the 1993 collection is back!

For the last few weeks, I've been stringing beads in the evenings, creating a small gathering of necklaces so I could bring back the 1993 Collection. Something tells me I'll be doing this most evenings this summer, because I just can't stop myself. I love these colors! And this time, I've added some gemstones to a few to add another layer of intention for these Soul Mantras.

Here's the story behind this collection:

When I was in high school, I listened to Lenny Kravitz sing "Flower Child" on repeat, longing to be that girl "dressed in purple velvet with a flower in her hair" who "speaks of liberation on the land and on the sea" living on the West Coast and standing up for what I believed in. Even when I was wearing my boarding school uniform of plaid kilt and button down white Oxford, I wore layers of beaded necklaces that I made sitting cross-legged by the lake behind my dorm. And then in the summer when at home, I'd add a few more layers on my wrists and ankles.

Recently I unearthed these beads in my studio and decided to play with them again after an almost 20-year break. And as I listen to Lenny and Mumford & Sons and Paul Simon and string bead after bead, I'm spending a little time with my 17-year-old self and remembering her dreams and realizing that she would be very proud of me and where I am as I tell the true stories over here in my corner of the world.

The 1993 Collection is filled with the energy of summer and mixed tapes and afternoons full of hope and secret dreams and the belief that one girl just might make a difference in the world. As you wear your necklace from the 1993 collection, I hope you will reconnect and listen to those secret dreams inside you.

water your mama soul

It is time to nourish yourself, baby girl.

A mama's day is full of so much. Shifting from one role to the next can be beautiful and really hard sometimes. Some days it can leave you feeling exhausted even while you're aware of the joy. In the midst of it all, you can forget about the one person who needs your support most of all: You.

Water Your Mama Soul is a 10-day journey into self-care, healing, and noticing what you need. It's about making the choice to open your heart to you even as you nurture the dear souls underneath your roof.

You'll use your camera and a journal to reconnect with yourself through prompts and self-care practices that will arrive in your inbox each day. And you won't be alone. I'll be alongside you with my own stories from the mama trenches as each email includes a story from my heart to you.

I've created this class because I believe 10 days of focused creative self-care for just 10-20 minutes a day will change your life. 

And I'm delighted to now offer Water Your Mama Soul as an ongoing class for just $19. When you register, your emails begin right away so you can work at your pace and begin today.

Learn more, read the FAQ, and register here. 

a watercolor picnic

Earlier this spring, I started to have a dream of a meet-up here in Tacoma. We'd gather with quilts + watercolors + cheese + fruit + drinks and paint and laugh and eat and connect and share favorite quotes and maybe even read a poem or two. 

And it's happening!! Here are the details:

What: A Watercolor Picnic! Join me for an afternoon of creating + snacking + connection. (Because I'm longing for more in-person time with kindreds!) Check out the Facebook Event page right here.

When: June 14, 1-4 PM

Where: Point Defiance Park in Tacoma (see notes below)

What to bring: Bring your own watercolors + paper (or some other creative project you're working on), a quilt or blanket, and some snacks (including some to share if you'd like) + something to drink.

What if you don't know anybody: Please come! Some people going do know each other but this is really about kindred spirits coming together. My hope is that we will start doing things like this more often because life really is better when we do it together.

Notes: Please RSVP on the Facebook events page so I have an idea of numbers. And if you aren't on FB, just send me a note.

On the Friday before we gather, I will update this post + the Facebook event page with the exact location. Weather and a few other things will help that decision. And if it rains, I'll update with a rain location here + on FB.

Also, note that this isn't a workshop. There is no cost. But I will be leading us a bit and sharing some poetry and other good things. I'll also bring some water for our watercolors, but be sure to bring a small cup for your water.

If you have questions, feel free to email me.

lockets + secret messages

I have a batch of my favorite large vintage lockets that I'm filling with secret messages and wishes for you. When I write them on these pieces of vintage ledger paper, I think about the words you might most need to tuck inside you as you walk in the world.

There is just enough room in these lockets for these slips of vintage paper + your own note or photo. You could even slip some flowers in there. You can find them right here. 

And I'm so excited that Bonnie (my studio assistant) is now modeling the Soul Mantra necklaces! This way it's a little easier to envision how the necklaces might look on you. We're having fun brainstorming outfits + ways to wear them + collections to come. (And soon we'll even include her face in the photos. Just realized how funny that might seem that we aren't. You can see a fun photo of us right here.)

pinned it. did it. {with doña}

Doña is back with another inspiring post about a DIY she found on Pinterest. I've seen these Story Stones and love how accessible Doña makes them. Read on!

