Everyone has heard of Pinterest right? Well long before the internet became this valuable source of material, I was cutting and collecting from magazines and other paper sources. I compiled all of these snippets into something called my Dream Book. I call it my tactile Pinterest. In this book I also write down notes involving goals, self-improvement, wishes and even recipes. I have been working on this Dream Book since college and as dorky as it sounds it has really helped boost my confidence to see some of the things I have accomplished! Every few years/months or whenever I feel I need to do a self-assessment, I make a wandering mind map of my accomplishments, hobbies and goals. I like to make this book super colorful and I don't limit what I can dream up. This book is a safe space for all of my outrageous ideas. I use pictures from home and garden magazines to give myself inspiration to design rooms in my house, even if I can't afford the things I put down, the point of my Dream Book is to be a dumping ground of all the things I hope for. 

Any time I have a vacation week I try to build in a day or two without any plans around all my other appointments and jam-packed visits with friends and family. For this July vacation I only had today with absolutely nothing planned. Usually I get wrapped up in the vortex of cleaning the entire house, but today was a beautiful day, so after getting my oil changed and doing the daily essentials (dishes, laundry, picking up scattered cat toys) I decided to head to downtown Wickford (the small harbor-side village in my town) and snap some pictures for painting. I also looked around the shops and got some art inspiration from the galleries and resisted buying things. When I went home I finished up the collage painting I had been working on and decided to use one of my photos from the day as inspiration for a new painting/collage piece. I love building the layers of paper to create texture on my paintings.