gratitude week 2 February

Saturday 8 Feb
Preparing for visit by my friends, I decided to make a cake. Here is one that I love to bake - gluten free Apple and Almond Cake. I loved that they said it looked so professional! You can find the recipe here.
http://www.citrusandcandy.com/2009/09/flourless-apple-and-almond-tea-cake.html

Sunday 9 Feb
Brunch with my dear friends from my clowning days- we met 35 years ago and have been meeting regularly for 21 years - we are ageing, we are changing, we hold a sacred space where we can share our inner most thoughts and sometimes we laugh.

Monday 10 Feb
Listening to Ludovico Einaudi on CD, reliving the concert on Sunday night at the Opera House. Haunting and evocative.

Tuesday 11 Feb
Enjoying beautiful organic fruits picked by my friend Deb and brought to us when she visited on the weekend. Luscious.

Wednesday 12 Feb
Lunch with my gorgeous son, Nick..I didn't take a photo so I will have to use a favourite one of him, although he says he is much older now. I don't think he has changed in 5 years!

 

Thursday 13 Feb
Feeling energised after my hydrotherapy and Bowen treatment. Thank goodness for caring professionals helping my shoulder recover.

[no picture for this]


Friday 14 Feb
Valentines Day- my husband is away and he sends me flowers and they are gorgeous purple and white lisianthus. Love that he remembered and chose my favourites.

the meaning of EMERGE

I am playing with my word for 2014

creating word clouds

of different meanings

and phrases

trying to see where my word EMERGE

may lead me this year.

I like the possibilities that my word evokes.

 

 

 You can make your own word clouds here on Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/

 

Light

On the weekend, I was captivated by light and shadows. Here are three images that caught my eye.

Trees
I was lying on the floor doing my shoulder stretch when I noticed that the sun was creating wonderful highlights and shadows on the tree outside the window.

Celtis shadows

Rug

The African rug draped on a chair caught the morning sun and reflected the stair banister.

Rug and stair shadows

Begonia
It was the light that caught my eye and then the tiny heart within the flower.

Heart light on Begonia



Gratitude Feb week 1

Today's post is a week of Gratitude in pictures. It is a challenge to remember to take a photo and think about gratitude..I have also added a paint filter to my photos just for fun..I do like creating paintings from my photos..
Being grateful everyday for at least one thing, improves my mood and reminds me that even when I feel down there is always something that has happened that day that brings me joy..

Saturday 1 Feb; Bruce and I walked from Clovelly to Bondi and back. This is a beautiful coastal walk. We got exercise, fresh air, beautiful blue water and clear blue skies. In this photo, lunch was nearby as was respite from the heat and humidity.



lunch is in sight

Sunday 2 Feb: I enjoyed a quiet coffee in the garden. It was peaceful and restorative. Bruce went to the beach, I stayed home, reading the papers and enjoying the birds, the flowers and the quiet.

Morning coffee

Monday 3 Feb: I went for a swim. Not in this pool - it's the one at Bondi. I swam in an indoor pool sheltered from the sun. Still this image captures the "feeling". Moving fluidly through water..

swimmers at Bondi Icebergs pool

Tuesday 4 Feb: Purple lisianthus are some of my favourite flowers, I found some in the local supermarket and they are now in my kitchen. Beautiful. The photo looks particularly beautiful in the watercolour filter. Wish I could paint like this.

Lisianthus

Wednesday 5 Feb
Bruce and I did some much needed pruning of trees in the garden and restrung some of our solar-powered fairy lights. Love the twinkles at night. The craggy bark and hanging plants are lit up in the dying light of the day.

Twinkle lights on the crepe myrtle

Thurs 6 Feb
Time to do some quilting. I am working on a sea blue quilt for my son, Nick. Enjoying the colours and the challenge. I was drawn to Kaffe Fassett's Earthy Mitre squares as a design but have made this a centre panel while I create soft sea scape stripes top and bottom.



Making progress, sea blues squares and stripes

Fri 7 Feb
Nothing creates a sense of summer more to me than luscious mango. When I was a child we would be given a mango to eat as a special treat. The sweet juice would run down our arms as we sank our teeth into the soft flesh. It is still my favourite summer fruit even if I have learned to nibble the flesh from the skin rather than sink my teeth into the softness around the stone.

mango ready for breakfast

Glass Bottles

When we were in London last year, wandering around the British Museum in the Turkish/Moroccan section, I saw these glass bottles. The light illuminated them perfectly and I was enraptured. I am dreaming of turning this picture into a quilted wall-hanging, if only I could work out how to do it. Design ideas keep swirling in my sleep.

Glass Bottles British Museum London

In the Metropolitan Museum in  New York, I kept circling back to the Tiffany Glass - pictures fashioned in stained glass. Again I thought of creating these pictures in fabric.

Year before last, in Noosa, Queensland, I spied these Mason jars filled with flowers and hanging from trees at a wedding reception. So simple and lovely

 

Now I find my eye is drawn to glass jars and bottles in homewares shops and on Pinterest.

So much so I've started a Pin board on glass bottles - just to get a gallery of shapes to work with.
http://www.pinterest.com/jennyfisher3/glass-bottles/

Hmm, think there is a drawing or design bubbling in the background here or maybe just a need to be creative with glass.

Gratitude January

Ever since I read how practising gratitude can improve mood and sense of wellbeing, I have been an inconsistent proponent of the habit.

In 2009, I read a magazine article about a woman who took a photo of the small things that she was grateful for, every day and posted it on Flickr . She had been experiencing depression and she found that posting her daily photo resulted in much improved mood. I started the practice of taking a photo every day. It was fun looking for a moment to capture and photograph. I think my folder had about 30 entries, maybe one month's worth.

Then I read in Sonja Lyubomirsky's wonderful book, The How of Happiness that writing  in a gratitude journal significantly boosted happiness. While it is recommended that you do it every day, Sonja says that once a week can be effective. In the last few years when I have become stressed and negative and unhappy, I would pull out my gratitude journal and write down my thoughts. It has been so important to take my focus off my worries and instead focus on moments of beauty, people, places that I am lucky to have in my life.

So I plan to look for those moments of gratitude and post them in my blog at least once a week. Today I'm doing a catchup.. for January and here are 10 things that I am grateful for

1. the extent of surgery on my arm was much less than had been predicted and
2. my recovery is happening so much more quickly
3. my friends who sent me so much love and support before, during and after my surgery- I floated on a cloud of love
4. my husband who listened to and supported me in my pre-op nervous jitters and my post-op exhaustion
5. a friend who sent the most exquisite bunch of flowers that not only looked divine in pinks and blues but also wafted a heavenly scent when I walked in the room
6. the beautiful sunshine that has greeted me so often in January making it a pleasure to sit on our deck
7. our garden has felt like a peaceful oasis where I can rest and heal
8. getting back into the pool and realising how much I love my swimming
9. breakfast with our son Nick on Australia Day at a cafe on the local marina
10. feeling the return of energy and excitement about what 2014 has in store

What are you grateful for today?

I love flowers