Monday - In Nature's Studio

We're going to take a little tour through Mother Nature's art studio today.  Before we get started, I want to thank everyone for your sweet comments you left on Friday's post.  You all are a bunch of ego boosters, yes you are.  You have convinced me to keep doing what I'm doing, and so I will.

Late Friday evening I received a message telling me that Saturday's craft fair had been canceled, so DH and I decided to get out of the house and go enjoy the gift of a warm day and some autumn color.  He's such a good husband; he reads my blog and he saw that I said I needed to get out more.  I am thankful for such a caring husband.

It was rejuvenating to be out where the air is clean and smells so good, and to have my eyes filled with such beauty everywhere.  I find the sights of autumn to be almost overwhelmingly beautiful, and so inspiring.

We drove through huge aspen groves.  There is a huge aspen colony in Utah named Pando.  It's a group of trees that are all connected by a single root system; it is one of the largest and oldest living organisms.  Up until recently, I had never heard of this.  Then one day I was looking at my friend's Flickr page and he mentioned it; after that it kept coming up in conversations with different people;  I'd hear about it on TV or read it somewhere.  It's such a magical thing, and makes me think of the interconnectedness of us all.  I think that we are all connected just like those aspen.

Ok, I'll quit getting woo woo on you;)  I am off to finish my to-do list for the day!  I have to tell you though, I had the best meeting with an artist friend today.  We've decided to meet once a week to help support each other and hold each other accountable in our goals.  We worked on setting our individual SMART goals and our intentions for what we wanted our meetings to be.  Each week we'll check in and help keep each other on track.  I am so excited about this.  I've felt like I've gotten myself into a rut, and I am so ready to get out.  Having a support system and sharing your goals with another is so important.  Voicing your intentions makes you more accountable than just privately writing them down in a book that nobody else will see.  Our egos come into play here, because we don't want to look like slackers, now do we?

Now I'm really going to go finish my to-do list!  Hope your week is off to a brilliant start!