A MindFULL Vacation

If you could see the sign hanging off the tip of my brain, it would say “gone fishing…for new ideas”.  We all talk about how important it is to step outside of our lives and slow down, but how often do we give ourselves permission or time to really take the step?

In order to fill our minds with ideas and thoughts we are the better for, we must first empty our minds of the clutter. Easier said than done, but with a change of scene for an hour, day or week, I find that the clutter starts to fall off and my mind is, once again, open to new ideas. Its like taking a long swim in the cool ocean on a hot summer day.

This summer, I was clinging pretty close to the shore. I didn’t feel like wading out into the summer water, so to speak, but I am so glad I did. A little change of scene has helped and once again, I am busy filling my journal.

I had forgotten about my journal – a small book that my friend Tamara taught me to easily make:  simply cut out words and pictures that mean something to you and glue them onto 1/2 of an 8×11 colorful page. Take the the page to Kinkos, where they can laminate  it and bind it to several sheets of plain white paper — and viola’! A journal for collecting ideas, all in one place and easy to refer back to it and use.

Before I head back out to the sand, here are a few ideas in my summer journal,  so far:

Black Mango tea – great iced

Pine Nuts – toast em and then roll ready to bake cookies in them for an extra little pizzaz!

Drizzle grape-seed oil on avocado, orange slices and dill

Collect stones of similar shapes and sizes and paint them — you can find little ones and make them look like green olives and fill a martini glass with them for a fun centerpiece ; you can paint them with designs and get a big piece of wood for a home-made checker board, you can lay them in a pattern by the back door and fill the spaces with cement, thus creating a small area for a table and chair, flower pots or a path in your yard.

Tunics are totally in! Fun colors and lightweight cotton make them ideal for hot days – paired with leggings and or thin white jeans, they are a fun summer uniform. Very “Mad Men”.

How do you empty your mind and refill it with MindFULL ideas? Let us know!