INVITING WHIMSY INTO WINTER | CELEBRATE THE COZY SEASON

I feel like sometimes winter is given a bad rap.

Yes, the days are shorter, the nights close in earlier, and sometimes the grey skies seem never-ending and make you want to hibernate until spring.

But somewhere along the way, I have discovered a real love of winter and its darker months. The light is softer in the winter, the sunsets riotous pinks, reds and golds.

Winter is a different kind of whimsy and magic.

It’s the cozy rugs and woolly socks, the flickering of the firelight, the small orange mushrooms poking through the earth.

And it’s time in the studio, between the busy summer months, to create simply for the joy of it.

Noticing the small things

Winter feels like an invitation to linger. To stay in bed and read a few more chapters before the day begins, to sip the tea in the gentle morning light (at a normal hour), to stay in your jammies a little later, to light a candle as the sun sets.

And in the softer light or grey skies, there is so much to notice.

The frost on the grass, the dew droplets on spiders’ webs, the contrast of bright berries against the sky, the moonrises, and the sunsets.

I photograph it all, thinking that one day I will create a photo book called ‘Whimsy in the Wild’

And I know once you start noticing the tiny beautiful details, you start to see them everywhere.

Winter Creativity.

Winter feels like permission to create without expectation.

To paint the big paintings and expand on those big ideas.

To play with colour and texture and mediums and collage.

To make the creative or fun projects that have my crafty soul singing with joy.

This year, I am thinking of sun catchers, pressed flowers, and air-dry clay, and I am going to finally create something with all the sea urchin shells I have collected from Australia and overseas. (I will keep you updated with that project!)

Inviting whimsy into winter.

Outside, everything feels dead: bare trees, brown grass, empty flower beds.

But once I realised that nature isn’t sleeping, it’s preparing and gathering strength for the summer, I also understood that winter is the same for me.

I’m not sleeping, but gathering strength for the summer ahead (and what a doozy it’s going to be, according to long-range forecasters!)

It’s replenishing my creative soul with seemingly random side quests, painting what my intuition tells me to, and celebrating the beauty and quiet moments of joy in the everyday.

And I wonder if winter is doing that for you, too.

It’s so easy to invite whimsy into winter. There are so many small rituals we already do that can be tweaked to feel a little more whimsical. Like:

Lighting a candle as the sun sets in your entryway.
Drinking tea from your favourite mug in the afternoon sunlight.
Photographing something that reminds you of winter magic.
Creating a craft basket with your favourite winter crafts to do in the longer evenings.
Wearing your cosiest socks, with a decadent hot chocolate, in front of a cracking fire. (I don’t have a fire, so I use a YouTube video of a crackling fire 😂 )
Listening to the rain while reading a book.
Hanging fairy lights (always fairy lights) that reflect in the darkened windows

For me winter whimsy is all of those, but mainly it’s listening to my evening playlist, in a softly lit room, the scratch of my pen in a sketchbook, ideas flowing onto the paper, my imagination running wild into the winter night.