Seaweed Pressing: Before spreading and drying
- Seaweed Pressing: After spreading and before drying. This will stay pretty much the same once pressed.
Studio Sunday::Seaweed Pressing
Simple Joyful Things
In honor of the simple joyful things in life!
10 Simple things that bring me joy…
1. Taking photo’s
2. Sunsets
3. Time with friends (family friends, new friends & old friends)
4. Laughter, especially from children
5. Chocolate
8. Hugs
9. Waterfalls
10. Flowers, in the garden, in my house, in photo’s-anywhere
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. — Dr. Seuss
The simple life::Living with Less
Friday Fieldtrip::Springtime in the South
I have a lot going on behind the scenes and I’m not quite ready to share as I mentioned in a previous post BUT…I want to share some of what I’ve been doing! I recently decided to apply to volunteer at Brookgreen Gardens and last Tuesday I was “interviewed” and “oriented” to become a part of that team. I am so excited, as a Master Gardener in both Maryland and Georgia I’ve been itching to get my hands in the dirt here and begin to learn more about the coastal plants I’m not familiar with. The Master Gardener program in SC is run through Clemson and I missed the cut off for the first class of the year so while I’m waiting and deciding if I want to continue as a Master Gardener here I opted to jump into the Brookgreen opportunity! This place is one of my favorite public gardens, anywhere, ever!
Here is the daily display of the flowers in bloom. This is not a comprehensive display but it represents alot of what’s blooming on any given day. It’s the sneak peak of goodies to be seen and smelled.
This bottle tree is in the education center garden which includes edible crops such as rice, corn, medicinal herbs, greens and other seasonal crops. I love the Southern tradition of bottle trees in the garden, they are said to catch evil spirits as they get caught the colorful bottles after being entranced.
Look at all these blooming beauties! Azaleas, Delphinium, Larkspur, Poppies and many other springtime favorites were in bloom. With the warm winter and spring we are having, the daffodils were almost done blooming but there were some incredible combinations of flowers not typically in bloom together. March is typically a “dangerous” month in low country gardens that border marshy areas, snakes and alligators are coming out of hibernation and I was startled by one in an unexpected spot as I was trying to get some shots. I’ll be learning a lot more about where they like to hang out and I’ll be using extreme caution! I am typically a pretty fearless gardener but I have a healthy respect for these potentially deadly creatures. Avoidance will be my main tactic, along with long pants, closed toe shoes and gloves when reaching into hidden areas.
I am thrilled to just be able to go soak in the beauty and contribute to sharing that with all the visitors who come there. I’m sure you will be hearing and seeing more of my Brookgreen experience over the months to come. If you ever get to Myrtle Beach or Charleston, it’s worth the little extra drive to visit this garden which also includes a comprehensive sculpture collection and a lot of plantation history.
Making room for Dreams!
Wow, January went by fast! Instead of setting a bunch of goals and resolutions for myself I decided to take a different approach to preparing myself for the year to come. A big reason for our move to SC is to live the life we have DREAMED of living! So, I’ve spent the better part of the month digging deeper, visioning, exploring the possibilities and really allowing myself to dream of what my life can be if I get out of my own way!
I love what Kahlil Gibran writes about dreams in The Garden of the Prophet; “You grow in sleep, and live your fuller life in your dreaming.”
I am exercising my ability to open to my dreams is by taking the online Mondo Beyondo Dream Big in the New Year course. So far we are about half way through and the daily exercises have invited me to explore my hidden dreams. What I’ve come to realize is that sometime after graduation from college I kind of forgot how to dream! This may sound crazy but when I left school I had dreams of becoming a well known designer, designing my own line of products (or license designs) and traveling to exciting and inspiring locations. Part of this dream came true but I also let insecurity creep in and listened to the naysayers until I eventually buried my own dreams in the daily grind. It’s taken some coaxing but I’m slowly un burying those dreams, bringing them back to the surface, inviting the possibility of new dreams into my life and casting off the ones that I’ve decided I no longer need to hold onto.
Creating a vision board is one powerful way I’m expressing what I dream for my life. In the past I’ve done vision boards with images but this time I decided to stick with words, which were easier to find and I added my own where I could not find them in magazines etc. Words are very powerful and now I’ve got this vision board in a place where I can be reminded every day what I’m attracting into my life.
I am learning that allowing myself to dream involves faith and casting aside my worries. I took this literally and wrote each worry on a shell and cast them into the ocean. Now, each time a worry automatically creeps in and threatens those tender sprout’s of my dreams I remember that I’m no longer going to feed my worries, they are gone, out of my hands and cast to the sea.
As I’ve been exploring the possibilities of my dreams I’ve met some fantastic people including Business Coach, Mary Anna Lewis. During a Dreams and Visions strategy session with her I wrote out “my perfect day” which was a truly powerful exercise! I invite you go give it a try. You can use any format you like, I used a letter as if I was writing to a dear friend who I hadn’t spoken to in awhile, telling them all about my life in general and explaining in more detail about how I spend a typical day. I was asked to share this letter with the other participants that day and voicing it out loud gave it even more power! Eveyone in that room said they could see me living it!
Texture Tuesday-Kim Klassen “Confidence” texture (one of several layers)
Allowing yourself to really dream can be a scary proposition for some people. If you haven’t actively allowed yourself to dream for awhile it might take some practice to get back into that place where you can let go of your own limitations, worries and rules. When was the last time you sat down and wrote down some dreams? Isn’t it time you do so? Don’t let your life go by without really living the life you’ve dreamed of!
Oouosji and the art of Living with Less
Today’s post was inspired by this article I read about Oouosji, the Japanese tradition of cleaning out for the new year. The article got me up out of my chair clearing out the holiday decor and giving the house a little spiffing up!
January is also the official Get Organized month (Go-Month) and Organizers, magazines and media across the nation are promoting getting more organized. The new year is a perfect time to start fresh and getting organized ranks a top resolution for many people. I always love getting a little more organization, especially after letting a few things go over the holidays. Since most of our belongings are in storage I’ve turned my attention towards digital and electronic organizing, including unread emails and blog posts in my RSS reader. Here are some of the ways I’m simplifying, getting things organized and trying to live with less.
- Whittled the blogs I subscribe to down to those I really enjoy reading and those that didn’t focus on stuff-I love the eye candy but don’t need the additional temptation! (I didn’t keep track of how many I got rid of but this is my second round of clearing out in the past month).
- Evaluated the twitter feeds I follow and reduced them by about 15%.
- Went through my two email accounts (one for personal use the other for newsletters, stores, coupons etc…) to delete and unsubscribe (see Unroll.me) from anything that no longer interests me. I usually do this a couple times a year at minimum.
- Went through all my digital photo files and deleted unwanted images and duplicates. At the same time I’m adding tags and ratings in Lightroom and backing it all up to an external drive. (This is an ongoing project since I have Thousands of photo’s)
- Sorted through music to delete unwanted or duplicate songs while creating playlists and rankings. (This is an ongoing project I will finished at the end of January 2012)
Among all those emails I was clearing out there was this great article over at Becoming Minimalist.
“Owning less is far more beneficial than organizing more.“-Joshua Becker
I got to thinking about how we are currently living with all our stuff is in storage (when I wrote this in 2012-for 8 months!). I’ve found myself craving a few of my things over the past 6 weeks, which consists mostly of clothes I wish I hadn’t packed, cooking tools and craft supplies. Everything else I can live with out for now. I’m sure after living without most of our possessions for months we will be much less attached and more likely to purge when we unpack. Remind me of this will you when I get to that point?! 2017 update, Purging is a regular (weekly) practice for me but I’m as attached to my stuff as the next person and certainly don’t consider myself a minimalist but I am always looking for ways to embrace living with less!
I came across an article about this guys who only owns 15 items! I wouldn’t consider myself a minimalist but I constantly work to embrace a less is more philosophy and lifestyle. I am glad to say that our Christmas holiday was not “stuff” centered (true for the past 5 years or so!) and I mostly give consumables and donations (love Heiffer Intl). I took some advice from the Joshua Becker article and grabbed one of the boxes we had gifts shipped in and filled it with stuff to give away…the process of living with less is one we have to continually re-evaluate and participate in.
Now as I take regular walks on the beach, I try keep this in mind and rather than pick up each little beautiful treasure I take a photo of it and release it (most of the time:).
Stuff comes, stuff goes and the less you let come in the less you have to let go of!
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