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Kristen is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer and homebody. She specializes in home and lifestyle content, and loves helping others live their best lives at home and beyond. Romanticizing her life since 1987, you can probably find her sipping on iced coffee, crushing a Crossfit workout, designing her next dream space, or blasting Taylor Swift.
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Studies suggest crafts are therapeutic, and can assist in coping with stress, anxiety, and depression. It’s worth crafting into your later life as well, because the risk of cognitive impairments tend to be reduced for people who draw, paint, color, journal, and craft. So if you’re looking for new ways to get creative no matter your skill level, here are five fun and easy projects worth giving a shot.
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Do you find painting intimidating? Consider squeegee painting. It’s become super popular, and for good reason, because it’s such an easy and fun way to make abstract art. All you need is a squeegee, a canvas or paper, and some acrylic paint. Just drop the paint onto your canvas and use the squeegee to spread the paint. It’s considered “process art” which just means it’s all about the creation and experimentation — there’s no wrong way to do it.
What’s great about this project is how simple the process is considering how impressive the payoff looks. Essentially, all you have to do is tie some embroidery hoops together and hot glue the fringe to the hoops. There are some small steps in between to ensure it looks uniform, so it’s worth consulting the video, but this project really shows you the power of some fringe and a hot glue gun. Plus, what’s not to love about making something you can use?
String painting is another fun and easy way to make abstract paintings. This method might be a bit messier so you’ll want to give yourself room to work. Some people press their paint-covered string between pages of a sketchbook, and then pull out the string while the book is closed to see what patterns it creates. Others will lay a bunch of paint-soaked string along a canvas and drag the strings across in one direction — but like the squeegee painting, there’s no real wrong way to make these.
Who doesn’t love a good upcycling project? It’s extra satisfying knowing that not only did you make something cool, but you made it from stuff lying around the house. You only need a few things for this project: shirts, scissors, and a hula hoop or piece of cardboard. The tutorial explains how to make your T-shirts into R-shirt yarn and your hula hoop or cardboard into a loom. Bonus: If you’re feeling ambitious you can also make pompoms from T-shirt yarn for your rugs.
We all love fresh flowers, but always keeping them around can be a bit high maintenance. These adorable coffee filter peonies are as fun to make as they are pretty. You’ll need coffee filters, food coloring, a glue gun, floral wire, and floral tape. Display them in vases, use them as ornaments, or as party decorations — there’s no end to what you could do with these floral creations.
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Once upon a time (circa 2016), I thought Dry January would be an impossibly boring and flat-out impossible feat. As a single and social 20-something, alcohol was often part of dates, going out with friends, and even my work. (I was a red carpet reporter and freelance food and beverage journalist in New York City at the time.) So, when my best guy friend and I made a bet to do Dry January 2017, I decided to take on the challenge and make it fun. Spoiler alert: I won our wager.
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If this is your first drink-free month or your fiftieth, here are my top five tips for actually enjoying a Dry January.
Brainstorm activities you enjoy doing that don’t require alcohol. Here are a few ideas to start: bowling, hiking (if a trail is available to you), yoga, or even something creative like a pottery class or painting. Next, invite friends and family to participate with you. This way, you can avoid bars, clubs, and most importantly, booze (out of sight, out of mind!), and still be social as you embark on 31 dry days.
When you’re looking for something to drink, you can always order (or pour yourself) a tall glass of water, juice, or soda. That said, Dry January is the perfect time to try some nonalcoholic sips and see what suits you best. These days, there are a variety of nonalcoholic beverages available including 0 ABV beers, wines, spirits, and cocktails. You can find them in stores and online, and drink them in fancy glassware (or however you usually have a buzzy bev of choice). You can even make them at home with step-by-step cocktail books, YouTube videos, and blogs.
Strength in numbers, right? When you have a friend doing Dry January with you, not only will you have someone cheering you on (as you cheer them on), but you can keep each other accountable, as well. Having a rough time? Call your dry month friend. Feeling great about not having a hangover? Share the news (and your new nonalcoholic cocktail recipe) with your dry buddy! As you make social plans that don’t involve booze, they’ll be happy to attend because they won’t be drinking either.
Alcohol is expensive, and so are the activities surrounding it. Add up receipts from a typical night out, and you’ve likely paid for drinks, a cab or Uber, and maybe a meal for midnight munchies — not to mention the next morning’s hangover cure. While participating in a Dry January, you’ll save money on all of these items and can put your savings toward a dream vacation, a new pair of shoes, or anything else you’ve been eyeing. In the end, it adds up!
