It’s been a while since I’ve shared Tiny Flourishes. The idea is to take note of things in your life that may seem small, but help you flourish and enjoy life.
Here’s my list from January:
1. Lichen Class
I’ve decided to try to do more things in our community and in searching for ideas, I ran across a class about lichen at our local nature sanctuary. A lichenologist (I didn’t know such a person existed!) taught the class. I loved it! We learned so much about lichen and now I see it everywhere.
It’s so interesting how our brains tend to almost totally skip over things we don’t know about, but once it’s brought into our awareness we notice it everywhere.
2. Trip to Florida
This isn’t a tiny thing, but we did get to visit friends in Florida for a few days. We had a great time with them. Florida was a bit cool, but warmer than Kentucky!
3. Poems for Strangers
When we were in Florida, we came upon a young woman who set up a stand with a typewriter and offered poems for strangers. Normally, I would walk past something like that and later wish I’d stopped, but this time I stopped and had her write a poem for me.
4. Spotting pink lichen
We saw all kinds of wildlife in Florida – manatees, dolphins, flamingos, macaws, alligators and more – but I got ridiculously excited when I spotted pink lichen. We learned about this type in the lichen class. It’s called Christmas Wreath lichen.
5. Cooking on our wood stove
Early in January we had an ice and snow storm that knocked out power for a couple days. We put our wood stove to the test to heat the house, which worked great! When we chose the stove, we made sure to choose one that we could cook on. That also worked great, so we had hot food and a warm house throughout the storm.
6. My daughter’s wedding!
Also not a small thing! She got married on January 2. The wedding was beautiful. I did the food for the reception and it turned out really well. It was a lovely night of celebrating!
7. Our anniversary
Jim and I celebrated our 37th anniversary. Time flies!
8. Lunch in a greenhouse
We went to lunch at Kentucky Native Cafe. They serve inside the greenhouse during the winter. It’s such a treat to be warm in the sun and surrounded by plants in January!
9. Sledding
The winter storm brought enough snow to sled. We had a great time with our kids and their dogs, sledding down the hill.
10. Daily art
I’ve been making time to do a little art nearly every day. Having that time to create and get into a flow state has been really good.
How about you?
Share the tiny things that are helping you to flourish right now! Leave a comment below.
Some fun things from January for me included trying an Intro to Tai Chi class and a Sound Immersion class at the library. Attended the Disney Lion King Broadway production with my daughter. Really enjoying workouts from Jump & Jacked and Body Project. I attend a monthly gathering of ladies to work on crafty and sometimes no-so-crafty projects and I usually bring the dessert to share at lunchtime. I made Hot Fudge & Caramel Chocolate Poke Cake. Oh my goodness! It was so good. I usually have leftovers to take home, but not this time. Since my grandma's funeral in August, I've felt this urge to reconnect with my cousins. There is a pretty big age gap between the five oldest cousins and the other seven. My three kids are older than my youngest cousin. Anyway, I made up a 'get to know you" questionnaire and wrote a letter introducting myself, my hubby and kids and sent it to all my cousins. I'm Facebook friends with a couple cousins. I'll wait and see who responds. Recently, in two different places, I've seen color walks mentioned. I feel like I need to give it a try now. It's pretty chilly in MIchigan right now, but the next chance I get, I'm picking a color and then going for a walk and try to find objects in my chosen color.
Nikki, you’ve got such great ideas on your list! I love how you’re reconnecting with your cousins and the color walk sounds like a fun idea. I haven’t made that cake in forever, but it’s a good one!