A Glimpse at my First Junk Journal

 

It is my belief that when we are new to a craft or art, it's quite likely we will need to learn what that art form is all about.   And that the very best way to learn is to start where you are with whatever droplet of inspiration that you might have and then one must find others who are performing the same art and learn from them and what inspires them.

So, my first junk journal is a semi failure.  I didn't have a clear idea of what I was doing only a vague notion.  And while I found I had a good eye for potential materials, i.e. junk, I lack skill in executing what my vision saw.  A few pages of the Christmas journal turned out cute, some were a mess and some downright ugly.  My biggest mistake was failing to have a blank space to journal!  I can remedy that by going back and adding in pockets and then tucking embellished labels and tags and sheets into pockets and envelopes.  These fun little books are meant to be used as a true journal with photos, writings, quotes, etc., as well as a way to express an artistic point of view.

New Year Musings

A wonderful, wondrous year is nearly behind me.  2025 turned into such a journey of discovery and loveliness that I get teary eyed just thinking about it.  Now we are just days from the start of a whole brand-new year in which possibilities are like a thousand little seeds scattering into the wind, nestling into crevices and cracks of earth where they will be watered and pushed to grow into somethings in the perfect seasons ahead.

I had no idea last year at this time what 2025 would bring, not that I've had insights into other years either.   I can say without a doubt this year has been the most joyful year I've ever had.  It was a bit of a struggle just at first as I began to shed off the out of focus, out of balance methods I'd used to cope in the struggle years behind me.  I'd buried myself under the necessary and unnecessary tasks alike in an attempt to hide from it all.  But I broke free and I've come to a lot of understandings, realizations and such that I hadn't sorted out in past years.  Somehow, there came an opening, light poured in and I felt myself come alive once again.

Calm Down...

 

Well, this is it.  At this point there is no further time for preparations, decorations, shopping, wrapping or anything else.  Christmas Eve, we have our gathering with Katie's family.   We'll go by to visit Mama on our way home.  

I won't go near a store in the next three days because it will be super crazy and the traffic will be horrific.  I'm pleased that I have all I need for our Christmas Day feast. 

The Gift

I've been thinking about Christmas quite a lot this year.   It's hard not to think of the gifting part of the season when you are up to your eyeballs in wrapping paper, and while I dearly love to give, I can't help but think of the gifts of my past, of what I might receive this year, of what the year ahead might bring.  

Looking back, I recall only a handful of Christmas gift items that really blew me away. There was the year that Santa brought me Sweetie Pie.  Sweetie Pie was a lovely blond baby doll wearing white eyelet, with a pink velvet bow in her little, tiny ponytail atop her head, lying upon a pink velvet pillow, bordered in white eyelet.  She didn't do a thing.  She couldn't talk or walk or drink as some dollies could, but she was so pretty, and I loved her dearly for more years than I'll own.  And Amie loved her too when I dug her out and passed her on.

There was the year Granny gifted me a pair of bell bottom pants, a turtleneck shirt and my first compact.  That was pretty major right there.  To be in style and seen as grown up enough to have my own face powder was a pivotal moment. 

There was the year I received a pearl ring.  It was set in an unusual way and was totally unexpected, nothing I'd asked for but which Mama had seen and chosen for me.  I was fifteen.  Just the age to appreciate such a lovely thing and to cherish it.  

Honestly, it's much that lingers in my memory.  John's given me lovely things, but he tends to gift me in October (sort of an anniversary in his mind...I've no idea why) and only things I'd had a hand in choosing (due to his gifting anxiety).  But there was one night near Christmas when he went into the mall and I stayed in the car, though I've no idea why.  And when he came out, he handed me the loveliest little pair of diamond earrings and he said, "I couldn't resist them...they sparkled like your eyes..."  Well, who wouldn't love that?  A few years later he gave me another pair, very similar, without the pretty speech.  

Funnily enough, while I am a big girl and have always felt I needed to have big jewelry to properly show on my person, John's gifts are inevitably incredibly pretty, delicate and feminine.  It's very gratifying to have him give me these things because it's a proper reminder to me of how he envisions me.  There are lovely pearl charms to hang from my ever-present hoop earrings.  A pair of diamond and amethyst earrings that are the size of my pinky nail at best and a delicate gold chain with tiny baby pearls strung along it that hits me just at the hollow of my throat.  I'm telling you this man truly does gift well when he sets aside his anxiety and just goes for it.

