My friend Trisha (Hi, Trisha! Miss you!) shared this to her IG stories, of people talking about what silly, whimsical thing they’re doing to bring a small joy to their life. The original ask started on TikTok.
Here are some of the responses:
I’ve asked my fellow SBTB teammates to share their whimsies with the world.
Sarah: I keep a candle on the windowsill in my kitchen, and when I’m cooking dinner, I start with lighting the candle like I’m some kitchen witch about to start my magical spells by peeling carrots and whisking eggs.
That reminds me – I need to add “candles” to the shopping list because I need a new kitchen magic candle.
Also: a small bit of context for this one might be needed. We give one of our cats, Wilbur, a ground up pill in a Churus, and those are pretty much the only treats we use because the other cat, Katie, is prone to nasty, nasty (and expensive) bladder stones. We’ve even got the special diet made of endangered species (I presume it is, given the cost). Wilbur gets his pill treat up on the table so the dog won’t try to steal the medication, and Wilbur is arthritic so I have to lift him. Kate gets her treat on the other side of the stair gate so Wilbur won’t bother her when he’s done.
Therefore, every evening:
“Sir Wilbur, might I hoist thee onto the dining surface so thou might enjoy a tasty medicinal treat? Lady Katherine, please allow your humble servant to escort thee behind yon privacy screen so thou might dine in peace.” The cats look upset if I don’t narrate. Especially Wilbur.
Sneezy: Using insanely beautiful pottery when I’m painting, apparently.
I got these at a stall in the Lantern Festival. It was being run by the potter couple who made them. Most of the ones being sold there were being sold at a discount for being ‘flawed’ somehow which… I KNOW, RIGHT??? FLAW WHERE??? It might be hard to tell from photos, but the round splotches catches light differently depending on the angle, and have a sort of holography effect when you move it under the light.
The husband is the one who uses this glazing and firing technique while the wife focuses on painting the ceramics and geeeeez louise her work so mind bogglingly detailed and skilled too. They explained to me this effect is created when ceramics are heated and cooled repeatedly at specific temperatures that crystallizes parts of the glaze. (Or at least I think that’s what they said… I really need to work on my Chinese…) It’s a very difficult technique to use, let alone learn, making it very cost prohibitive for most to learn. Apparently there are only three, maybe four people in Taiwan who still practice this technique.
There were lots of colours to choose from, but I ended up picking these ones because I know I can’t have things that are too ‘loud’ around me while making art. But man!!! They were all so PRETTY!!!!!
The ones that came home with me are joining Pretzel Heart:
Besides being eminently sensible, Pretzel Heart is from a friend, making them exponentially motivating and calming. As you can see, Pretzel Heart is already battle tested.
I LOVE how they look, I LOVE the feel of them in my hands, and even something about the shape of them make the act of starting to make and practice art feel much more doable.
(Also very sincere reminder to everyone to NEVER eat out of a container you arted with. DO NOT RISK EATING PAINT OR PIGMENT OR WHATEVER ELSE. Get MORE pretty cups and bowls and whatever you want. NEVER mix tableware you eat out of with containers you paint or whatever with. Just because they LOOK clean, DOES NOT MEAN THERE AREN’T TOXIC PARTICLES LEFT ON THE SURFACE!!!!!! GET MORE PRETTY CUPS!!!!!! DO NOT NOT RISK YOUR HEALTH!!!!!!!)
Tara: I can’t think of anything by way of individual acts of whimsy, but I’ve been getting some through my tabletop gaming groups.
One group is about to wrap up a 2+ year Dungeons & Dragons campaign. We’ve been playing a bunch of loveable dirtbags and mine is a grung (think frog person) druid. I’m going miss that little chaotic dude, but I’m also excited for us to start a new story soon.
My other group recently started a campaign using the Kids with Brooms system. We collaboratively came up with the world and made it extremely cozy. Our game is set in a coastal town that’s inspired by Beach City in Steven Universe and it has merfolk, ghosts, and a mystery that we’re just beginning to pull apart. I’m playing Gemma, a half-merfolk girl who’s tired of being afraid of everything. Now that she’s starting high school, she knows this is going to be her year.
