I really doubt my blog gets readers any longer but that's alright. I've not been here giving anything new to see. I wonder sometimes why other people blog. Do they blog for followers, money, loneliness, to inspire others???? I think the list could go on and on. The answer for me is varied. At first my blog started to just share PSP tutorials and then it grew to share signature tag making kits but as I was doing all these things I realized I just liked to write. I liked to share my feelings....happy, sad or somewhere's in between. This blog became my not so secret diary sometimes. When my husband died in 2015, I plummeted down a deep, dark rabbit hole that has taken some time for me to try to find the light. I had to find the me without him. It's been hard. I've had to start a new job, find a new home, and create new friendships all the while helping my family learn a new normal. I had to give myself permission to smile through the tears and actively look for the joy in life. I've learned every day that I'm fortunate enough to be on this earth is a new day to be my very best me. 

So my friends....I'll leave you with this little quote I saw while browsing Pinterest the other day.

The pastor to my church gave a sermon awhile back that I honestly can't remember the topic of but I have carried a phrase he used during the service with me ever since.  "Do what you know how to do until you can do different." My whole life is different now and in the struggle to find my new normal I am slowly getting back to doing what I know how to do. Sometimes it's just finding the energy to make the bed and other days it's the sheer determination to "art my hurt away". Its during these art therapy times I think of nothing. I am totally immersed in the process---the colors, the texture of the paper, the way the pencil sounds as it scratches across page in the sketchbook or glides across gesso, the smell of the wax from colored pencils or the distinctive smell of markers, the squishy feel of the paint when you smear it with your fingers---it's almost like I get a "time out" from life where I can exhale quietly with no expectations from anyone or anything.  It's when I can remember that my precious husband was my biggest fan. It's where I can hope he's smiling down on me from heaven still cheering me on. It's where I find a small piece of me I recognize from before my life got turned upside down. It's in these tiny islands of peacefulness that has helped me cope with the loneliness. The absence of my best friend has been devastating. It's in the faces of my journal girls and the doodles on a notepad that I lay my heart bare with words and symbolism that reaches to my core. Sometimes, well a lot of times, words don't convey the feelings I have in my soul. I thought I would share a few of my journal girls. No fancy art supplies used but I do use Prismacolor colored pencils because they are super waxey and blend beautifully for skin. The rest of the supplies used are a mechanical pencil, micron pen, Sharpie water based paint pen for the white highlights and in the Bloom girl the vivid color is from Dye-Na-Flow liquid fabric color. She is also the only one on watercolor paper.
So my friends whatever your troubles are maybe you can art yourself a moment of peace, exhale gently, and turn whatever is hurting your heart into something beautiful. ❤️

Sometimes one needs to retreat from the world to find out who they really are. That's definitely what I've been doing. I've been one half of a two part team for so many years that I'm floundering around like a fish out of water. Everything is just as difficult and unfamiliar to me as the fish who needs to be in the water to survive. Me without my husband literally takes my breath away. I am finding grief to be very exhausting and unpredictable. One day I can laugh and other days all I can do is cry. It's a cruel sack of emotions I go through. For the longest time I thought I was going crazy but then I found a group on Facebook with so many beautiful souls who are walking the same walk as I am. I am NOT crazy. I have found out that what I feel is ok and quite normal and it's my grief and MY time table on when I do or don't do things. Other's move on fast to new relationships and just as equally there's just as many who a Chapter 2 with someone is a foreign concept. I'm of the mindset that I was so lucky to have a love story of a lifetime. How could I be greedy and expect anything more. But if God set someone in my path I would do my best to recognize that gift. Until then, I am creating a life for me with no expectations of sharing with anyone else. I need to find me and who I am as a single solitary soul and sometimes I think I know who that girl is and other time's she's as elusive as smoke in the wind. 

2016 is almost over. I don't believe in resolutions but I have been giving tremendous thought on how I want to live the next year. So many of my days during this past year I just existed. If I got through the day, it was an accomplishment.....it really was!!!! I've decided it's ok to be selfish. I am a team of 1 now. I need to take care of me so my health is top of the list. I will quit feeling quilty for finding joy and I will consistently make time for art, digital and mixed media, and last but not least I will make time for God and set aside time for my Bible study and prayer time on a consistent basis.

Above it all I will will be BRAVE.
Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing. 

― Emma Donoghue





Many blessings for the coming year to all of you!

It's been a long time since I have blogged. A lot has happened since the last time I shared. One of the things that kept me away was that I was living life with my husband...we had big plans to sell our home and buy a travel trailer and I go out on the road with him while he worked out of town. We realized that we had lost so much time together already with the work situation and we wanted to find a way to remedy that. You can't get time back.

Then the knock came on the door that changed my life forever. My beloved husband had died. He was only 46 years old and for all we knew healthy. He has just had a physical but a blood pressure issue had went undetected over time and he had a cardiac arrest. He was out of town working. I had spoken and texted him through out the day. Things were great. He was scheduled to come home the next day. In less than a split second my heart was shattered. Just a few days ago marked a year that he has not been the voice I hear every single morning when I wake and the rock I leaned on. I had the luxury to be a stay at home mom and wife. We sacrificed for that to happen but it was worth every coupon I clipped. It's taken me a year to find a new home and a job that could pay the bills that go with it.  In fact, I've only been in our new home a month and I still have boxes to unpack.  

So here I sit.....being eternally grateful for all my blessings and at the same time cursing because this is not supposed to be my life....but yet it is.  Everyday I wonder how I will make it through and at the end of the day I find that somehow I did. I wonder if I will ever feel genuine joy and happiness again. I have moments with my kids......how can I not? but that's not joy felt in my soul.
And if I've heard it once....I heard it a hundred times....."You are so young, you will remarry." I die a little every time I hear it. Me and Ricky were perfect together.....I can't even wrap my mind around anyone else in my life.



So here I sit....working on living again.....and maybe one day I can smile without tears in the corners of my eyes.

Here's to Living Well and Blessings to All☻