*****

I’m a creative person. I’ve worked hard at building, feeding, and nurturing creativity in my life. As a mother, I love witnessing my young daughter’s innate creativity. How much we are all born with! But I also know how easily that creativity can be squashed.

It might be squashed by teachers who are trying to get a classroom of energetic kids in line, by schools with a focus on academic achievement, by people who don’t understand or who are threatened by the unusual, and sometimes by well-meaning parents. 

Because I know she probably has that road ahead of her, I feel it is my duty right now, while she’s young, to build extreme creative resilience.

I do this, mostly, by giving her lots of open ended toys and unstructured play time. We have blocks and peg dolls and play silks and more. I have a whole Pinterest board of Waldorf-style toys that I love for their open-ended playing qualities. I also make sure to let her see me being creative - in the kitchen, in the garden, while playing with her, as well as in my studio with my own craft and art projects. She loves to work alongside me at my “big desk."

One area where my creativity is lacking, however, is story telling. Bean is getting to be an age where she’s making up stories and playing pretend a lot. I wish I could say I tell her stories at bedtime, but after “Once upon a time…” I freeze up. I simply don’t know where to go next.

Recently in an attempt to jumpstart my own story-telling abilities, and also to encourage hers, I started looking into story stones. I had heard of them, but had never seen them, and wanted to make my own. Pinterest, of course, had a wide variety of ideas.

There were these with highly detailed monochromatic drawings. These make the whole stone a character, instead of just having a picture on the top. These use the stones as puzzle pieces to create new character combinations. 

I decided to make a set like these – simple, colorful and fun. 

I had some rocks leftover from a friend’s landscaping project, so I picked out 10 flat-ish ones and scrubbed them with soap and water to get them pretty clean. These stones are a nice size - a handful for my daughter, but not enough to really hurt if she dropped one on her foot. If you are collecting rocks from a beach or river for this project, just looks for stones that have one flat side for the image and have a fairly smooth surface.

I decided to use images of things that my daughter is drawn to or talks about often already, so my pictures included a house, a baby, some flowers, and a bug. I showed her the first couple and then got her input on what other pictures she’d like. “A bird!” she said, “and a kitty cat.”

I used a combination of Montana acrylic paint pens and Sharpie oil markers, because I had them already, but I think the Infinity Markers that Liz used for these Soul Mantra Stones would work really well. You could also paint your pictures with a brush and some acrylic paint.

The stones I’ve seen for sale are all sealed with some kind of top coat, but I didn’t bother. Since my daughter loves the sound of them hitting each other, I’m sure it is only a matter of time before the pictures wear off. No matter, they only took me about 30 minutes to make!

As with any other new toy, she had a surge of interest when I first introduced them, and then left them to play with something else. It may take a few weeks before they cycle into regular use. I’ve put them in her toy box where she can find them when she’s ready.

PS: If you love the idea of story stones but don’t want to make your own, here’s a seller on Etsy who makes several themed sets.  

Disclosure from Doña: Some links are affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission if you purchase from the links.

Doña Bumgarner is a writer, artist, mama and a craft project-collector from way back. She loves Pinterest and uses it to help solve a household dilemma at least once a week (see her “pinned and done” board). She lives in Santa Cruz with her partner, their little one and his almost grown one, and a collection of cats and chickens. She writes about the practice of moms feeding their souls in the midst of raising a family on her blog, Nurtured Mama, where you can also download her free Mothering Moments ebook. 

a question to ponder...

This is the question that was flowing through my mind as I prepared for this month's Hand to Heart practice of "Let It Go." Last week, I found myself face to face with it as I was in the midst of...I might as well be honest...a full-blown temper tantrum in my mind.

My to-do list felt extremely overwhelming. Work stuff. Home stuff. Paperwork. End of the school year stuff. Summer is coming stuff. Family is coming to visit stuff. Not enough stuff. I'm too much stuff.

It was stacking up inside me as I paused everything to take a quick shower. Scrubbing my body with sugar scrub, I tried to pull myself out of the "stuff" by brainstorming the stories and prompts I want to share with this "Let It Go" practice.

And I found myself focusing on the question "What story could you set down?" as a starting place for our practice.

I noticed the irony of my own stories swirling, but moved on to washing my hair and brainstorming some more.

But the question kept tapping on me.

Finally, I felt these words tumble through all those thoughts and feelings:

I could set down the story that I'm too much.
I could set down other people's expectations...and my own assumptions about those expectations.
I could set down the fear that no one will ever really get the me that lives in that most secret part of me.
I could set down the "all this shit that has to be cleaned in this house before family arrives next week" to-do list until the weekend.

