How is your 2019 going so far? I love the New Year–full of hope and promise and opportunities to correct the wrongs of the year gone by.

I know we’re supposed to keep going in a continuum but I think there’s nothing better than hard starts and hard stops to stop, reflect and move forward. And, thanks to living in the US with the summer being in the middle of the year, I get two such opportunities.

Joy

Those of you who follow along on my Instagram will know I went to visit my sister-in-law in Jakarta. If you solely follow this Blog, that post is still in draft mode (lol). On my way there I watched a Ted Talk that totally caught my attention.

If you had time to watch it I hope it caught your attention as much as it did mine. If you didn’t the essence of it was that colours–especially round colours–bring you joy. When you’re surrounded by colour you can’t help but be joyful.

This was a bit of a mantra of our week. Of course after that I forgot all about it until we got back together again for Christmas. I saw that the author and presenter of said Ted Talk had written a book by the same title.

So back to being joyful and thinking about bringing joy to my house.

Jewelchic

As we were leaving Australia we sat next to a fabulous Mother/Daughter duo in the Qantas First Class Lounge.

Big big shoutout to Qantas if I can continue to visit the Lounge as it’s truly a great place to visit before you fly out! And, even better we got the best service from our guy who helped us peel off our bags (we were a little stressed), find battery charges and generally make us feel at home. I wish I got your name we just wanted to take him home with us to look after us for always.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Br81j1yHvi0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

So, anyway, the Mother & Daughter duo said to Miss H (now 16) that they loved her nails cause they matched.  All three of them had a brightly coloured fingernails–a different colour on every nail.

I then noticed she had fabulous jewellery.  It turns out she’s a jewellery designer and designs amazing, brightly coloured jewellery.

We talked some more and they (by then we also met the hubby/dad) have such a happiness about them. So we swapped Instagram handles and started following each other.

And it turns out she’s much more than a jewellery designer!

More Joy

They were off to New York. Cut to a few days later and lo and behold they met up with Ingrid Fettel Lee (said author of book & TedTalk presenter) when they were there. It got me thinking about joy all over again.

They (Megan & Zoe are their names) recorded their chat on Facebook Live. You can watch it here:

https://www.facebook.com/JewelchicPage/videos/287018078675337/

What a small world!

Cut to 2019 New Year’s Resolutions

One of the things they talk about are choosing words to reflect the types of joy you focus on in a particular year. This year Ingrid’s words are “energy” and “harmony” and her words last year were “celebration” and “abundance”.

Megan & Zoe’s word for the year is “joy”. And they chose theirs separately so they say on the video.

So I thought it would be good to come up with a word too. But I misread it (of course I did!) and thought I had to come up with three words to describe my year ahead.

So, after a bit of soul-searching I’ve decided that my three words are:

1. Spunky
2. Happy
3. Thankful

The overarching theme is positivity and joy rather than negative and ungrateful.

Favourite things

Jewelchic puts out a call in her live video to name five things that make you feel joyful. Why don’t we do that? What are five things that bring you joy?

I’ll start:

1. My Fam Bam (the name our group chat!)
2. Home (especially the smell as I walk back in the door after I’ve been away)
3. Water (preferably in the form of a vivid blue pool or a crystal blue sea)
4. My (our) Doggies
5. Flowers (the smell of Jasmine coming out in Spring is THE best!).

Happy 2019 everyone! May you be as inspired as I was. Or may I be an inspiration to you!

Cheers!

xx ItStartedinLA xx

PS: If you want to follow Jewelchic you can click on the links for Facebook or Instagram and do your thing.

PPS: Don’t forget to share your five favourite things or your three words for 2019.