flower power

July 11, 2009 5 Comments

I enjoy taking pictures of flora. Unlike small children, they are not a constant blur of motion (Sir I.), do not scowl and hide their faces behind their hair if you try to take a picture of them (Miss M.), and are not constantly trying to attack your camera (the Baron). I snapped these shots on a recent walk around town:

Daylily. They are so pretty and they grow around our yard without me having to do anything to help them along (besides keep the hooligans away).

Small purple flowers (anyone know what these are?)

Small white flowers. I’ve narrowed this down to Queen Anne’s Lace (not as full as most of the Queen Anne’s Lace I’ve seen) or water hemlock (highly poisonous, highly unlikley, since this was taken by a roadside, not near a stream). Or is it yarrow? *throws up hands*. Whatever it is, nobody touched it, nobody ate it. I was the only one to stop to take a shot.

And, here’s a daisy (or is it an aster??) that we saw out on a hike through the woods. I like this picture, even though it looks like the flower is suspended in midair.

Anyone else care to share flower pictures from their current habitats?

Filed Under: creativity, pretty pictures

creativity in the kitchen

July 9, 2009 4 Comments

Cooking is often a drudgery. It’s something to be endured and gotten over with quickly, just so that we have food on the table and as few as possible prep dishes to clean up. Yet, cooking and baking can be fun, playful, social, satisfying, and creative. Here are a few tips that have worked to keep me from treating cooking as yet another chore, akin to cleaning the bathroom.

  1. Use a new ingredient. My newest discovery is pancetta, for this awesome (yet simple!) spaghetti alla carbonara. It took me a while to track down pancetta, but did it ever just make this dish. Someday I’m going to buy a bunch of swiss chard or beet greens and actually do something with them (other than staring at them in a befuddled kind of way).
  2. Try a new process. Mince garlic by hand… er, knife. Whip heavy cream (or in the case of my daughter’s birthday cake, have your husband do it). Poach an egg. Blend together banana peanut butter milkshakes for breakfast.
  3. Use a new or rarely-used kitchen gadget. Pull out the gadgets that are gathering dust in the depths of your kitchen cabinets–the bread maker, the food processor, the ice cream maker, the slow cooker. And use them. So, hon, are we going to make homemade ice cream this summer?
  4. Make a convenience food from scratch. Make pasta. Pickle cucumbers. Can jam. My thing is bread making. I make all of our sandwich bread, bread sticks and Italian bread.
  5. Enjoy the sensory experiences of cooking. The smell of ginger and garlic, the sizzle of frying meat, the satiny-silk feel of spilled flour under your bare feet, the colors and shapes of produce, and of course, snagging a pinch of cookie dough or sipping a spoonful of soup. Go cook, and then do some freewriting to capture those experiences.
  6. Cook with children. Several weeks ago, Sir I. and Miss M. helped me make these yummy sweet potato dunplings. It took far longer than I’d anticipated, what with mixing up the filing, folding the wrappers, boiling and frying the dumplings. By the time we finished, we were so ravenous that we plunked ourselves down on a picnic blanket in the living room and ate hot sticky dumplings off the serving plate. It was great fun, down to the specially-shaped dumplings Sir I. had made.

And, just to whet your appetite, I’ll leave you with a picture of Miss M’s strawberry chocolate mousse birthday cake (yum yum!):

Have you discovered a delicious new dish recently?

Filed Under: creativity

30-minute creativity

June 28, 2009 2 Comments

I have a hard time working on a big creative project during the summer.  Maybe it’s because I’ve spent more of my life in school than out of it, and summer whispers vacation to me. Or maybe because summer is such a short season where I live and we’re eager to cram in as much pool, park and yard time as we can. Summer fills up with camps and cookouts, gardening and berry-picking and hiking. It’s time for play, not for marathons.

I doubt I’ll get a novel written in the next two months, but I do have some creative projects planned. I want writing to be fun again, so I’ll be experimenting with new ideas and new forms. Sir I. and I will (hopefully) start taking piano lessons. The kids and I will draw, color and paint. Then there’s that easy-to-make skirt I want to sew for Miss M.

