Sometimes I need to kick-start my quiet times into gear by drawing something out. I'm certainly no artist and if you look back at my hand written journals (back when I used to actually keep hand written journals) you'd find scatterings of elementary-ish stick figure drawings throughout as I would attempt to write out applications in picture form.

I just had the urge to do it again only I wanted to go back to the days in which I would illustrate things with construction paper, scissors, and glue. Sometimes I wish I still had all my old pictures. I'm sure I laughed at them critically at some point and pitched them, but they were such a part of who I was…who I still am.

Unfortunately for me, though, my quiet time crafty urge came too late at night for me to do much about it. So I turned instead to the Fun Felt app for the iPad. Problem solved.

Here's my 2011 rendering of a 1970's Sunday School banner of Psalm 1:1-4:

There now. I feel much better.

What do you do to kick yourself back into gear when going through a quiet time funk? I'm all about the new ideas…

• If someone would invent a dust sucking machine that you just turn on in a corner somewhere and keep it on and all the dust makes its way over to said machine instead of on every other flat surface in the room, I would buy one. For every room.

• I resolve to not buy any magazines this year. I don't read them and they make me feel guilty.

• This quote: "Not knowing is a scary place. If it could be mapped, it would be plotted right in the middle nowhere. It would include wilderness and a ghost town…complete with ghosts. I am telling you it is scary place so that when you arrive, you will not be as scared as you would be if you had not known. And you will most likely get there if you have not already driven through its environs." – Read more at Scribo Facio Noto – I've been thinking about this post a quite a bit this week.

• Christan ends her thoughts on the Voyage of the Dawn Treader with this: "Dear ones, may you see your Redeemer today as the One capable of making you new rather than your resolutions.  May you have hope that your heart will be renewed – rather than your body or your organizational skills or your circumstances.  It is your heart, indeed, that is promised restoration by His sometimes painful grace." – I needed to read that today.

• Becky lists off some good stuff she found at Desiring God today. It's worth a read.

• I just discovered I'm 3.75 years behind in our family scrapbooks. This makes me feel super awesome. I sort of want to make the move toward digital, but need to see someone do it before I'm comfortable going that direction. I want to see a completed book too. I don't want to waste all this time on something only to not like how it turns out in the end.

• Opt Out En Masse talks about reversing the consumer mentality – in ourselves and in our kids. Ouchie. Hat tip to Growing Kids Well.

• I've managed to clean/purge three full rooms this week and half of two others. And my house still needs an overhaul. Must do my desk area/dumping ground next.

• Corrin is starting something new for 2011 by forming a writing community with writing prompts. Part of me wants to join it, part of me knows I'll start and then drop out. That's what I do.

• Somehow I have a need to start everything fresh today, but I'm scared of failing at it all yet again.

And that's where I'm at on this chilly Saturday, January 1, 2011.

Happy New Year.