Starting a new year

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. I was blessed by my family to have a vacation the day after Christmas. My parents, my husband, our two girls, and I packed up and went to Lake Havasu City in Arizona. My parents have a beautiful vacation home there that they generously let us all use. We spent a week resting, playing lots of games, reading books, doing crafts, fishing, and just enjoying each others company. It was the nicest vacation I've had in a long time and was a great way to end a very rough year.

I'm not really one for making resolutions, but this year I really wanted to change my mindset a bit. Dealing with the economy and all of my health struggles got me down a lot. So my resolution for this year was to be true to myself and have gratitude OFTEN! Not just for the big things, but for the daily things that make my life wonderful. Like my two daughters who crack me up all the time. Our favorite thing recently has been to randomly yell in a silly voice, "It's so fluffy!" like the little girl in the film, Despicable Me. I still get a smile thinking about yesterday in the car when we all yelled it and my husband laughed. Those are the little moments that make life so rich with joy.

I'm also so thankful for all of my health problems. I know that sounds silly. Like why would you be thankful for that?! But for me it was an eye opening moment that made me realize I needed to slow my life way down and be present in my husbands life. Through it all I've grown to realize how incredibly blessed I am to have this loving sweet man in my life who encourages me every day and who treats me like I'm his best friend. Because of being chronically ill I've been forced to have a lot of time with him and our children. I'm so grateful that when the kids are older they will remember that their mom was here to do fun things with them, be involved with their schooling, and to just be present in their lives.

One of the other wonderful things that I'm so grateful for is the community of friends I've made online. All of the amazingly talented and encouraging friends who give me hope and share the joy in their life with me. They make my days brighter and remind me that sometimes you have to stop whining about life long enough to start living it!

One of the ladies whom I've "met" through Twitter is Punk Rawk Purl aka Tammy George. She is an encouraging, artistic, fun lady. She makes me smile often and I'm so thankful for her encouraging tweets and awesome blog. She is doing lots of blogs about gratitude that are just beautiful. Check her out at her blog.

Two other fabulous ladies I admire, Mati Rose McDonough and Lisa Congdon are teaching a five week painting e-course called, Get Your Paint On! How fitting is that! When I saw the title and that they both were teaching I knew I had to be involved. Tomorrow is the first day of our course and I can't wait to get my paint on with them!



Last but not least I have updated my Etsy shop with four new paintings. I've really enjoyed working on creating different shadows and textures in the paintings. It really is fun when you finally stop worrying about realism and just paint!