Doing something different this year. I'm taking the best ideas of the last two year's positivity journals and compiling them into this year's composition notebook positivity journal. First good idea was to prepare it ahead of time, giving myself 6 spreads plus one extra page per month, with three pages devoted to the requirements of good memories, quotes, and scripture and then whatever else I wanted to do in the rest of the spreads. I watched a lot of bullet journaling and planner videos to list their ideas and did the same until I began running out of ideas at the end of last year. I was late in video making last year because I was struggling to come up with more ideas to fill in pages. Then I got Covid and didn't feel like messing with either my journal or video-making. I gave myself GRACE though and uploaded them when I could. That was a struggle too - giving myself GRACE -- a foreign concept to my way of thinking since I usually beat myself up mentally for not being PERFECT!
I felt so good though, when I finally got November and December's videos made and uploaded. But in January, I called a time-out -- to take a wee break while I recharge my creative batteries and to learn new journal techniques. I've been going at journal-making straight for two years now. My newest idea was to work-up a Table of Contents for the whole year with assignments for each page, however, I can be creative within those page assignments. I've made up to 6 months worth so far and if by mid-year, if I've changed my mind for something else I want to remove or add-in, I can do so. Oh, and since I use a skinny elastic hairband to keep my journal closed, I've added in divider tabs at the top of my journal to keep them out of the way of the hairband.
COVER: Baa! The Lamb of God
Here's my table of contents for the first six months:
1. Divider Page (theme "friends;" most of the cards came from the Dollar Tree) 2. Daily Calendar
3. Pictorial Diary
4. Scripture
5. Art Journal Page
6. Quotes
7. Art Journal Page
8. Good Memories
9. Art Journal Page
10. Prayer List (it's good to pray for your friends and family)
11. Glue Book page (of my tea envelope collection)
12. Poem (either mine or someone else's that I enjoy!)
INSPIRATIONAL ARTICLES:
"Sandpaper people"
DIVIDER PAGE CARD: "My friends are a reflection of my good taste." 🥰
DAILY CALENDAR HIGH-LITES:
Happy New Year!
I'm grateful to be alive after Covid!
I doodled 2 Pantone cards for Marsha Baker's project this month.
I participated in our church's 24 hours of prayer-time in the middle of the month. I prayed for church revival and our Nazarene missionaries in Romania.
Inauguration of New President; Garth Brooks sang Amazing Grace. I listened to the inauguration via the radio as I was doing chores.
ART JOURNAL PAGE: Go back up to the top of this page and click on both the playlist and the creative stuff link to use your eyeballs and brains.
SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 33:11 = The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.
Proverbs 4: 23 = Above all else, guard 💂 your heart 💖, for it is the wellspring ⛲ of life 🧍.
John 15:15 = I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Ephesians 2:10 = For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
ART JOURNAL PAGE
QUOTES:
BFF: A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart 💖 and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
Fowl moods will not be tolerated!
"Friends fill your life with joy; your soul with sunshine and your heart with love."
Give thanks.
"Good friends are like beautiful flowers in the garden of life." (Katrina Mayer).
"Lord, lead me today to those I need and to those who need me, and let my life and the things I do have eternal significance." (Amy Grant).
Party till the cows come home.
"The shape of true love isn't a diamond. -- It's a cross." (Alicia Bruxvoort)
Welcome to our Lil' Nest.
ART JOURNAL PAGE
FARM FRESH MEMORIES:
"I remember playing in the ditch at grandma and grandpa's that ran in front of their farmhouse. It was especially fun when Grandpa turned on the irrigation well and the ditch became a muddy mess. We had a good ole mud slinging time then. We didn't dare go out to play without our shoes on though, for goat-head stickers were plentiful and hurt like the dickens to step on.
Grandpa's big barn was the best place to be. They had barn cats that we sometimes got to feed and Grandpa kept extra eggs in a refrigerator in his farm office in the barn. We watched Grandpa milk cows and squirt milk into the barn cats mouths.
Up in the barn loft we would arrange the hay bales into rooms and play house up there with our cousins. Grandpa helped me get up on a pony when I broke my foot in senior high before Thanksgiving that Christmas in the barn."
PRAYER LIST: I'm praying for my support team (friends) and Bible study ladies. I'm continuing to pray for our missionaries in Romania and for church revival.
GLUEBOOK PAGE: I glued 5 blue tea envelopes to my page and 3 tea tags. I love the layout and designs of some of the envies. Since I was taken off caffeine by my urologist-gynecologist (it can make you go, go, go), I've moved to drinking dried hot herbal teas. However since some of my friends still drink real tea, they collect and save envelopes for me too, so you will see a mixture of both.
POEM:
The Long View
By Fay Inchfawn.
Some day of days! Some dawning yet to be
I shall be clothed with immortality!
And in that day, I shall not greatly care
That Jane spilt candle grease upon the stair.
It will not grieve me then as once it did,
That careless hands have chipped my teapot lid.
I groan, being burdened. But in that glad day,
I shall forget vexations of the way.
That needs were often great, when means were small,
Will not perplex me any more at all.
A few short years at most (it may be less),
I shall have done with earthly storm and stress.
So, for this day, I lay me at Thy feet,
O, keep me sweet, my Master; Keep me sweet!
