This week I made some art:
52. Make art for Clark, Andee & Maya
I wanted to do something they could hang in their house or in Maya’s room. Clark is Jake’s brother and all three of them are wonderful people and I wish I could do something that’s superb. Alas I am only so-so at this art thing. My mother-in-law was coming and I wanted to have it done so I could give it to her to take to Boston.
Here’s the finished product:
It’s, of course, inspired by Rebecca Sower. The frame is from Ikea and it’s a 9×9 opening (I think the frame is 9.5×9.5). I just glued my art on the wooden back. Here it is without the frame:
Here are some more details:
It says “home is where love is”
I used all the wonderful fabric and beads my sister sent me from Turkey.
It’s hard to tell in the photo but the clouds have some transparent beads on the corners.
I learned how to make a French knot during this piece. It took me forever and I still mess it up every other time. My brain just could not get it.
I hope they like it.
Our theme for March is home.
The journaling reads:
Jake and I have been together for sixteen years but we’ve never owned a home before 2009. We’ve always had the misfortune of living in cities where the housing prices are exorbitant.
In New York, we almost bought a two-bedroom condo but at the last minute we decided to move away from the city instead. In San Diego, we never even considered buying. (I’m thankful for that because those same houses are now selling for half the price.) It didn’t bother me that we didn’t own a house.
But a piece of me always wished that we would someday get to have one. And last year, my dream finally came true. Our house isn’t as big as it could be but it’s really perfect for our little family. It’s in a nice neighborhood with good schools. It’s new and clean and all the rooms are spacious. There is a lot of light in every single room. And, most significantly, it’s ours. I am very grateful.
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I 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.
I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. But ever since I can remember, it never felt like home to me. While I loved my family, I felt constrained and a constant sense of not-belonging. Very early on in my life, I decided to study computers and shortly thereafter I decided I wanted to go to school in the United States. (All of this was before I was 12 years old.)
It took another six years, a lot of sweat and blood for me to finally make it to the United States in 1992. Even though I had dreamt of this moment for a very long time, the first year was scary and foreign more often than it was fun and refreshing. I remember being homesick a lot. I wrote and received a lot of letters. (This was before email was as widely spread as it is today.) And I cried a lot.
There were a lot more cultural differences and language nuances than I’d expected. Pittsburgh was a very different city than Istanbul. And I just felt like I wasn’t going to adjust any time soon. Several times, I questioned my decision to take such a big step. Maybe I was just the “not belonging” type and my problems had nothing to do with being in Istanbul.
But then I made friends. I started dating. I joined clubs. I got jobs on campus. I made more friends. Slowly, I learned a lot of the colloquialisms. And four years later, I had quite a few solid friends, an undergraduate degree with a minor and a graduate degree and I had started dating the man who would end up being my husband.
I then moved to New York for my first job. New York is a lot like Istanbul: big city, a lot of people rushing around, dirty, and always moving moving moving. It’s also very multi-cultural. New York felt a lot more like home to me. My husband and I spent seven years there (working very hard, long hours) before we decided to move away. At the time, I thought I was totally done with New York.
Our next home ended up being San Diego. We moved there sight-unseen, no friends, no jobs. In many ways, it was like Pittsburgh all over again. I felt out of sorts. The culture here was too different and I felt like a foreigner all over again. It took a few years but the birth of our first baby gave us the opportunity to make some good friends and we slowly started to get used to San Diego. I must admit that both of us felt like we missed New York dearly.
A few years later, we ended up moving to the San Francisco area. Northern California is similar to New York in a lot of ways. It’s also full of computer programmers and we have a lot of classmates here from college so it feels much more like home. And yet, we now miss San Diego. We long for the beach and the relaxed, quiet life we lived there for a while.
If you notice one pattern in each of my experiences, it’s that each time it took me a while to get used a new environment. To make it my home and find my place. I think this is how “home” works. What makes it home is the people, the familiarity, the routine, the comfort. All of these things take time.
