Melissa Stephens Art

‘Tis the season for gazing at our tree’s twinkling white lights, sitting by our fire’s comforting warm flames, and baking (then eating!) our family’s favorite Christmas cookies. These are a few of my favorite things this time of year! To that I’ll add a new tradition, writing re-mixes, last year of the beloved holiday poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” and this year the classic song from “Sound of Music,” “My Favorite Things.” With its cozy winter imagery of sleigh bells, snowflakes, and mittens, it has become a holiday classic. 

I hope to return to writing about my other favorite thing, making art from my life, in the New Year. I have a few intentions for 2026 but am trying to hold those ideas gently, allowing them to unfold, not so much as a set-in-stone plan but as an open, loose framework that encourages space and opportunity for my art and my writing to grow in the direction it chooses. Until recently I never would have imagined myself typing those two words, “loose” and “plan,” together in the same sentence. Why only a little less than 2 years ago, while relaxing in a lovely inn in Jackson, Wyoming, where our family had gathered to celebrate the holidays, I spent the quiet morning hours outlining a detailed plan for my monthly missives in 2024. It felt amazing! In that rigid outline of 12 topics, each seasonally related to a garden theme, I thought I’d cracked the creative writing code, vanquishing my recurring fear of the blank page and organizing my way through the nagging “what am I going to write about” question. That masterpiece of a plan lasted ….. 0 months! Seriously, I never used it! That January I wrote another story altogether, about a trip I took to Prince Edward Island, Anne of Green Gables homeland, and the insights I gained from that travel. After that I never course corrected back to my original, diligently crafted plan. 

More than a year later, in February 2025, I finally wrote “Nesting Season,” about finding inspiration in the fallow days of mid-Atlantic winters. It incorporated some of the hibernation season ideas I’d intended to use the year before. The other 11 carefully bullet-pointed, garden-themed notes remain buried in a Word document on my computer, likely never to be unearthed again. 

This is a lesson I’m struggling, during this season of life, to learn: to allow myself to write, paint, draw, or make whatever inspires me in the moment; rather than attempting to choreograph an entire creative dance card months ahead and expecting, when the time is right, those preconceived plans will feel fresh, will sparkle with creative energy. It doesn’t work, not for me. Though I’ve been a stalwart planner for as long as I can remember, creativity is teaching me its wiser, and far more enjoyable, if I shelve the stale plans and, instead, allow ideas to UNFOLD (likely my One Little Word for 2026) in the moment. It’s a revolutionary concept for me but one both Art and I, in our retirements, are embracing … unfold … sounds like a gentle, curious, and inviting way to live, doesn’t it? I’m trying!

Thank you, as always, for reading. Your support, your likes, your comments, your witness to my unfolding, it means the world!

Until 2026, I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons and leave you with “MS’s Favorite Things” (sung like Julie Andrews!):

Stenciling patterns on canvas and papers,
Layers of collage, such fun artsy capers,
Adding and adding until a piece sings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Rainbow-hued paint tubes and smudgy black charcoal,
When I am making it nourishes my soul.
Heeding the nudges creativity brings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Lost in the moment, the time quickly passes,
Playing with colors, brush strokes in wild dashes,  
Mixing up palettes from which paintings spring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When to-do’s mount,
Lists are growing,
And I’m feeling stressed,
I climb up the stairs to my studio room
‘Cause that’s where I feel my best!