new book

All the Things

So many new things happening in January! Staying busy helps during these cold months in Alaska.

This month has been a busy one. As all months usually are. I like it when I’m busy, especially during January and February, as that makes these coldest months of the year pass more quickly. This will be an update on happenings with several things.

Painting of magpies on plexiglass. 2024 Willow Winter Carnival written across the center.

First, I was asked to paint a window for the Willow Winter Carnival that happens each year here in my little, tiny town. I did a little bit of research and realized that painting windows when it’s -30 degrees really isn’t possible. So I painted plexiglass instead to create a “window” painting of sorts that will be displayed in the front entrance. This was more time consuming than I imagined it might be, both physically in obtaining materials and painting, as well as mentally because I’d never done anything like this but wanted it to turn out well. I like the finished product.

Next, I finished up my new website and have now launched it! Busy Mom’s Life Coaching is now available to the public! This has not just been a January thing. I started on it way back about September. I am excited to share what I have learned over the years about goal setting and habit changing, and hopefully I can help other people progress in their lives. There is a lot of information there, but I will be adding to that as I go along. There is also a zoom link for 30 minute meetings once a week with topics of discussion as well as time for Q&A.

Watercolor painting of a hummingbird flying toward a purple flower.

I have been painting a lot of small sketches over the last several months, but wanted to do a bigger painting. This new online class has been great to get me going and inspired again. I decided to take a spin off one of the tutorials and I painted a hummingbird. I created the composition from a couple of different pictures, and then painted. It was a fun project and I love the finished product.

Lastly, and this didn’t happen all through January, it just happened today, but I got back my edited manuscript from the publishing company. I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet, but I am super excited to continue on with the process of getting this next book completed!

Introduction

It’s getting late tonight, but I wanted to write anyway. I have been working on a new book, you have had the opportunity to read several parts and pieces of this book and I finally finished writing and setting it up last week. This week I was able to get it saved online and approved, and I ordered my proof copy of the book. I am super excited for this new book, it’s set up similar to the other book, in a workbook format.

So tonight, I decided to add one more section of the book here the Introduction, just to give you one more idea of what’s in it before it comes out. I am hoping to have the copy next week sometimes, but who knows with they way shipping goes these days. My fingers are crossed, and all I can do now is wait. The other pieces I have shared are just excerpts from chapters but the Intro is quite a bit shorter, so I will share it all. Hopefully it’ll give you an idea of what the book is about, why I wrote it, and maybe even a desire to read it when it’s printed.

Gratitude Introduction

I wrote this book as a reminder to me, and hopefully a help for others, to begin the process of, or remind ourselves of, the things we have in life to be grateful for. There is so much in life to be grateful for. Gratitude changes our attitude, and helps us focus on the good in life. Gratitude lifts us above the problems in life and helps us find solutions. Gratitude helps us see all that is good in our lives and turns our attention to those things, rather than the hard and bad. Not that those things don’t exist, but often when we can look back and see the good, the hard and bad don’t seem quite as big. Instead, we are able to look ahead at solutions, or at least see that we have conquered so much, so we can keep conquering. I hope you will use this book as a work book, but as a beginning or middle, not an end. Being grateful is a lifelong pursuit.

Throughout this book I will talk about 6 areas of gratitude. Obviously, there are way more areas, but this will hopefully help you get started on your journey to being more grateful. I know it has helped me as I have written it. At the end of this book, I will have the categories listed again with space to continue writing. You may fill these pages as your read this book, or it may take you weeks, months or years to complete all the spaces of all, or one particular area. You may also decide to create your own book for those things you are grateful for and not use any of the spaces provided. The goal is to help you get started on a lifelong path of being grateful. Whether you’ve been on this path of gratitude your whole life already, or are just starting out, I hope this book helps you move forward with new insights, and new ideas or ways to have gratitude every day.

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the what I’ve been working on lately. I hope you are setting goals and achieving them in your life, and that you take time everyday to work on them, or at least most days. What are some of your goals? How are you working to achieve them? What are you grateful for today?

Nature

Today I am going to share another excerpt from my next book about gratitude. I love nature. I love being outside. There is something very relaxing, even if it’s in my own yard, about being outdoors. There is a renewal in nature. I am grateful I grew up in an area of the country where we were short distances from some of the most beautiful National Parks in the United States. We spent a lot of time in Zion National Park when I was a kid. I loved hiking in the Grand Canyon, and visiting the beautiful state parks that dot the area around Southern Utah are beautiful as well, Cedar Breaks and Red Cliffs to name a couple.

