N Your Dreams

Valentine's Evening

Not sixty six years together but working on it!

We are in the valley for the weekend. Today is my parent's 66th wedding anniversary. A celebration dinner is planned for this evening. My dear friend Bonnie's birthday is this Sunday. We are celebrating by taking a class at Mystic Paper on Saturday. In the past we all combined the celebrations into one gala event. I hosted a dinner party. Entertaining was a big part of my artistic endeavors. I would be embarrassed to tell you how many sets of different colors and types of silverware I own. Times change though and new interest creep into the repertoire. I have been cleaning out dishes and silverware over the last few months. Some of my favorites I have kept and some are packed up for storage. I just read a post on Judy's My Artistic Side

about the need to get rid of some supplies. It hit a real cord with me. Since I love to create with paper , fabric, and all sorts of other things I have a problem. I buy way too many gadgets that come my way. I buy way too many papers. I buy way too many stamps. You get the picture. When I was commenting on Judy's post I had a thought about treating my supplies like clothes in the closet. I once read a way to control one's closet was to throw something out each time a new item was purchased. I think I am going to try this approach to my art supplies and see if it helps. In the meantime I am also going to start with a little goal-I am going to go through all of my stamp sets and get a box and filter, filter, filter. When watching a recent Opra show it was about getting rid of clutter. One of the important suggestions was to have little goals to reach instead of getting bogged down by viewing the big picture.  Thank you Judy for putting a spark in my being about getting rid of some things.

Now-my next topic of conversation--beautiful, inspiring, gorgeous, eye candy filled publications.  Like supplies, I buy tons of them. It is like going to the movies for me. I love to look at them. Special treats for me to spend time being still just perusing and aaaaahhhhhing and ooooooohhhhhing. I purchased the latest edition of Artful Blogging a couple of weeks ago. I just started looking at it a day or two ago. As I read the letter from the editor at the very beginning of the book I stopped dead in my tracks when I came to the following sentence:

And as Jenny Doh reminds us, it's not whitewashing the truth to only blog about the good parts of your life-----it's spreading a positive message that will help brighten someone else's day. This sentence evoked many emotions within me and started me reflecting on it's content. I immediately went back to my beginning blogging class 101 with Mike Putman at Mystic Paper. He told us we needed to decide on the focus and purpose of our blog. I can remember thinking my purpose was to include everything about me--all of this thing called LIFE that I hold so dear. I also read a muse today by Ro of the Scrapgirls site concerning this very topic. B U----- It is worth the read. Often her muses are definitely worth the read-- but back to it-- I guess my point is, if one's blog is about one's life, not blogging about the entire being is not allowing someone else to gain entrance to one's REAL being.  Now, if the intent of the blog is not about life at all and just about ???? then why would one need to even address the topic about whitewashing the truth? I want people to know all of me. I want to know all about the people with which I spend my precious time.  I want to feel close to the people in my life and to be close requires intimacy.  To be close requires trust----not so much trust in other people but trust within oneself. Trust that allows one to B U!

Thanks for spending time with me today and my hope is you will find some time today to spend with yourself.