There was the silk wallet he paid a friend/co-worker to bring back from China when she went on a work trip.  It was very well made, beautiful and I loved it so much that I had to put it away because it had worn so, but I always felt a thrill of pleasure when I'd take it from my purse to pay for a purchase.

The children often gave me gifts that made me cry.  They were sweet and funny, and I saw their hearts in the gifting which meant the world to me.  

But overall, I haven't been given great or spectacular things.  Not saying that in a disappointed sort of way.  I didn't expect great or spectacular.  I expected that if I received anything at all, I'd be polite and complimentary and pleased enough that the giver was pleased and I'd take whatever I was given and enjoy it until it was used up, eaten, worn out.  And if I received nothing, I'd not be disappointed and whiny about it but carry on, as one ought to do.

Which brings us up to this year...It's been a lovely year.  The year itself has been a gift in so many ways.  It's been peaceful and pleasant, filled with lovely things.  We had a proper bit of winter and a proper bit of spring and a mild summer and a lovely autumn.  November alone was a month of legend where pleasantness and loveliness in autumn is concerned.  

There were family times together, not all the children gathered at once, but the individual families came and we have had time with them enjoying their company, laughing and talking and eating together which is the most companionable way to be.

There were all the gifts that flowed back into my life: reading, art, swimming, singing, piano, music.  The gift of time to truly enjoy those things.  The ability to change a very bad habit of being unbending and boring and insistent upon doing all the work all of the time and never taking moments to enjoy.  And the ability to recognize when I'd allowed fear to become the controlling emotion and I stopped it in its tracks and went right ahead into the scary places arriving in triumph and joy. 

There have been sunrises and sunsets that blew me away and clear bright nights and the coziness of home when it was stormy or cold and miserable.  There have been good meals and more than enough always to feel like plenty.   

There has been major work done on the house again (this time it was painting the kitchen, back entry and laundry), and on the cars and we've had money enough to do both.  I won't say it didn't get a bit tight, but it wasn't so horribly tight that we were in a permanent state of doing excessive penny pinching.

This year, this whole year, has felt like a wonderful gift.  Unwrapped in layers a little at a time and finding with each layer something that was especially lovely.    And I am so very grateful for it all!

The year of 2025 will be the year I'll remember best as being gifted much...

The Stockings Are Hung...

When I was a child, I wanted one of those mesh stockings filled with cheap plastic toys and barely edible hard candies so badly!  Alas, one never was left for me. I don't remember stockings being a thing in our early childhood and it most certainly was not a thing at all when we were older kids. 

Year after year, I'd read The Night Before Christmas and when I'd get to the lines, "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care..." I'd wish above all things that I had a stocking to hang and wake to find filled.

A Wish Book Christmas

Do you remember the thrill of the Christmas catalog coming in the mail?  

In our home, we all wanted to look through it when it arrived and the one of us three kids to see it first, always called, "I get it first!" 

And how we did pore over it.  Of course, the first time through we were all obligated to hurry up so the next could have a chance at it, but then we would pick it up randomly all through the six weeks or so until Christmas arrived.  We made out multiple wish lists as we counted down the days until Christmas.

Dear Santa

 

One of the highlights of my childhood Christmases was the opportunity to see Santa.  Sightings happened more often than being able to visit and once we moved out into the country well even sightings were unlikely to occur. 

However, there was always mail.  I could write a letter to Santa each year and my brothers and I generally did until we were too big to believe any longer.  I don't know what happened to the letters we wrote each year.  We put them in an envelope and some years; we were given a stamp to go on that envelope.  As a rule, we handed the letters over to Daddy, because he worked at the post office. As far as we were concerned, we had an absolute guarantee of having our letters delivered safely to the North Pole!

December's Quiet Pleasures

 

December is such a festive month, that it hardly seems as though one would need to plan to enjoy it.  But it's because it is such a festive month with so much to do, that I find I must be especially mindful to make the time to get to the quiet splendor of the month.

In a month marked by busyness, I want to appreciate this month.  I'm no less busy than anyone else, but I'm trying to be very mindful this year of the need to stop and breathe, to not run on adrenaline and overwhelm and to recognize the full significance of all that happens this month.

This Last Day of November

I made a new to us recipe on Saturday.  I had gotten a copy of the Magnolia Home Winter Journal in the mail, and this recipe sounded so good.  I had only about half the ingredients.  There were a few substitutions that were made.  It was a lot of work, more than the recipe as written required but I was starting from scratch with several items.  I will tell you it was really, really good.  But I've no idea if the recipe as written is good because it really just ended up being the jumping off place of inspiration for me.