Month by month 2017

I thought I would do apost showing one photo from each month in 2017.  It was actually harder to do than I imagined.  There were a couple of months when I hardly took a photo.  Shock horror!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

A quick update

I have almost completed a week in my Everyday Journal.  My pages are coming along and I am feeling a sense of satisfaction.   The Journal may not be as fancy as some others you will see on Social Media but this is me.  Maybe as I practise through the year the pages will become more decorative.  Or maybe the total opposite!

I did a title page for my word of the year: Gratitude.  I used Gelatos and a small French Curves.

I finished off my calendar page using Gelatos through a stencil and added some washi tape.

I set out to complete a minimum of three things a day.  I managed that most days.  I did do other things that didn't get listed!

I journaled on this page.

And at the end of each day I wrote down three things I was thankful for.

Just off to take down the Christmas tree and then I need to sit down and plan this coming week.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Being Continually Thankful

This post first appeared on the Jubilee Church blog yesterday.

We are a few days into the New Year and already many of the resolutions people made on January 1st will have been broken. I don’t make resolutions. I choose a word for the year that describes what I want to see more of in my life. Last year’s word was ‘connect’ because I wanted to have more connection to my family and friends, to my creative work and to God.

This year’s word is gratitude or thankfulness.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Thursday of November. Recently the whole month of November has become synonymous with thankfulness and people have been encouraged to keep a gratitude journal. But thankfulness should be a year-long habit – a lifestyle – not something we keep on one day or for one month.

There have been many studies done on the value of being thankful. It turns out that gratitude is good for our mental health.

We don’t need to keep a gratitude journal although writing things down always helps. (There are also Apps available.) One thing we can all do at the end of the day is think of 3 things that we are thankful for. We could start the day that way too. And having thought of the things, we can thank God for them.

Thanking God in prayer is powerful. We can thank him for what he has given us already and we can thank him for things he has yet to do in our lives. We can thank him for the promises he has made us that are not yet fulfilled.

You might like to do a study of the words thank, thanks, or thanksgiving in the Bible. There are many examples. Let’s ‘Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name’. Psalm 100:4

New Year’s resolutions or contemplation of lifestyle changes almost always consist of activities we must do or change usually around diet and exercise. We say to ourselves: ‘This is THE year when we will lose that weight or improve our core strength’! But thankfulness is a habit we can easily incorporate into our lives. And instead of rushing to add even more activities to our hectic lives why not quiet down and be thankful. Becky Webb recently shared with us about incorporating rest into our lives - here's the link to the podcast.

We can be thankful as we rest. Let’s make 2018 the year we learn to be continually thankful.

Thanks for joining me today.  And thank you for your support last year.  I hope you will keep visiting my blog through 2018.
Bernice

PS: You can follow my journey with my word of the year here on my blog.  If God gives you a word for 2018 why not join us in the Everyday Journals # Living Your Word of the Year Facebook group.