karenika

My wish for you: Make Love of Yourself Perfect

This is a layout I made for My Mind’s Eye.

And the journaling says:
If there’s only one thing you get to have or be, my wish is for you (and me) to know that all you need is already within. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself inifinity and eternity and discover that you don’t need them, you are beyond. I love the the two of you with all my soul and I wish you endless peace and contentment. May you make love of yourself perfect.

details:

Letters with Nathaniel – S and T

Here are S and T:

Like each time, we talked about each of the words and then differentiated between capitals and lowercase. Then we colored all the letters.

Here are some photos of him working on his pages:

coloring

the glue:

and more gluing:

and more coloring:

Yey! Nathaniel is still loving this project!

Letters with Nathaniel is a weekly project for 2012. You can read more about it here.

Weekly Diary – December 8 2012

You saw most of these on my December Daily pages but still…Here are some snapshots from our week:

the kids at breakfast with santa. their favorite part was the juice this time.

photos with santa.

nathaniel was scared of him again but wiling to stand next to david.

writing letters to santa.

david took his extra seriously.

then they made ornaments.

and colored.

david liked creating his pattern.

then we took david to swimming where nathaniel played with the umbrella while david swam.

and i just snapped photos.

of my super cute boy.

who had fun with it.

and the swimmer, too, of course.

and then it was advent time.

the boys had forgotten all about it so they were very excited.

both got playmobil this time. David got the knights and Nathaniel the forest animals.

David’s came with a poster which he loved.

Here’s the full photo the babysitter took on our anniversary.

and me volunteering in Nathaniel’s class.

we played with all of his toys.

he loves this magnetic numbers.

and playing outside.

i think he liked having me around.

while i was there, Jake was in David’s class where David presented about The Train of Lights, a Christmas tradition we have.

David had his favorite spelling homework this week.

he got to write the words into puzzle pieces and draw pictures. (then we cut them up and he put them together at school the next day.)

the boys have been playing with legos a lot lately.

this week was unusual for us and I am out of town all weekend so we had to take our shot with no natural light. Still better than no shot.

so grateful for my family.

and here we go. i hope your week was lovely, too.

Weekly Diary is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.

December Daily 2012 – Day Six

Today’s about the kids’ advent calendars. I added a number from each and a photo of some of what they had so far:

and here they are opening them:

and here it is with before and after:

that’s it. more tomorrow.

Journey into Collage – Week 49

text reads: do not wait. time is passing. let go of being right. pick up the phone and apologize.

Journey into Collage is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.

December Daily 2012 – Day Five

Today is all about our anniversary. Jake and I celebrated 18 years from the day we started dating. The photo is not great but I still love having it.

and I added another page to hold the poster and tickets for the movie we saw and the menu from the burgers we ate and the receipt of my coffee from the movies:

and here it is with before and after:

that’s it. more tomorrow.

Art Journaling – Week 32

And here’s the final page for 2012:

The full text reads: be calm. stress never helps.

A year in review coming next week.

I am creating art journaling pages each week for now. You can read more about this project here. This set uses the Fabriano Roma papers.

Taking My Own Advice

Almost a month ago, I registered a new domain.

Some people like to collect domains but not me. In the last fourteen years, I’ve only registered four domain names. One for karenika (right here), one for my photography business, one that I let expire after a year and now this one for my coaching business.

I registered the domain soon after my last class and then let it sit there.

I kept putting off working on it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to say. I didn’t know where to begin. I kept thinking it had to be “just right.” I had to have more of a plan before I started. I had to make sure it sounded professional. Or powerful. Exciting. Uplifting. Unique. Amazing.

Perfect.

I had a lot of ideas about what it had to be. And, of course, I was none of those things, so I just let it sit there and fester. I had several tabs open, waiting for me to update, haunting me day after day. A reminder of how I was slacking. A reminder of how I would never have the right words.

So, finally, tonight I decided to take my own advice and start.

I decided that instead of being perfect, this new site would be a living, breathing one. In the thirteen years I’ve had it, karenika.com has gone through many, many iterations. It took years for me to find the style, the voice, the tone, and the balance of what I wanted this place to be. And, of course, all of it changed as I changed. This place grew and morphed with my life, interests, passions, etc. There’s no reason to think that my new site has to be anything different.

Nothing in life is final. (except maybe death…)

After I decided to put all the voices in my head aside. I wrote up a draft, gave it a once over, read for possible grammer and spelling mistakes and then hit publish. I also copied over my blog post about starting since I think it applies to my overall coaching vision. And I was done.

Well, I had started.

I am confident it’s far from perfect. It reads funny and has holes. But it’s a start. And it allows me to take the first step so that others might follow. Sometimes it’s just about getting unstuck.

It all starts with the first step. However tiny.

I hope today you’ll take the first step in whatever you’ve been putting off.

December Daily 2012 – Day Four

Today is all about Breakfast with Santa. I added a 4-3×4 page to add some extra photos. It’s the ornaments the kids made:

and here the back:

and then the photo with Santa:

and here it is with before and after:

that’s it. more tomorrow.

The Savor Project – Week 47 and Final Page

And here’s the last spread in my book:

here’s a closer up of the left side:

this page is about david presenting at school, nathaniel playing with daddy at school, and then election night and voting.

And here’s the right side:

Here it’s eating cupcakes, my science of mindfulness class and david’s puppets.

By then I was done with November and December will be savored through December Daily, so I closed my book with this page:

Thanksgiving photos and the boys decorating the tree.

Art along the bottom as usual.

Another great week. And there we are. Still savoring.

The Savor Project was supposed to be a weekly project for 2012. You can read about my setup here.

A Book a Week – Insurgent

Probably the number one book on my list of “what I am looking forward to reading” was Insurgent this year. I really really loved Veronica Roth’s Divergent and wanted to immediately be able to start her next book. I waited patiently for a long long time before it finally came out.

And then I saved it for my long flight to Turkey so I had to wait even longer. And then the kids wouldn’t let me read it on the plane, so I had to wait even longer.

Oh, but it was so worth it.

I loved this book almost as much. (I still love the first more.) And this one ended with an even bigger cliffhanger so now I have to wait patiently for number three.

Ugh.

December Daily 2012 – Day Three

On December third I got to volunteer at Nathaniel’s class and Jake went to David’s class because David had a presentation about a holiday tradition. He chose to talk about the Train of Lights. So the front page talks about David’s presentation: