Lovin’ Lately (January 5, 2024) #FridayFavorites

Hi everyone. I haven’t shared the things I loved recently in a while, so I thought today it would be fun to do so. As usual, I’m linking up with Friday Favorites.

1. My new clay extruder. I got the Makin’s Professional® stainless steel one. It’s a lot sturdier than my previous extruder, which I managed to damage within weeks of getting it. I only got the new one yesterday, so am still learning to use the extruder. For this reason, I haven’t really made anything using it yet.

2. Cernit polymer clay. This is a new to me brand of polymer clay and I haven’t yet made anything out of it either, but I’m loving all the beautiful colors it comes in.

3. The book The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut. Okay, this one I’ve had for a few weeks already, but I really like it and, since I haven’t done a list of my favorite things in a few months, I think I can still mention it. It really helps explain not just the Enneagram types, but also the instinctual variants.

4. The book Feelings First Shadow Work by Benjy Sherer. The author advertised the book in one of the personal growth groups on Facebook I belong to, saying something about what if, say, your leg hurts because of a baseball hitting it ten years ago and you kept going to the field to chase that baseball down. That, he claims, is what most people do when they start doing shadow work: focusing their minds on details of past traumas rather than truly feeling their current feelings and processing those. I cannot articulate what the author said nearly as well as he could, but his words were spot on. Another appealing factor about the book is the fact that it has journaling promts. Then came the big bummer: we’re instructed to read the entire book first before jumping to the journal prompts. Having the short attention span that I do, I’ve only just started the book, but it so far seems quite cool.

5. A huge chocolate Christmas tree. Unfortunately for you (or maybe fortunately as I’d just make your mouths water), I’ve already eaten part of it, so I cannot take a picture. I got it from a temp worker on Wednesday when we strolled down to the town’s bakery to buy some apple-filled pastries called “appelflappen” for the two of us and the thing stared at her. She said she gave it to me as I was her first client of 2024. How lovely!