what I learned this spring

It’s the beginning of summer for us in Australia, and time for me to write my favourite list. I started keeping track of what I learned a few years ago thanks to Emily P. Freeman, and it became a way of caring for my soul, not just something to write. I hardly wrote on the blog during our winter and spring, but I never stopped writing down what I was learning. In a world that keeps changing and moving, I need these practices to keep me grounded and firmly here. Maybe you should try it too? The easiest way for me to do it is to have a place in my journal (like a page), and whenever I learn something, I go there and jot it dow. Re-reading the list at the end of the season (I keep my list according to the seasons) puts a smile on my face every time.

Our spring was warm and beautiful, and here’s what I learned:

I learned how to bullet journal (see above). I love it and will probably write more about it in the coming weeks. The short story is that I enjoy having everything in one place, and it’s become a creative space for me. More life-giving creative outlets are usually a good thing. For an explanation about bullet journaling, you can start here. My version is this one: It’s a homemade planner with whatever you want in it. The end.

You can’t really sift wholewheat flour. I started sifting flour this year, and feel super grown up doing so, but when I sifted wholewheat flour in October, the bran was left behind in the sifter.

For a few weeks in early October (our spring), the evening air smelled like perfume. I think it was jasmine or something else, but all I had to do was step outside for lungfuls of the sweetest smelling perfume. It wasn’t like this last year, and by the end of October, the scent was gone. But it was delightful while it lasted and a good excuse to get outside in the evening.

Grocery shopping in person is a major energy and decision-making drain for me. Even if I have a good list. Even if I meal plan. I’ve been using a few places for online shopping in October and November, and it’s been a sanity saver.

How to wash my face. Apparently you can learn how to take care of your skin as a 35-year-old, and adding a skincare routine to my life gave me so much more than clearer pores. You can read about that here.

Always keep bacon around. This has been a lesson of 2017, and you will have to trust me on this. When you have bacon in the fridge, all things are possible. Including (especially) happy meal times with children. Also, breakfast for dinner. Also, fast tomato sauces. Also, fast white sauces. The sky is the limit.

Putting up photos is a good thing. My phone has lots of photos. My laptop holds lots of photos. Photos that I just look at, on our walls, in a book? Not so many. I changed that up with a giant photo board for our wall as a gift for my husband’s birthday. It brings us all so much joy to see these memories from the past.

The pruning of the trees in the forest is done by the seasons, and I think it is the same with us. I wrote a bit about the way time can cut back our branches for GraceTable in October.

Re-reading my old blog posts reminded me of the ups and downs of the past years and reminded me of the woman I used to be, the good and the bad. It was a sweet walk down memory lane, and it gave me many reasons to be grateful for this space and your investment in it. I wrote about that here.

Ecclesiastes wasn’t written by Solomon (blog post coming about this soon). I finished my first grad school class two weeks ago. Studying again was one of the most enriching and even fun parts of 2017 (also one of the most stressful). I learned a lot from the class and from the process of formal study, but one little lesson was a comment my professor made in class during our 45 minutes on Ecclesiastes. I’ve been told by almost anyone who mentions the book that it was written by Solomon, but he said most scholars – conservative and critical – dispute this claim now mostly because of the Persian loan words in the book. Persian didn’t exist when Solomon was king.