Hand Lettered & Watercolor Recipes

Hiatus

hi·a·tus

hīˈādəs/

noun

noun: hiatus; plural noun: hiatuses

1. a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.

The state in which this blog finds itself.  I will be back soon!

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Palawan! (In which she reminds herself to maintain perspective)

This week I am trying frantically to finish preparations for the first big business meeting of the year and my first international trip of the year.  This evening I was griping to the kids about the insane pace right now and the loss of even a day off for the next two weeks – not even a day to slow down and pack!  Argh.

And then I paused for a moment, randomly clicking around the interwebs because I had reached that point where the words and the graphs on the PowerPoint slides no longer made sense to me and remembered.  After the big, stress-filled business meeting I am going to Palawan!  Immediately after my business review is complete I am climbing aboard a Philippine Air flight to Puerto Princesa with my colleagues and coworkers to attend our annual strategic, team building and development meeting.  On Palawan!!

I really lost perspective.  Palawan is the largest of the 81 provinces in the Philippines.  In ancient times Chinese traders traversed land bridges from Borneo to Palawan.  They were followed by many, many migrants to the Philippine Islands.  The caves of Palawan have revealed china, pottery and other artifacts from those first visitors.

Palawan was also the first area within the Philippines colonized by Spain in 1622.  Centuries later the Japanese invaded the province on May 18, 1942.

What excites me, though is that Palawan is considered the last ecological frontier in the Philippines.  Its 1700 islands are covered with tropical rain forests and vast areas of marine wilderness.  One of those unique treasures is the underground river in the Puerto Princesa National Park.   Check out the Wikipedia info on the park and the river, but also check back here in a few weeks and I will post my own pictures and impressions.

The first day of our Leadership Meetings includes an excursion down the subterranean river.  After that we get to listen to some speakers from Frost and Sullivan and Forrester, play some team building games and flesh out our 2015 strategy. And I almost opted out.  I almost chose to just fly home to have a weekend.  Forfeit my voice in the strategy sessions.   Watch the snow melt in my yard rather than paddle down an underground river.  I was ready to burrow back into my winter hibernation cave rather than explore a Unesco World Heritage site, one of the New Seven Natural Wonders  – paid for – in full – by my employer.

It is so easy to lose site of the bigger picture when we are caught up in the urgency of the now.  It is important that I am well prepared for the upcoming meeting.  It’s important to my career that I present well and dynamically, that I engage my audience and that my presentation is relevant and vital.

It’s not necessary, however, to lose site of the rest of my life.  I am still lucky enough to have two of my adult children who choose to live with me (and yeah, I know, rent is cheap with me, but I don’t care!) and the one who doesn’t live with me, who lives thousands of miles away in New Hampshire, works for the same company I work for.  We are connected.  So, so connected.

I just had to report all of my vacation days for 2014 (apparently there was a glitch in the tracking software and although the hours were deducted from my accrual, the actual dates were lost – try recreating every day you took off for the last year, not easy!) and I took a lot of time off in 2014.  I was lax about taking time out for the first few years working for my company so I had a lot of days accrued.  And I took 29 days off in 2014.   That’s a month and a half of paid time off last year.

Some of that time was to be a barely-needed care giver when my mother had surgery  (a post will follow some day about my appalling lack of ability to handle a real crisis during that time, but I am still processing it and can’t get it written yet).  However, even more was time off during the Holidays and a leisurely trip to North Carolina to wonder at my sister’s brilliance and revel in my parent’s garden.  Another week was to ride the train from Colorado to California and play with food and photographs and paper with my sister.  I had a month off to just be me in 2014.  That’s a luxury many don’t share.

And now I have the all-expenses-paid opportunity to experience warmth in winter and wonder in our world.  And I nearly lost sight of what was being offered to me, and I completely lost perspective.

Lucky for me I still have time to reaffirm my willingness and even my strong desire to participate in creating strategy, building teams and being a part of this oh so wonderful world – and a chance to paddle down an underground river in just a little over a week.  I need to go pack!

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

A Little Something Wonderful

I love Susannah Conway’s practice of posting a link list each week, Something For the Weekend.  It’s like a chat with a good friend about the new books coming out and things you’ve seen and heard and want to share.  She doesn’t expound on the links, just points us to a few things that we might want to see.

If you don’t know Susannah check out her blog, she’s got a very calm and unique way of looking at the world – and sharing it with us.  She also has some pretty darned cool classes including Photo Meditations – registration opens February 4th and I have the date marked in my planner 🙂

My Word of the Year – 2015

Do you choose a word for your year?  I am not confident sure that I lived up to my word for 2014 which was grace.  I am still working on living my life with grace.   This year I am adding regaining my confidence.

Bella Grace

I can remember Sunday mornings as a teen sitting in the cool, darkly paneled sanctuary of All Saints-by-the-Sea listening to Father Woodward deliver a homily that felt uncomfortably aimed at me. Sometimes it felt as though someone had been reading my journal, the message was so pointed and so exactly what I needed to hear, whether I wanted to or not. That connection with my core, with who I was and am in my most quiet and private places is what anchored me in my faith life.

