The dark days of winter can really have you buried in your feels, water signs — you are the zodiac signs most in touch with your emotions, after all.  The holidays had brought forth such joy and a feeling of community!  Now that they’re over, you have a tendency to hide away in your bedroom to hibernate for the winter.  However, remember you can’t just wait for the summer sun to rescue you from this winter gloom and stir your creative passions! You have to learn to find joy all year round.

Don’t worry, we got you!  Here are some ways to help you embrace the cold weather — spurring you out of your creative slump and propelling you toward finding happiness on even the darkest of days.

Go ice skating

Whether it’s hand-in-hand with your significant other or arm-and-arm with your best friends, ice skating is the perfect winter outing for you.  And the best part?  You can find an ice-skating rink almost anywhere in the country — no snow required!

If you’re one of the lucky souls who lives by a well-frozen lake or pond, you don’t have to visit a rink to join in the fun — just be safe and make sure the water is, in fact, frozen thick enough for skating before you head out onto the ice!  If you’re like most of us who aren’t blessed with weather cold enough to support a nature-made ice rink, you’ll have to head to an indoor or outdoor rink to skate.  Fortunately, most ice rinks only charge between $10-20 for an hour or two on the ice (check your local rink for pricing), so it won’t break the bank!

Pro tip — you’ll save yourself the rental fee if you can bring your own skates!  If you don’t own a pair yourself, you can always look for a friend or family member who does and ask to borrow theirs.

Even if you’ve never skated before, learning how is part of the fun, especially if you have your friends there to laugh with you and pick you up when you fall.

Go play in the snow

If you’re lucky enough to be blessed with a plethora of snow, you have fun waiting for you right outside your door!  Put on your warmest winter clothes (don’t forget mittens!), grab your snow boots, and head on out!

Start out small and create a chair or sofa out of snow.  This will be a nice place for you to sit, survey your surroundings, and decide whether you want to keep building or just sit tight and enjoy the fresh air.  If you’re hoping to hide from the world while you play, you can build walls and enclose your own private snow garden! 

You may even end up building your own snow fort!  Walls, windows, and doorways — complete with snow furniture inside.  This takes time, maybe even a few days, but what a fun place to hang out with friends!  If you are already an expert, then you could tackle a roof overhead, but be careful with that if you’re not — you need the right snow, and it’s hard to get a solid roof that won’t come down on you when you least expect it.  Let your creativity run wild as you build, and you’ll find yourself feeling like a kid again in no time! 

Like I said, building a snow fort takes time, so don’t be afraid to call for reinforcements.  The more hands you have, the quicker the build will go! 

Whether it’s a personal hideaway or a new hangout spot for you and your best buddies, your snow architecture will become the perfect refuge all season long — or until the sun melts it all away, that is! 

Spend time at a local coffee shop

When the cold weather really gets you down, water signs, you’ve got to get out of the house for a while!  I know it can be tempting to get lost in the warm blankets of your bedroom, but believe me when I say a change of scenery will be good for you.

Your local coffee shop is perfect, because it combines the familiar, low-key atmosphere of home with the community feel of a public space.  While all coffee shops are different, most try to embrace the same warm and cozy vibes!  Settle yourself in a big, comfy chair with a warm coffee or tea and your laptop or favorite book, and allow the afternoon to slip away.  Who knows?  You may even find a friend who’s reading the same novel as you!

If your social battery is running low, don’t feel pressured to socialize!  You don’t have to participate in the coffee-house mingling if you don’t want to, but being enveloped by warm, affable, human murmuring can be all you need to feel like you’re part of the world around you.  Just being surrounded by others will help motivate you to get some work done — or at the very least will help you feel less alone during these overcast, dreary cold spells. 

Host a baking party

Nothing dispels the winter blues better than freshly baked goods!  Warm chocolate chip cookies, gooey butter cake, sweet cinnamon rolls — is your stomach already rumbling?

Invite your best friends for a chill night in where everyone brings their favorite homemade baked treats — or (if you’re feeling competitive) host a bake-off where everyone makes their own version of the same treat! 

You can add a twist to the competition by trying to recreate elaborate cakes, like in Netflix’s hit show Nailed It!  If you aren’t already talented bakers, then that makes this challenge a hoot!  You can create multiple categories like “Best Tasting,” “Most Creative,” and “Biggest Baking Fail!”  Or, simply reward whoever created the most delicious and appealing treat with their choice for movie night!

Afterward, play some board games or watch your favorite movie while you enjoy your delicious creations.  It’ll be a nice balance of chit-chat and rest.

Start a scrapbook

You have some of the biggest hearts of all the zodiac, water signs.  You’re extremely sentimental, and your phone is probably bursting with thousands of pictures of your loved ones.  You’ve probably been saving ticket stubs and concert wristbands for years, promising yourself you’ll make a scrapbook someday, but you’ve never gotten around to it!

Well, why not use the cold as an excuse to finally take that time to combine all your cherished memories in one place!  You can create special scrapbooks dedicated to things like last year (or years), the evolution of a relationship or friendship, a specific trip you took, or look to the future and start a one for the current year that you can add to all year round.

Pro tip:  For those with moon or Venus signs in the earth or fire elements, we highly recommend building a goal scrapbook where you can plan for the future and really gain that sense of accomplishment!

Let your creativity flow freely as you decorate the pages however you want!  You can keep it simple with pictures and a few doodles or notations, or let the pages come alive with handwritten notes galore, stick-on jewels, glitter glue, braided ribbons, and elaborate stickers. 

Trust me, nothing will help you out of your winter slump more than by working on something new!  You’ll create a treasure you’ll cherish forever, and you may even start a new scrapbooking tradition that will continue for many years to come.

Make your own candles

This DIY project is easy, inexpensive, and highly-customizable — making it another great way to break through a creative slump or just a fun way to pass the time with a new hobby!

You can buy a candle making kit, but we recommend helping protect the environment by working from scratch with eco-friendly materials.  What a wonderful opportunity to use older glass mason jars or recycle the jars of your old candles that have already been burned.

Like with other craft projects, there are plenty of ways to go about candle-making!  For example, would you like to dip colorful designs?  Carve intricate swirls?  Or maybe even create a metal base, like a cat’s skeleton, and form your candle around it for a spooky reveal!  There are plenty of candle making how-tos available online — but you can find new ways to make the recipes your own, like experimenting with organic fragrance oils, adding flowers, or adding multiple colors.  You could also build a unique candle display — like we mentioned in our Holiday DIYs That You NEED for Your Small Apartment blog.

Use your new candles to bring an ambiance of light and warmth to your home, or make them for friends and family using their favorite colors and fragrances to remind them that you’re thinking of them during these long, cold, winter months.  Just don’t forget to make at least one for yourself, too, water signs!

Also check out our previous cold weather activities blogs, below!

6 Ways to Relish the Cold Weather, Fire Signs! — here

6 Ways to Savor the Cold Weather, Earth Signs! — here

6 Ways to Enjoy the Cold Weather, Air Signs! — here