Daily Treasures and some fun Apps

Where does the time go?  It's good that it's February already -- we are that much closer to spring!  And speaking of spring, this was one of my daily treasure photos that I posted to Instagram recently.  I was very delighted to see seed packets in the store and I had to take a photo of them!  Then I added to it in an app on my phone called Rhonna Designs.  It wasn't a free app, but it lets you do lots of cool effects.

 

 Last Friday the late afternoon sun was out, and I took a wonderful walk to enjoy the rare bit of sunshine. The photo below shows two trees glowing in the sunlight, but then I added a bunch of extra texture and color with an app -- I think the one I used was DistressedFX.  Lots of cool stuff on that app as well.

On Sunday, Chicago got hit with quite a blizzard.  It was also the first day of February, and my cousin made a calendar in which the February page was a wonderful explosion of lovely colors.  I used an app called DXP to blend our snowy backyard tree with her calendar page, and the result is this fun treasure!

 The photo below was of the full moon rising in the blue light of dusk, with tree skeletons in the foreground.  But I played with it in a fun app called InstaBlender and came up with this fun abstract.

 I worked on Saturday, and was perusing one of our books when I found this poem by Vachel Lindsay.  I memorized this poem in grade school, and haven't seen it since, but snippets of it have been floating around in my head.  It was fun to see the full poem and realize that I had remembered a good bit of it!

 Today it was time to begin work on my Valentine bookmarks.  Here's two versions -- both a little rough, but I think I can tweak the design and come up with something by Valentine's Day.

Wishing you sunny days and warm nights!

Daily Treasure

The first week of a new  practice is usually the easiest one.  Now that I'm into my second week of daily treasure hunting, the daily grind of winter has set in and it's a little harder to remember that each day holds treasures.  Especially with the sub-zero temps, traffic-congesting snow and extreme winds.  (Sorry -- that's not supposed to sound so whiney. . .)  But there were treasures each day as well.

 Winter fruits like oranges and grapefruit as especially yummy AND so healthy.  It was good to eat this one a little more mindfully, savoring the juicy sweetness.

 I have fallen in love with this magazine.  Published in the Netherlands and printed in Poland, it is filled with beautiful images and inspiring articles.  I just have two back issues, but I am very tempted to subscribe.  It's a little pricey though.

 I vicariously enjoyed the Documented Life Project last year as fellow bloggers shared their beautiful journal pages.  This year I took the plunge and joined.  The prompt for week 1 was to use a book page as background.  The image of the girl is from my Flow magazine, and the notes are ones I took while reading Christine Valters Paintner's book, Eyes of the Heart.

 Taking the Christmas tree down.  Again, I tried to be mindful and grateful as I took the ornaments off and put them away.  I will be glad for a little extra room in the house, but I will miss the twinkling lights.

Finally, an image of warmth and light on cold and dark winter days.

Wishing you daily treasures this week!

Happy New Year

Welcome to the new year and a fresh start!  In the past few years I have chosen a word for the year, and it has been interesting to see how that specific word impacts me throughout the 12 months.  Last year my word was "perspective", and I think (hope) that my perspective has shifted from being rather narrow and fear centered, to becoming more focused on God and His bigger view of things.  I went through the book "Jesus Calling" each day, looking up the scripture passages at the end of each day's reading.  I was surprised at how many of the entries revolved around "do not fear" passages.  But given how prone I am to fear, it turned out to be a very good thing.

This year my word came in a surprising way -- a dream in early December.  I hadn't even begun to think about a word for the upcoming year when I dreamed that someone gave me an envelope with this word printed on the front.  Before I had a chance to discover what was inside the envelope, I woke up.  I was very disappointed that I couldn't delve further into the word in my dream, but then I felt a gentle nudge reminding me that I could spend a whole year exploring this word.

My word for 2015 is "treasure".  There are so many directions this word can take me, and I think it will prove to be a wonderful theme for this year.  I have begun two practices to help me mine the treasure God sends me each day.  The first is keeping a gratitude journal.  I have done it in the past, and I know it is a great discipline.  The second is on my Instagram account.  I want to post a photo each day that expresses a treasure I have realized.  I am hoping to post these photos to my blog once a week and tell a little bit about them.  Here are the first ones:

 It was a sunny day (not common in the winter in Chicago) and the sunlight reflected on the snowflake design in this gift box and onto my kitchen counter.  It was a delightful design to come upon in the morning.

This is part of a calligraphy piece I did to hang in a prayer room in our church.  It was great fun to create this, and I promise I will show the rest of the piece one of these days, as well as share about this awesome room that we have set up.

 It's my honey!  We were out all day going in different directions, and we enjoyed winding down at Steak and Shake.  Of course Don had to have a shake.  So I guess I ate at Steak and Water.  :-)

 We had a dusting of snow this morning, and driving to church was like a fairy land.  This photo doesn't do it justice, but it was just a quick cell phone shot, and it does convey the story.

In case you want to follow me on Instagram, my name is Sunnytoo, and I am using the hashtag #dailytreasure on each of my daily photographs.