Documenting Your COVID-19 Experience

Here we are, friends, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Depending on where you live, it may be longer than that for you. For our family, our pandemic experience started just over a year ago with a final trip to the grocery store, a new refrigerator, and the end of in-person school. I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes that have happened over the last year, and that led me to develop a project I’m excited to share with you:

The Stay at Home Club: a COVID-19 Journaling Project

Whether you are a regular journal keeper or a complete novice, this is a historic opportunity to document your experiences for yourself — and for posterity.

This journaling project is very simple. All you need is a blank book, something to write with, and the PDF of questions and prompts — a free download which I’ve created to help you. Our family is working on the journaling project together. I want to include everyone’s perspectives and experiences. But this could be a solo project as well.

You’ll find all of the details at the link below. It includes some videos that can help you get started, a few photos of what we have started, and suggestions for supplies, too.

Not only is this an exciting project, but it is also my first collaboration with Owl and Ember! Owl and Ember is a new enterprise I am beginning with a dear friend, Holly Kennedy. We are starting small — an Etsy sticker shop — but we have really big ideas!

The shop just launched, and we have the cutest COVID badges for The Stay at Home Club! How did you earn your crafting badge this year? What about cooking? Check out The Stay at Home Club badges and all of the cute stickers at Owl and Ember by clicking the link below!

Be well! Stay safe!
XO
Angela

Armistice Day • 100 Years

Armistice Day • 100 Years 
I spent a few hours today meditating on the music and poetry of The War to End War. In some ways WWI seems so long ago, and yet 100 years is fleeting — a mere blink in time. And the deaths of 8.5 million soldiers (and an estimated 13 million civilians) can not be forgotten. Nearly 22 million people died in four years of brutal warfare.

So I spent time today listening to music of and about WWI, and I made poppies. The poppies are printed with the text of Britten’s War Requiem — poems woven together with the words of the mass for the dead. The poem written across the page is John McCrae’s brilliant “In Flanders Fields.” And this is all layered upon the pages of the gospel of Luke 2: 29-32, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”

But it is the MaCrae’s call which keeps running through my head...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

To read the entirety of “In Flanders Fields,” visit Poets.org.

Blessings!
A

From @MidModernMama on Instagram