OPEN A DOOR

The second week of 2016 and I already have a lot of catching up to do.  My cold kept me from doing my usual end-of-year activities: de-clutter, reflect, and find a purposeful word to guide me throughout the year. I've been thinking about new words, but nothing has resonated with me yet. Last year's phrase, Letting Go, helped me start the new year by looking at  the pieces of my life and my behaviors that I could let go of and change. I thought about that phrase all year long and it helped me to move through old and new hurtles.

The seed pods on the left and right of the photo are from our wisteria that almost died from the drought. Late in the summer new tendrils started growing up the trellis where the dead branches still hung.

Other words -- Fly, Freedom, Yes, Hope, One Thing at a Time, Create -- have attached themselves to me in other years, and they have been the underlying force that encouraged me to grow.

This year, maybe Adventure will be the one or Nourishment or Intention. But first, I need to de-clutter and reflect before I can feel the purpose for the year.



While thinking about words, I wandered our neighborhood and took photos of doorways. My inspiration was an online watercolor class I took with Jacqueline Newbold, which included segments about painting windows and doors. These are my finished pieces from the class:

I took the photos of my neighborhood's doors and made watercolor sketches of them. They are preliminary sketches and need adjustments:  the houses are a little wavy and out of scale with doors the wrong size compared to the structure around them.  I realized as I was drawing the fronts that I needed to start with the door and fit the rest of the house around the door instead of the other way around.

Here are the sketches of doors:

Maybe that will be my phrase for 2016: Open a new door.

Check our Jacqueline Newbold's website for information about watercolor classes:

http://djnewbold.blogspot.com