Another thing I noticed is how I always long for the previous place once I move. When we left New York, we were totally done with it and ready to move. Yet when we moved to San Diego, we remembered so much of what we loved about New York. When we moved to Palo Alto, we realized how much we missed the beautiful beaches of San Diego. I think this is also typical since we often don’t tend to appreciate what’s in front of us until it’s disappeared and we realize how much we were taking it for granted.
I’ve now been in the United States for 18 years. I turned eighteen two weeks after I moved here so this is my break-even year (I’ve lived here the same number of years I’ve lived in Turkey) and I can tell you without a doubt that I belong here more than I’ve ever belonged in Turkey. I’ve now made homes in 4 different cities in America. I’ve got an American husband and two beautiful boys. I’ve even become an American citizen (a lifelong dream come true for me) and I’ve been gainfully employed for fourteen years in American institutions.
While I firmly believe home is where you make it, I do also think there’s an innate sense of belonging that you feel in some places. A pull. Maybe it’s that the people there are more your people. Or that you connect with nature there more. Or it’s the weather. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that my home is here. And I am so thankful to have found it.
There’s nothing that feels as good as a sense of belonging. Like you’ve come home.
This week’s project was made last week. I needed a full week for it so here it is:
47. Do a week-in-the-life project.
I’ve attempted to make this project several times before but I was never successful. I realized there were two things that held me back:
1. I felt my life wasn’t interesting enough. I was worried all my days were the same. I was worried I was going to have to spice it up for the week which killed the whole point. I decided that my boring life now would be so interesting to me years from now and would be worth preserving.
2. I felt like I had to keep track of every minute of everything. I’m anal and I always worried I wouldn’t have enough time for that. So I decided to just focus on a few activities each day. One day, our meals, routines. Another day, our play, etc. I didn’t stress. I just decided to go with the flow.
There are a lot (A LOT) of photos here so you’re warned. Feel free to skip.
I pre-made most this book in two days over a weekend. I picked all of my favorite things that I’d been saving. I sewed the stuff on, put almost all of the embellishments on ahead of time, too. During the actual week, all I did was print photos and glue them and do some manual journaling. I did add some final touches to each page but 85% of the work was done ahead of time. I promised myself I would hand journal the whole thing. I also wanted to print my photos small. I added a few large ones throughout and I love my whole book.
Here’s the overall look. Detail on each page to follow:
Here’s the cover:
and a little detail:
This is the inside of the front cover. In that little pouch is the embroidery sampler I did that week in Teresa’s class. Photo of that:
Monday: No big theme for Monday, just sentiments.
Tuesday: our routine, our walk, my grandmother, david’s ladybug.
Wednesday: Nathaniel’s recent milestones, kids playing, headshots of each boy.
Thursday: David’s 100 day celebration at school, goings on around the house – nathaniel playing, david coloring and watching pink panther, me embroidering and the cleaning lady.
Friday: chat with mom, more embroidering, david highlighting, my kids together, our trip to the park
Saturday: David and I did crafts, the directions for the craft are in the pouch, time with Daddy, haircut, Wii, and then a photo of Jake with Nathaniel and one of me with the boys.
Sunday: a trip to the craft store for beads (receipt in the little envelope) David playing with them, and Nathaniel playing, too.
Back cover inside: sorry for the blur. Just a recap of how much I cherished doing this project.
And finally the back cover:
I HIGHLY recommend doing this. Loved every minute of it.
The journaling reads:
I love scrapbooking. I know that different people have different opinions about it and I don’t care to change anyone’s beliefs or stereotypes. I just know that, for me, it’s a wonderful way to spend my time. I love taking pictures, I love preserving our memories, and I love playing with pretty paper and embellishments. I’m pretty sure I will do this forever.
Recently, I’ve also begun playing around with fabric and stitching and doing collages. It’s not as much for memory-preservation and I don’t really have a good “excuse” for doing it but I’ve realized that it makes me happy. Sitting at my table and touching all the different textures, creating with needle and thread, using my sewing machine, and just enjoying the process gives me a lot of peace. It makes me happy. It calms me. I can do it for hours on end without noticing the passage of time. I’ve realized this is not for memory-keeping but it’s for something just as important: my soul.
Creating art makes me happy and brings my soul the peace and calm it needs so very much.
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.