Kiki: I have a problem with putting things back where they “belong” and it’s meant I’ve lost a lot of jewelry over the years, so now I have little crystal bowls and tiny ceramic plates scattered all over my house so I can drop rings and earrings in them instead of just anywhere. I feel like a little magpie or a tiny dragon when I go digging through them to find a matching set.
Carrie: I named my electric wheelchair “The Blue Beetle” for many reasons – it’s tiny, blue, and fast, it kind of skitters, and the Blue Beetle comic book character has powers that can be summed up as “super magic awesome mobility aid”
When I learned that I will be reliant on grabbers permanently I bought decorative duct tape, current patterns include purple paisley, sunflowers, unicorns, and dragons, and tie-dye rainbow.
I carefully pick out one mug a day (usually, but not always, one of my octopus mugs) and savor my hot chocolate in the mornings.
Amanda: Maybe not whimsy, but I listen to ska or metal music in the morning to pump me up for work. Helps work out any residual Sunday Scaries!
Y’all, what’s your whimsy lately? Please share in the comments!
I decorated my bedroom so it would have a Green Gables feeling to it. And all my string instruments (guitars, ukuleles etc.) have names
I’ve lived in Louisiana (on the northshore of Lake Pontchartrain, about 25 miles north of New Orleans) for 25 years—over the years, that’s added up to a lot of Mardi Gras parades and a lot of Mardi Gras beads and “throws”. One thing I like to do is strew the more interesting & unusual strings of beads around the house (the little 3M removable hooks are invaluable for this purpose). My husband and I have covered the side of an armoire, book shelves in our bedroom, and various pieces of furniture elsewhere with our favorites. Since our furniture tends to be of the “heavy dark brown wood” variety, the beads add a wonderful pop of color and fun to the look.
I used to sing classic R&B and oldies rock to my cat, modifying the lyrics for him (e.g. “Little bitty kitty one, come on and dance with me…”). Not sure if I will do that when I get a new cat, or will need to come up with something new. I also greet birds I see when I am out walking.
@Merle I sing to my cat too! That’s what I was going to list, I am proof the complaint that “musicals are unrealistic because people don’t just go around singing” is false!
Uhhh, what else…I also make a blanket/pillow igloo-fort for reading on my weekend nights. “Fort” might be too strong of a word but I usually aim for extreme coziness and minimal need to get up. “Temporary lounge chair with blanket enclosure and nearby snacks” might be more accurate.
I make up songs on the go about all the stuff I’m doing during the day. My oldest son has picked up the habit, so now our mornings are one big musical. My youngest has started dancing when we do this so I have hope that he will join in as soon as he starts talking.
We’ve had a very gray winter, so I retail-therapied with candles. I was on a tight deadline in January and realized one particular candle helped me get into the right headspace. Since then, I’ve browsed my candles each morning to decide on the scent/mood for the day. My family is bemused, but no one really complains when the house smells like a fancy bakery or tropical flower! You’re welcome, guys.
My “begin writing session on train” ritual is to turn to the back of my notebook and write a sentence about what imaginary landscape I’m passing through today. So, for example, “The 0645 is a message in a bottle, bobbing on Titan’s methane sea”. (Then I turn back to the front and write something I’m actually trying to work on.) It’s a really effective mini warm-up, actually. (I adapted it from Joanne Harris’s “Today the shed is…” practice.)
When my untidy house needs a quick fix, I set a timer for ten minutes and pretend the MOTHER of one of my favorite romance heroes is about to pop by. Then I run around like a madwoman, all atwitter with fear and excitement. The house USUALLY looks marginally better when the timer goes off. Maybe this is less whimsy than sickness?
I look for beautiful and unique ‘orphan’ china cups and saucers at thrift stores, and mix and match them by color or pattern, and try to enjoy them at least once a day with a pot of tea at breakfast or lunch.
I cross-stitch geeky things. Therapeutic stabbing to produce prettiest!
