I know I’ve done this before, but this last month of art journaling also meant that I finally finished the art journal I started back in 2008. So I decided it would be fun to to do a recap post about all of them. So here’s the item:
56. Create an art journal and fill all the pages
So, as I mentioned, this journal was started in 2008. It was an old 7gypsies album I had and I covered it with a photo that I loved and with my word of the year for 2008 which was journey. Here’s an image I took early this year:
This year, I bought a journal kit from Rebecca Sower and added the hodge podge pages into this book. So it ended up with some scrapbook paper, some water color paper, some copic paper, tags, envelopes, etc. I then glued the cover so it was one piece. That failed at some point, so I punched some holes and put ribbon through them. Not sure that worked so well, either. But it held up. So now here’s a look at all the pages I did this month:
and more.
and one more set.
And here are some pages from July and before.
remember the trees from months ago?
and more
And here are some shots of the album before and after:
And finally here’s a top-down look for you.
And there we are. I can’t believe this journal is done. I think for next year, I will make another journal and do pages once a week. Maybe I can keep it up.
Journaling Reads:
In 2007, I took Shimelle’s class on making a Christmas minibook. That 31-day course was the first time I created a book focused on the season. The next year, I discovered Ali’s December Daily and I was immediately in love.
Since then, I haven’t missed a year and each year I prepare my book earlier and earlier in anticipation of all the wonderful memories and excursions and family time we plan during the holiday season.
This book has become my favorite project of the year. It’s my way to capture my artistic width and depth and for me to capture the way we’re living our lives right now and for me to take a moment every single day to remember how grateful I am for my life. For our life.
These books are among some of my most cherished items in my life. We regularly look through them and talk about the memories. It’s a minibook that always sits on my mantle. This is not just another scrapping project, it’s a way for me to enjoy Christmas while it’s happening and it heightens my awareness.
In honor of my tradition of daily photography and a guest post at shutter sisters today, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite daily photos since I’ve started karenika.com. They’re not in any kind of order.
They are over the years so they are taken with different cameras and have different amounts of post-processing.
First time doing lowlight photography.
Macro.
One of my all-time favorite shots of David.
Skyline Boulevard.
Another macro-ish shot in San Diego.
Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.
Hillside, Fethiye, Turkey.
Recent Nathaniel photo that Jake likes.
California Academy of Sciences.
and
La Jolla at sunset.
And of course the butterfly in the banner.
I am so grateful for my tradition of daily photography and how much it allowed me to capture my life over the years.
Here’s this week’s item:
40. Find a decaf coffee I like
Well, that’s not really the item I ended up doing but it morphed into something much bigger. I originally put this item on there because I was nursing and I really wanted to be able to drink several coffees a day without causing any harm to the little one.
But I tried a bunch of different coffees and didn’t like any of them. Except for the one I was already drinking, which is this:
Yes, I know, not real coffee. But it’s the only one I like and since I don’t think any soda or juice or anything else besides water, this was my one joy.
So months passed as I looked for alternatives. Other decafs. Teas. Herbal drinks. I tried a lot of different things. My friend Lori, intelligently, pointed out that decaf coffee likely had a lot of harmful things for the little one, too.
I’d pretty much given up on this item for the year.
I’ve always had a problem with my weight. Since I can remember. It only got worse in college and went downhill from there. I was never supremely overweight but always had a lot more fat than any person needed to have. The more important part is that my self-worth is wrapped up too much in my weight. I’ve dieted for pretty much most of my teens and twenties. I even lost 26 lbs with Weight Watchers in late 1990’s. In fact, I was doing relatively well until 2004 when I got pregnant with David. David and then Nathaniel meant that my weight is now back to the pre-Weight Watchers numbers and those are not pretty. Not to mention now my belly never recovered from baby number two.
Even when I did lose weight, it had always been due to change in diet. Or mostly not eating. Never through exercise. Ever. I never did sports as a kid (except for a few ski trips) and exercise is not something I do.
Really. It’s not.
For this reason alone, while inspired I’d frequently read Donna Downey’s weight loss posts with dismay. When it came to Cathy Zielske, I stopped altogether. I moved her blog out of my Reader and refused to read. But of course, every few weeks, I’d sneak a peek and feel terrible all over again.
I am not entirely sure where it came out of but suddenly, in October, I decided enough was enough. I was prioritizing everything else in my life except for what supposedly was the single biggest factor in my unhappiness and lack of self-worth.
So it was time. If these women could do it, so could I. Yes, I could.
I didn’t want to wait until January. Dates are arbitrary and now is always the best time to start anything. Even though it was already October 1, I decided I would start walking the very next day. I’d already bought a Nike+ device thanks to an older Cathy post so the next morning I put my shoes on and got to walking.
And I’ve walked every single day since: (that first Tuesday, my nike+ didn’t work for some reason.)
My goal was to walk somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes each day. Ideally between 1 to 2 miles a day. I cannot run. I just told myself to start where i was. Walk. Even if slowly. I can only start where I am and move from there.
The daily-ness was more important to me than the ability to do longer stretches at a time. I work well with routines and I know that if I give myself one day off, I will quickly start sneaking more days here and there. Everyday is not negotiable. It’s not something I can interpret differently or cheat on. It’s simple. Consistent.
In the last 23 days, I’ve walked daily and i’ve even started running very slowly for one minute or so every 6-7 minutes. Just slowly. Every now and then. I am not forcing myself. The goal is to keep doing this. That’s more important than anything else. Even if I just walk 2 miles a day every single day for the rest of this time, I will still shed the weight. It will happen.
So for the first few weeks, I only added these walks. I didn’t change my diet at all. But then two weeks in, I’d lost five pounds and I decided if I am walking this much, I should at least eat better, too. I don’t eat too much but I eat bad things. Not fried or fast food, but things with zero nutritional value. I also wanted to get my kids eating more veggies. At least Nathaniel who’s still malleable.
So I started a new food regiment last week. I still drink my coffee once (and sometimes even twice) a day. But for lunch, I eat a wrap with broccoli and low fat cheese and heirloom tomatoes. My snacks are a bunch of fruit and some plain yogurt ( I love plain yogurt and I spent a long time at the store comparing ingredients of all of them and bought the Greek one.) My mid of the day coffee(s) has been replaced with this tea:
Courtesy of Cathy’s blog. Thank you Cathy.
My dinners are very light. I generally used to only eat coffee and 2 graham crackers for dinner. Now, on days when I don’t drink another coffee, I eat a bowl of yogurt with some fruit. If I am really hungry, I’ll have more fruit and some water.
This weekend I discovered that Nathaniel will eat pretty much anything if it’s on my plate and not his. So now he’s had sole fish, heirloom tomatoes, summer and winter squash, green beans, and cucumbers just in the last three days. Progress.
I would say that I don’t know how long it will last but I do. This is going to last. Because I’ve decided that this time it’s a priority. I am doing this. I will get healthier, thinner, and have a better diet. Less processed foods. More moving. Healthier will equal happier in this case.
Just last week my wonderful parents bought me a treadmill. Hopefully it’s going to get here end of this week. Which is just in time for the winter. I went out for 25 minutes in the pouring rain today. I will not stop. It will be slow. But I will not stop.
This matters.
And that’s how my plight for the decaf coffee went away. (In the meantime, the little one pretty much stopped nursing, too.)
Journaling Reads:
When my older son was born in 2005, I decided to take a photo of him every single day for his first year. I made posters with the 365 days’ worth of photos and loved seeing how much he changed in his first year of life. And then in 2008, I again decided to start taking daily photos and have been taking them without a break for almost three years, now.
These photos capture the essence of our lives. From the minutia to the rare big occasions. From the mundane to the special. These photos show our progress, our joy, our milestones, even our sorrows.
I look at my older photos regularly. I love flipping through and smiling at the memories that come rushing in. I love seeing what used to be ordinary for us and how much it’s changed.
Most significantly, taking the moment to take photos has improved my memory considerably. Because I have to take the extra few seconds to look through the shutter, it’s like I freeze that moment in my mind, too. And now it’s etched there forever. So I can stop time whenever I wish.
I hate Halloween.
There I’ve said it. I really, truly hate it. I don’t like pumpkins or pumpkin pie. I do not enjoy costumes. Most importantly, I hate anything scary. And Halloween’s built on scary. Maybe if I were a kid, I might enjoy the candy but, at my age, I know it’s best to stay away from it. So, in my opinion there’s nothing redeemable about this day.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t grown up with the tradition of celebrating it. Where I come from, we don’t have Halloween or anything like it. For the first few years I moved here, I ignored it. Then for a brief period I made my peace with and even embraced giving candy to the kids who came to our door.
Then we had kids and it was time to go trick or treating, and I hated it all over again. The haunted houses, the horror movies on TV, the candy I had to tell my son he couldn’t have. (One or two or three but certainly not the whole bucket.) I just didn’t understand what was so great about this holiday.
