Another year, another attempt…
How has it been almost a year?? AGAIN?
I felt it was my time to share last year, but apparently it was still not quite time. I hope to share more one day, but for now, all I have time to do is write a quick post. It’s driving me a little insane to leave this website all wonky, unfinished, pages askew… oof. But it will have to wait.
So, then… the reason for this post?
My best friend and I have had many many talks about self care. We’ve had many talks about a lot of things lol, but as we’ve grown, gotten married, and had kids, mostly on similar timelines, we’ve learned a lot, and one of those things is that self care looks a lot different than most people imagine it to be.
When you’re on a budget and a 24/7 caregiver for very young children, it’s not exactly possible to go take a weekend trip to a Cali vineyard, or even go get a pedicure alone, lol! So what does it look like, to refresh and energize one’s self? To pour back into our cup that gets drained in just 47 minutes every morning from changing diapers, cleaning up endless messes, balancing budgets, chasing after kids, running a household, scheduling appointments, grocery shopping, cycling through mounds of laundry, changing out seasonal clothes, changing out outgrown clothes, buying new clothes (see a pattern?), wiping noses and hands, calming big toddler emotions, and on and on. Phew! I’m exhausted just writing that, hah….
So we’ve talked a lot about things we do for ourselves, and also things like insecurities that have been around since childhood. A recent topic was creativity. We both have some insecurities about creating… it always feels “not good enough.” After all, we’re no pros. There’s always someone else better. Many someones.
But it makes us HAPPY. Heck, there’s even information out there about the benefits of just exercising the creative part of the brain! Even if we suck at the output, we enjoy the process, and that’s all that matters.
So here I am, on a challenge 🤣, posting some of my recent creative projects.
A bit of background is that I got into digital planning last year. I’ve always been an avid planner, using paper planners of all kinds, and becoming increasingly more picky about my planners over the years, until I came upon Happy Planners several years back, and then refused to use anything else. I LOVED customizing them with stickers, markers, and more. Well, digital planning has digital stickers, and I thought it would be cool to learn to create my own…just for fun. I’ve been messing around on Procreate on my iPad, though I really am not artistic at all lol! I also have had almost no time to learn or practice different techniques or functions of the app, since I usually only have a few minutes at bedtime to play around.
I also love coloring, and when adults coloring came into style (haha!), I thought it was the best thing ever! I loved getting adult coloring books and using markers, colored pencils, and even gel pens to color them in. It was so relaxing, and I loved listening to music or an audiobook while coloring to calm my brain. Well, I thought it would be fun to create some pages to print and color! (you can also import them into a coloring app and color digitally)
So I made a page of free downloads, which you can find in the top menu, or by clicking here.
I hope you enjoy them, or if you’re an artist, I hope they make you feel amazing about your art 🤣 haha!
I’m off to bed, so goodnight for now!
~Jess