Post Turkey Post

Here I am on the last day of the Thanksgiving Weekend, relaxing. I can hear the husband out there moving fence while I'm sitting here, at the open windows watching the sun begin it's swan song for today. The temp is mild and everything is looking pretty fresh from the recent rains.

Turkey Day was delightful. My daughter hosted the whole tribe for a wonderful dinner and lots of fun. See her blog for some of the activity she put us to.

If you look back a bit you will see the bounty I received for my birthday. Well, lucky, lucky me, it continues. Look what showed up in my mail from Randi

This journal, like everything Randi, is so beautiful and tactile. I have several other things etc. that she has sent me, and left me when she moved away. I love them so I tend to use them as decorative pieces. This journal came with a strict admonishment to USE it. And so I will.

After all, who could resist painting and sewing and scribbling on pages like these? Thank you so much Randi. She knows I have a big place in my heart for her, just because of who she is and because she is the person who got me started on all of this altered and mixed media fun.

I do have an excuse for not starting on this baby yet. Several posts ago I shared a journal of security envelopes inspired by Mary Ann from Dispatch from LA.
I have been at work in this wonderful messy crackly thing.
It has an addition to it's cover. The flower was on a birthday card I received from another Mary Ann, a very special friend. What I love about this is the way each page becomes part of another because of all of the windows. Journaling is usually a planned activity for me. I have been struggling to be more spontaneous and this encourages me. It sits right on the desk, handy for doodling or random gluing of whatever scrap I discover in my hand. None of these pages are probably finished. They just keep evolving. But I thought I'd share a bit of where I'm going here. I find it very satisfying.




This left page has a clear pocket with the 1000 Journal Pages card in it. It is a fold over so it is like a little journal in a journal. Do you have any idea how much that tickles me? So odd, how we have these little 'things' that don't really have words to describe them, but that are such powerful parts of our inner works.
I have been including the waxed paper I use when I am painting in the pages of journals that I make. Another one of my favorite things.

Do you work in several journals at once? The orderly part of me wants to finish one before I start in another, but the want-it-all-want-it-now part of me loves jumping around.

This started out to be a page on which I cleaned up the last bits of paint left from another project in the altered book I'm also using. She has crazy lips and her hair looks like mine felt the day I did this. A nice space all ready for some words.
This next page stinks. No really, it smells. I was in one of the corrals with my granddaughter awhile back and she began picking olives (we have a literal forest of olive trees) and squeezing the juice onto tree trunks, rocks, fence posts and the like painting pictures. The color variations impressed me so I picked up a baggie full and decided to use them in a journal spread. This is particularly meaningful to me because there is evidence that they used to grow and cure a large quantity of olives here on the ranch.
While I had fun experimenting with all the different shades and just smearing this juice all over the pages, it wasn't so fun trying to get the color out of my finger nails! Then, a few days later I discovered the smell. I have some of those perfume samples that come in magazines and I've actually been planning to put them into some of my pages. This seems as good a time as any to do it.

I think I've bent your ear and strained your eyes long enough. I'll leave you with this fragment from the Journal of Jules Renard (see earlier post)..."To seize the fleeing idea by the scruff of the neck and rub it's nose on the paper."