Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

Now, may be even today

1. Describe your perfect Sunday.

2. What things have you accomplished that, before finishing, you were dreading to the depth of your soul? Going to the dentist after three years of abstinence? Reading all the books you had to read for your masters? here is your space to list all those things, then cross them off. It’s OK that you’ve already done them – you need to celebrate striking the big things off your to-do list. Consider adding things you still need to do. You can draw inspiration from seeing them next to a list of all the other things you’ve accomplished.

 

Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

During the week:

1. Write your favourite smells on one page and on the opposite page  - write your favourite sounds.

2. Use another two pages to  get really creative. What is your favourite colour? (Green? stick dome grass here. Yellow? – Find your favourite shades on paint chips at the hardware store and tape them into your journal. Red? Find every related shade of red crayons and doodle on this pages)

Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

During this week, how about you:

1. Start a list of happy songs (how about “Shiny Happy People” from REM or “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond?). Try to add a new song every week from now on. Ask your friends to contribute. (or, we could start a list here! send me your suggestions and we will create one common Very Happy List)

2. Pick a particular time on a particular day of the week and, every week, list what makes you most happy at that specific moment, until you fill up two (!) pages. Watch your moments of joy accumulate, shift, and circle back in again.

Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

In the next 6 days:

1. What is your favourite thing? Cats? Dogs? Reading? Find a bunch of happy quotes about it and write them on one page

2. On the other page create your own personalised happy map of all the countries, cities, and street that mean the world to you. You can use GoogleMaps or anything else that will help you create a map, then print it out and paste it into your book. (Some ideas to get you started: favourite childhood locales – from school to the site of your first kiss; your favourite vacation spots – from a family trip to your honeymoon in Bali)

Happy Weekend: update

I only was able to finish half of my plan for the week! I’ve created my happy list but didn’t’ get to finish the poem. Not that I didn’t have a poem… my printer broke!

Just to re-iterate: my digital camera broke early December and I gave it away to be repaired first week in January –  it is still not being repaired, I haven’t heard anything back from them. I also found out that my printer can’t handle anything but standard A4 paper and only if it’s really thin… So no printing on card stock! And this week – it just stopped printing all together. You cannot even begin to imagine how annoyed I am right now! I had a beautiful plan on how to integrate all those poems, lists etc. into my journal and did involve printing – now I can’t do anything. And you know I don’t feel motivated to be creative about it, cause it’s not much fun when nothing you want to do works:-(

But, at least I discovered PROMARKERs – really cool for colouring:-) They are beautiful, and I really enjoy using them!

Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

For the week to come:

1. There are certain unspoken associations of happiness: cookie-baking grandmas, faithful childhood dogs, a sky full of rainbows. But just because lots of people love something doesn’t mean it’s wrong for you to love it too. Pick your favourite happy cliché, and write about it on one page.

2. Who are your favourite people in the world? List them on one page.

You see – very simple!

Happy Weekend: prompt for next week

So, here we go!

In the next 6 days create following two pages:

1. Make a list of things that make you happy – anything and everything that makes you happy – small, big, profound, simple.

2. If you are familiar with A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and other Shel Silverstein books, you know that he is a master of t

he silly but poignant rhyme. If you never heard of him before – like me – I would highly recommend you check his work out!

Write you favourite Shel Silverstein poem on the next page, and then try to memorise it.  Or, if Shel is not your cup of tea – pick someone else as long as his/her rhymes are FUN!

I will try to doodle my list of things that make me happy, based on the doodle 101 class that  I just subscribed to. The image in this post is from that class. Looks lovely!:-)

Happy Weekend: update

So, the first week and my first update! This was a busy time, I had to create an album and to the first two pages. I spent way too much time on this project and I found it quite challenging – but this is because everything that involves things for real, rather than digitally, makes me feel very nervous and I tend to over-think a lot:-). My album has now 60 pages (just because I found a stash of 60 pages of the same paper:-) ) Each page measures about 17.5x19cm. My next step here is to figure out how the binding rings work – I have no idea! I thought I would just somehow open then and then snap back together, but, no – it’s not that simple:-)

More Happiness Now!

I somehow feel that I am getting too engrossed in some sort soul-searching and self-discovery journey with all the project I’ve started this year. And actually… actually I just want joy and happiness, some sunshine . May be it is the English weather now with its grey and rainy days that make me feel not joyful enough

To do something about it I’ve decided to introduce another arty project into my life!:-) This time it’s NOT digital! (I can’t believe I am saying it) I have so much stash left from last month. I thought I was making a hybrid December Daily so I bought so many papers, album covers, embellishments - none of it used up. It all sits there quietly in a corner and every time my eyes wander there I feel guilty!

Anyway – this project is about using up the stash (as much as I can) and creating something that will make me feel just happy and sunny…

Every week I will publish here a prompt from a wonderful book I received last week called “The Happy Book“. Actually it is already set up as a journal where you can write and be creative but I don’t like the way it’s bounded and I am not comfortable writing in books even if they are made for this:-)

Anyway, as I just said – I will publish two prompts each Sunday and then post the result on Saturday a week later giving me 6 days to complete the tasks. They are easy and fun, so two are absolutely  OK and easy to do in a week.

I will photograph the album, the stash I am using etc. so you can see how the album will be coming together. From quite a long list of tasks I’ve selected 40 – so enough to keep me busy for nearly half a year:-)

To get started for this week the tasks are: