Tag: simple

Slow Living Moments: Renew

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A new year, a new month, and another beautiful collection of photos for the Slow Living Project (read this post if you are new to the project). With the new year upon us, Melanie and I wanted to focus on the word ‘renew’ — thinking about the ways we renew and restore ourselves, our family, our world. Asking how, with a slow, mindful, approach, do we make new once again.

This month I found myself particularly inspired by many of the captions that accompanied the beautiful images shared. But I also noticed just as many images that didn’t need a caption at all — it seemed obvious, intuitive, how the image conveyed renewal. When we slow down and listen we know what we need, we know how to renew, ourselves and our world. As always, thank you so much for sharing and inspiring!

The photos and moments that struck me the most are shared below. It is always so hard for me to narrow down the selections, so please visit the full gallery to see what others shared.

Renewal through creative rituals

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Photo by @mommetry

Renewed life

Renewed energy, strength, bonds

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Photo by @ambertia

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Photo by @ekwetzel

Renewed by the elements

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Photo by @lewesmap

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Photo by @c_theresia

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Photo by @devine_tribe

Death, rebirth, renewal

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Photo by @petalplum

Melanie’s selections can be found over on her blog www.geoffreyandgrace.com.

Thank you to everyone who participated this month and shared their slow living moments. Everyone is welcome, so please join us in February as we explore the theme ‘love’ in the context of slow living. In many places around the world February is a month focused on love, our love for our partners, our children, our family, our friends. As always, please feel free to interpret this word broadly and in a way that resonates with you. Please share your images with the hashtag #slowliving_love so others can be inspired. Last month we started using the hashtag #slowliving_ for all our images in the project, so that we have a hashtag that covers the whole year. Feel free to use it yourself.

You can see previous month’s themes and selections ‘create’ here, ‘explore’ here, ‘bloom and harvest’ here, ‘raise’ here, ‘gather’ here.

Our Pinterest board ‘Slow Living Moments’ includes all photo selections from the project visit it here.

Thank you to everyone who shares photos and inspires us to live slowly, wholeheartedly, with gratitude. Best wishes for a beautiful love-filled month! xo, Danielle

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You might also like my post:

Thoughtful Gifts for Children for Any Occasion

Inhaling the Season, Inhaling the Moment: Cycling through a Snow Storm

The Mathematics of Love: Growing our Family

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Slow Living Project

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Slow living.

If you know me from Instagram or in real life, it’s no surprise that I am drawn to slow living. It’s probably a combination of my natural disposition and a reaction to the pace of my day job, which is hustled and unpredictable.

I’m not sure if there’s a gold-stamped definition of the term, but I know what it means to me. Slow living is about being present in the moment. That’s about it. Sounds simple, right? It is. And yet, it isn’t. Our minds race forward and back through time to what we are doing later today, to our to do list, to a conversation we had last week, to an article we want to finish reading. In body, we are always here, but in mind and spirit, we are quite often busy time travellers.

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For the past few years, I have been working to slow down and be present, especially when I am with my children and family, this means connecting with the moment, focusing my attention there, and enjoying exactly where I am. This has allowed me to put my whole heart and mind into what I’m living now. I think it has been a very good thing for my own sense of calm and for my connection with family and friends.

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In the last few months I made an acquaintance with the lovely Melanie from Geoffrey & Grace. Melanie has a beautiful Instagram gallery of images featuring her young daughter, time in nature and at home. You can also find her writing about life over on her blog. I’m excited to be collaborating with Melanie on a year long hashtag project around the theme of slow living. The project officially launched last week, you can read Melanie’s post about it here. But since I was away on vacation I’m getting around to my post…slowly.

For the project, there will be a monthly hashtag focused on slow living. Over the course of the year we want to look at all the different ways we can bring a slow living approach to our lives, through the seasons and holidays, in the home and outdoors, with family and friends. For the month of August, we are focusing on the word ‘explore’ and what this might mean in terms of slow living.

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What we are looking for is your participation in this hashtag by posting photographs to Instagram that fit this theme for you. We hope you will join us and share the project with friends too. At the end of each month we will choose our favourites moments to share. If you’d like to be considered for a selection please use the hashtag #slowliving_explore and tag Melanie @geoffreyandgrace and me @hippieindisguise. At the beginning of each month we will announce the next theme.

We hope this will help us all slow down a little more and enjoy the fleeting moments we live each day with a more open and full presence. If you’d like to see some of the photographs already posted you can click here. I’ve been blown away by all the beautiful moments shared already. This project is going to be pretty great!

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