Last, but certainly not least, remember to be nice to yourself (and your fellow Dry January participants, of course). Alcohol is ingrained in so many cultures, and it’s not easy to avoid. Whether you give up booze for the full 31 days, or three, or have a one-drink January, or a damp January, the most important thing is being aware of the role alcohol plays in your day-to-day life.
With that, best of luck and cheers! You’ve got this.
Meeting professional and personal goals means knowing what those goals are — and the New Year is the perfect time to figure those out. Your intentions may come when you’re in the shower, on a walk, or right before you sleep. Sometimes these whispers need a nudge to become priorities in your day-to-day life.
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Journal prompts can be useful tools to reflect on the past and set specific intentions to move ahead in the new year. You can either reflect on some of these prompts by writing them in a journal, or even talking them over with a friend.
If you’re looking to break in your brand new journal, use these journal prompts to help with self-discovery, anxiety, healing, and reviewing the year, as well as questions to help teens:
Self-discovery often requires time to reflect. Near the end of December, I reflect on choosing a word of the year, as opposed to setting resolutions. Choosing one word is a way to prompt me into self-discovery on how I want to set the tone for the next 12 months. In years past, I’ve chosen compassion, laughter, pause, and let go. Here are some of the ways prompts can help you arrive at your word of the year:
To help the self-discovery process, you don’t necessarily need to rely on a word of the year. You can ask general questions to dive deeper into your self-discovery journey. Psych Central offers some questions on how to approach this process:
Research shows that to help alleviate stress and anxiety, journaling can lessen intrusive thoughts. In a study, participants who journaled for seven weeks found that consistently writing thoughts in a notebook or journal helped with anxiety. Confused on where to start? There are some recommendations on what to ask, according to The Good Body.
Healing requires time to process all of the emotions — it will likely feel uncomfortable, but it also likely means you’re involved in helping yourself get better. Silk and Sonder offers some questions that may be helpful in your healing:
As you enter into a new year, it makes sense to review how you spent the last 12 months, from what you did right to where you may improve in the upcoming months. The questions can be broad or as specific as you like. Renowned therapist and author Nedra Tawab recommends that you ask these questions:
Journaling is beneficial for adults, but can also be a useful strategy for teens. Teens are likely going through so many ups and downs in their adolescence — feelings that arise from social media, navigating relationship issues, and working through managing school work, friends, and extracurricular activities. If they practice journaling in their formative years, it can be something they carry with them in adulthood.
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I’ve always favored paper planners. Despite all of the planning and productivity apps that I’ve tried in its place, a paper planner has always reigned supreme. Aside from my feelings, there are plenty of compelling reasons to adopt paper planners. They cut down on screen time, they help you remember things better (writing by hand not only is better for committing things to memory, it’s also mindful practice), and they make it easier to focus, since you don’t have to silence notifications on your paper planner. And science aside, it’s just more fun than your Google Calendar.
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As a lover of paper planners, here are three of my absolute favorites that I recommend to keep you on track this year.
I bought Adam J. Kurtz’s Unsolicited Advice planner for the first time in 2020, in the height of the doom and gloom year. There’s a lot to love about the planner aside from the unsolicited advice, my favorite feature being that it’s part calendar and part journal. There are built-in prompts each month to reflect on how you’re doing overall. One that I appreciate is the “recurring theme” section so I can see I’ve made no progress in my goals to, say, put away my laundry in a timely manner this year. The planner includes traditional important dates like the first night of Hanukkah, as well as lesser known important days like Nov. 18th, aka “Married to a Scorpio Support Day.” Each planner also comes with a few sheets of adorable, endearing, and funny stickers.
If you already look to the stars for guidance, you’ll appreciate this planetary-focused Astro Planner from Chani Nicholas. This planner includes a lot more than calendar pages and zodiac phases — it’s full of rituals, reflections, exercises, and more. As someone who will never be able to memorize their birth chart, I particularly appreciate the customizable chart wheel. There’s also a similarly useful reference table of the signs, houses, and planets. Any planner that makes extra space to organize your thoughts is a good one if you ask me, so the additional space dedicated to planning, intention-setting, and dream journaling is essential. Plus, there are activity prompts for each significant astrological event, such as New and Full Moons, solstices and equinoxes, lunar and solar eclipses, and more.
The Bullet Journal is more a planning method than a planner itself — you can make one out of any notebook. It has all the essential components of a planner, but it’s a lot more malleable. The “BuJo” has sections for daily to-dos, monthly or weekly calendars, notes that track your mental and physical health, and a record of both short-term and long-term goals. My favorite part of using a bullet journal is that it has a built in system for dealing with to-do list items, especially ones that end up rolling over from the previous week or month.