Sunday afternoon...

Rarely does a week pass by as fast as this past week seemed to go!  It has been very cold here in wonderful Minnesota but the sun has been shining.  I had plans to work on creating beautiful things on Friday but ended up dealing with house issues.  We spent Saturday looking for eagles and enjoying the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN, and managed to get some great pics!

We really enjoyed seeing the eagles in the wild and in the National Eagle Center.  Very beautiful and regal birds.

Today we had the typical turkeys in the yard but then I noticed this odd misfit off to the side and discovered it was a ringed neck pheasant!  First one we have seen in our backyard.

I just LOVE seeing birds in our backyard, especially when they are unusual!

I have done a bit of art today, trying to keep the sketchbook challenge moving forward.

I really wanted to play with putting red and pink on the background of my sketchbook, wondered where it would lead.  I had NO idea I would end up with Fly and Sing but so it goes!  Fun to just be able to play with art and not have to have any scripted outcome.

Often it seems that the work we do, the conversations we have and even the simple little activities we engage in seem to have to lead to something greater - either a accomplished agenda or a yearned for prize or recognition.  I am working to Embrace my Bliss--focusing on the ABC's - awakening my spirit, bringing joy to other and creating beautiful things.  Some days it is really easy to feel like I have been intentional about the ABC's but other days, I feel out of touch!

I was "chaplaining" at the hospital on Thursday and met with three pregnant moms who are all on bed rest.  I was really struck by the strength of these women.  They are vastly different and yet each is finding their way to make peace with their lack of control in their circumstances.

One woman has a husband and three other children out of the country and yet she was quoting bible verses to me about how God doesn't give us more than we can handle and that along with the suffering, we are given the strength to endure.

Another woman was telling me how grateful she is for skype because she can say good night to her 18 month old who is 2 hours away with her husband. She was tearful as she described how hard it has been to spend the last 2 months away from her son and husband but knows their future depends on her ability to be in the hospital and "allow this baby to grow."

The third mom was a teen and was going outside for a cigarette when I stopped in her room.  I asked if she or her boyfriend needed anything and they requested a King James bible.  I was stunned!  I don't get too many requests for a bible and certainly didn't expect these teenagers to want a King James version!  The dad says he finds encouragement and strength in reading the bible and wasn't able to bring his to the hospital.  Coincidently, one of the other mothers had an extra King James version which I gratefully passed on to the couple.

I once heard someone say that "coincidence" is when God decides to remain anonymous.  Once again, the people I visited brought ME joy and for this, I am grateful.

On a different note, I am registered in the state of Minnesota to marry people.  I have presided at one wedding for a couple 5 years ago in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) who wanted to be married in the presence of their son who was not expected to live.  I am happy to say that their son will turn 5 this spring!  It was a lovely ceremony and the only marriage ever held in the NICU!  I felt very honored to have presided at their marriage.

I was recently asked by a woman if I would marry her and her fiance.  They are having a "destination wedding" out of the country but have found it too difficult to legally be married in that country so they want a simple ceremony here first.  I met with the couple today at our house and will preside at their wedding ceremony on Tuesday, 1-11-2011.  Pretty cool day to be married!

To see the hope and joy this couple expressed was inspirational!  I was also struck by how different they are from Bill (my husband) and me who just married 11-04-10.  Many of the details are so very different from us and yet the same commitments are made:  to love and respect one another.  I am honored to be presiding at their wedding this week.  It is also my mothers 67th birthday and she is celebrating with my dad on a trip to Las Vegas!

I made her this card and gave it to her when we dropped them at the airport:

Torn paper, inked edges, stamping on a tag and a tied ribbon--a birthday card!

Wishing everyone a week of embracing your bliss!  May you have time to awaken your spirit, bring joy to other and create beautiful things!


Susan, Blissfully!

More Art stuff...

I decided to add a couple of the sketchbook challenge pages I made yesterday.

I have been reading about the Noodler ink that is bulletproof, meaning you can paint and such over it and it won't bleed.  I am falling in love with my fountain pens and inks!  I just started with a circle and added whatever came to me, various doodles and such.  Randomly added acrylic colors and viola!  My little mandala.  I know there are guidelines for mandalas and this may not fit the bill, but it sure was fun making this and using all the great acrylic colors.  I am wondering why I waited until age 46 to try acrylic paints??  They are really easy to use.

I also added a page with a photo:

DH Bill and I were down at the Mississippi River last week and we were engulfed by all this snowy mist.  It was pretty amazing actually.  He took this pic of me sitting on a bench looking over the River--which you can't see because it is so misty snowy.  We also did a video where I stood in one place and turned 360, you could not even see beyond a couple feet.  It was pretty magical actually.  We did manage to see a few bald eagles when the mist cleared for a couple minutes and then poof!  They were invisible again.  We have some awesome photos from this day and I will post more of them in my flickr album but I wanted to add this pic to my sketchbook because it reminds me of serenity.  Peaceful even though I can't see very far and yet "warmed" by the sun (of course this day was probably 5 degrees so warm is relative here but the concept is good!).

Happy Tuesday everyone!  

I hope you have a day filled with awakening your spirit, bringing joy to other and creating beautiful things!

Susan, Blissfully!

