oh happy day! :: Small Pond Graphics

Archive for oh happy day!

oh happy day . The Joy of Blurred Lines

· July 24, 2015

Friday is here, and I’m thinking about joy. I was sitting in my studio the other morning, and snapped this picture from a corner of one of the bookshelves. It was relatively early, and none of the kids were awake yet. It gave me time to enjoy some quietness and plan for my day.

The week has been somewhat overwhelmingly busy with client projects and work needs. I am in the midst of developing two campaigns to promote Starkville tourism, and it’s sort of my “busy season” — if this busy-ness can be distinguished from other busy-ness — in preparation for the fall needs of some of my most faithful clients. Busy-ness is a good “problem” to have. It’s rather like a blessing than a problem, I guess. At least that’s how I see it, and I’ve been quite blessed lately.

With the children out of school for the ever-shortening summer vacation, I’ve been enjoying having three side-kicks with me most days. We keep busy playing outside with popular kids wagons , playing in the dirt is such a valuable lesson. Back in the spring, I made arrangements for them to be enrolled in their normal summer program, but for some reason this year, I was more anxious to take them out of another routine and allow a little more freedom. They’ve each had a few day camps. We spent 10 days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Gulf Shores, Alabama. We’ve tried to delve into our “summer jar,” as I wrote about in my last post a month ago, and enjoy some family activities. And, mostly, we’ve enjoyed being “off the clock”, so to speak, with the wake up, bedtime and scheduled routine.

What that’s meant for my summer is that I’ve been doing a little extra juggling of projects and my workflow. I’ve been doing more balancing than normal in trying to get work completed. The city planning of “Lego World” on the dining table, staging for the next puppet show, craft projects, comfy clothes, couch “slumber parties”, and a stream of favorite movies on Netflix have all punctuated my very fragmented design time.

In the midst of all this three-ring circus, each of them have invariably commented to me at one time or another, “you always have to work!” And, sometimes, as a freelancer and small business owner, it seems like I do!

I don’t punch a clock. Or leave an office. Or shut down the equipment. Some of my choices for how I’ve structured my work and life-life mean work sometimes happens at odd times, in odd places, and with odd background music like an ukulele, If you happen to be needing strings for your instrument visit Four String Fun shop. And, with the creative process being such a huge part of my business development and perpetual task list, all kinds of odd things get lumped into work — drawing, painting, looking at books, doodling, taking photos, using scissors and ribbons and paper and such! Sometimes just looking at my phone or iPad gets lumped into the work category in all our minds.

When I hear that “you always have to work!” from one of my loves, I try to remind them — and myself — that our freedom this summer means working together so Mommy can take care of responsibilities. Wednesday night, Bug asked me, “do you have to work tomorrow?” His commentary when I said “yes” started some good reminders for me and the children about how privileged we are to structure our lives this way. “You can bring your laptop upstairs with us.” “Because we don’t have to go to after school.” “You can work some and play with us some.” Yes. Yes, I can. We talked about what a blessing it is that we have the choice of whether the kids can stay home today. The choice to set our own schedules. And, I asked them to help me and compromise with me as I make some of those choices to balance what they want to do with what I need to do. To see the fact that Mommy is creating ad campaigns in the living room as the joy and blessing it is.

When I find myself having trouble with drawing the lines or struggling with client communications and design puzzles as I’m tuning out songs from Frozen, I have to remind myself again and again of those same things. To stop and remember how special this time is. How grateful I am to have it. To recognize the blessing and joy born out of those blurred lines. I guess that’s what I was doing when I snapped the “Joy” photo. Thinking about how rare this time is. This “summer break” when all four of us are in the house. When all three of them are vying for my attention, my listening ear, my involvement in whatever project has emerged. And at the same time, when so many new art opportunities are presenting themselves — the chance to work with organizations and clients who make the process very un-work-like. It’s rare. It’s precious.

Oh Happy Day!We

Categories : mother's heart, oh happy day!

