Okay, exhaling now

Now that I've done the pictures and admired the Nautilus journal all over again, I had to share it with HP but



I kept this picture back from the Beautiful Metaphor blogpost, the final piece in the journal, from Minimiss, because it's such a wonderful signature piece for this blogpost. I hope that's okay by you, M!

I thought you'd like to see the other hugely excited recipient of the Nautilus journal, HP, who loves the images, studying it with great care. When we started this journey, I didn't know that by now he would have lost a lot of reading ability, but still be very open to images and color, and this is such a great experience for him. I pointed out the pages from people who are in touch with us otherwise, to identify them for him, and he wanted to be sure you all know he's very happy to be included in this experience!

Here he is admiring Annie's page, after enjoying the beautiful watercolor and mixed media piece from Irene (dogonart) -- incidentally, first time in a while he's used his hands as well as that



And Heather's beautiful insert page



And here he is enjoying the signature Friends page.



And, in case we need to remember the significance of the nautilus image: that's a shell creature who, as it outgrows the previous section of the shell, closes it off firmly and moves on to grow more into a new life. A metaphor for a life well-lived, I'd say.