What a weekend!

It has been quite a productive weekend for me. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I did a lot of cleaning. I also decided that I want to start getting up at 6AM...which is very, very, very early! But I set my alarm, went to bed early, and voila! I was up right at 6! I set both my phone alarm and my radio clock alarm. I snoozed my phone alarm once but the radio went off like 30 seconds later and I just got up. It was magical, especially because I never get up that easily. We will see if it continues, but it was great today.

I had wanted to go for a walk right when I got up, but it was still very dark outside. I don't even remember the last time I was up before the sun. So I made some tea, put on a load of laundry, and listened to the radio until 6:50 when the sun was rising. I walked for a little over 30 minutes and it was a great way to start the day. It was also nice to be outside without it being a million degrees.

By 9AM I had done everything on my to-do list for the day except catch up on my Qur'an reading. That was also a weird experience. I decided to make another to-do list with my "nagging tasks" as Gretchen Rubin (see previous post) calls them. I also added make a plan for my Happiness Project and make an inspiration board (!) to the list. (An inspiration board is basically just anything that inspires you and I couldn't wait to start working on mine.) My dad also asked me (half-jokingly) if I wanted to paint a bookshelf downstairs and I decided I might as well. I'm not a very artsy person (so I thought!) but why not? Well...I loved painting the bookshelf!! I don't know why, but it made me want to be more arts-and-crafty. Obviously painting a bookshelf is much simpler than making an actual painting, but I was inspired. It was very relaxing and I didn't have to think of anything except the paint. I also got lots of paint on me, which was sort of funny to me because I'm usually so clean and un-messy.

So this evening I went to the store and bought a foam poster board and a couple craft supplies (I already have a lot, as I discovered yesterday) to start my inspiration board. I pulled together some of my favorite quotes (I have quite a lot, if you haven't noticed.) and pictures. I didn't particularly feel like printing anything out and I felt like putting my newfound craftiness to the test, so I got some white paper and various crafty writing supplies and wrote the quotes by hand. I only did a few, but I'm quite happy with them. Here are a couple examples:

They're not perfect but I think that's what makes the board special.

I also wrote a quote down and decided to WATERCOLOR the white paper. LOVE!

I also like that the quotes are in my handwriting because that makes it more self-affirmation and inspiring to me. I think I might print out, but we'll see.

So I was very pleased by myself after this watercoloring (I am clearly easily impressed.) and I decided I wanted to draw. I am the world's worst artist, so this was quite the decision. I drew a sunflower with poster markers. The petals are outlined in sharpie and colored in with colored pencil. Multi-media, guys! Here it is:

Clearly I'm no Picasso but I was pleased with it. It looks more like a daisy than a sunflower though. Oh well.

So after this, I needed more painting!! I decided to paint the entire foam board so if there were blank spaces they would be colorful instead of white. That was sort of the reason; mostly I just wanted to paint! This was my end result:

The corners are cut off some because I apparently had it angled when I took the picture in Photobooth, but you get the idea. I like the swirly ones because they look like flowers to me.

I haven't actually put anything on the board yet because I need to print out pictures first and do more quotes, but I am happy with my progress! And I was happily surprised with my artistic-ness. Like I said, not very much talent, but I like it a lot. Maybe I'll bring some paint to Boston with me. We will see.

Anyway, I'm off to do a little reading and go to bed so I can get up early again!