Tags : beautiful ordinary, conscious living, conscious working, gratitude, well-designed life

oh happy day . The Summer Jar

Posted by haley montgomery

· June 5, 2015

Friday is here, and I’m finally getting back to my Oh Happy Day! Gratitude Project posting series. I started it as a way to remind myself to make gratitude part of every day, every week. Thornton Wilder wrote that “we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures,” and beginning with gratitude is the best way I know to live aware of how blessed we are.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that blessing over the last few weeks as we’ve been finishing up the school year and getting ready for summer. This spring, I devoted some time to thinking through the direction of this blog, and by extension, my business. And, I guess, by further extension, my approach to work and how it integrates with the rest of life. As an artist, so much of creating and exploring new ideas is an on-going process that isn’t necessarily confined by the typical workday. As a single mom, dealing with the loss of my husband and the changes that has brought to our lives, I’ve also grown to understand that for me, it’s very important that what I “do” in my work and how I spend my days creatively be meaningful and inspiring.

As I was thinking through some of my blogging topics and inspiration-focus back in March, I wrote a “creative map” and lots of notes about various aspects of the creative life. For my “living” category, I wanted my thinking, writing and creating to reflect a “quiet, authentic and conscious life” — there is that word “conscious” again. My goals for some of the writing and sharing settled on three things…

to talk and “be” about real things
to be a good steward of time and blessings
to infuse daily life with beauty, creativity and celebration

The concept of being deliberate and conscious in what we’re doing isn’t easy sometimes. Being that “good steward” can be difficult when faced with all the mundane activities required in working, mothering and home-keeping. And, of course, busy-ness can be our enemy as we get stretched and pulled in lots of different directions. We often start to lose the joy in whatever we’re doing and begin checking items off our calendars and to-do lists.

I want to stop that cycle in my life. I want, as Emerson said, to “finish the moment” — each moment — and to make the most of each opportunity represented in that moment. I think I’m particularly more motivated in that commitment as I see my children growing at what seems like an exponential pace at times. As they become more and more independent (and just physically bigger), I find the desire to grab onto each fleeting moment with more of a white-knuckle grip! And, I suppose, summer offers it’s own impetus to slow down. Our schedule slows down, and we have fewer commitments as a family, but how will we use that freedom? I don’t want to get to August and say “where has the summer gone?” We’ve had an unprecedented build-up of excitement anticipating the start of summer, and I’ve been determined to put every effort into taking full advantage of it.

Enter the Summer Jar.

The children and I decided to create a list of things we wanted to do this summer — experiences big and small that would help us have memories and joy to show for the time spent this summer. We decided to put them in a jar that we could pull from to plan for activities or to surprise ourselves with fun experiences. Baby Girl decorated the jar with her special brand of summery illustrations, and we have it front and center on our dining table with a pen and sticky pad ready to add more experience suggestions. We’ve included things like our normal trips to the farm and to the beach, but also things like building our train set and a lego city, getting yogurt or ice cream, going to the library, eating outside on the picnic table, swimming, game nights and more.

None of the activities are earth-shattering, not all of them require “going” somewhere, and most aren’t new experiences. But, the power comes in the intention — the conscious choice of experiencing and “finishing” each moment. I want to recognize the joy and to take time to celebrate it in my heart at the end of each day. I suppose that’s the essence of gratitude. And, I want our summer jar to encourage us to embrace the beauty and wonder in some of those mundane activities that weave our lives together between the other fun experiences. I hope we can have a healthy mix of going and simply being together in those moments of someone sitting in my lap, working together to cook dinner, reading together at bedtime, playing games and sharing the same space.

We started some of our “summer jar” experiences yesterday with a trip to Denny’s for pancakes for breakfast and a visit to the MSU Library to see the Kinsey Collection on exhibit there. I’ll share more about this remarkable collection of African American art, literature and historical documents in a later post, but today, I’m so thankful we had the opportunity to enjoy it together and have it as one of our memories of the summer of 2015. It is open in Starkville through June 20 at the John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library, and it’s well worth the time in experiencing some little-seen aspects of our own history.

