Good morning, world!!
It is hard to believe that our weekend is over. It is actually kind of hard to believe we had a weekend! We did SOOOO MUCH stuff in the past 2 days.
I put out videos, we did a bunch house chores, ran some errands, and we packed a bunch of boxes. So many that I am concerned that we are going to be run out of the house because of just how many boxes we have taking up space! 😉
We have so much more packing to go, and my sister from Arizona is coming in in 10 days, so I have to have the majority of our packing done before then so I can feel free to play to my heart’s content while she is in town!!
I just can’t wait to move. I can’t wait for this whole process to be over, but I am thinking that this process is actually going to take us a few tedious months to get through. You see, moving to Portland is only one part of what we are doing. We then have to finish fixing up some minor details in the condo, and go through the process of selling it. I have never sold a home before, so I am not exactly sure what all that will entail!! All the while, I will have to keep working with our mortgage company, because we are still upside down in our condo, by about $20,000. Not my proudest moment, but there you go! I am hoping that my mortgage company will let us do a short-sale on it. My husband works in Portland, I just lost my job, and we can’t afford to keep it – it costs too much to live here, and there is no way we would be able to rent it out, without having to shell out a fortune more on miscellaneous costs that we would not be able to get covered in the amount we can rent it for. And, who am I kidding? I honestly, deep down to my toes, just don’t want to keep it, even if that means my credit is going to have to take a hit for it.
We haven’t been happy here since we first moved in.
When we did initially move in, I knew it was a mistake at the get go. It was the first time I really heard the message of “it is so important to follow your intuition, it will not lead you astray.” Well, I didn’t listen, and because of that, we have had 10 long years in a place where we have not been able to entertain friends or family because there is really no parking to speak of, we live on a busy street and have to deal with an HOA that really doesn’t know what it is doing, which means we have not really had much peace being here. It has been good for being a place in which I can hide from the world. Now that I say it out loud, I am not sure what took me so long to make the decision to move. Somehow I felt I was being irresponsible because the mortgage was not payed off yet, but really, our quality of life is suffering because it has never really felt like a home.
That is what I am longing for, a real, honest to goodness, home!
People do have those right?
It is not just some hooey that you see in movies, right???
That is what I want, a home. I think that is why my YouTube videos are starting to lean to home decorating, DIY projects, cooking, and entertaining, because that is what I want in my own life. I have a psychology friend who is always telling me, you become what you need in your own life. Yep, she is right. This is what I need. Someone who can show me how to turn my house into a home, a place of love, friendship, and daily creativity, and turn my existence into a life, and who better to do that for oneself than your own self!??
I just pray that my videos can, not only help me, but help someone out there who might be watching, who might be longing for a home of their own too. Then all of my efforts will definitely be worth it!!
I have so much more to do today, so I had better get on it!!
Here is to creating the future of my dreams,
Good morning!
I once had an instructor teach that you should never use red in your art journaling unless you were using it in really tiny quantities, because it caused to much distraction. Well, red is my favorite color, but when she said that, I figured she was a better artist than myself, so she must know what she is talking about. So I completely took red out of my repertoire!! Seeing these words in print, is quite shocking to myself, because I never thought that I would let something like that stop me from using something that makes me so happy.
Well, if you have been following my journey lately, you will already know that I am going through a process of stripping off everything that is not authentically me, and how this translates in this art journal spread is that, since my favorite color is red, then I should be allowed to use it whenever I want to! That may seem like a very minor thing, in the big picture that makes up my life, but I am learning that being 100% completely free to be myself in everything, including my art should be a given! No matter how well intentioned that art instructor was, I need to remember to let my true colors fly and follow my true north, in whatever that means for me at the time! So, that is what I went into this play session thinking.
As I was laying down my colors, I decided that I was going to use a magazine image on this spread. I do that a lot in my personal art journaling, but I am not sure I ever have in any of my video layouts, so that is what I thought I would do this time. Again, all about being authentic and showing my true colors. It also is proof to myself and to anyone else who might be wondering, how do I create beautiful art journal pages if I don’t know how to draw? Well this is a perfectly acceptable way to do so!! I mean why not??? I just try to incorporate the image into one of the layers, instead of just plunking her down on the top of the spread, and I think she ends up looking pretty cool!!
and do you see what color she is????
Well that about raps it up for today! I am very happy with this spread, I hope you enjoyed it too! If you haven’t subscribed, please do so, so you don’t miss what’s to come!
As, I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself. I have a new Mixed Media video out, and this week I decided to go old school and do a full art journal spread! I thought that this would be a piece of cake, but in all honesty I have been doing 1 page, loose leaf, journal spreads for the past 6 months or so, and I found myself struggling more than usual to get something down on the spread! Plus, to start a spread from start to finish, is not easy on my poor brain right now! Mama is seriously busy, I have mentioned that haven’t I? 🙂
On a more serious note: I chose this sentiment this week because I think that some time in the past 6 months this happened to me. I looked around at the life that I had created, and thought to myself, “How the hell did I get here?” It was like I had this plan for what I wanted to do, be, have, and experience, and then somewhere along the way I got sucked up in the rush of traffic of what is “normal”, “responsible”, and “expected”. When I finally really, truly looked around at this life that I had created, through all of my choices, and actions, I was shocked that I had ended up here. It was kind of like driving to work in the morning, and you let your mind start to wander, when you finally get to the parking lot at work, you do a double take and ask yourself, how did I get here??? That is what happened to me, and my life. It is not that my life is so bad, it is just that it is not what I had set out to create! That is freaking scary.
