a new journal - of sorts

2013 ended in a hurried, uncomfortable way for me. We lost my father-in-law in November and the mourning period stretched through to the end of the year - Sunday, December 29 to be precise.

Without kvetching or whining too much, I feel as though I missed a lot of what I look forward to during the holidays, Christmas especially. I have written in my journal about it and am launching into 2014 with a fresh outlook.

I just wanted to share a little bit with you about why it has been so long since I posted on my blog.

I love the New Year - I like setting goals for the new year and feeling as though I have a clean slate;
that excitement of seeing 12 clean months stretch out in front of you like an empty highway begging to be driven upon.
Eventually I hope to be able to have this feeling every morning, but as of today feeling it now, at the start of this new year in front of us, is enough.

A friend of mine up north suggested a free facebook group to me that sounded very interesting - it's called the Documented Life Project. The premise in a nutshell is combining a planner and your journal into one, and filling it out with weekly challenges. 
I decided to post my results here so I have them all sort of collected together in one place online. 

this is the planner I chose - it's a lovely one made by Gallery Leather, found at Barnes and Noble here is Issaquah, Washington - near where I live. I liked this one because it was a lovely turquoise color, and is Made in the USA! The moleskine ones that were recommended in the group are mostly made in China :(   
So with a little patience and searching through what they had, I hit the jackpot. This is about 6 1/2" wide by 9" tall - larger than the moleskine too, which I prefer.

Week 1 Challenge: photograph, sketch, paint or incorporate your front door.

I drew this with a micron pen, size 005, then watercolored over it with Daniel Smith water colors.

I worked from the photo below - it was too cold to stand outside to draw! :)

There is also an optional class that teaches you how to alter your planner, decorate the cover, and add "tip in" pages; these are really just flaps -\I always thought tips ins are when you add an entire page to your book - not just adding to an existing page-but whatever you call them, I did some. I thought I would take my own path -you know, see what the other folks were doing and just make it up.

So here are my page flap additions as of week 1:

what do you think of it so far?  :)