Happy Whatever is Happening in Your Life

Sitting outside Quincy Market last night, eating ice cream I overheard the following conversation behind me:  (Young girl with tiara or sash and Young boy passing by)
      Young Boy:  (obviously noticing the attire) Hey, " Happy Birthday"
      Young Girl:  It's not my birthday
      Young Boy:  Well....Happy Whatever is Happening in Your Life!

***Ah Ha!  My blog title for the week was invented***
I thought this was the best line ever.  I think it will be my Facebook Status of the day just to see the response!

So for today's blog post I am going to just list the things that are making me happy right now.

1.  Having both of my children around and loving the fact that no matter how old they are, they both still love to spend time with their Mom.
** Yesterday morning I took my son to Plainridge Park Casino,  the first casino that opened in MA since passing the gambling law.  It is only 20 minutes from my house.  It only opened a month ago and we have been wanting to check it out.  They were having a bonus raffle and I won $100 in Slotplay (which turned into a $30 or so profit).  I broke even which for me is a good day at the casino.
**Last night my husband and I went into Boston with our daughter for dinner and to walk the Greenway.  There was an exhibit going on that I wanted to see.  More about that in the happiness list.






2.  Boston:  I just can't get enough
**Boston is just full of fun..Yes I love walking around any big city, take me into NY City anytime, but Boston is still the best!  It is for reasons like our visit last night.
This weekend in Boston was the Figment 2015 installment on the Greenway.  Lots of interesting art, light and music displays to interact with.  There was computer art where you could see yourself on screen with a emoji above to paper sculptures made from business cards. There were spinning flowers and bouncing slinkies with glow lights in them.  The exhibits were available to look at, walk around, go into, touch, watch, experience and most of all enjoy    

3.  Being Creative
I know that is a very vague reason to be happy but let me explain.  I love creating things and some thing come out exactly as planned, others not so well and then here are the happy surprises in between.  One of my creative mediums that I have not mentioned is Photography.  Taking pictures and scrapbooking them were a thing of my past.  Now, for the most part I have them organized on the computer, backed up on a portable hard drive and I do use them for my blog posts, or card making, journaling etc.  I just don't do event pages anymore.  Maybe someday I'll get back to it.
If you have been reading my blog you all know my love for knitting and all things fiber arts related.  Those are my planned projects, that may be more beautiful once completed, I have an idea before I start what it will look like when it is finished.  It makes me happy to learn that new stitch or make something I have never tried, but there are few surprises.  Zentangles make me happy, and there is a small element of surprise, as I do not start a tangle knowing exactly which tangle patterns I will use or what order they will be in.  The Tangle evolves as I go and sometimes amaze me in the end and other times I flip the page and say, "that one is done."  Then there is art journaling, and card making and all things paper crafting that have been pushed aside but are starting to emerge again in my head and supplies are being purchased!  Now back to photography and Happy Accidents!  When you click that shutter button, you may know what you are looking at, you may know what settings are on your camera......yet sometimes this happens and you are ecstatic!
I have a Pentax X-5 also known as a bridge camera.  I have had it for 3 years and have only used the Auto Settings, which makes this a very expensive Point and Shoot camera.  A couple of weeks ago while out with the family I decided to play with them manual settings, making the camera work more like a DSL.  I took a photography class in High School and I have a book that is all about the fundamentals of photography and I am just starting to experiment.  Last night while walking through the Greenway we stopped at the Carousel for some pictures and look at the picture I captured when the carousel started moving.  So I continued to snap away some more:
The results were this fun play of light against the dark sky of night.  I loved the results and the experience of surprise when the picture showed itself on the little digital screen.
My daughter bought herself a DSLR when she went off to college and she had her camera with her as well last night.  So I snapped the first photo and got so excited by the results that I went over to where she was snapping photos and said, "I have to show you this" at the same time she is queuing up her camera with her most recent shot to show me.  We look at each other's cameras, same shot different angles!  We were bot so excited by the results.  I really need to go out and play some more.  Happy Accidents are the best part of being creative for me.


This is just a short list for this week.  I know for sure there are many more reasons to be happy in this world and many things to be happy about.  I, for them most part love life and all it has to offer so being happy is a natural state!  I have seen the alternative in others, have has short moments of unhappiness myself, it sometimes cannot be avoided but it can be overcome!  So I leave you with this quote of the week:  I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. Groucho Marx