writing studio

A Little Peek Around Joyful Pause Cottage (video)

From the raised bed gardens to the corner herb garden on my deck everything is planted making it feel so alive around Joyful Pause Cottage, our home, and our property. It feels so magical!

I’ve even begun picking a few of the blossoms and have them drying in my flower press for future art projects to add to my Esty shop! I hope you enjoy the little (video) peek around my little corner of the world!

Click here or below to travel along via this short video…

XO

Barb

                  

A Dancing Fairy (and Grasshopper!) Inside Joyful Pause Cottage. Come See the Video.

It has been one of the most magical June’s I can remember in a long time. Though I know it’s just the beginning of the month. But I’m feeling like the difficulties of 2020 are beginning to show the gifts of why we had to go through what we did.

For me, I’m deeply appreciating things even more than I did before. The simple things. Like growing a vegetable garden this year, paying even more attention to the flower and shrub gardens around my Joyful Pause Cottage and home, quiet weekend mornings sipping coffee out front with John, and catching moments like this when a fairy and grasshopper dance in the sparkling light coming through the shade on my window…

Click here to watch the video I captured of it, or on the video below… 

Wishing you a most magical week.

XO,  Barb

The Art of the Pause

Mid-summer I began dabbling in mixed media collage. It’s a whole new way for me to embrace pausing in yet a different way. Like writing, when I’m in the flow, nothing else can enter my brain. I’m finding when choosing different layers to collage (papers, paint, and images) I’m not really thinking of anything, but just being with what is.

Yesterday I finished this collage on canvas to support the fact I recently renamed my writing cottage to Joyful Pause Cottage. This 10 x 12 space — a ‘room of my own’ and separate from my house —sits off the southeast corner of our deck. It was built in 2009 as a labor of love by my hubby as a place I could come to as I began my journey of writing two children’s books, three memoirs, and I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve written to date. But let’s just say LOTS!

But it’s become so much more than where I write, that I had been feeling this inner nudge to change its name for quite some time. Joyful pause is also about the joyful paws that have been part of my tribe in helping me evolve over the years — especially three special needs dachshunds. And if you look at the bottom of the collage you’ll see a paw print image to represent each one of them — Frankie, Joie, and Gidget. All three of their sweet and loving spirits remain here in this space with me.

Joyful Pause is now the space in which I collage, write, provide oracle readings via Zoom with clients and for my Youtube channel, meditate, dream of possibilities, and take joyful pause moments to glance out my windows to be inspired by my gardens or connect with the birds, bunnies, turkey, deer, or squirrels that I’ve been blessed to see here in my yard often.

xo,

Barbara

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