The Year of Living Creatively: Week 2

So Mondays are hard . . . for just about anything. This is true when you're trying to be creative. Day 7, March 14 2011: I introduced my kids to the joys of scrapbook stickers. Don't laugh. This was truly a creative and spontaneous thing. I wanted to do something with my 10 year stash of stickers (yes, I started collecting acid-free stickers in 2001) and pulled out two binders full of them so I could *do something* with them. My younger child became very interested in what I was doing; she'd never seen my full collection, neither had my older daughter. We went through the whole collection, mostly Carys and I, and thought off all kinds of projects we could do with them! Carys seems to love them as much as I do.

I have adored stickers since I was a child. I have albums full of them from the 80s (sadly, not acid-free, but full of memories of cool designs and allowance money spent.) I also decided, sort of spontaneously as well, to bequeath half (or more) of my collection to my girls, so they too can start their own collections and projects. We divvied them up and they took theirs away in acid-free plastic boxes, new treasures for them to dive into if they need inspiration for their next craft project. And I was okay with that.

Day 8, March 15, 2011: Oh we were so creative today! Funny how an expiring Groupon can spur you to such creative heights. I bought a Groupon to a local paint-your-own pottery place months ago, and we had to use it. We had decided beforehand that the girls should paint something for my Dad's upcoming birthday, and they did. But while browsing the selection of ready-to-paint pieces, I discovered the perfect metal frame with hooks to hang in my house. In fact, I'd been thinking for the past week or so that we need some hooks on the wall to get stuff off the floor. Stuff like backpacks, etc. The metal frame holds 4 large tiles, to be painted by me (with some help from the girls). So 2 1/2 hours later, the girls had painted tiles decorated with their handprints and I had designed a monogram tile for each of them. I even free-handed the designs! A huge leap for me. I usually don't trust myself to do something like that because I might mess it up and still have to pay for it! I can't wait until the pieces are fired and assembled.

Days 9-10, March 16-17, 2011: Okay, it's also hard to be purposely creative when you're traveling. We did quick road trip up to Austin, packed with visiting friends and relatives, eating our favorite Austin food and shopping. Too busy to be creative, seriously. Then when we arrived home, we had out-of-town guests join us about an hour later! So I'm amending my 'year of living creatively' rule to excuse traveling days (and days when we have company) when necessary. (Although I did attempt to be creative when we were in Houston last week.)

Day 11, March 18, 2011: This was the day our lovely visitors departed for home in the midwest. I had big plans to try some new cake techniques today, but really just spent the day watching shows I'd recorded on the DVR, playing on the computer and napping! So, no excuses at all for the lack of creativity. But everyone needs a "catch-up" day, where doing nothing at all is the order of the day. Am I right?

Day 12, March 19, 2011: I put on my Super-Creative Mom Cape and walked my younger child through the steps of creating her own board game for a school project. Choices of projects were: report, poster, PowerPoint presentation or "other creative idea." Obviously we chose "other." I casually suggested that she create a board game about her assigned research topic: Kangaroo Rat. I love creating board games. The first time I made one was in 5th grade for a Civil War project and my teacher absolutely loved it, asked if she could keep it, and had it laminated for future classes to play with. Laminated. Immortalized forever at the tender age of 11. Carys loved the game idea too so we ran with it.

We made a list of what supplies might be required (the list she created was pretty amusing, by the way, and highlights the unique logic of a 1st grader). Then we went to Target and walked up and down aisles looking for things that could be used as other things. *Super Creative Juices at Work Here.* For example, small drawer knobs became game board pieces, with some tweaking of course. Electrical tape to make decorative hinges for the board. Super-proud that everything we bought was my idea, but then again, I was shopping with a 1st grader. Carys designed the board game path ("No shorcuts like in Candyland, Mommy.") and I cut out the squares for the game spaces. We didn't finish the game; attention spans were waning. But it was an awesome start and I loved the feeling of creating something totally new out of lots of other things.

Day 13, March 20, 2011: This was Day 2 of the Kangaroo Rat Game project. I was really getting into it. I went online, as my daughter is not allowed to Google yet, and found cool pics of super-adorable kangaroo rats from various educational websites. We had all these ideas about how the game should be played and therefore what needed to be created for it (too many ideas really). This kept us busy for a while, as did some non-creative but very necessary research about the kangaroo rat. Super-Creative Mom's work is never done!

Photo from Google Images