A few years ago, my husband bought a pumpkin carving kit. A $5 one at wal-mart. It came with pictures you taped on the pumpkin and then cut out. This little thing was the first step to changing my feelings about this holiday. I now really enjoy the process of picking the pattern and carving the pumpkin with my kids. (Even though I do all the work.) I also enjoy our yearly trips to the pumpkin patch. I love that it’s something we do as a family.
So while I am still not at peace with Halloween, I did manage to create some small sub-traditions around this holiday that I look forward to. This way, I can make sure that I share my kids’ enthusiasm about one of their favorite days of the year.
Maybe that’s the trick for dealing with something you cannot stand: creating a small portion inside it that you love.
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.
Here’s this week’s thing:
42. Find something to volunteer with
Before we moved to the West Coast, I used to volunteer a lot. During 2000, I took two of my work days and spent them volunteering full-time. (I worked 3 days a week and volunteered two). I worked at a non-profit book store, I worked with the deaf and helped them find jobs. I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, Junior Achievement, and several other organizations. I then quit my job and became a corps member in Teach For America. I got paid but it was still volunteer work to make the world a better place.
I love volunteering. I really, truly do.
However, when we moved west and I couldn’t drive I stopped. Then I had kids and it got worse. And now I don’t volunteer at all. I wanted to fix that this year. I wanted to work regularly with a cause I believed in. And yet, so far I haven’t been able to do that still.
But there is an area where I’ve made some small progress. I became the room parent for my son’s class. I’ve also volunteered in his classroom and art class. I am the photographer for the class so I go to many of the events to make sure there are photos. I am also planning on volunteering with the local education foundation that helps raise money for all the schools in my area.
I also volunteer at work. I create all the posters for all the authors events. This might sound small but it’s a significant contribution to a very valuable and all volunteer-run project.
I still yearn to find ways to volunteer more one on one. Ways that feel more tangible to me. In the meantime, these are the small ways in which I’ve brought in more volunteering into my life.
I will keep seeking more opportunities in this area. But I feel like even if it’s small I have made some progress so I am taking that for now.
Journaling Reads:
In 2003 my husband and I spent two months driving across the United States.
Prior to that, we’d been living in New York City and hadn’t even owned a car. Prior to that, I had never camped. I refused to use a public bathroom. I couldn’t really drive. I always overpacked for car trips. I spent a long time picking hotels and restaurants. I couldn’t read a map.
This one trip changed all of that. In two months I learned to become a master navigator. I could put up a tent in the dark. I slept anywhere from mountain sides to swamp sides. I used pretty much all kinds of public bathrooms (and even gas station ones – but I still refuse to go into a port-a-potty.) I got really great at finding decent hotels and food. I learned to be flexible and enjoy every moment of being in the car.
That trip also was the start of a tradition for us. We’re definitely cartrip people now. We drive everywhere and I prefer it over any other kind of trip. I love being able to get in the car and just take off, knowing it’s all going to be perfectly fine.
I was thinking about traditions last week. Since that’s the theme of this month and since the holiday season is fast approaching, traditions are on my mind lately. It seems many of our traditions surround the holidays and surround family. And yet, what’s a tradition but a recurring activity?
Something we do again and again just because someone, somewhere along the line, started it and we’re choosing to continue it. I must admit that being a routine and schedule-lover, I cherish our traditions. I see them coming every year and I can plan for them and doing them gives me a major sense of accomplishment.
In fact, I’ve been thinking recently that I love traditions so much that I want to create some of my own, just for myself. For example, I could start one called Wednesday Lunch where each Wednesday I go to a local cafe with a favorite book and my little boy. This way, I get to eat something I love, take a little break out of my work day and get out of the house on a regular basis. (I work from home so it’s easy to stay in all day long.) If I do it once or twice, I might stop doing it but if I call it my weekly tradition, then it feels like something more substantial. It feels more sacred and I am less likely to skip it. And it means I get to actually go out and enjoy the California sunshine weekly.
After all, it’s a tradition.
So here’s my plan: set two new traditions that encourage me to do something I love on a regular basis.
How about you set one with me, too? Maybe it’s having a cup of coffee somewhere I can people-watch. Or reserving some time to read. Or writing in my journal. Maybe it’s meeting a friend to go to the movies every Thursday. It can be a daily commitment or a monthly one. Or even a yearly one. As long as it’s something that makes you happy. What would be on your list?
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.
Here’s the item I did over the last few months:
60. Clean up the Garage.
When we first moved, I wasn’t sure how I was going to arrange everything so I decided that things that didn’t already have a known home were to be placed in the garage and we would slowly open the boxes from there as needed. Which meant that our garage ended up looking like this:
We left the right side empty just in case were going to put the car in there.