I take my cats’ order before feeding them.
“Good evening, Sir Sluggo. Will it be the shrimp pate, tuna in gravy, or salmon shreds this evening?”
“And what about you Miss Snowball?”
“And would either of you like an appetizer? I have a few lovely Catnip flavored Temptations to tempt your palate.”
And I do it in a bad British accent. My kids get so embarrassed for me.
There’s a vintage Sesame Street song where Cookie Monster calms young Jeffy’s fears about getting a haircut that I’ve always loved. Sometimes when I’m getting ready to go out, I’ll belt “Me look in da mirror, and me see/Handsome monster—OH! It me!” in full Cookie voice and accent, even though it makes me hoarse…
I photograph trees
I greet dogs. Always.
I have a great love of sparkly shoes, earrings, etc.
I arrange my books by spine height.
I set up a bed in my attic so that I could listen to the radio late at night, read books, hear the rain and remember what it felt like to be a teenager.
I come from a pretty whimsical family. My parents had very complex imaginary lives for our cats. They were often being consulted by presidents and the pope for their wisdom. When we went on vacation, my parents would shake their heads over what the cats would be up to while we were gone, such antics as buying things from the home shopping network and making expensive international phone calls.
Always singing and making up parody songs for my kids and just in general.
A lot of whimsy seems to involve animals and music . . .
My husband is a little less whimsical (but endearing in many other ways) but if a cell phone or some piece of electronics starts going off unexpectedly he gives it a very stern look, puts his a finger to his lips, and makes a shushing noise like an old fashioned cartoon librarian (I know current librarians aren’t like this!). I’ve picked up the habit without realizing it. My phone alarm went off in the lounge area of a college campus recently and the students all chuckled when I gave it the shushing treatment before turning it off for real.
All of these are great!
I’m trying something new: aiming to do one thing each day to support/strengthen a community/network I belong to., even something as small as expressing appreciation, thanking people, looking in their eyes and smiling.
I make puns, and I talk to my computer when making PDFs for work to encourage it to not fail or corrupt the file.
Reading these makes me realize I need some whimsy in my life (and maybe some Peter Wimsey for good measure).
Did anyone else think for a moment that this might be a post about Dorothy Sayers? I know the spellings are different, but, though I’m generally a good speller, there are certain words that I ALWAYS have to look up. Lord Peter’s family name is one of them.
So, my current (plebian) whimsy is to keep a list of poems and lyrics in Google docs on my phone and work on memorizing them verse by verse, stanza by stanza. I used to be able to recite The Fat Budgie, How Doth the Little Crocodile, Song of Wandering Aengus, and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 by heart, plus I knew a crappe tonne of song lyrics from my favorite singer-songwriters. Think 70s Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell for example. Also quite a few Beatles and Simon & Garfunkle tunes before that. At present, I’m working on an extended version of Hallelujah, and I’ve reached the fourth verse out of seven maybe. My voice doesn’t set the neighborhood dogs howling, but I have lousy range, so Cohen is perfect for belting out.
I too sing to my pets, dogs in my case. There are general songs, like Baby Dog to the tune of Baby Love by The Supremes with verses adapted to fit the situation, although I can end up doing a Bob Dylan and singing one note for ages to get all the words in if I’m being dozy. The general songs can be sung for any dog and Baby Love has been sung since our first dog Jazz, one of her nick names was Jazzlet hence my nym. There are also dog specific songs which each of the dogs have had although our current girl hasn’t got one yet, I’m sure one will come along at some point. The silliest was for Penny a springer spaniel, we were her fourth home after failing as a gun dog, being too much for a family with young children (she wasn’t safe around small people especially if they had food), and finally falling into hate with the dog of a friend of ours who Penny’s owner fell in love with. Part of her problem was she didn’t pay attention or rather she payed too much attention, she’d get so wrapped up in doing something that she couldn’t move on to the next thing. The classic example was ‘find’ (you throw a few small treats around and the dog has to find them) where she’d get so excited by the looking for them that her nose could pass right over the treat and she wouldn’t register the smell, so she’d never find them without help, this despite being incredibly foodie. We called that ‘dingling’ which led naturally to Dingle Dog, sung to the tune of Jingle Bells.
