesson from the first week of class!)

She's still a work in progress - I still need to do another layer on the background and meaningful symbols on the shirt and a bit more work on the face.  She's not meant to be realistic in the sense of human proportions.

But she's come a long way from this:

And I've really been taking my time on this one because, somehow, she just seems too important to rush.  After all, she's supposed to be tending my dreams...

And here's my finished project from Week 12.  The lesson, called "Beauty in the Chaos" had us make a color-filled totally abstract background and then "find" the images hidden in what we had created.  I saw the girl planting flowers right away.  It took me days of staring at the painting to "see" the heart, the robin, and the path leading to the tent? (some kind of dwelling - I wasn't clear what).  In finishing the painting, I purposefully left the grass and sky very transparent so you can still see a lot of the "chaos" underneath.  I thought I had snapped a picture when it was just background, but apparently that was one of those things I did in my head and not in reality. 😕





The recent work on these two projects was accomplished during a two day retreat at the Jersey Shore.  I need more play dates like that!

My March wrap up ... in mid-April

We finished off March with a total of 4 Nor'easter storms and the threat of a 5th.  The cold weather continued into April in what seemed to be a never-ending Winter.  But then on Friday/Saturday we had a preview of Summer with temps jumping into the 80's.  Folks were out in short sleeves, yard work was being done, it was truly a celebration of the coming Spring.  It seemed like overnight the yellow forsythia leaves popped out and trees began showing buds.  A promise fulfilled - Spring always comes. 

Then today happened. It's 40 degrees right now.  Yes, it dropped over 40 degrees from this time yesterday.  Last night the wind howled and carried on. Today is grey and drizzly and dreary.  The last two days were just a tease.  This entire week is slated to be in the 40's and low 50's. Which is just as well - I have to be in the office 3 days this week.  So I won't feel like I'm missing anything.

Besides the never-ending-winter-storms, March was an interesting Month.  In "FIT" class, we tracked our mood throughout the month.  For me, the blue represents my "default" state - calm, content, even-steven, just being.  The yellow were particularly productive days and the green is when I was feeling most cheerful.  Thankfully March only gave me moments of the unfocused, tired, stressed and frustrated colors.  I was most surprised at the complete lack of angry/annoyed... which maybe means I'm growing up???

 For One Little Word, we were supposed to track one habit all month.  Of course, I always see it as "go big or go home" so I decided it was time to resurrect my habit tracker from 2015 (I think).  I actually enjoyed keeping this up to date and even though I'm not excelling at meeting every goal (like art everyday), there is a satisfaction in seeing all the color filling this sheet and in seeing in visual form that I had a decent month all things considered!

 I'm also keeping a monthly FIT calendar to track my steps and workouts.  The supplies to keep this one up to date are portable ... which means I can do it even when I'm traveling!

Gratitude journal is up to date!

Which reminds me... as of March 31st we gave up our shop in Phillipsburg NJ (lasted 1 year 3 mos) and are back to one local shop for our antiques business.  Sales have been so flat lately that I'm not even sure that one will last through the year for us.  But I've gained back over 3 hours per week of my life and I couldn't be happier about that!

What are you grateful for today?