Journal | February 2019

Welcome to my February journal. Each month I’m gathering my musings and noticings captured during fleeting moments during the month. I’m documenting the stories and moments from the month to create my own regular gratitude and journaling practice. Journaling about life can be achievable and is a way to connect to the experiences that make up the patchwork of our lives. Rather than lengthy prose, snippets of memories and photos can capture the feelings from the moments that are equally as valuable. There are no rules to journaling. It is space for you to fill in whichever way you choose.

February was a month where I started to settle into the year. For us it was a mixture of walks, taking photos, continuing to sort elements of our home and capturing life in a more regular routine. Here are my February journal notes.

…We had thick snow on the 1st of the month and had to head to the doctors for Chloe’s injections. I remember the feeling of the snowflakes falling, the gentle breeze whipping up the flakes around us.

…The cold weather was contrasted with super warm temperatures and blue skies, making it a month of extremes to shake up the start of the year and connect us to the seasonal shifts and how changeable our weather can be.

…The updates and building work in our home are progressing slowly. The scaffolding came down at last from the roofers and a new dawn of beautiful light flooded our home. Work has started on our utility room.

…The start of the month saw me reading so much, bouncing between a few baby related books and my stack of non-fiction books about nature, forest therapy and starting a small business.

…I’m enjoying the moments when I’m reaching more for my DSLR to capture photos of Chloe during the day. The light is much better and my head and energy levels have started to feel in a place to capture the moments. I hadn’t captured enough of the early days in the way I wanted and it instigated a push to use my DSLR everyday to capture little moments.

…I’ve created lots of content ideas this month and have a set of blog posts started. I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to be back in this space. Being a mum has changed so much in my life and I want to retain my own identity, and give myself something else to focus on and develop whilst on maternity leave and build more regular writing into my week.

…I finally managed to weed and prepare our raised beds in our garden. I’ve been noticing everyday the slow growth of the bulbs coming up in our garden containers. I’ve spent a few hours clearing space for the spring planting and deciding the seeds to buy for a year of growing.

…I managed to finally finish off handwriting our thank you cards for all of Chloe’s gifts. I am so embarrassed about how long it took. I managed to get the 30 something thank you cards written and posted for all of Chloe’s wonderful gifts.

…I started the month with a few random acts of kindness. Last year I did this by gifting coaching to people, and this year I’m mixing it up and making a note, just for me, of what I’m doing. I want to bring more actions like this into my life and how I live. I will pick my moments and hopefully try to make someone’s day a little happier in some way.

…I headed with friends to our local city farm one Friday morning. Chloe slept through the whole trip however it was a lovely time out of the house seeing friends and knowing that Chloe will love visiting the farm and allotment gardens when she gets older.

…As well as capturing images of our day and of Chloe, I’m aiming to take more varied photos of nature each week to connect with my word of the year Bloom. I know that I feel in flow behind my camera and love trying to develop myself as I shoot.

…Our (almost) daily walk around our local park enabled more to notice the crocus coming up, allowed us to watching the blossom gradually come out across a number of different trees and the light levels change during the month.

…I started to capture more video clips of Chloe and uploaded images and videos I’ve captured so far into the 1SE (One Second Everyday) app to create a mini movie of an image or video everyday since Chloe came into our world. I love how the snippets show her develop and we can watch how she has changed and grown. It’s such a clever app and shows us what our weeks look like.

I hope that you will join me in noting down the small moments each month to help you establish a gentle gratitude practice and a way to journal your memories in a simple way. Here are a few of my favourite images captured this month.