Dingle dog, dingle dog,
dingling all the day
Oh what fun it is to be
A dingle dog today
Verses adapted to whatever idiot thing she was doing at that moment.
This is maybe closer to juvenile humor than whimsy, but my husband and I make sheet jokes when we make our bed. They are the same jokes over and over again and we giggle like 12-year-olds every time. E.g. –
I’m always taking sheet from you.
This sheet has got to stop.
What a sheet-show!
I’m giggling as I write this. Maybe the 12-year-olds are onto something!
I collect nail polish. It has been a while since I counted, but I have well over a hundred bottles, organized by color family. The many colors and finishes make me so happy, and sometimes I like to reorganize them just to soothe my brain.
I also talk to and sing ridiculous songs at my dog throughout the day.
@PamG: I did think of Lord Peter! For what it’s worth, the motto of his aristocratic family (which is included in his biography at the start of some of the novels) is “As my Whimsy takes me.”
I feed this group of crows that come to my yard every morning. There used to be four of them. I called them the Gang of Four. Sadly I only see three of them now. They come every morning and caw. I’ll come out with nuts or oatmeal. Whatever I’ve got. Crows have facial recognition (Its true!) and the leader stays right on the fence while I scatter the food. As soon as I turn, the other two swoop down from the roof. Its a little daily joy for me.
I write texts to my mom from my cat. All these texts begin with a cat face emoji to indicate that she’s the one speaking.
We have hummingbirds and we are lucky enough to live in a climate where they are present year round. We started with just one feeder on our deck, but they are territorial little buggers and the alpha male likes to guard one of the feeders even if he isn’t actually drinking from it so we kept adding more, plus an additional one at the front of our house. It’s endlessly amusing to watch them buzz around and chatter at each other. Also they know exactly who we are and will sometimes come up to our faces and buzz us. We aren’t really sure if they are thanking us for the food or telling us to get outta there while they eat though!
I’ve been making Lego diagram as of the books I read and taking pictures.
*dioramas not diagrams
I almost didn’t share this because it seemed silly, but what’s whimsy, right?
Lavender-Life in Michigan produces wonderful lavender products. They also sell lavender stuffed animals, which I have gifted to many people. When you buy any of their stuffies, they donate a second stuffy to a child in foster care. Win-win.
I hadn’t anticipated the impact *on me* of having my own lavender bunny. He (don’t ask me why he, I don’t know) is my constant companion at home. It is impossible not to hold him and feel comforted. Much the way pets bring down our blood pressure, Bunny does the same for me.
A chemotherapy patient, grieving friends, friends recovering from a broken pelvis or a devastating car accident: every single one of them carries their bunny/dog with them. The lavender helped my SIL sleep without smelling all the drugs being pumped into her.
Another friend had to quarantine everything because of a viral throat infection; in a text, she wrote: “I had to isolate Bunny for a few days bec this virus can spread to/from inanimate objects (don’t tell him I called him that). But, he’s back now.)”
Silly, right?
My only quibble with Lavender-Life is that each stuffie has a (very pretty) removable paper tag on a string that reads, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” If the stuffie is shipped to me to pass along, I remove it; it’s not appropriate for everyone. YMMV.
Anyway, this is my too-long-but-spectacular take on whimsy.
This is tiny but I usually make a to-do list for my work day. I make it the night before and sometimes I write inspirational notes to my tomorrow self on the top, like “You’re going to do a great job today!” Lately I’ve been drawing a small icon like a heart or flower under the date, and taking the time to color it in with colored pencil.
I also sing to my cat. My old cat Scruffy always had made-up songs, but for some reason my current cat Coco inspires rewrites of existing songs. I usually forget them after making them up but a recurring one is,
Feed me breakfast one more time
Once is never enough
With a cat like me
(Apologies to Captain and Tenille)