So the left side got all the boxes.
here’s a closeup
The photos do not do it justice. I cannot tell you how terrible it was. We could not get into any of the boxes. The door could not be opened. A few months ago I decided that was that and I was going to tackle it. I was told getting it professionally done would be around $6000. There was no way I was paying that.
So I found some metal shelves on Amazon and we measured the garage and I went to town. I bought one just to see if it would work. And when it did, I bought four more. Jake helped me move the boxes. We opened nearly all of them, threw out and/or donated a ton of stuff and then ended up with this.
I cannot take photos that do it justice. Especially since I didn’t have my wide-angle lens.
But trust me when I tell you that everything is 100% organized now. One section for less used stuff like luggage, camping gear, etc. Another section for office supplies, toilet paper, etc. Everything has its place and I can easily get to it all. Jake has his own area now too with two tables, lots of space and both garage doors open without problem. No smell. We still need to sweep in there but otherwise it’s completely happy and it was done for exactly $300. More money than I wish I’d spent but considerably less than the $6,0000 I was told.
The best part is that the garage is now 100% usable. And I feel so much more peaceful. Isn’t that what it’s all about after all.
Journaling Reads:
In my family, we always create a special present for big birthdays. For my father’s 50th we made a videotape of all of his friends telling stories. For my mom’s 50th, we made her a website with all her friends. For my sister’s 30th, I made her a book. And just recently for his 36th, I made my husband a book of stories from all of his life.
This year, I decided to take the tradition even further and not wait for a “big year.” Life is short and one birthday is no more significant than another, if you ask me. Why wait until we reach a big, round number when I can make a meaningful present now?
So my hope from now on is to make something meaningful as often as I can. These presents take time and effort from not just me but others, so it won’t necessarily be an annual event. At least not at this scale. But it will be frequent and it won’t wait for a 50, 60, 90. It will be as often as I can and whatever birthday comes next.
Or I won’t even wait for a birthday. Any day is special, right?
One of my all-time favorite quotes is this gem from Mark Twain:
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” –Mark Twain
I think about this quote often and I try to surround myself with people who are supportive and people who know that there’s enough success and joy and happiness to go around for all of us. This week, I was thinking about this quote in a different context, too. Not for ambitions, but for choices. After I moved to the United States, I met many people who started criticizing and belittling my taste. My choice of music, books, movies, etc. (I don’t think this is related to being in the US, just happened to coincide with that time in my life.)
I’m going to specifically talk about books because that’s nearest and dearest to my heart. You can say many things about me but there’s no question that I am well-read. I’ve read most of the classics as well as most of the award-winning books. I can read literature without worrying and I even enjoy it. I’ve read lots of Shakespeare or whomever else you might consider “high literature.” And yet I loved reading Twilight or Eat, Pray, Love or whatever other books someone else might consider “trashy.”
Before some of you object, the only reason Eat, Pray, Love (which I absolutely loved, by the way) is on that list is because I was sitting at my book-club meeting two months ago and one woman said, “Did anyone like that book anyway?” I almost fell off my chair. It never ceases to amaze me how completely high and mighty some people can be. I replied “I loved it and so did millions of others since her book was a major bestseller.” And it instantly made me mad. I remember when I was living in New York and there was a huge Harry Potter craze (this was when the second book was about to come out.) and people were criticizing how her book was terribly written blah blah blah. I kept thinking, here’s a book that has kids waiting in line at a book store at midnight. it’s a book. not a video game. what more could you possibly want?
When people said things like that in the past, it would just make me feel small. I must be not as “polished” if I liked the music that was too common or the books everyone read and judged as non-literary. But in the last few years, my attitude has been changing and now I keep thinking, these people can go you know where. I don’t need people like this in my life. I don’t need people judging the way I spend my leisure time. Telling me what things are supposed to give me joy.
What do they know? What makes them a better judge? Honestly, most people just worry about looking good and they feel like if they put you down, you will be too embarrassed and not expose them for who they really are. I don’t need any such people in my life. I don’t need others to validate my taste in things. My ability to judge what gives me joy.
So while these people aren’t belittling my ambitions, they’re belittling me and making me feel small. And I say it’s cleaning time. Time to put these people out with the trash. And get some “really great” people in my life. Those who support and love me just the way I am. And it’s also time for me to look at the people who are supportive in my life and appreciate me the way I am and show some gratitude. Those great people are rare and deserve a lot of appreciation.
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.
|
projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
|