Last week, I lost my grandmother.
She was 91 and she lived a long, healthy and full life. When I learned of her passing, I wrote a few words about our memories and how much she meant to me. As I was writing the post, I realized how much stronger “Weekly Gratitude” has already made me.
I am the melodramatic kind. I tend to over-analyze everything and feel emotions deeply. I worry too much and have a lot of hopes and wishes. While I love living in the United States, one of my greatest fears is not being near my family when something happens to them. For the longest time, my dad used to smoke a lot (he went from 3 packs a day to nothing, bless his soul) and he didn’t eat all that well and slept even less. I had these fears that we would lose him and I wouldn’t even be there to hold his hand. I had this long list of things that I never got to do with him. I felt that I would never forgive myself.
And yet, I am still terrible about visiting home. I dread flying with the kids and my life is pretty hard to uproot. So I haven’t been home in a long time. Thankfully my parents visit me and I’ve had the opportunity to see them. (Not nearly as frequently as I would like of course but they are so kind to take the long trip when I won’t.) But I hadn’t seen my grandmother since 2006. And now I will never see her again. When Nathaniel (my 10-month-old) was born, my parents asked me to visit so my grandmother could meet him. But I didn’t. I was too worried about flying with a baby and a 5-year-old.
So you would think that now that she’s gone forever, I would be wallowing in remorse. And I think the old-me would have. But this project has helped me see the positive side of so many things this year. I’ve noted 3 things that I’m grateful for every single day. That makes 159 things this year so far. (That’s quite a lot isn’t it? And we’re only in February.) It has shifted my focus from the bad to the good. To the “glass is half full” perspective.
And it has allowed me to move past regret into appreciation. Into being thankful for all the times I did have with my grandmother. For having had the luxury of meeting my grandmother and sharing so much with her. And on and on. I know that if it weren’t for this project I would be feeling sorry for myself so much more. Which is, of course, taking the focus off of her and making this all about me. Instead, I can celebrate her and make this all about how amazing she was. And will always be.
Which also brings me peace about my parents. Peace about my life. About living it daily. Living in the moment. Living with gratitude. And choosing joy.
This project has already changed my life more than I ever thought it could.
I will miss you, Omama, may you rest in peace.
This was another one of the items that got done during our trip to Big Bear/LA:
19. Learn to change a tire
My intention with this one was for me to actually change the tire but since I wanted every step, I am going to count it for now because I did learn to change one. I will still plan to change one by myself this year, too and if I do, I’ll come back and edit this.
When we went to Big Bear, our tire was being funny but we added air to it and got on the road. After the three days it sat in the driveway there, it was completely flat. So we had to change it.
As it turned out, we were missing the toolset for it, but thankfully Kendall’s car had what we needed the most. (Kendall and Holly were in Big Bear with us and had rented a car.)
The first thing was to take off the spare. We have a CRV so we had a full-sized spare.
He then unfastened the bolts in the tire (the flat one) one quarter turn and then jacked up the car (you had to find the part under the car that the jack hooks into to make sure the car doesn’t topple over.
After he jacked up the car so the tire was completely off the ground, he took of the bolts and the tire and put the new one on. Then he fastened the bolts (not too tight cause it will break the rim and it will make it hard to remove the next time.) Then we slowly put the car back down and put the flat tire in the place where the spare was sitting and bolted it back and we were pretty much set.
It all sounds easy and Kendall made it look easy but I think it’s pretty hard and I just hope never to have to do it by myself.
The journaling reads:
It might seem odd to file coffee as something that’s good for my soul but, for me, it really is. With two kids and a job, my mornings are really hectic. The kids get up early and I am often drowsy and in pain from too little sleep. Then there’s the making breakfast for everyone, changing, nursing, and feeding the baby and getting everyone dressed. Next thing I know, we’re driving to David’s school.
After I drop David off, we come back home and I put Nathaniel down for his nap. While he’s napping, I prepare my coffee and grab some graham crackers (and maybe a chocolate if we have any left.) Then I get to sit down and enjoy the first quiet moment I got that day. For the next forty-five minutes or so, I cherish the solitude and “me” time.
These forty-five minutes have become my favorite part of my day. I love my kids and my husband and my job and my crazy life but there’s something magical in pausing for a short while every day and just taking some time for myself.
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.
I’m a fan of Karen Walrond and have been reading her blog for quite some time. She’s recently started answering anonymous (or not) questions on formspring. Here’s a recent question and her answer that really spoke to me:
What is the most frustrating thing about being photographer for you?
The most frustrating thing about being a photographer is that people rarely see their own beauty when you take their picture of them — they’re far quicker to zero in on the mole or the laughlines they hate than the fact that they just have a great face, or a warm smile. I shot a wedding for someone as a gift once, and even though she was radiant, when she saw the final pictures, all she saw was that she hadn’t lost the weight she’d wanted to before her wedding. I still haven’t put together the album as a result!
This is something that I really struggle with all the time. I can tell you a million reasons why I dislike the way I look. Some of them will be about cruel friends during my formative years, others might mention dieting since I was twelve, but the fact is, there’s no excuse for me to feel the way I feel except that I keep perpetuating ideas that other people put in my head. Or maybe they didn’t even do that and I just chose to believe it for so many years. Nonetheless, I loathe to have my picture taken so much that two years ago, when we first started creative therapy here’s the art I made for the very first catalyst which was about “something you lost.”
Here’s the journaling:
I am the girl behind the camera. I am the one who takes photos I capture the moments I preserve the memories. There was a time when I was in front of the lens. When I let people take my photo, but now when I see a photo of me I cringe. I see all the flaws all the fat all the ugliness. I lost the ability to see myself clearly. I can’t remember what it felt like to look at the photo and see me. I miss that.
Every word of that is so true. Over the years I’ve made so many attempts at making peace with seeing myself in photos. For the longest time, it was a “I need this to feel good about myself” thing.
But now that I’m a scrapbooker and our family’s “memory preserver” I realize that having photos of me is not just about feeling better about myself. It’s so much more than that. Imagine if (God forbid!) something happens to my mom and there are only a handful photos of her and they are many years apart? I would be devastated. To me, every single photo of my mother is breathtaking. It’s not about whether her makeup is perfect or every stand of hair is in the right place, it’s about my mother. How she looked over the years, how much her soul shines through each photo, how much I cherish her smile, the glimmer in her eyes. How I can almost hear her when I see the photo. Almost smell her, even. I love looking at photos of my mom from her childhood, her youth, from all the years when we were kids, teenagers, married and everything in between. Who am I to deny that to my own kids?
When I look at a photo of myself, it’s true that I always see my huge, crooked nose. My uneven and thick eyebrows. My funny smile and messed up hair. I see all the blotches. I see everything wrong. But if I look deep down, I know that it’s important to document this, too. These stages of my life. Of our life. I know that even I will cherish having these photos years from now.
In the spirit of taking a solid step forward, I asked my husband to take photos of me and our youngest today:
Yep, I still cringe a lot when I look at that. I think that it will be a while before that goes away (if ever.) but I’m no longer letting that stop me from taking these photos. I was here, I existed and these photos are proof of my life and my stories. As someone who believes in documenting life, I cannot leave such a big hole in mine.
So, my challenge to you today is to get a photo of yourself. Hand over the camera to someone else. Put it on a table with a self-timer. Find a reflective surface. Do whatever you need to do to snap that shot. You are worth it. And I promise it will be good for your soul.
I didn’t intend to do this one, this week. But, as always, the incredible Rebecca inspired me with her heart sessions so I thought this would be as good a week as any to do some stitching. So I did:
10. Sew everyday for a week
I thought this would be as good an opportunity as any to learn to do some hand-stitching. I’ve never done that before so I used these amazing tutorials.
On Saturday, I did this to practice my French Knots:
On Sunday, I did this to practice the chain-stitch (hard to see in the photo, sorry!) and putting beads.
On Monday, I learned how to do a blanket stitch.
Tuesday was too stressful so I did something simple and you can’t see it but there are two beads on the button holes.
Wednesday, I wanted to learn how to do the buttonhole wheels so I made one with the hear and then added some beads to the other one.
