Frosty

I nipped out into the back garden to take some photos.

I remember this poem from my childhood.

Jack Frost by Cecily E. Pike 

Look out! look out!
Jack Frost is about!
He's after our fingers and toes;
And, all through the night,
The gay little sprite
Is working where nobody knows. 

He'll climb each tree,
So nimble is he,
His silvery powder he'll shake;
To windows he'll creep,
And while we're asleep,
Such wonderful pictures he'll make. 

Across the grass
He'll merrily pass,
And change all its greenness to white;
Then home he will go,
And laugh, “Ho! ho! ho!
What fun I have had in the night!”

As I write this blog, there's snow on the ground and it's snowing again.  The pretty sort of snow. It feels like being in one of those snow globes.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Journal 2020

Last time I showed you this year's journal set up and ready to go.  My last update of my 2020 journal was at the beginning of November.  I'm amazed!  I didn't think it was 2 months ago I last shared my pages.  I have shown you the Advent Words pages that feature in the journal.

I am really pleased that I completed the journal.  I don't always!  I quite often run out of steam either in June or September.  But in 2020 I kept going.  Mostly because it did me good to record what I had done on each day.  Lockdowns and restrictions made it feel as though I hadn't achieved anything, but recording what I had done confirmed my achievements.

I tended to fill in my calendar at the end of the month with what actually happened!

I started trying out new layouts and included to do lists

Another monthly calendar

I started filling in the gaps with Christmas images from a sheet of scrapbook paper

I'm not sure how I managed to have a spare Christmas card without an envelope.  Plus we did our cards before the last day to post.  Unheard of!!!

And lastly a handmade card sent to me by my dear friend Suki.

Most of December seems to have been taken up with Simply Create. I've still a few videos to make for it.  This week I'm going to concentrate on monoprinting.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Journal 2021

For 2021 I have chosen to follow along with Valerie Sjodin's Plan with me in 2021.  There are free tutorials on Valerie's blog, but I have signed up for the Premium version.

I am taking inspiration from Valerie's tutorials and as far as possible making her ideas my own.  If you are a regular reader you might remember that I said in this post that I wanted this year's journal to be less rigid.  That's all well and good but when I really thought about it,  I really like working in squares.  Lots of my textiles are squares.  My last two sketchbooks are squares.  So guess what!  Instead of circles that Valerie is using, I'm using squares.  And as much as I love the new layout Mary Brack has been trying out, I decided to stick with the squares and the rigid.

I am using squares as a symbol throughout my journal.

One of the things I want to learn this year is how to take decent pictures of my journal and sketchbooks!

My Word of the Year is Intentional.  On this definition page I also included synonyms, antonyms and a quote.

I have no idea why I included a future log.  More in hope than anticipation I think!

I've written the workshops in pencil because there's still the likelihood they may be cancelled.  Especially the January ones as we recently went into tier 4 lockdown.

Intentional isn't a word that you see in the Bible but fortunately I found a list online of suitable verses.

Quotes were easier to find, although not many of them actually include the word Intentional.

One of Valerie's design ideas is to use the Dutch door as a divider.  I am using the winter symbols of raindrops and snowflakes.  Valerie suggested doing doodles, but I don't doodle, so  I used a stamp that has this lovely garland of snowflakes.

This page is reserved for a private thoughts based on a three day study on Lectio365 - a daily devotional app.  Valerie provides a montly devotional in the premium version of Plan With Me.

For most of 2020 I wrote what I actually did in the month at the end of a month rather than use it as a guide to what I was going to do.  Who knows how this will get used!

I wrote the areas I want to intentionally focus on this year.  I wrote them inside squares of course!   And finally the start of the journal for recording to do lists, gratitude lists and what I did each day.

Valerie, Mary & I have archived the Living Your Word of the Year group on Facebook as we feel led to doing other things.  However you can still follow along with us as we continue in our own ways to live out our word of the year.

Valerie: https://www.valeriesjodin.com/

Mary: https://www.foundonbrighton.com/

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

PS:  While you are here check out Simply Create