Birds of a Feather

My friend told me that it seems like I am a leader to other women in my life.  I hope I'm on a path that they would like to follow.  I believe life is an evolutionary process...that's what we are here for...to be the true, whole and expansive soul we are meant to be.  After childhood, I think this gets a lot more challenging!  It's like we forget, as we get older...the outside world leads us away from ourselves...and we have to find the way back.  Maybe I'm helping my friends find their way back as I find mine.  I know that I have come to a place in my own life where being with others that want to go there is really important to me.  So I'm gathering my birds of a feather so we can help each other and enjoy the flight.

Breakfast Salad

I was inspired by our volunteer tomato plant to make something for breakfast that used them...they are Sweet 100's, we think.  The plant grew from under our deck out into the front planter next to our triangle palm.  And these volunteers are amazingly sweet and flavorful.  And it's more of a community plant...passersby and neighbors helping themselves to the bounty!

What's a Breakfast Salad, you may wonder?  Two hardboiled eggs, at least 10 Sweet 100's or other tomato from the vine, halved, preferably not refrigerated, roasted and salted sunflower seeds, fresh thyme leaves, salt, pepper and homemade shallot vinaigrette.  Peel and cut your eggs and make this while they are still warm.  Yum!  

What Inspires You?

I am inspired very much by the books that I read.  This quote was taken from "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein.  I just loved the way Enzo nailed us humans...all our flaws...yet he aspired above everything to be human.  I recommend this book to everyone.  I want to shine with all my light all the time and I want my kids and friends to do that too.  If we all did that, imagine the world we would live in!

Anyone Can Be an Artist, Right?

I think there are many artists...famous ones, in fact, who recognize this.  Maybe it's the critics, not the artists themselves, that make the judgments about what "they" think is "art" and "not art."  My own inner critic (of everything I do in life, not just art!) has prevented me from doing so many things because my efforts wouldn't fit into the right category:  "art"!  So I think I will listen to these other artists and my heart and not critics.  No critic, including my own, can hear the knocking from my soul.  It's up to me to hear it and answer.

FLOW

Flow (psychology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.

According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. people with several very specific personality traits may be better able to achieve flow than the average person. These personality traits include curiosity, persistence, low self-centeredness, and a high rate of performing activities for intrinsic reasons only.

I was just really proud that I scribbled over a few mistakes without being upset that this page wasn't perfect.  Letting go of perfection is a big reason for art journaling.  It's a freeing experience and very satisfying...no matter the outcome.

I Finally Did It!!!

Hello everyone!  I have to thank my dear friend Mccabe Russell for encouraging me to start this (I would NOT be here without you!), and Michelle Ward at greenpepperpress.com for starting the Crusades and showing me how so many people are fulfilling their creative souls by doing art and sharing it via blogs.  So, I'm posting a pic of the most recent page from my journal and hope you will check in with me as I do with you!
XO
Sarah