And then I heard this truth, "I just want to be outside of this house."

Working from home can be awesome, but it can also mean that you never really leave your home or your office. And that longing to just be in nature can pull on me. Finally, I got quiet enough to hear that pull.

So I went to my favorite park and stood by Puget Sound and picked up a few rocks to represent these stories that I wanted to set down. And I threw them. Far. Into the water. Watching the ripples swirl and finding myself recentered and a bit lighter.

Your Soul Homework: Take out a piece of paper and answer this question, "What story could you set down today?" And then when you are done, breathe and notice what you might need. Maybe you need to put some stories onto the page and "set them down" by writing them out. Maybe get outside. Maybe ask someone for a hug. Listen. You will know what to do next.

*****

If you want to circle with a group of women who are exploring these kinds of questions, come along to Hand to Heart my free ongoing community of women. Each month I share different ideas to add to your current self-care practice and we're here to support you if you're just beginning the adventure of learning self-care.

Learn more and request to join right here.

glimpses {1}

Evidence I do sometimes cook pancakes from scratch

She's been wearing them indoors too. Makes me so darn happy.
(We found them at Old Navy.) 

As summer arrives, the 1993 collection will be returning to the shop soon because
I love going back to my high school jewelry making roots.

Called on my tools on the Tuesday that felt like a Monday:
glitter glasses + unicorns + poetry + coffee. 

Celebrating Jonny's birthday

Soul Mantras all in a row waiting to be polished.

tea + watercolors + listening to Pixie Campbell's wisdom from her Boundaries Bootcamp class
This is how I #fillitupbuttercup 

Part of being a parent is just forgiving yourself again and again. When you have a triumph, like being able to take in the waist of the special pajamas she has to wear for her pajama party at school tomorrow and you save the day, well, you have to hold that triumph close.

*****

Over on Instagram, you can find me sharing "the true stories" with glimpses of my world. I still think it is the best social media community out there. And it somehow feels like this really safe space where I can process the real and the beauty and the hard stuff with a circle of kindreds.

If you're on Instagram, come over and say hi. I'd love to connect with you there.

story catching and releasing

From time to time, I extend an invitation to the people in my ecourses or group or on my newsletter list to send over a story they need someone to catch. I read their words and then I carry their stories with me and release them in a special ceremony.

Today, I want to share a glimpse into one of these ceremonies. I hope it will also be a starting place for you to create your own releasing ceremonies as you need them.

On an afternoon in April, I sat in the quiet and reread all the stories that had been sent my way. Tucking them into my pocket, I walked outside and the first thing I did was gather up these little flowers from my front yard. I picked one for each person who shared her story with me + one to represent the whole group + one to represent me. I took them with me on the short drive to the woods in Point Defiance Park. A little round junco greeted me on my path as I began walking into the woods breathing deeply, trusting I would find the spot that felt like it was ready to hold our stories.

As raindrops fell upon my head, a man standing under a shelter meant for picnics began playing a hand accordian. For real. I couldn't help but laugh out loud, "Only in the Pacific Northwest." He set the background music for my walk further into the woods.

After a couple of minutes, a huge tree called out to me from a distance. As I got closer, I saw that it was thick with moss and ferns who decided to make their home right there toward its roots. Its leaves were just unfurling up toward the sun, and it was as though a whisper said, "I can hold all of this and release it to the winds for you."

Yes, a little woo woo. But also, true.

As I stepped over a few overturned logs to get to it, I realized it had a perfect little crevice waiting to hold the flowers I'd brought. Thinking about the words shared and the hopes I have for each person in our circle, I tucked the flowers in one at a time while continuing to take deep breaths. The moss surrounded them like soft blankets.

I stood there for several minutes, my hand to the mossy trunk of this tree. Noticing the sounds, the smells, the shades of green surrounding me. As I was breathing, I felt this visceral sense of calm within and around me. I said a prayer of thanks to that beautiful tree and asked it to hold our stories and then release them into the wind and the rain so they could become nourishment.

As I turned to walk back, a junco was hopping right along the path. It stopped and looked at me for almost three full seconds and then flew away.

Soul Homework :: Think about how you can incorporate simple rituals like this one to help you let go and connect. You might want to talk a walk into the woods this weekend and leave behind in offering at the base of a huge tree or even under a pile of leaves. Let the wisdom of the earth that has been here for so many years hold your stories for you.

And feel free to send over any questions that you have.