It’s been just over a year since Melanie and I launched the Slow Living Project. Initially the project sought to inspire others to share their slow living moments through photography. As the months went by the number of contributors grew and we explored different facets of slow living through a variety of themes, the project became more than simply a celebration of photography, it became a community and a pool of inspiration around the notion of slow, mindful living.

Participants began talking more about slow living in their captions, testing the idea, pushing it, contemplating, and always inspiring thought. As the months passed, I found myself evolving and changing. I was so inspired and guided by the photos and captions that my way of life changed. I joke that slow living made me lose all sense of deadlines, which is a little bit true, but I also found myself changing in other ways. Slow was really sinking in. Slow was no longer something I did on my days off of work. Slow was infiltrating my very state of mind. By the way, slow doesn’t mean (for me) that I do things at a slower pace necessarily, sometimes it does, but what it means is that I approach my day, my task, my interactions in a mindful way — meaning very connected with the present, connected and in touch as much as possible, in a singular way, with what I am doing in the present.

From my own evolution it became clear that the Slow Living Project would need to evolve too. But I will get to the at the end of the post. First let’s celebrate the winners of the photo contest!

In July, Melanie and I announced we would host a photo contest to celebrate the first year of the Slow Living Project. In partnership with our awesome sponsor  – Magic Organic Apothecary – we awarding 6 prizes this month for our favourite contributions to the #slowliving_explore hashtag on Instagram. As there were around 3,000 photos in that gallery this was no small feat (see the gallery here). But after many chats Melanie came up with 6 photos (down from about 60!) that we loved. (You don’t know how many times I wished for extra prizes!). What you’ll see below are excellent photos, no doubt, but technical ability is not what we are looking for. Really we are looking for a moment of slow living captured beautifully, poetically. As well, we tried to gather a collection that showed variety and would inspire in many ways. Slow living and exploration are personal, we all do it our own way, alone and with children, family, friends, indoor and outdoor, physically and mentally.

Without further ado…

Winners can email Melanie at geoffreyandgrace@gmail.com to claim their prizes. As well, check out Melanie’s post about the winners here.

A massive thank you and heartfelt hug to everyone who contributed this month to the hashtag and to the project over the past year. You have changed my life for the better! Melanie and I (and countless others no doubt) have been inspired by the moments you shared. We’ve been inspired so much, that Melanie and I knew we had to make a few changes to the Slow Living Project.

Going forward we will no longer have monthly themes, instead we would like to introduce the hashtag #slowlivingforlife. This reflects Melanie and my understanding that compartmentalizing slow living doesn’t feel right to us anymore. Slow living is a way of life, it is a perspective. We also, in embracing slow living, have had to be reasonable with the amount of work we put on ourselves, so we will now post to our blogs every so often, when the inspiration strikes. Please continue to tag your photos on Instagram with the slow living hashtags, as we hear all the time from people writing us that the slow living galleries on Instagram have been hugely inspiring. Won’t you please inspire someone today?

As a little memory jog, our year in themes and hashtags was:

• Explore (August 2015 and July 2016) #slowliving_explore
• Create (September 2015 & March 2016)  #slowliving_create
• Renew (January 2016) #slowliving_renew
• Love (February 2016) #slowliving_love
• Gather (December 2015) #slowliving_gather
• Reflect (June 2016) #slowliving_reflect
• Bloom and Harvest (October 2015 & April 2016) #slowliving_bloomandharvest
• Nurture (May 2016) #slowliving_nurture
• Raise (November 2015) #slowliving_raise

You can also see a collection of our favourites from the past year on our Pinterest board, click here.

Thank you once again for contributing to the project. There will be lots more writing on slow living coming up in this space so please check back or subscribe by email or bloglovin.

Wishing you a beautiful, slow day. xo, Danielle

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