I have a similar, although less holy, core connection with Bella Grace, the newest offering from Stampington & Company. The editors say “Bella Grace is a special publication devoted to discovering magic in the ordinary” and I have to agree. The aesthetic is one of muted colors, evocative images and rich matte paper, all elements I am drawn to.

On page 8 of the recent issue (Volume 1, Issue 2) D. Smith Kaich Jones speaks of silence and says “I even like my colors quiet.”  Yes! I have often struggled to explain why I am drawn to the muted, the dusty, the … quiet… colors. My beautiful sister surrounds herself in luscious jewel tones and I understand why. But I like my colors quiet.

As an inveterate form filler-out-er and workbook lover the writing prompts with space to contribute right there, on the lovely page has me reaching for my pen again and again.

Without skimping on the imagery more attention is paid to the words in Bella Grace than in some other Stampington publications which focus on the images and the how-tos. As a word person that’s important to me.

This is a magazine that has stories on Silence, Wind, Water, Photography, Writing, Polishing the Silver Before Vacation, Musings on Grass and Savoring Chocolate all in one lovely package that fits in my work bag, lives on my nightstand and is becoming lovingly well thumbed.

Someone, somewhere has been reading my journal. How else can a magazine so perfectly curated for my tastes be explained?

For the record, I am in no way affiliated with Bella Grace or Stampington & Company.  This isn’t a review, it’s an exploration, a thinking-through, maybe an homage.  I have not been paid in any way for this post.

Ornaments and Tags

I spent an afternoon this week playing with clay like a child.  It was as fun as I remembered, but this clay didn’t smell of earth, like real clay, or that odd salty, musty smell of Play-dough.  I made baking soda and cornstarch clay which is surprisingly easy and economical to make, smells wonderfully fresh and clean and handles beautifully if you use it the same day as you make it.  I found that storing it over night resulted in a crumbly mess.

I will share my process and recipe, but be sure to check out some of the pins and posts that inspired me to make these ornaments and gift tags, there’s so much you can do with this clay.

This photo from mariegracedesigns.com first piqued my interest in baking soda cornstarch clay.  This one adds some sparkle to the dough, but the clay has a slight glimmer without adding anything additional.  I love the use of pine sprigs to press into the clay here.  I only used stamps on mine, but want to go back and use rosemary and other botanicals when I make more.  Laura at dishfunctionaldesigns.blogspot.com did some nice things with ribbons on hers.

   

I used the Cooks.com recipe of:
2 cups baking soda
1 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup water

Mix the cornstarch and baking soda then stir in the water.  The water will remain on the top of the dry ingredients and will take a bit of time and stirring to combine and ensure mixture is smooth with no clumps.  Cook over medium heat stirring constantly.  The dough will start to stiffen up and clump quite suddenly.  Stir quickly to avoid scorching until the mixture resembles lumpy mashed potatoes.  Turn the dough out into a bowl and cover with a cool, damp cloth until it’s easy to handle.  Turn out onto counter dusted with cornstarch and kneed four or five times.

Roll out to1/4 inch thick.  Stamp using your choice of colored inks and stamps or press articles into the clay to make patterns.  Cut out with sharp cookie or biscuit cutters or with a knife.  I learned from experience that using a glass or other cutter with a thick or dull edge makes for messy results.

You can allow the cut ornaments to air dry or place in the oven at 200 for an hour or so depending on the thickness of your items.  A hotter oven or extended baking times will cause the clay to brown.

After my initial cuts I re-rolled the dough which resulted in a nice marbled effect.

These ornaments were made with the re-rolled/marbled clay.

Once dry the ornaments feel like porcelain or Jasperware.  Seal with a spray sealant if you prefer a smoother finish.  I can’t speak yet for how long the ornaments or tags will last without being sealed, but will be watching over the next few seasons.

This is definitely a medium I intend to experiment with more.

A Couple of Holiday Creations

I love staying home for vacation (although though the term “staycation” grates on my nerves for some reason) because it allows me a chance to nest, to reconnect with my home and spend some extended time in a creative mindset verses trying to cram all of my creativity into the hours after work or on the weekends.

I cooked a lot this week.  Beyond the holiday fare I made food that takes longer than an hour after work to put together.  That alone is incredibly fulfilling creatively.

I started a writing project that is still in its infancy.

And I made some things with my hands.  First, an Advent Calendar to hang on the mantel above the fire.  Each day we will add that day’s date until the calendar is full on December 25th.

Awaiting December One

I kept to a very limited pallet which not only goes well in my home, but is neutral and could work with many decors.  Until the start of Advent we have a black grosgrain ribbon stretched across the fireplace below the mantel with a basket of date tags sitting in wait, each with a tiny brown clothes pin to clip it to the ribbon.

Each date tag is slightly unique.  I stamped the dates on Kraft and manila tags, brown and white doilies, and a couple of custom shapes I had in my stash.

I embellished with punched snowflakes in red, white and brown and some stamped images. On just a few I used red sealing wax and and a seal and on others paper butterflies made from book pages  and custom paper

The final tag, for Christmas Day is an envelope.  I won’t be home for Christmas.  I will be off in New Hampshire with my middle child and the two who will be home in Denver can open the envelope for a surprise.  Even adult children deserve unexpected surprises on Christmas.

I will share more tomorrow.  Happy holidays!

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