My Soul is Sending me to Cali

As I've gotten older I've been spending a lot more time listening to my heart and listening to my soul. I am less concerned with what I should do or what I think people expect me to do. Doing this is what brought me to start this blog and to revisit my love affair with arts, crafts, and creativity.

And now it is taking me to California. I am heading off to a painting retreat with Chris Zydel in the Napa Valley area. I will be staying in a mountain resort and painting with wild abandon for a week! I will be spending time hiking in nature, connecting with fellow artists, soaking in the atmosphere, expressing my creativity, tuning into my intuition, playing with juicy, colorful paint, and taking some time to recharge my batteries.

I am so completely thrilled about it I could jump up and down clapping!

I may or may not be posting in the time that I am gone but I will be back and I will have a lot to share with you so have a great week!

Jealous of My Vacation Life

If you're anything like me you love your vacations. I feel like my life is a series of events that we have to rush to. I know, I know, having 5 children you would think I would have guessed that. It just seems that we never have much down time.

So this year when we went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for our family vacation we just wanted to keep it low key. We rented a house and went up there with almost no knowledge of what we were doing. We decided to figure it out when we got there.

Most days we didn't leave the house before 11:00. We got up whenever we got up. We had a leisurely breakfast of eggs and/or pancakes with fresh fruit. There was no rushing, there was no, "we're going to be late...hurry!" It was just relaxed. The funny thing is we still managed to do a lot of different things. It was just the attitude, the pace of life that was so different.

Have you ever blurted something out and then wondered where that came from? Well about 2/3rds of the way through the week I turned to my husband and said, "I'm jealous of our vacation life." He gave me a funny look and said, "What the heck are you talking about?" I went on to explain how much I wanted to live on vacation forever! He chuckled and agreed.

Later I was sitting on the beach and I pulled out my journal and I started to write. Of course this jealousy concept came up again and I wrote, "I don't want to be jealous of my vacation life. I want to bring the attribute of my vacation life home with me and incorporate them into my lifestyle. I want to create moments of the vacation life at home, the beauty, the relaxation, the togetherness, the slower pace, the nature and inspiration that surrounds me here I will bring home with me."

Now that I am home I have been able to keep the slower pace going. That being said, the kids have not gone back to school yet and our hectic sports schedule has yet to swing into full gear. So how do I make sure to remember to bring those vacation moments into my daily life?

I have found that the best way to make change is to be specific so I am specifically going to schedule family time in the way of blackout nights (lights out) and game nights. I am going to schedule time in nature and put it in my calendar. I am going to continue to work in my journal and surround myself with beauty and I am going to commit to attending more art events. In fact I am going to an art fair this weekend! Yay!

Art To Go

I am leaving for a family vacation tomorrow and I didn't want to go a whole week without doing anything in my journal. What fun would that be? I decided to put together a little to go art kit.

I bought everything I needed at Walmart. Ha, isn't that funny. I got this small pink backpack in the little girl's section. It is small enough to easily carry but big enough to fit plenty of stuff. I got these cute pencil bags and a large one for all my pens and pencils and I have this cheap watercolor set that fits right in the bag. I am ready to go!