Image result for Southern Utah — Cedar Breaks

I now live in Alaska, and it is a stark difference from the desert I grew up in. But I have learned that there is beauty everywhere around me. When we think of an ideal setting in nature, somewhere we would love to spend time, we each have different locations we think of. Some think of sitting on a beach relaxing or maybe snorkeling or surfing. Others think of hiking through slot canyons and sandstone. Some people think of the forest and a hiking trail to the top of a mountain, or a refreshing lake. No matter where we go, there is beauty. So here are a couple of thoughts on the two places I have spent most of my life.

Image result for Mount McKinley National Park — Denali

I grew up in the desert southwest, in Southern Utah. Not much water, it seemed like we were always having a drought and having to conserve water. But the sage brush, I love the smell and color. The rocks and mountains, I love the red and orange, sometimes yellow and even white rocks found in that area, along with the white trunks of the aspen, the green leaves in the summer, and where I lived, it snowed in the winter. I loved every season. It was amazing what would grow there as well. We had a garden, as well as fruit trees, and my mom always has beautiful flowers around the house and yard. There is so much inspiration and peace there.

Now I live in Alaska, and there is beauty. Usually there is no worry about drought here, although we have had a few wildfires rip through our community in recent years. The trees are green all summer, so many trees. It rains regularly, and I don’t know if it’s from growing up in the desert or what, but I love the rain, I love the sound of rain, and I love the fresh smell of rain. In the winter, the snow is always fresh (because it snows a lot). When it gets really cold, the hoar frost is the most beautiful thing, it’s like God dumped glitter, the perfect amount everywhere, and it just glistens. Looking out the windows during the day, there is always some sort of animal to see, whether it’s birds, fox, moose, on rare occasion a bear. It is beautiful!

I love hiking, biking, and exploring the world around me. Because of that I have had many experiences in nature that I am grateful for. What is your favorite part of nature? Do you have a favorite National Park or place that you visited as a child? I would love to hear about some of your favorite places in nature in the comments.

I decided to write another book similar to the first one that you can see on the homepage of my website. As with the first book I would like to share some of what I have written. This book will be about Gratitude. I haven’t come up with a name yet, but I am almost done writing. This has been a wonderful process, just like the first, in reminding me about the importance of gratitude. Nothing I have accomplished in this life have I done completely by myself, even though I like to do a lot of things as much as I can on my own. But there are so many people and resources along the way that have influenced me and helped to get to where I am now. I am reminded in writing this book to be grateful and to say thank you. I am sharing today a brief section about where and how I have gained some of the skills that I have. Very little of my education has come from formal schooling beyond High School. Hopefully it will give you some ideas of where to go to find information and education.

This first one is education I did receive from a college, but it was a distance learning program and didn’t have any “college credit” associated with it. When my kids were little, I wanted to learn how to sew better. I thought at one point I wanted to be a seamstress for a living. I wanted to learn basic sewing principles and techniques as well as how to make my own patterns. I looked online and found a course offered through a university in Arizona. The class was in hard copy book form for the majority of the work, and the tests were given online. The final was submitted through the mail in picture form. It was a good class. The things I learned in this class allowed me to make my daughters some dresses completely from scratch, I made so many shorts for all my kids, as well as pajama pants and fleece jackets. I still make my own dresses and on occasion I make skirts, pants, and as well. The things I learned in that class have stuck with me, and I am grateful to have found the class online, as I searched for a while to find one that wasn’t in person, and for the knowledge that it gave me to both make clothing, as well as know I didn’t want to do that for a living. But the things I learned have stuck with me, and helped me in my business as I have ventured into fabric panels for home décor and quilting.

I love to cook, but I haven’t always liked to eat super healthy. When I started to get in better shape, I decided I needed to learn to cook better so that I could make healthier meals for our family, as well as make things taste good. I didn’t take online or book courses for this, I decided there was enough free information just on the TV. I love watching cooking shows, and shows like America’s Test Kitchen and Cooks Country were really great helps. I liked those as well because they had the science behind why things worked and why they tasted better. I’m definitely not a gourmet cook even now, but as I watched those shows with the intent to understand and apply what I was learning, my ability to make better tasting food increased, and the kids now say that I am a good cook and they like almost everything I make. That’s a huge win! I also like that we eat a lot healthier when I cook at home as compared to fast food, or boxed foods. Now, there are so many videos online with recipes that make finding good, healthy food recipes easy, and make learning how to cook easy and inexpensive.

Painting is a new found love of mine. New as in the last 6 or 7 years. This was not something even on my radar until I took my daughters to an art class offered by a friend. They came home with some awesome art that I decided I wanted to try. The art teacher created a series of lessons online called Createful Christmas and I decided to try it. Fortunately, they turned out fairly good initially, because I liked it and kept going. I decided I liked watercolor more than acrylics so I started to search the internet for online courses. There are a ton of free courses, as well as many very reasonably priced sites that offer lessons for a monthly fee, usually $10 or less. I also picked up books about watercolor techniques at the library and our local bookstores. I have learned so much, but I think the thing I love about painting more than anything, is how relaxing it is for me. I can be up-tight and frustrated with life and sit down and paint, and it all just melts away. I am grateful for that initial class my kids took and the inspiration it was to me. I am grateful for the many resources on the internet and you tube where people are willing to share their talents with the world, and I am grateful to be able to try something new.

This is just a short synopsis of one of the chapters in my coming book. I hope that you looked at the ways you have been educated throughout your life. Getting any type of knowledge is important, we should never stop learning. So, whether it’s a college education, or a crazy mashup of a variety of other sources, or a combination of both, learning should never end. I hope you take time to look at your knowledge, and be grateful for the sources, whatever they are, that have helped you get where you are today. I would love to hear about something you have learned recently.

Book

Friday was a super exciting day, as I searched for my book online and found it on the Barnes and Noble website! It is a little bit surreal to see it actually being published, not only as an eBook, but also in actual print, hardcover, real life. My kids prefer books to Nooks and electronic reading in a lot of instances. I am not as picky, however, I am suddenly really excited for the actual book to land on my doorstep, hopefully soon!

My book is about setting goals. I tend to set goals, rarely tell people about them, strive to accomplish them, and then move on to the next thing. Sometimes I forget how important it is to include people in my goals, or at least let people close to me know what I am doing. Case in point: My husband is very supportive of whatever I decide to do. He knows I am ultra conscientious of our money, more so than he is, so he knows I am not going to frivolously spend money on things of little value, at least most of the time. I know that when he comes to me with larger purchase, which we always discuss, that he has done his research, and most often the purchase will assist him in his business, or repairing cars, etc. and will be an asset. But we discuss big things of that nature. What I didn’t talk to him about was that I was writing a book. Not because I didn’t want him to know, but because I just did it, that’s what I tend to do. I learned to paint late at night, I sew when he is at work, much of what I do he is unaware, or only slightly aware of because he either doesn’t see me doing it, or he is busy getting his stuff done. When we work together on his jobs, most of the conversations revolve around building houses (that’s what he does for a living), fixing cars (that’s his biggest hobby), or our kids.

So when I found my book online, I was super excited. He happened to call me just minutes after I found it, and I was so excited that I told him my book was online and available for purchase! There was silence, and then he said, “You wrote a book?” I thought, “Wow, did I not tell him that?” It is super exciting to accomplish goals, and some people really need those words of affirmation from people, which is an awesome boost to help us keep going. I think in some ways I really do like those words, but if I don’t get them it doesn’t slow me down, I just keep going with the next goal. But after he found out, he was happy for me, and wanted to know what it was about. It made me feel good to know he was interested. I thought about how often I see people doing great things, think to myself, “that’s really cool that they are doing that,” and then move on with life. How much benefit would it be if I just said to them, “That’s really cool, great job!” I think as we go through life, we, or probably mostly me, get wrapped up in what we are doing, we see things, think it’s great, and then just keep going with what we’re doing. I was grateful that day for his kind words. I hope I can see others better, and help motivate through my kind words as well.

My youngest son came to me the other day and wanted to know how I focus my mind. I told him it’s not always focused, but that setting goals, and going about your day doing good is a great way to maintain focus. When we set goals we have a purpose, we have something for our mind to work on, to think about. Setting goals also sends us in a direction, we are no longer floating along wherever the wind takes us. I am grateful for the goals I have set in my life, and now see how they have and are changing me for the better. There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 year ago. The second best time is now.” I often look back at my life and wish I had started doing the things I am doing now, long ago. How much further ahead would I be? But at the same time, I can’t live in the past, so now is the best time to start for the future. I don’t think 20 years ago I had a desire to write a book, or at least not a huge one, but I’m glad I didn’t wait for another 20 to accomplish the goal now. Now, on to the next goal, what will it be? Learning how to market books possibly! I hope you take opportunity to set a (or some) goal(s) today, so in 20 years you can look back and see how far you’ve come. If you need help figuring out what to do, you can check out my book on Barnes and Noble here.