On this “Oh Happy Day,” I’m also so, so grateful for the opportunity to build my work life on my own terms with the freedom to organize my days so that these types of experiences with my children are possible. It’s never easy to balance family and work responsibilities, and I’ve become more and more mindful of the blessing I have as freelancer to set my own schedules. It’s a true gift I don’t want to squander or take for granted in these seasons when all my loves are together under the same roof.

Oh Happy Day!

Categories : beautiful ordinary, essays, oh happy day!

Tags : beautiful ordinary, conscious living, family experiences, inspired by summer, Starkville MS

oh happy day . Muddy Waters

Posted by haley montgomery

· March 13, 2015

It’s Friday, and this installment of my Oh Happy Day! Gratitude Project is a dispatch from the farm where we’re winding down our spring break week. We’ve spent spring break here for the last several years, but this year has been a little different — and maybe a little un-spring break like. I usually spend some time with plein air watercolor while we’re in “the country”, but this week I’ve taken a break from drawing and painting. I’m still nursing a recuperating sprained ankle, so some of our usual farm activities like walking the pastures, climbing hay bales and such just haven’t been possible. Plus, it’s been very cloudy and rainy this week, so we’ve had to be extra patient for time outdoors.

With so much rain (and snow) over the last month or so, and some still hanging around this week, we are surrounded by mud and water here — so much so that we almost decided not to come this year. Still, the time, as always, has held the blessing of quieter days, staying up late, sleeping in, laughing, reading, and just hanging out together. I’m realizing more and more how precious those days really are as we try to keep up with all our normal weekly activities. Even with the rainy and muddy weather, I’m grateful we still found some ways to carve out the nature time that is the hallmark of our farm days. Perhaps one of the most needed blessings has been the freedom to simply let go and run feet first and unrestrained into the muddy waters around us. We’ve visited the creek every day to throw rocks, run through the puddles, and splash in the low places funneling water through the culverts. At least the children have. My ankle isn’t quite ready for running, but I’ve done my share of cheering, laughing out loud at the escapades, and at least walking through the mud at a much slower pace. Sometimes when rain takes things out of the ordinary, you just have to embrace the muddy waters. And be thankful.

In my normal habit, we still had enough dry skies for me to capture a few photo glimpses of farm days and nature’s still lives, if only the views from somewhat level ground this trip! Here are a few…

This rain and a few milder temperatures this week have made some green come alive! Our spirits are totally ready for spring, and I think the earth may be ready too. I have a few recap posts on this winter’s snow day escapades, and then I’ll be ready to get inspired by spring in full force. Stay tuned!

Oh Happy Day!

Categories : my South, oh happy day!

Tags : farm days, inspired by nature

oh happy day 030615 . Stories + My Old Friend

Posted by haley montgomery

· March 6, 2015

I started blogging in May 2008 in a little corner of cyberspace called EyeJunkie.com. Some of you faithful friends have encouraged me there as I’ve shared a lot of writing through the years. This “Oh Happy Day” post is a transplant of a series I did at EyeJunkie that I want to bring over to Small Pond Graphics. The Friday series started as I was thinking about our cultural love of the phrase, TGIF, or “thank God’s it’s Friday.” I wanted to consciously incorporate gratitude into my work and life so that TGIF wasn’t just a silly acronym, but a true reflection of a thankful heart expressed each week. Gratitude, as it turns out, is actually a pretty poignant and successful business model!

Today, I’m relaunching Oh Happy Day here with gratitude for an old writing “friend” and the clarity for how we can go new places. Here’s the story…

I began the EyeJunkie blog as a creative outlet while I was working at an advertising agency, chasing two crazy preschoolers, and pregnant with my Baby Girl — the perfect time to add something new to my plate, right? It actually WAS perfect timing, and the process turned out to be a great opportunity to express myself. Almost all of my creative time was being spent doing work for clients. The children had taken up any “free time” I had for creative or “making” projects. And, we all know that raising toddlers carries its own brand of creative thinking! At the time, I began to realize that I needed a way to do something creative that wasn’t related to selling sandwiches or shoes or branding new businesses. I needed something for me. That outlet became the blog, EyeJunkie.

I experimented with all kinds of things at EyeJunkie. I learned WordPress, which I now use exclusively for client website development projects. I participated in all kinds of memes, posting themes and “national day of…” writing events. I explored a ton of what I call “hare-brained” ideas. But mostly, I wrote. And wrote. I wrote about ridiculous things. And not-so-ridiculous things that made me think. I wrote about my family and my faith and the culture around me. I never gained a substantial audience beyond that circle of friends and family who hung on my words, but the writing became important to me — a way of thinking. And a way of disciplining myself to focus on things that mattered.

Living deliberately was sort of the theme of EyeJunkie. I deemed it “adventures in paying attention” — the pursuit of taking a deeper look at life without and within. I used the writing to try and bring meaning to everyday experiences, and to slow down and record those precious moments with my children. To give them their due. In the writing, I settled into sort of a loose mixture of prose and poetry with a bent toward stream-of-consciousness that sort of helped me find my “voice” in a lot of my communications now.

The last seven or so years of writing on the EyeJunkie blog have carried me through the daily experiences of raising the little souls in my charge, the changes in our family, changes in my work, the launch of my freelancing business, the suicide and grief surrounding my husband’s death, a lot of journeys toward what I believe about social issues and culture today, and of course the persistent pursuit of faith throughout. EyeJunkie is an old friend.

As my posting and writing for EyeJunkie.com has become more sporadic over the last year or two, I’ve been struggling with my feelings about that space and how or if it should continue. I love it, but haven’t had the will to write there consistently. But, I suppose, as in all things EyeJunkie, the posts have been so tied to my own thinking that to say goodbye to them was almost like saying goodbye to myself. In my thinking and planning for 2015, I finally decided it was time to let it go. Although, not really. I suppose I felt it was time to let it stand — stand as it is, as an archive of my thinking and the beautiful, and sometimes challenging, experiences chronicled there.

I’ve spent the last month or so regrouping on the Small Pond Graphics website and my blog here. I usually do that at the first of each year in an effort to make sure my time is spent well in what I share publicly and that the core of what I’m doing is represented well. I’ve found this year, that I really wanted to bring the best of EyeJunkie — that piece of my soul that’s been out on display — into where I’m moving for Small Pond.

The goals and ideas behind the EyeJunkie writing are the true undercurrent of how this freelance business has moved and grown and changed over the last 4 1/2 years, and much of that thinking has fueled the boundaries I’ve set up for myself in business and the choices I’m making about where it goes from here. I have an increasing conviction that my “work” — how I conduct it, the projects I choose, and ultimately the communication that emanates from it — should reflect what I value in my “life” because work IS life! We live in a culture of sharing, of communicating — almost more communication than we can handle. For me, sharing and communicating is an inevitable outpouring of creating. When I crawl in bed at night and I’m left to my own thoughts, I want to know that the hours I’ve devoted to working reflect an honest pursuit of a quiet, authentic, and conscious life. I want to talk and share and “be” about real things.

To that end, I’ve been working to revamp the “categories” a bit for the Small Pond Graphics blog to expand my thinking beyond design and images. As part of that, I’m excited to share a featured section called “stories,” which now contains a chunk of what I think are the most relevant and “evergreen” writing from Eyejunkie — my old friend. My goal is to begin posting more “stories” and thoughtful writing on some of the root ideas I’ve mentioned — peppered in with the watercolor and lettering and design-centered things I usually share, of course. I’m so thankful for all the experiments and life chronicled in the EyeJunkie stories, and those “legacy” posts will serve as my own accountability and encouragement to make sure whatever I share moving forward is governed by authenticity, sincerity, quality and creativity.

I’m so blessed by the opportunity to do what I love on my own terms and to be able to share that journey with so many of you.

Oh happy day!

If you’re interested in reading some of the legacy posts, my ever-overthinking brain has organized them like this…

beautiful ordinary | essays | mother’s heart | on faith | on social justice

southern stories | twelve days | widow’s tale

Categories : essays, oh happy day!

