Park Butterflies Then, a Daffodil Celebration

This is one of my very favorite journal entries!! For several reasons: 1) right in the midst of designing the page, a "creative spark" took place, gifting me a new, delightful idea 2) the day at the park was one day I actually let my child have a free day playing in the park with a new friend and 3) the farm scene expressed more how I felt about the day than how it would have "photographed".

My day in Lithia Park (a divine mile long strip of gorgeous Ashland park that follows the Lithia Creek up into a valley) with my playful new friend Bettina, culminated a walk that ended up with us laying on top a picnic bench. We lay there for quite some time watching the trees sway and our conversations meander where ever they took us! Quite fascinating and freeing. I mean, how long ago has it been since YOU laid out on a picnic table? I had to capture the view we experienced and wanted to incorporate this colorful card my friend had given me. At first I was going to just glue in the card in the bottom left corner but ~ SPARK ~ the idea, "why don't you cut out the butterflies and allow them to fly all over the page?" OK!!!! And to surprise, when I did that, I also created these fascinatingly shaped windows thru which to see the trees and even more butterflies created by the negative spaces. Thanks Spirit!

A few days later, I was invited to a Daffodil Fest. This was not only to honor the flowers now in bloom (hurrah Spring!) but to pay tribute to my precious mentor student (see my "The Joy of Mentoring" post, December 16, 2009), Kiri's, granma. Seems Granma had an incredible collection of daffodils back east and some of them had traveled here to be planted in rich Oregon soil. And now they were in bloom! So I joined the gathering at my mentor student's parents home and enjoyed meeting the cast of neighbors (who discussed the visiting neighborhood black bear). I was given a tour and so loved the barn and animals that they became the theme for my sunny, animal-sprinkling of a journal entry.

Don't you just love it when creativity is out of your hands and turns out even better than you could have imagined, because of that? Isn't it just divine to be creative?