This Was May

Well, I have a confession to make. I’m writing this monthly recap post for May and well, we still have a couple of weeks in May left. So maybe this post should be called, “This Was {Part of} May” instead. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me. We’re going out of town at the end of this week, and I just realized that it might be a little difficult to find time to write so here I am, writing about May in the middle of May. 🙂

This month has been all about writing for me since I have been putting together a workbook on creative retreats as part of #infobomo—Infopreneur Book Month. (P.S. That little workbook ended up becoming a paperback on Amazon!) It has been a great community, and the ladies who created it put together more resources than I could ever have imagined. That said, it has also been a lot of work.

I never realized that so much needs to go into creating a workbook and since this is new territory, it has definitely taken up much of my free time. But it is still fun to do, and I have a few more ideas of workbooks I’d like to create as resources for you in the future. May has definitely been the month where I was bitten by the workbook writer bug.

It is exciting to see this workbook take shape. In the photo above, I was playing around with patterns for cover ideas. And on the left is the manuscript itself. At this point, it is going to be about 60 pages of personal retreat ideas, worksheets, creative prompts, and printables. (It ended up being 114 pages—I love this book so much!)

I cannot wait to share more of this with you! Taking time to do creative retreats has been so incredibly important in my life, especially now that my time is limited as a stay-at-home mommy. 🙂

My sweet husband bought me some of the Postman’s Knock calligraphy worksheets for Mother’s Day, and I’ve been slowly but surely working through them. My letters need a lot of love (as seen above, haha) but it is so therapeutic and fun to write these letters. I love that she shows you how to write them with a calligraphy pen AND with a gel pen. (You can “cheat” and fill in the downstrokes to fill out the letters which I’ve totally been doing.)

We went over to the Oregon coast recently and walked along this huge stretch of sand. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to going to the beach in my jeans and tennis shoes; that still kind of cracks me up having been raised on the beaches in Southern California. Still, the quietness of these beaches reminds me of the off-season in California where you have the whole shore to yourself. It would be so fun to go on a long run on this beach. I need to do that one of these days. (Probably should get back in running shape first. ;))

The end of May also brought with it this fun 30 Day Creative Challenge I hope you’ll join. I have been incorporating 20 minutes a day of creative time into my life this past month and am loving that I am actually seeing some progress on projects. I have great hopes that I will finally finish a scarf I started last fall, and possibly, maybe get caught up with my daughter’s photo book. A girl can dream, right? 🙂

DecoArt sent me some fun fabric paint to play with this month, so I made a painted and embroidered onesie for a friend’s new baby. I’ll definitely be using this technique for more projects in the future.

I was bitten by the workbook writer bug and simultaneously bitten by the air-dry clay bug this month. You should see my desk in our office right now. It is literally covered with drying clay pieces. Magnets, necklace beads, and even some tiny donuts (or maybe they’re Cheerios) are waiting for me to paint them. It is such a satisfying craft. I will definitely be sharing more projects with air-dry clay in the near future.

So, how was your May? Tell me about your adventures in creativity in the comments!