Tags : behind the scenes, EyeJunkie, gratitude, writing

oh happy day . Mommy’s Office

Posted by haley montgomery

· May 18, 2012

Oh Happy Day! It’s Friday, and that means celebration in my world (like it does in yours, I’m sure). The anticipation of the weekend was already in bloom as the kids were getting ready for their “it’s a school day” routine this morning. Friday mornings have become more relaxed for me lately. I often start the day with a photo field trip of some kind — the product of which usually ends up on my design blog — followed by a frappacino breakfast before settling into my office for real work. It’s a blessing and boost to creativity to take some time looking at something new or seeing something familiar in a new way every once and a while.

Now that I’m back in my office after this morning’s jaunt, looking at the piles through the lens of having shirked them for a few minutes, I’m actually relishing this place that has become my daily familiar. It’s been a full, but good week. I’ve been blessed with confirmation on a couple of new projects. We’ve celebrated Bug’s four-year-old kindergarten graduation. I joined Little Drummer Boy on his end-of-the-year field trip. Balls were miraculously caught in tee ball games. And, hallelujah, Baby Girl was able to take her white fuzzy dog for show and tell today. It’s good to reflect on accomplishments, big and small. And my office is a good place to do it. It’s given me the opportunity to reflect already this week.

I’m in my office. Like I am a lot. And somehow they all end up here. The kids, I mean. This place of wonder where Mommy spends her days and keeps her computers and displays art treasures has become somewhat of a magnet for curiosity. Maybe it’s just a peaceful, but less-used place for them.
Maybe it’s the place that holds me during the days when I’ve assured them I miss them every minute. So, they feel compelled to fill it with reminders of themselves. Maybe it’s the small items sitting everywhere — quirky toys and objects I’ve picked up through the years that were introduced into their lives when I began working from home. Maybe it’s because sometimes they’re not allowed to play here. They just somehow all end up here.

I came down the five steps of our enclosed breezeway to my office one evening this week while they were playing outside, like I often do. A typical night. I was putting away some straggling parts of the work day, as my habits seem to dictate. One by one, they made their way in.

They know where the colored paper lives, and they pull it out to choose their pleasure. They know the skinny marker cup and the fat marker pot and the zigzag scissors holder and the way to drag the chairs so they all have a corner of the work table. And the tape. Baby Girl loves the tape.

They explored and created while I put things away. And, in the process, I found new places for their scribbled gifts and listened to their excitement as background noise.

“This smells nice.”
“What is this?”
“Mommy DON’T look at this!”
One shared letters and spelling secrets with another, coaching out some covert message. Scribbles spilled over from the red and purple paper onto the butcher block tabletop. I’m so glad washable markers don’t wash out completely from wood. I don’t know if I could work each day without the reminders of their slippage outside the lines.

I was thinking the other day how difficult it’s been to muster writing topics — how devoid of profundity I seem to have been lately in this season of ballgame schedules and end-of-school activities. How I’ve been searching for the will to compose meaningful thoughts in the face of busy project lists.

I read the phrase “joy of life” in an article this week. It was something a writer had recognized while paying attention to an unexpected walk through a London park. Just like what I find looking around my office on an evening like Wednesday evening. Not a birthday or a holiday, just a Wednesday evening. When I listened to the secret conversations and found places for the zigzagged hearts decorated with “I love Momy” and exclamation points and fives — lots of number fives.

Three test cases for joy and profundity staring me in the face. Their brilliance so blinding that I can scarcely believe I’m so fortunate to be able to see it.

Oh Happy Day.

Categories : oh happy day!

Hello & welcome! I’m Haley Montgomery, and I’m the designer and owner of Small Pond Graphics. I sometimes fancy myself a frog kisser— a documentarian coaxing poignant moments from unexpected places. This blog has evolved from those moments.

The small Pond FIELD GUIDE is part diary, part sketchbook, and part wish list – an archive of ordinary wonders. For years, this space has housed my stories – creative ideas, vintage inspiration, our forays into curious places, and the simple artifacts of quiet of conscious living. Through watercolor, photography, and illustrated tales, these pages uncover the blessing of ordinary days and the wonder found in authentic places and pursuits.

I invite you to open the boxes.
Peek into the drawers.
Rustle through the pages.
I’m honored to have you here.