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.
In my opinion, the people who give up on their resolutions fall into two categories: those who never start and those who can’t keep it up. Today, I wanted to talk about the first set since I think those might the people who’re likely giving up on this project right around now.
Let’s say you read about Weekly Gratitude somewhere and thought it would be a lovely idea to do it in 2010. You spent some time thinking about your format or maybe you had big ambitions about making a fancy album with beautifully designed pages every week. You might have even begun the album but you never really did a page. You just couldn’t settle on a format. You’ve been meaning to do it but we’re already on week 4 of the year. Now you’re so behind, it doesn’t even seem worth it. Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
Let me repeat that: YES! It’s WORTH IT!
You can still begin and you should absolutely do so. The great thing about this project is that it doesn’t have a timeline. The calendar year is an imposed timeline and not a natural one. The best time to start practicing gratitude is……
now.
Not in January 1 or February 1 or any other time. It’s just now. Scrap the fancy format you intended to do, give up on the beautiful layouts, but don’t give up on practicing gratitude. If you’re struggling with getting started, simplify. Simplify a lot. Take just one photo a week, or jot down a few words. Even a single sentence each week counts. The goal is to take a moment (however small it may be) and pay attention to something that makes you feel grateful.
You don’t have to go back and create ones for the first few weeks of the year. Start from this moment on. Lori doesn’t put dates on her art and I think that’s a marvelous idea, gratitude doesn’t have anything to do with a timeline. The goal is to notice more. To look around and see the things that are wonderful in your life right now. If all you end up doing is taking a moment for ten minutes a week and thinking of one thing that you’re grateful for, I think you’ll still find the exercise to be powerful and beneficial.
All this is to say, you can start now. Don’t tell yourself that it’s all over cause you haven’t begun yet. Don’t punish yourself by making yourself go back and do all of the previous weeks. Don’t fret if you did week one and skipped weeks 2 and 3. It doesn’t matter. You can start now and you can continue now. Don’t worry about impressing others. Don’t worry about the quality of your art or words. This is not for other people. You don’t have to share it with anyone. This is for you.
This is so you can see the good things in your life and nothing should get in the way of that.
I don’t mean to sound preachy or like I’m scolding. I really just want to encourage you. I want you to know that this one resolution can be started anytime. It’s not tied to January 1.
Today’s as good a day as any so if you’re in doubt, today is the best day to start this project.
Ps: If you have friends who has intended to do the project but gave up and aren’t even reading our blog anymore, please send them this post. Encourage them to start. I wholeheartedly believe that they will be grateful to you for encouraging them.
Taken from the freeway on the way back home. All the rain has made the landscape lush and stunning. I wish my photos would do it justice.
We didn’t get home until late in the day so here’s the only Nathaniel photo for the day:
After a horrible night of the little boy screaming for the most part and burning up, we quickly packed up and got on the road. When we got to the Turkish Consulate, their internet was down and had been so since Friday. We did all the paperwork, left her all my identification and got on the road. We were supposed to see our friend Jess (hi Jess!) on the way home but she has two little ones and since Nathaniel was still sick, we all thought it was a better idea to skip it this time around. So we drove straight home.
And now we’re home and I am so grateful. I love my home. I love being home. I am hurting all over but I am home!
Note to Self:
I have the best kids in the world. They have suffered through so much in the last 5 days and they have taken it all in stride. They are amazing. No fits, no complaining, no yelling, no fighting. It’s a miracle. Not to mention all the math David and I worked on the whole time. Jake’s an angel, too. Puts up with everything and never complains. I am a lucky lucky gal.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. Being home! This one doesn’t need any explanation.
2. Jake driving us home all the way without any complaints. At some point he was so tired that we had to pull over and he ran for a bit to wake up. But he powered on and got us home safe and sound.
3. I have been putting off doing the embassy stuff for so long, and I am so grateful it’s now done! At least my part of it.
This week’s craft wasn’t a craft. It was a science project. We decided to do one of the experiments in the science kit I got David for Christmas. It was the exploding volcano.
Here’s David doing it:
And since photos cannot capture this one, here’s a bit of video I shot. It’s one minute and might be boring for you. We’re whispering because Jake was napping. Nathaniel is screaming cause he’s in the high chair and out of puffs.
This was a really fun one for me. I always loved playing with my Chemistry set as a little girl and thanks to David, I got to relive a bit of that. I might have even enjoyed it more than he did.
Today was CHA. The Ranger booth always has something beautiful like this and the pieces of art always inspire me. This was no exception.
Nathaniel was in good spirits in the morning. After his breakfast and nursing, I put him down for his morning nap and left while Jake and David were relaxing.
Last night, I briefly met Michelle, Tonya, Jenn, and Staci for dinner and the SEI party. And then I came back at 8 and went right to sleep. This morning, they came to pick me up and we met with Krista and Stacy and got our badges and walked in. The show seems smaller and smaller to me each year. We did get to see some beautiful booths and I briefly got to meet a lot of the BPS people and that was wonderful. For a little over and hour Nathaniel was also with me and that’s when I realized he was a little lethargic and warm. As it turns out, he’s running a really low fever. And David’s coughing and both of the kids (and I) have cold, dry patches all over our faces. Jake and I are also covered with bruises.
At 4pm I could take no more of the walking and Krista dropped me off at the hotel before she went home. Both the kids needed some TLC and Jake was tired but watching some football. They are both coughing and I think really tired of not sleeping in their own beds. I cannot wait to go home tomorrow.
I hope that it’s a smooth day at the embassy and we can get home safely and early and relax and go back to our routine. And our beds.
Note to Self:
We are all too worn out. I am so grateful that my family is so strong and that we all worked together so well to take care of each other in the last few days. We were all looking forward to this vacation and never, in a million years, would we have guessed it would have been so terrible. It could have been millions of times worse, of course. Thankfully, we’re almost at the end. I hope.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. Jake taking care of the kids so I could have some girl-time with my friends.
2. Warm weather. I have never been this happy not to see snow.
3. Nice scrappy friends. The AMM women are so wonderful and easygoing and great to be with. I am really glad to be a part of that group.
That’s us, leaving Big Bear. Never to come back. Thank God, it had only snowed only an inch more overnight so an hour of plowing was all they needed to get our cars out.
So while they plowed, I cleaned up and packed and Nathaniel watched.
so did David.
And because not enough crap had happened, we saw that we had a flat tire. We had called AAA yesterday but the guy showed up and then left without fixing anything and by the next day the tire was totally flat. Thankfully, our spare was in good shape and even more thankfully Kendall’s car had the tools we needed (because ours were missing.) So he and Jake changed the tire.
And as fast as we humanly could, we got out of there. There was only one road open and within minutes we were out of Big Bear and taking our chains off. Another hour and a half and we were safely in Los Angeles.
Note to Self:
As it turns out, I am too old to stay up all night. My whole body was hurting and so was my head and everything else. It was definitely a terrible experience. I am okay with never doing that again.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. Kendall having the right parts to help us change the tire and helping us actually change it.
2. That one road being open, I know that all the roads closed shortly after so we just made it.
3. Jake was a superstar. He stayed up a lot of hours and still drove us all to LA and helped get everyone settled before he passed out for the night.
Friday started just fine. Except that there were several more feet of snow and a lot more icicles in our balcony. As Jake and our friends were discussing when to go boarding, the Big Bear website said that due to rolling blackouts Big Bear was going to be shut all day. That meant that if they wanted to go skiing, they had to go to Snow Summit which is a drive. Except that the cars were under 6 feet of snow (so was the driveway.)
Hence began a day of plowing. All three of them plowed for hours and hours. And the big plow never actually showed up so after a day of plowing, all they got was nothing.
Nathaniel was in good spirits
and crawled all around the house.
the kids and I stayed inside and they played together and had a lovely time.
Nathaniel is thoroughly fascinated with these cars and I love watching him.
And then snapped a shot with Holly.
At the end of the day, we put the kids down to bed and five minutes later the electricity went out. On Thursday, we’d lost electricity a bit but not all day today. So I felt hopeful that it might come back but two hours later it was still not back and we called the electric company and they said it might take up to 48 hours to fix it.
That’s where the day turned ugly. The cars were still not really able to get out, all the roads were closed, and there was to be no electricity for a long long time.
The men went to get a lot of firewood and we even turned all the burners on for a bit.
The condo had come firewood but no paper and no kindling so it was a major challenge to start a fire but Kendall managed it. Since only that room was going to be warm, we brought the kids in there, bundled them up and decided we would all sleep in the living room. David went right back to sleep but Nathaniel was fascinated with the fire and watched it for a long time before he finally went back down.
I told everyone I’d stay up all night to feed the fire (remember all three of them had plowed for the previous 7 hours) since we wanted to make sure the kids stayed warm.
So I did. Jake slept right near me and I woke him up a few times. Once because I dozed off for 15 minutes and the fire almost went out and I panicked and didn’t know how to fix it. At 3, 4, 5am, I kept thinking I might doze off but I managed to stay up, sit in the dark and watch the fire. At six, I finally thought I might pass out so I woke up Jake to take care of the fire and passed our for 40 minutes. Nathaniel and David took turns waking up all night and it kept me a little more focused.
In short, it was the most horrible day ever. (Which is amazing since I felt that way yesterday AND the day before. It’s like each day was trying to break the previous day’s record.)
But we made it. We made it to morning with the fire burning and the kids nice and warm.
Note to Self:
I am never going to Bear Mountain again. I decided this time that Nathaniel is still too little to travel. I don’t want to put him through this and I can tell he’s so very uncomfortable in the pack’n’play. It was just sad watching both my kids struggle so hard to sleep. This, for me, takes all the fun out of the vacation anyway. So we might as well stay home.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. Firewood. If we didn’t have any firewood, I can’t even imagine how horrible things would have gotten.
2. Kendall and Holly and Jake who spent the whole day plowing which turned out to be the essential step in us finally leaving Big Bear. The plow never came and the only reason we were able to get out was because the three of them plowed.
3. I am just thankful we survived the day with the least damage possible.
I made these with the October A Million Memories kit.
For my third 52 Things, I decided to do:
46. Knit a hat or a sock or mittens.
I used this simple YouTube movie to figure out how to make a hat.
I already knew how to decrease and there’s nothing else new here except for knitting in the round which I happened to have the needles for but I had never done before. I used some yarn I had and since the yarn was bulky, I used 64 stitches.
Here’s the hat:
The hat took me about a week on and off. I really didn’t spend much regular time on it. It was quite easy to be honest. The hardest part of the very ending cause I was down to like six stitches and it was getting really hard to keep knitting. And I don’t have a crochet hook so I had to improvise for the very ending.
Here’s me wearing it.
I think it ended up being a tiny bit too short for my liking. I would have liked it an inch longer. But the great thing is both David and I can wear it (I have a small head.) and it’s soft and warm.
I’m not a hat person but I might actually wear this around. I like it.
Even though it was one item, I think I might still like to learn how to knit socks, too. Looks pretty hard!
There are almost no words for how much snow there is here. Let me just say, we cannot see out the window of our balcony because it’s covered with snow. The kids and I spent the day in the house with rolling blackouts. But it was warm with plenty of food so we played games and relaxed. Nathaniel looked out the window a bunch. I think he liked the snow.
or maybe just the blocks.
When everyone came back from skiing, we bundled up the kids and took David outside to play in the snow. The stairs to our condo were covered with snow and our friend Kendall helped David slide down them.
and then David did it by himself with a lot of encouragement.
And then Kendall carried him back up the hill. Isn’t David so lucky?
All this time Nathaniel was super-grouchy. He woke up grouchy from the nap and never recovered. After he ate his meal, I thought it would calm him to chew on a teething biscuit but then he started eating big chunks and I got worried he was going to choke, so I took the piece out of his mouth which made him so upset he was beside himself and could not stop crying, he was crying so much he couldn’t breathe and went all purple and passed out. And then came back within seconds. The longest seconds of my life and I don’t think I have ever felt this bad in my whole life. I shook me to my core. Even though he’s completely fine now and has been since that moment, I will never ever forget that moment. This is something Jake used to do a lot as a toddler. He would hold his breath to get his way and he would hold it until he turned purple and passed out. God help me. I hope this is not a habit Nathaniel takes on because I know I could never ever handle it.
After the kids went to bed, we sat up and chatted and it was really nice and it’s quite awesome snow but it’s been quite a trip so far.
Note to Self:
Seeing your child limp is the worst feeling in the world. I’ve really been struggling since it happened. Jake has been trying to explain to me that passing out is the body’s way of forcing you to breathe and that’s what he used to have all the time and it’s ok and it will likely not happen ever again and he’s been trying to calm me down. But it’s broken something inside me and I am not sure that will ever heal.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. I am thankful we are in a warm and safe home. I know they evacuated a lot of homes in LA yesterday and we are lucky not to be affected that way.
2. I am thankful that David got to have so much fun in the snow with Kendall and Holly and Jake. There’s nothing like hearing your son’s cries of joy and wonderment.
3. I am thankful that Nathaniel’s ok and back to his cheerful self. He’s such an amazing kid and I plan to make sure he’s happy all the time and those teething biscuits are going to trash.
Continuing with the theme of Work.
Here’s my page:
The journaling reads:
I have been on the design team for A Million Memories for over two years. While I love the kits and I adore the community, I’ve been telling myself that I need to quit. I have way too much on my plate and my preferred layout style is too clean and plain to be on a kit club design team.
But I can’t seem to do it. Even though I feel guilty and sometimes even frustrated about the whole thing, each time a new kit arrives at my door, I’m like a kid in a candy shop. I tear that box apart, and I immediately start designing layouts in my mind.
This kit is the reason I do at least four layouts a month. Many months, this kit is the only layouts I do in a month. I often wonder if it weren’t for the kit, would I take the time to sit and make layouts? Regularly? I’d like to say “yes” but I honestly am not sure.
As of now, the A Million Memories kit is the reason I get to capture our stories regularly. And I am very grateful for that.
We decided a day with flash floods, tornado warnings, and torrential rain would be a great time to take a car trip with the kids. Don’t you agree?
The one wonderful thing about all the rain we’ve been getting in California is that it’s made everything a lush green which is stunning to look at. I snapped this photo while Jake was driving 60 and used my little point-and-shoot so it’s not the best but it shows you how green it was.
And look at the tumbleweeds.
We ended up being in the car for fourteen hours and it was way way dark by the time we got to the condo so this was the only Nathaniel shot I have. Better than nothing I guess.
It was a long and pretty scary day but we made it safe and sound and since we got here there’s been so much snow that our car is already buried under it and you can’t see it. All this for a super-short vacation. Oh well. It’s nice for the kids to see all the snow.
Note to Self:
It was a long day. I realized that as I was getting more tired that I was getting more and more anxious. I think getting tired just makes everything feel so much more complicated and overwhelming. Which made me wonder what would happen if I weren’t as tired as I’ve been for the last year. It’s been so long since I’ve had a night of solid sleep that I wonder how much lighter I will feel when I am getting some high quality sleep again.
Three things I’m grateful for today:
1. For the fourteen hours we drove, the kids were total champs in the car. No whining, no tantrums, I am so very blessed.
2. Jake was also a total star today. He woke up at 5:30 and drove all of us in crazy, stupid weather for fourteen hours. He put cables in the car (learned how to do it right there while he was doing it, in the dark.) He was a total champ the whole way too. He’s just amazing.
3. Honestly, I am just thankful we made it safely. While it was never dangerous, I just wasn’t so happy with how bad the weather was so I am glad we’re here safe and sound.
This week’s download is some day of the week tickets. Here is what they look like:
You can download it here: day of the week tickets download.
You are welcome to play with these as much as you want and use them anywhere you’d like. You are NOT allowed to sell them ever. You don’t have to but I’d appreciate a link back if you do use them.
This is part of a weekly digital download series. They are posted every Thursday. You can find all of the ones that were posted here. If you like my downloads, please click here and give me ideas/requests for 2010. I would like to continue this feature but I am not sure I can come up with enough ideas on my own.
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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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