HAPPY NEW YEAR

Every New Years I intend to start new things on New Years Day - every year I forget that I have to spend a few days clearing up the past year.  Things like taking down decorations, writing appointments on calendars, reviewing and putting away last years journals, preparing new journals and choosing words and intentions for the New Year.  I have usually chosen my words by the New Year and this year I have chosen HARMONY and four supportive words: PATIENCE, FORGIVENESS, FAITH AND ACCEPTANCE.

I have spent the past two days putting decorations away and replacing them with everyday decor and sorting out my journaling.  I have bought a scrapbook and am going to get some insert pages on Saturday with a 50% off coupon at Michael's.  I want to save cards and different ephemera and thought this would be the best way to do it.  I can also add some of my art and poems and quotes that I find.

On November 1st, I started making a calendar and finished it on December 11th.  I am so happy with it as it is the first project I have done that includes watercolours and lettering.  This is the cover and January.  The background for January is darker and has snowflakes on it.  I have sold five of them so that is very exciting for me.

I hope to blog more frequently as well.  All good intentions, I hope I can follow through.

I would like to share a poem by David Whyte called Faith:

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

from Where Many Rivers Meet.