karenika

Weekly Diary – June 8 2014

I am trying to play catch up again:

the light lately seems to be even worse in early morning.

my hair is all gray in these photos.

but we are all still full of joy

and laughter.

and here we go. so grateful for my life. i hope your week was lovely, too.

Weekly Diary is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Nathaniel Reads to Mommy – Week 11

Nathaniel Reads to Mommy is a project for 2014 that I am doing with my 4.5-year-old son. You can read more about it here.

Mix and Match – June

Here’s my Mix and Match for My Mind’s Eye for June:

Journaling Reads:

My little boy,

I remember when your Daddy and I were discussing how David needed a sibling. I remember when we decided to see if we could expand our family so we could be four and not three. I remember when I carried you for nine months in my belly and I was so sick for so many months. I remember when you came to this world right on time and so very quickly.

I remember what a sweet baby you were the whole time. You loved your brother so much and adored all the attention he gave you. All the times he read to you or put on puppet shows for you. I remember the big, huge smiles you gave to all of us all day, every day. The funny way you crawled with you legs not bent at all.

I remember the big blanket you wouldn’t sleep without (it’s become so tiny now but you still won’t go to sleep without it!) and I remember the first day you walked. The first words. Your laughter. Your first birthday and all the ones after that.

When I look back on the five years since you’ve joined our family, I remember so many joyful moments. You have brought so much laughter and love into our lives. You never hesitate to give hugs and kisses to any of us. You are always generous and sweet.

Nathaniel, on this fifth year of your life, here are some facts:,you love playing with magnets and legos. You really enjoy the Pigeon books and the Elephant and Piggie ones. Since the beginning of this year, you’ve been reading a book a week to me and your reading has improved tremendously. You don’t like to wear socks and take them off the minute you get home from school. You don’t like veggies or oatmeal but eat them anyway. You’re a pretty picky eater. You like to have backwards day where you’re wearing your clothes backwards (not inside out but front to back.)

You are excellent at math and ask Daddy to give you some multiplication and division questions each night. Your favorite movies are the Lego movie and the Iron Giant. Your favorite book is The Pigeon needs a Bath, you like to read it again and again. You snuggle up with me and like the brown covers and let me hug and kiss you as much as I like (I love that!) Your favorite games to play are Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare and Minecraft, which you love to play with your brother. You have a few good friends at school: Kyle, Aiden, Jordan, Tejas, Daniel and Esan. You are very friendly and also love being funny.

My sweet boy, the last five years with you has been truly wonderful and I cannot imagine our family without you. All of us love you so very much and are so very thankful to you.

Happy, happy birthday my son, here’s to many more. I love you madly.

Today I Know – Week 22

This week’s inspiration comes from the line drawing class I took with Lisa Congdon back in March.

I drew these with a size 1 micron and used the watercolors to color. The background is also watercolors. I am not such a fan of it but the goal was practice so I am trying not to judge myself too harshly.

prompt says: today i know that many people in the world are

I wrote about how many people feel broken in their own way.

Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Stitching Circles – Week 21

This week’s stitching also comes from urban threads. After the involved unicorn last week i wanted something small and quick. I used stem stitch, fill stitch, and back stitch on this one. The little word is simple.

Stitching Circles is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Monthly Projects – May – Painting Faces

As promised, here’s my month of painting faces which is what I chose to do for the month of May for my monthly art projects. I signed up for Judy’s painting faces class the minute I read about it.

I love Judy and knew I would love the class.

Despite the really unwise move of putting the wrong date on my calendar, I finished the whole class anyway. I started it one month late, when it was already finished. I just got into the class and did each assignment on a day in May.

I ended up with a range of faces, some I liked, some I really didn’t. But I got a lot of practice, which is what this is all about.

Here are the twenty faces I made:

Another thing I learned in May was that twenty is the perfect number for these projects. Like I mentioned yesterday. I learned the magic of twenty from this project.

I need like a million more hours practicing my faces but, for now, I am grateful for this month.

A Book a Week – The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale was also a book club pick and a great excuse to finally read some Margaret Atwood. This book was well written and must be right there with some of the original masters of dystopian literature.

but it was so depressing.

So, so freakily depressing.

So much so that I felt disturbed for some time after I finished the novel. I am not sure I can recommend it knowing how much it disturbed me. But, of course, she’s a classic and so is this book. So there we are.

And I am glad I finally did manage to read it.

Savor Project – 2014 – Spread Sixteen

This week is about Cal Day at Berkeley and David’s paper on quantum physics.

so happy.

Savor Project is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Remember This – Week 22

This week’s simple remember this was done for My Mind’s Eye. It was a page where I wrote never ever give up with washi tape. Then I painted the page, and then I stripped the washi and added some black marker. and ta-da!

and here it is without the black marker:

which do you like more?

a lot more about this can be found on the My Mind’s Eye blog.

Remember This is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.

Monthly Projects – April – Lettering Quotes

As I was prepping to write about my month of painting faces, I realized that I never wrote about my month of Lettering Quotes back in April.

When I was originally planning my monthly art projects for 2014, one of the ones I really wanted to do was this lettering exercise. I specifically signed up for Lori Vliegen’s class with the intention of doing this.

I am really grateful that it had the exact intended effect.

I started small with writing in my notebook and unsure of exactly what to do. My first five were basic and warm-up:

then I decided that I was having enough fun to pull out my watercolor papers. Each morning, I would pick a quote that spoke to me, find an image that I thought went with the quote and I sat down to make them both. I then colored it with watercolors and water color pencils.

and, most nights, I used the page and the quote to write my blog post.

some days, I struggled with what to draw but I still wanted to keep going.

Other days I didn’t know how to change things around so it would keep being interesting. But then I realized interesting is not the point. Practice was the point. So repetition is part of practice.

I tried to pick quotes that really inspired me. I am not one of those people who collect quotes so I didn’t have an arsenal. I just looked at a few sites and made a pinterest board with ideas.

I then used that board each day to pick one. If I found myself spending too much time picking something, I’d force myself to pick the very next one I looked at. That usually motivated me to pick quickly.

All in all, I ended up with 26 of them. I’ve come to realize that a good number is 20. If I can do 20 of something new each month, I am making tangible progress and it’s good practice. 20 also means I don’t have to do them on the weekend if I don’t want to.

I loved doing these and had to tell myself that I couldn’t continue on to May. It’s important to me to switch them around. So for may, I did faces, but I might come back to this on another month of this year.

Most importantly, it made me less scared about writing, which was exactly what I had hoped to achieve.

On to another month!

Listen with Intent – Week 22

A new month and a new intention. This month, I wanted to do something fun so I decided to pick Listen Creatively. How can I change things up? How can I look at the same thing differently? Can I get creative with my listening? What would that look like? What would that sound like? I am not sure what to expect from this month, but I am open to being creative with it.

The creative lettering I used here comes from this pin.

The image here is supposed to be watercolors.

Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.