Glitter is Glam Challenge in the Moxie Fab World

I have fallen in love with boxes!  I saw the posting for the Glitter is Glam Challenge and thought about fairies!  I glitter embossed the top of this box, punched the edges with a Martha Stewart punch, added an edge of ribbon with glitter, embossed the die cut starts and embossed the fairy stamp with gold glitter.  I thought it would make a great tooth fairy box or a make a wish box!  I haven't seen any boxes entered for this challenge --but I am new and just thought it would be fun to play with glitter.

Susan, Blissfully!

Happy New Year~

The time seems to be flying by these last days of the year!  Here we are at January 1 and it seems like it was just Christmas.  We took down our decorations today and the house looks so different without all the lights and holiday stuff!  Feels like it is back to simplicity.

I am busy getting my Embracing Your Bliss business details put together, working to finalize a logo, ordering business cards and preparing for the website to launch.  Very exciting to see it begin to come together.  I have also decided to participate in the Sketchbook Challenge!  The badge is on my blog.

I am sitting in my studio typing this entry and just looked out to see a beautiful bald eagle soaring through the back yard.  I am a bird nut and it is so rewarding to be able to see all kinds of birds right through the window in my room!  There is nothing as majestic as a lovely bald eagle gracefully passing by.  Wow...I also watched this solitary turkey hang around our feeders today.  Typically there are 15, 12 females and 3 males but today, there was 1 all alone.  I wondered where the rest of the flock was?  Did she just need some time alone?  Was she cast out by the others?  Did she get lost?  I will never know but I enjoyed watching her strut around peacefully.  Often the turkeys are scurrying around trying to get the piece of corn before the others but this lone turkey moved with grace and peaceful often missing with the rest of the brood.  Maybe she is a good model for the coming year...Here is her pic:

As I thought about this post, I was wondering what I have done this last week to move forward the ABC's of Embracing Your Bliss:  Awakening your spirit, Bringing joy to others and Creating beautiful things.  It often seems easiest to find examples of Creating beautiful things!

I took a making Vintage Valentine cards class this week at our local scrapbook store, Archivers.  We made four cards and it was really fun to learn new techniques and to get new ideas!  I have been away from scrapbooking and paper crafts for the last 5 years and am just overwhelmed at the amount of new techniques that have emerged!  Here are the cards:

The sketchbook challenge involved getting a new journal and decorating the cover so I created a new sketchbook cover for the challenge:

I was also playing around with acrylics paints for the first time and decided to experiment on the first pages of my sketchbook.  I took a lovely card that my daughter Charlee gave me for Christmas, attached it with Golden polymer to the page and then mirrored the drawing she did with acrylics.  It was really fun to use this medium and to see how they worked.  I have only worked with watercolors in the past so this was a new adventure for me but I am glad to have preserved this lovely card she gave me.  I also did a more typical Susan journal page talking about Christmas, the new traditions we were creating - using a bit of torn paper, embossed rubber stamps and some inking of the edges of torn paper.  What I realized is that I need to have two journals!  I have been avid journal writer since my early teens and the purpose of a sketchbook journal feels different than my typical rant and review feelings journal!  So I opted to buy a simple clairefontaine lined journal!  I also bought my first fountain pen, a lamy.  Boy did I have fun picking out various Noodler inks, learning how to change the ink cartridges and use the convertors.  I had no idea that there was a whole fountain pen using community out there!  Amazing.

This is also a time of year when I spend thinking about my spirit and what I want the next year to look like for me. In all honestly, 2010 was a very tough year for me.  A lot of loss and even though I got married and had a lovely honeymoon, there were huge disappointments in my family and work world--and my community of faith.  So as I look to this new year, I can't help but wonder where I am being lead and what the universe has in store for me.  Joseph Campbell has a great quote about bliss.  He wrote, "Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls."  I have seen and run in to a lot of walls in 2010 and I welcome new doors opening!  Embracing Your Bliss is the beginning of a new journey for me and I look forward to opening more doors in the coming year!

Bringing joy to others!  This can sometimes be the most challenging of the ABC's for me.  I try to do things on a daily basis, sometimes as simple as making sure my husband's towel is on the sink so he doesn't have to reach across the bathroom when he finishes his shower--to the volunteer chaplain work that I do in the neo-natal intensive care unit at one of the local hospitals.  Last week I had a chance to meet this young couple who had a baby with some genetic anomalies (gentler way of saying defects).  This couple was so grateful to be sharing time with their baby.  They are in their teens and to look at them from the outside without any data, one could really think they "have some issues" but in fact, I felt so blessed to spend a few minutes watching them love their baby.  They asked if we could pray for her surgery the next day, asked to pray to be good parents and went on to tell me how excited and grateful they were to have this child.  I was deeply touched at their sincerity and amazed at the maturity they displayed in dealing with a very difficult situation.  Often I find in my chaplain work that it is not me who brings joy but rather the people bring ME joy.  This couple was truly a gift of love and joy!

So the new year begins - and it is my heartfelt intention to really work to Embrace my bliss this year by focusing on the ABC's - awakening my spirit, bringing joy to others and creating beautiful things!

Blessings on your new year and I hope you journey with me--Embracing Your Bliss!

Susan, Blissfully!