Thursday, I just had fun. Yes they are all over the place and crooked but I still love them.
And Friday, I grabbed some of my favorite fabric and just had fun. I didn’t stress about how the fabrics don’t line up on top of each other. I was wiped from a long long week.
And here they all are:
During this super-stressful week, these little hearts were the only few minutes I took for myself everyday. They are simple but I still love them.
Thank you, again, Rebecca, for the inspiration.
The journaling reads:
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do when I needed to relax was to take a bubble bath. I would fill up the tub, get a bowl of my favortie fruits, some music I loved, and a book and just dive into the bubbles.
I could easily spend hours in a bubble bath. It’s something that calms my soul and relaxes my body. It’s like the warm water and the soft bubbles take away my frustrations and worries and leave me with nothing but calm peace.
When I lived in Japan, many years ago, the apartment I stayed in had a deep and wide tub where you got to punch in a number for the temperature of the water and the tub did all the rest. It ensure the water stayed at that temperature for the duration of my bath. It was the greatest tub ever and I took more baths during those six months than I can ever remember. And when we moved to Palo Alto, our house had no bathtubs which made me realize how much I really craved one.
Now, we live in a house where I get to have a wonderful tub and I get to experience the joy and relaxation all over again.
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.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this project lately and the format I chose. I will admit that when I see some of the art other people are doing, sometimes I feel guilty. I love what they do and I feel like maybe I should be more artistic, too. Maybe I should be making mixed media pieces or some beautiful scrapbook layouts. I should at least be printing my work out, shouldn’t I?
But here’s the deal: The format I chose is working for me. Working really well actually. I feel so comfortable with the photos and words approach I’ve chosen that I could probably do a year’s worth of gratitude entries in one night. While this may feel less creative, the greatest thing is that it gives me the space to focus on what matters most: the gratitude. I don’t spend any energy fretting over picking the right papers or embellishments or worrying about whether my art will measure up.
I pick a subject matter, find or take a photo that works and then just write my thoughts. This is what’s most natural for me. It’s the part I struggle the least with and so it makes my system work brilliantly. And if I want to then create a layout about my gratitude topic, well there’s nothing stopping me from doing that, too. But there’s no pressure.
The trick is to find what works best for you. Are you someone who struggles with words but has no problem capturing photos? Great. Skip the words. Don’t force yourself to “improve” while you’re doing this project. The focus of this project is gratitude, not improving a skill or learning a new one. There’s no grade here. If you’re better with drawing, then draw. If you prefer to write in pen, write in pen. Do what works for you.
Do what comes most easily, most naturally.
Not sure what that is? Here’s a way to find out. For the next six weeks, try a different system each week. Here are some ideas:
1. Use Kim’s journaling cards to journal on the computer or by hand.
2. Use my template to do a photo+word combination.
3. Make a scrapbook layout.
4. Do some sort of mixed media creation (quilt, sewing, altered art, etc.)
5. Draw by hand. Sketch.
6. Do an art journal entry. Paint, draw, cut out photos from magazines and glue.
Each week take a note of how the process felt. Was it hard but rewarding? Did you put it off or feel like you couldn’t wait to sit and do it? Did you feel relieved when it was done? How long did it take (did you notice how long it took?)?
Make a note of your observations each week. Then, at the end of the six weeks, pick the one that felt most natural and like the least amount of work. It’s an extra bonus if it felt rewarding, too. But the goal is to make it feel effortless. So that you will keep doing it for the next 46 weeks. You want to practice gratitude. You don’t want anything at all getting in the way of that.
This is the mantra I repeat to myself when I drool over other people’s art. I love it but I know my system works brilliantly for me. It feels effortless to me and when I think of doing it for another 46 weeks, I don’t cringe or panic at all. It feels 100% manageable.
My advice to you this week is to find what works for you. Find the system that’s most effortless and use it. Remember that’s just a tool. The goal is keeping gratitude at the forefront of our lives for all of 2010.
Once you find it, you can even make an entry on how grateful you are for the system that works so efficiently for you.
If you have found a system that works really well for you, please leave it in the comments. It might end up being the best system for someone else, too.
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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
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