A New Journal

I've never been one to journal.  My perfectionist tendencies can't handle the imperfection of not journaling every day or not having the nicest handwriting.  I tend to make a few days, rip pages out, and quit.

But I sense I may have a new possibility.

My friend gave me the cutest, most colorful, lovely little journal for my birthday.   It's fairly small, has a ribbon bookmark, and a magnetic closure.  I love magnetic closures.  Yeah, I know its weird to have a special affinity for magnetic closures on books.

It's it just adorable?

I wasn't sure what I could do with it.  Like I said, I don't journal.  But then I ran across an art form, stylized doodling really, known as Zentangle.  Zentangle is actually a trademarked name, complete with certified zentangle teachers.  It only took me a little while to figure out the gist of it.  Others have come up with zentangle-inspired doodles. From what I'm seen, I liked the inspired doodles best.  They are right up my alley as a person who enjoys repetitive doodling that hasn't evolved into more than a single doodle.  I put the two together and decided that I'd fill this little book with doodles even though it is full of ruled paper.  I may even use the doodles and an inspiration to journal a bit to go along with them.

I decided to try doodling a letter for my first page.  The second page is based on a heart, but it isn't done year.  I'm looking forward to filling more pages and seeing if my doodles evolve into some of the more involved pieces I've seen on the net like...

This lovely one with a flower in it
Or color works like these

Sock Puppets

One of the activities available at the retreat I attended last weekend was making sock puppets.  Knowing about the activity ahead of time (I'm on the planning committee), I didn't think I'd make a puppet personally.  In the end, I didn't make a puppet...I made three!

It was so much fun.  Four or five women sitting around talking, laughing, and creating...what could be better?  Some of the puppets created were simply amazing given the limited supplies we had on hand: simply some tube socks, some limited colors of yarn, some felt, a bucket full of buttons, needle and thread, and hot glue guns.

My kids loved their puppets and can't wait until after Thanksgiving when they want to try making their own now that Mommy knows how.

Here's a closer look at Mika's puppet. It's simply a girlish puppet with long, golden hair, lips, and a couple of necklaces.

Sam's puppet was the first one I made.  Because I did such a sloppy job putting the mouth in, I covered the seams with a colorful mustache and beard.  To that I added long hair in a pony tail, eyes, pipe cleaner glasses, and a shirt and bow tie.

Josh's, as you can see in the first picture, was a frog of sorts, complete with a fly attached to an extra long tongue.  Unfortunately, he kept pulling on the tongue until the felt was double it's length and the felt in the mouth pulled away from the glue, so the tongue got cut short.

The kids LOVED them more than I would have guessed.  Maddie even loves putting them on her hand.