LSNE Days 5-8

I'm continuing to make progress on learning something new everyday in Shimelle's September class.  Wednesday, Sept. 5, was a busy day for me - I taught class, held office hours, attended a work meeting, made a bunch of phone calls and then went to a school event. It was the most activity I had done outside of the house since we got back from Europe. And it felt great! To have a normal, busy day. Lesson learned: Sometimes a busy day is a good day.  The prompt for Sept. 6 was to think of something for which you are grateful.  I wrote "I am grateful for new recipes, home-cooked meals and my morning cup of coffee."  The first two items reflect the gratitude I feel towards my friends who are bringing us dinner once a week. Not only is the food a tremendous help, I have learned a few interesting recipe ideas (both the kids loved the homemade macaroni and cheese; I loved the idea of adding diced chicken and/or broccoli to tortellini in pesto). I also tried and loved Stacy's Sweet Potato and Chicken Salad.  Super yummy! As a bonus, Clara likes it, too.  As for the morning cup of coffee, every morning for over 25 years, whenever Paul is home, he brews a pot of coffee, so that I have a cup ready for me when I stumble out of bed. So grateful for that!

On Day Seven, I was reflecting on how I spent my time. And, I realized that the 20 Days to Organize and Clean Your House Challenge is working well for me because I laid so much of the groundwork for it this year by doing a lot of organizing and purging early on in conjunction with my "One Little Word" for 2012.  I'll be checking in and blogging about my OLW soon.  The journaling reads: "It takes a lot less time to clean a room that I've already organized.  Finally, Sept. 8 brought a challenge to learn a new skill. As I mentioned in this post, I learned how to make photo collages in Pic Monkey. 
I'm continuing to really enjoy this project. It's fun to use up some of the little bits I have in my collage containers. As you are no doubt realizing, I have a HUGE collection of stuff. I'm trying to add a little bit of consistency by having all the artwork be bits of paper that I cut and paste (no drawing, painting, etc.); by always featuring a round circular embellishment from the same company (I have to figure out where they came from so I can share it); and by including the day's number in the collage. One of the things I really like about this project is that, in addition to forcing me to be mindful of life's lessons,  it is also a subtle chronicle of what I'm doing this month. How's your LSNE journey going?