A Time to Pause

Our theme this month in the Everyday Journals group is A Time For... Valerie Sjodin asked us to think about what it is time for in our current season of life. For me, this month it is a time to pause, even as the school year begins and my schedule picks up the pace. My hubby and I generally take a vacation in September or early October and rent a cottage east of us on Lake Erie. We love these fall vacations. The summer season is done and school is back in session so the lake area is quiet and uncrowded. We can relax and enjoy peaceful surroundings.

We started our week visiting our area's newest Metropark. Howard Marsh just opened in May and we have not had a chance to visit it yet. Since it is on the way to the cottage we decided to head over early and spend some time there. We were not disappointed! Toledo has incredible Metroparks. The new one was formerly a large working farm that the park system in conjunction with ODNR has returned to wetlands - 1000 acres! We saw many types of birds and other wildlife and enjoyed walking the trails and boardwalks.

This morning I went for a sunrise walk, which is a habit of mine when on vacation. I love how calm the beach and lake are in early morning, and the light is incredible as the sun climbs. Early morning walks in the city just don't have the same feeling of peace.

The clouds last night looked like they had been painted.

I photograph this old dock every time. I just love it!

I also enjoy creative time while on vacation. Creating with limited supplies tends to stretch me creatively. I have found that I have been in a bit of a creative rut since I did the Colossians Words challenge, which isn't unusual for me when I lead a challenge. It requires a lot of attention and energy writing the devotional Bible studies, making the art, posting daily, and managing the Facebook group. So I usually will find myself struggling with what to create for a few weeks following a challenge. To help stir those creative juices I started looking for something with some prompts for journaling. In that search I stumbled on The Reset Girl and her Faithful Life Club which offers a monthly Scripture journaling challenge. The theme for September is A Fresh Start and the weekly Scripture passages tie into that theme. I came upon the group mid-month but started with week one anyway. I've done one page so far. I also picked up the journal I made for Roben-Marie Smith's Salvaged Journal class this Spring and brought it along to make some nature themed pages. 

Week One Faithful Life Challenge

Everyday Journals Group

Nature Journal

I hope you are enjoying your last week of summer and are finding time to be creative. :)

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Bernice Hopper, Valerie Sjodin and I are using one journal to record events, experiences and relationships and  to explore our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We are each blogging about our experiences and our art. If you would like to connect with others about creatively organizing your word, your ideas, thoughts, prayers, events, or your projects all in one journal, you are invited to join our Facebook group: Everyday Journals – Living Your Word of the Year.

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Valerie: https://valeriesjodin.com/blog/

My Salvaged Journal

In my last post I mentioned that I was taking a class with Roben-Marie Smith called Salvaged Journal. In this class we made a journal out of an old book and filled it with various of types of paper and ephemera in various sizes. It's almost like the junk journal concept that was popular w few years back. I had completed the journal in mid-April and have slowly begun to work on the pages.

Since the book I used had these great etchings on the cover of a bird, a flower, and a leaf, I knew I wanted to use this journal as a nature journal. It has a lot of pages in it so it should last me through all four seasons. I love starting it in Spring, which is my favorite season and the season in which the birds return. What I am finding with this journal, with its variety of paper types and page sizes, is that is encourages experimentation with art mediums. Here are a few of my pages before adding art:

For my title page I used one of my favorite techniques: hand cut letters. I used pages from an older National Geographic magazine because I love the vintage colors used in magazine photographs from the 50's and 60's.

So far I have a mix of pages using collage, paint, magazine photos, my own photos, painted tissue paper collage, and painted tissue paper cut letters.

I am really enjoying experimenting in this journal with different types of art mediums. It's good to stretch myself creatively. I have also learned that whenever I take a class it's important to me to keep my own style. Roben-Marie has more of an abstract style to her collage, and while I did try her style with some of the lessons, I found it just didn't feel like me. It's good to try other types of art and styles when taking class but it's also okay to take those lessons and adapt them to fit your own style and artistic voice. It's also encouraging to realize after a few years of making art that I have developed my own style. 

This weekend my friend Rox and I take our annual visit to the wildlife refuge on Lake Erie to experience spring bird migration. We have one of the top 5 birding spots in the country so close to us! Over the years we have exposed a few of our young friends to birding and will continue with that tradition this year. I hope to include some of my photos and observations in my new journal.

Some of my favorite art and bookmaking supplies:

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Spring Birding Part 2

It is a tradition each Spring to go with my mom and my friend Rox to Magee Marsh Bird Sanctuary on Lake Erie during Spring migration. Birding is huge in our area during Spring migration because of the number of Warbles that come through here and rest along the lake shore before their flight across Lake Erie. The birds actually will wait for the right weather conditions before crossing the lake. In a previous post I wrote that the second week in May is known here as The Biggest Week in American Birding where literally thousands of people flood the area from all over the nation and beyond. Well, we wait until the following weekend each year to avoid the crowds. There may not be as many varieties of Warblers but we still see a lot of birds.

This year we took my young birders with us, SaiVion (9) and Corvieon (12). And it was quite a treat! I honestly don't know how SaiVion made it through church. His excitement level was at high alert from breakfast, through church, and never waned the entire afternoon! Spending time with the boys like this is great stuff. The more we do this the more we start to see a glimpse into how God is shaping them and the interests that are forming in them. SaiVion has such a true love for animals and nature and his passion for art is really developing. He is constantly thinking in terms of drawing and capturing his memories on paper. Corvieon is developing a talent for photography. A friend of ours let him borrow his old digital camera for the day and that opened up a new world for Corvieon. He really has a good eye and had a blast with the camera until the battery died!

We had a good day, saw a lot of birds and the boys learned a lot. The highlight of our day was getting close to an Eagle's nest and seeing both the parent and the youth. It was fun experiencing their first time seeing an Eagle in the wild. And my track record for Eagle-spotting continues to grow. This was my fourth spotting this year!

Gray Catbird

Swallows

Yellow Warbler

Blue Heron

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

We saw both Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets. At first the boys thought the smaller ones were babies but we looked them up in the bird book and learned the differences between the two.

Saved the best for last!

Winter Birding

I love watching and photographing birds. This past summer/fall I was reading The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer and got in touch with a practice she calls "breathing exercises". You can read more about it in this post. Simply put, breathing exercises are finding things to do that stimulate our senses and nourish our creativity. I found that taking photo walks fits the bill for me. In addition to stimulating my senses and building my creative energy, I found that the time spent on photo walks also restores my emotional energy and is a time of solitude and connecting with God. At that time I decided to fully embrace birding and started keeping a nature journal and learning more about how to identify the birds and their habits.

Other than putting up some feeders in our backyard I wasn't planning on continuing to bird watch through the winter. But then I stumbled on the Window on Wildlife areas (mentioned in Tuesday's post) in some of our Metroparks and winter birding opened up wide for me. I stopped at one of the parks after my budget meeting on Sunday. It was a good way to relax after the meeting and we had our first snow of the year, so it was a good time to see what the birds were up to.

Goldfinch and female House Finches

Finally got the quick little Chickadee in a photo!

Male Downy Woodpecker

Female Cardinal

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Tufted Titmouse

White-breasted Nuthatch (one of my fav's!)

Even the deer come over and watch the birds!

On my list of winter birds that I have not seen as a Junco. On Sunday I finally saw one. Then the next morning in my backyard a pair of them appeared!

Junco at the park

Junco's in my backyard

Some pages I worked on last month in my nature journal:

Enjoy your day and find some ways to "breathe" this week!