january 2026.

Stepping into the month of January with snow, remenising on winter, wondering about hibernation and starting a new painting.

From the darkest days of December we slowly enter January 2026. As humans we celebrate this change of year with festive fireworks. For animals January is part of winter and many animal species hibernate in places where enough food is available and where a safe, warm nest, burrow, or shelter can be found.

I wonder how it would be to hibernate as a human. Up in the northern countries there are places were you can get snowed in and cut off to other places, which would leave you home bound. All of a sudden there would be a lot of time to rest, for creating art, or bake bread and maybe do little chores in the house if you have all necessary tools available. Would that be similar to hibernation? Maybe I am romantacising this a little.

What I do love is the time spend with family and creating simple, comforting and delicious meals and finishing with the ever indulgent English Sticky Toffee pudding (omg so delicious!). Enjoying the company and sharing bits of good times from the past year and slowly turn to look into the upcoming year.

In my previous blog I wrote about my theme for 2026 and that I take time to reminisce on 2025. Writing down the highs and lows and reflecting on what I would like to keep, what I would like to let go and what I would like to focus on in 2026. Then when the last day of the year arrives, ideally i'd like to go to bed just as usual and wake up refreshed in 2026. Start with a new-years work-out at the gym and then enjoy the quiet rest of the day, drinking coffee and starting my new knitting project. Well yes, you read it correct, I knit. That I can add to my hibernation list of things to do while snowed in and passing time. End of 2025 I happily finished my previous sweater and wearing it days on end now, enjoying the warmth of the alpaca wool on my skin.

Now for some people the change of years is to look up and maybe saying a soft goodbye to what has been and welcoming the new year in festive cheer. Set some new years resolutions and off we go! Or not? After a quiet new years day snow (!) was entering January! It is not often we have snow, but oh do I love snow! Snow gives so much joy and energy, it reflects light and of course comes in with crisp clean air!

Snow is magical! An untouched covering blanket existing of trimendous amounts of snowflakes, which in themselves are pieces of art anyway. The shapes, all the differences, the reflection of the sun, prismatic! Lot of colors are hidden within this single white dot we see with our bare eye. Look up close and you'll see what I mean.

If you haven't tried to paint snow yet, I invite you to try and use, at least, magenta, prussiun blue, yellow and white. If you do try to paint snow and you will see all colors of a prisma included. Set up your painting with magenta and slowly work your way through a snowwhite landscape, using the white of the canvas and creating shades of prussiun blue for shadows and notice the yellow in the clouds. Yellowish grey clouds, that's when you know more snow is coming. Whoohoo!!

Snow brings not only color, but silence too. Have you ever risen at 5 a.m. to venture into the silent streets, with only the faint yellow glow of the streetlamps frantically trying to illuminate your surroundings? At this early hour, you'll be the first to step onto the snow, completely alone, listening to the muffled crackle under your shoes. Listen to the muted sounds that can only exist at such an hour, in absolute stillness. It is like meditating.

After the stillnes of the snow, admiring the many snowmen with carrot noses, stickfigure arms with little gloves on them and faintly remembering the festivities not so long ago, all is getting back to it's usual rhythmn. Nothing special, just another winter day. Adding a few minutes of daylight each passing day. During one day, the sky showed a few beams of sunshine. To me, crackling air and sunshine are the perfect weather for a relaxing walk in the park. So I did, happy go lucky.

After a while I noticed green sprouts of leaves and little white flowers. There they were, the first snowdrops! That's when you know life is awakening. Very slowly, the first signs of life are unfolding. It makes me happy and makes me looking forward and up, to notice any news signs that spring is softly heading to the surface. But I also remind myself to enjoy this very moment and savour this winter month too. Time just passes by so quickly and if your not looking upclose to youself and you surroundings you'll miss the things happening in front of you. It is right there! If you don't see it, slow down, take time, make space, and just notice what is here and now, at this very moment.

These dark winter months making it a bit easier to slow down a lttle. I notice within that I yearn for a bit of easy going, mindfull life. So I surrendered to slowing down a bit more and feeling at ease with this. Which gave me space to look at self-imposed thoughts with a distance and to free myself from thoughts about what I should or could do.

One day, just like that I felt a sudden itch, a spur of the moment, a creative urge to want to paint my elephant's world. It has been 2, maybe 3 years since the idea came to me and it did not follow through. The idea stayed in the back of my head, I sketched back then but it wasn't what I was looking for. It didn't gave me that special tingle inside, that feeling that makes me shiver a little, knowing I might have something worthwhile. It was for that momentum that I wanted to paint the world of the elephant. Taking a canvas with a landscape that I made back then and painting it all over in sandy grey was the starting point. Using a blue pastel to set up the elephant in a way I thought would fit. But then after three tries of bleu pastel lines, I found my bearings and decided that if the elephant's head which kept coming onto the canvas the way it did, was the way that it must be and how I will go forward.

To me, painting is about feeling free. The more freedom I sense the more the painting unfolds itself. It is me who is painting but the painting finds me to be revealed.

On that note I will close this January 'memoire' and soon will start on February's journey.

Would you like:

• my delicious indulgent sticky toffee pudding recipe?

• know how to make your own sourdough bread?

• to start knitting a sweater?

• to see my painting process of my Elephant's world?