DIY Gift Idea - Covered Gratitude Journal

I've really been into gratitude lately.  I've been spending the last few weeks following two free on line series of meditation with gratitude as the main focus; one by Deepak and Oprah and another offered by the Mentor's Channel.  Together that adds up to around 40 minutes a day of focusing 100% on everything I have to be grateful for... and I can tell you, the more I focus on all these things the more grateful I feel. And the more grateful I feel the happier I am.  The happier I am the happier the people around me... it's win win win.  

I've also recently started keeping a gratitude journal in which I jot down a few things that I think of being grateful for right before bed.  Some examples include:

• cashews
• cosmetic dentistry
• Fabri cleaned the bathroom
• flannel pyjamas
• Sera's laugh
• my own cooking
• my health

As you can see most of the items are everyday, ordinary things and others carry more weight, but since I've started jotting down 7-10 items a night I close my eyes and am off like a light switch in no time... no anxiety, no stress, no worried and no planning for the next day or remunerating about the day that's past.  It's a habit I intend to continue and would suggest to anyone.

As a gift this year for the holidays I'm planning on making a few of these little gratitude journals for some friends. I did one for myself today and perhaps you'd like to see how:

What you'll need:

• A simple blank or lined notebook
• Fabric scrap large enough to wrap around the notebook
• scissors
• a xacto blade
• hot glue and glue gun.

Starting at the outer horizontal edges glue the fabric to the covers of the book along the edges while it is closed.  Use a tiny bit of glue at a time and go back and forth between the two covers being careful not to glue the book shut.  Then you can go back and do the upper and lower edges of each cover, again going back and forth between top and bottom stretching and pulling as you go. Make sure to keep it smooth. Before you get to the corners trim and fold over and under the fabric so that it's neat on your inside covers and then fold the corners as if you were making a bed with hospital corners. Use a dab of glue on each corner.  For the spine of the book glue and tuck in the fabric that has remained outside.  If you would like extra polish you can cut out a piece of card stock that is the same size as the inner covers and glue this on top of your raw edges of fabric.

To finish off my book I glued an elastic from the back to the front so that I could keep it closed. The fabric was a scrap of silk I bought in Japan on a trip in 2012.

Now that's something that just screams for me to pour my gratitude into.