Thankful Thursday: How?

So how will this work?

Each day for the whole month of November there will be a blog post with links and prompts.

Each post will include:

A Theme
Rather than just leaving you to think up 3 or 5 things that you're grateful for on that day I have chosen a daily theme.

A Starting Point
There will be questions for you to think about on the day's theme.  You can answer them or just use them to get you thinking.

A Quote
There will be a quote either related to gratitude or more likely related to the day's theme.  Some will be serious and some will be a bit off-beat.

A Bible Verse
Although the Thanksgiving holiday is now a secular holiday, it grew out of a tradition of thanking God for the harvest.  As a Christian myself I want my Gratitude Journal to be about thanking God and so I have included a Bible verse each day.  However just ignore it if it doesn't mean anything to you.

Inspiration
Where possible I have found videos, blogs or websites to provide inspiration for the day's theme.  Some might be a bit silly.  The Muppets and SpongeBob feature!!

Technique Challenge
Each day has a technique challenge to include in your journal.  This will be particularly for those keeping creative journals.  Keep reading even if that's not what you want to do.

Where possible I have found videos to demonstrate the technique or I will have added photos of examples.

InLinkz
At the end of each post there will be an opportunity to link your day's page to the blog to share with other readers.  This can be a link to your blog, or if you haven't got a blog please use the Flickr group.

I have set up the Flickr group and if you already have a Flickr account please ask to join.  If you don't have a Flickr account it is easy to join and it is free.

The group has been set up for the photos to be public but any discussions to be for members only.

PDF
There will be a PDF each day to download (and print) with all the day's information and links so that you don't have to be continually looking at the blog.  It will include the quote and Bible verse in larger print for you to cut up and stick on your page if you wish.  And here is the whole blog post as a PDF so that I can see if it works!!

Guests
Dotted along the way there will be guest posts from  Julie Kirk, Robin Norgren, Vicki Abrathat, Rachelle Panagarry and Maria 'Rinda' Oliveros.

Next week I'll talk about the different ways in which you might make your Gratitude Journal.  It can be as simple as getting a small notebook and writing down things that come to mind as you read the blog.  It need be no more than that.  Or you can get involved in the techniques and challenges.

Remember the only rule is: this is your journal and you do it the way you want to. Other than that there are no rules.

This has been a longer post than I thought it would be and I'm sorry there were no photos to break it up a bit.  Thanks for sticking with it to the end.

Bernice

Thankful Thursday: Why?

First of all, thank you for joining me today for my first Thankful Thursday blog post.  Today I want to tell you why I've set up the blog and why it's a good idea to develop an attitude of gratitude.

Not that I have totally conquered the attitude thing but I hope we can learn how to do it together.

So why the blog?
It started out that I wanted to set up a challenge blog for some art journaling friends that I've met in a group on Facebook.  And then through various books I was reading I knew that I needed to develop a more wholehearted life.  To take a more positive outlook.  To be more thankful.  Which is where the idea of a gratitude journal comes in.

Of course in the UK we don't celebrate Thanksgiving like our friends in the States do.  Their celebrations are based on the harvest - which we usually celebrate in September.

Once I started planning the blog posts the whole thing grew into something much larger than my original thoughts.  SO if you're not an art journaler, don't worry.  There will be something for the scrapbooker, the feltmaker, the quilter or for the person who does not consider him/herself to be creative in any way. (Which by the way is NOT true!)




Why keep a Gratitude Journal?
You can Google gratitude journal (as I did) and you will come up with thousands of websites.  However they all seem to be in agreement that living a thankful lifestyle enables you to be more mindful of the moment, more creative, healthier and happier.


Here's a great article about gratitude.


And here's a scrapbook page I did some time ago.

Thanks for dropping by.  I hope you will come back next Thursday to find out more about how this prompt/challenge blog will work.

Bernice

Welcome

Welcome to a new blog providing challenges and prompts to build up a Gratitude Journal.

There will be occasional prompts from now until 31st October to help you get started.

There will be 30 days of prompts and quotes during the whole month of November.

I hope you will join me in this project.