So I put together a list of low-prep creative ideas for the busy person, things to do in thirty minutes or less:

  1. Play a musical instrument. Our piano lives in the hub of the house, it’s always available (no taking it out of its case), with my lesson book open on the music rack.
  2. Doodle, either using a book of drawing prompts or a pen and a sheet of paper.
  3. Freewrite. I do ten-minute sessions on a theme of my choice.
  4. Journal.
  5. Do an art or craft project with a kid. Don’t have a kid available? Do it on your own. Kid projects are unintimidating and simple, perfect for beginners and those with little time or few supplies. Check here and here and here for ideas.
  6. Journal in visual images for a change. Draw or make a collage. Here are some tips to get you started.
  7. Go on a walk with camera in hand and take pictures that interest you. You get to be creative and exercise.
  8. Sit out in your yard, the woods, or a park and sketch. I like to draw leaves. My kids like to bring me leaves to draw. Win-win.
  9. Do some mind-mapping.
  10. Write flash fiction.

Any other suggestions?

Filed Under: creativity, drawing, inspiration, journaling

art camp

June 22, 2009 Leave a Comment

This is what my back hallway looked like for three days during an art camp I hosted for my kids and those of two other families. The participants were six kids ranging from almost-three to five-and-a-half, with two other moms assisting and three younger siblings running/scooting/lying underfoot. We did a variety of projects from blow-painting to stringing dyed pasta necklaces to stamping broccoli forests to watercoloring caterpillars to printing cards. The kids produced an impressive amount of artwork and a good time was had by all.

Things I learned:

1. For my first time putting together something like this, I think I did a pretty good job picking the projects, gathering the supplies, and facilitating the process. Sir I. was very jealous of my status as Art Camp Director and was often overheard telling people, “Only Mommy is the instructor.” Heh.

2. When you get five girls together to create art, a lot of pink and purple gets used. By the end of art camp, even Sir I., the only boy, had succumbed to peer pressure and automatically asked for purple.

3. Three days is a bit much for the age group I was working with. On the last day, we lost Sir I. and another little girl to a vacuuming truck outside our house. The collage butterflies could not compete with the massive machinery.

4. Try using watercolor paper for watercolor painting projects. Maybe there is less chance of destroying the paper by overpainting it, like Miss M. almost did. Oops.

5. When picking pasta for pasta necklaces, don’t pick the large tubes because they slide over the rest of the pasta and the knot you made to keep things from falling off one end. Double oops.

6. If you need to wait for paint to dry before you can finish a project, it’s probably a good idea to do the painting a day before. Those egg carton bugs sure would’ve been cute, but we just didn’t get around to them.

7. Kid art is really cute! I mean, I knew this from before, but it’s fun and dynamic and utterly charming

8. We should do art camp again! Once the memory of the chaotic three days has faded, that is. Which it should by the end of summer.

Filed Under: creativity, kids at play

linkatopia

May 19, 2009 Leave a Comment

The Art Projects Edition:

daisy yellow has a three-part series on organizing summer art projects for you and your kids. I believe my kids have every intention of running wild in our yard and at the park this summer, but I prefer more sedate activities. My planned projects are: making jam, sewing a skirt or two for Miss M., sketching outside (I’ve been eyeing my purple phlox as a potential model), playing the piano. And writing. There is always writing.

As if I really needed more arts & crafts ideas to do with the kids: Deep Space Sparkle and The Crafty Crow.

I’m drooling over these Prismacolor double-ended markers. I just want to spread them out rainbow-like on the table and gloat over them.

Filed Under: creativity, drawing, inspiration, kids at play, linktopia

muscle memory

May 2, 2009 4 Comments

It’s been six days since I started teaching myself to play the piano. At first, I was completely flabbergasted by what I was working towards: You mean I have to know what notes all the keys are, which fingers to play them with, read music and keep time, and eventually have both hands doing their own thing at the same time?? Riiiiiight.

Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. Twenty minutes in the morning after breakfast, thirty minutes after dinner, every day, and I’m already doing things that I wouldn’t have believed possible for musically-challenged me. I hunker down, concentrate on a snippet of music, play the same notes over and over again, until my fingers are doing it on their own. Like crocheting, beginning is the hardest part; figuring out the pattern, the several false starts, the forehead-furrowing eyes-narrowing concentration, and then, suddenly my fingers are no longer tangling all over themselves, but sure, confident, strong. It’s like running, or flying. I don’t have to think about it. I just do it.

There’s not much muscle memory involved in writing fiction (unless you count typing or handwriting, which I don’t). It’s much more of a cerebral activity. Yes, there is inspiration, and yes, I have written as if my fingers were on fire, but it’s not quite the same thing. Crocheting, gardening, piano playing–they’re all things I do to rest my mind, to let it coast, in a way that I can’t while writing.

To think that I was concerned that the piano would sit around unused when we got it. The husband, Sir I. and I have been jockeying for piano-playing privileges. The husband flips pages in the piano book until he finds something he’d like to plunk out. Sir I. plays falling snowflakes and thunderstorms in Michigan. Me, I’m the one methodically working my way through the book (page 16. hooray!). Which, I suppose, tells you a lot about the kind of person I am. I’m thinking of splurging on lessons for myself, to undo all the bad habits I’m undoubtedly teaching myself.

Heh. Piano. About the last instrument I would’ve picked for myself. It was always the violin or the flute that I regarded in a romantic rose-colored haze.

Now, do you think the baby will grow up to have perfect pitch? He certainly spends a lot of time under the piano bench while I practise.

Filed Under: creativity, piano

recycling

May 1, 2009 2 Comments

Two of our favorite picture book read-alouds are I Stink! (garbage truck with attitude) and I’m Dirty! (mudbath-lovin’ backhoe) by Kate and Jim Mcmullan. They are an absolute blast to read aloud, complete with sound effects and deep growly big-vehicle voices. The illustrations are simple, bold and suitably icky. Inspired by these books, the kids made collages out of trash (clean trash–no dirty diapers or thrown-out food involved): wadded-up newspapers and crumpled aluminium foil, packaging and clothing tags, painted over with brown for a dirty effect.

Here is Miss M.’s:

Watching the kids get excited about turning trash into art made me think about my creative debris–the freewriting, the journaling, the college essays, the stories that were never completed or had no luster. They take up no room in a landfill, but their ghostly presences tug at me every time I go dumpster-diving in my writing folder. A few have been taken apart and recycled; one of my college application essays, for instance, yielded me a treasure-trove of images that made their way into Second Sight. A failed attempt at a funny mixed-up identities Cinderella story was drastically reworked into the much-darker Lily in Winter. My first attempt at a novel based on the fairytale of the twelve dancing princesses formed the basis of yet another failed novel (hmm, transforming trash into trash??). I go to my freewriting for sensory details, splinters of emotions, strong images and metaphors.

What do you do with your artistic debris? The sketches that weren’t quite right, the stories that didn’t work, odds and ends of crafty hobbies?

Filed Under: creativity, inspiration, kids at play

baby steps

April 22, 2009 2 Comments

Light blogging this week and I’m off to my sister’s wedding, so no posts this weekend.

There have been no major happenings on the writing front. I’m still chugging along on that not-so-short story (probably 7K when done). I had wanted to complete it before leaving, but I’ve been too distracted this week (packing, mentally preparing for the long drive, explaining patiently to the littles for the thousandth and one time why we cannot just leave for our trip right this second, etc etc).

OTOH, I have dabbled in some non-writing creative endeavors. I finished a sketch of a Chinese actress I think is just gorgeous*. Sir I. and I sat down to a lesson out of Drawing with Children, and goodness! I am just so impressed with the bird he drew. It looks like a real bird. With a beak and feathers and everything. The kids and I drew and painted Russian-esque buildings. Sir I. made a Baba Yaga-inspired house collage, complete with antlers and eggs for a tail and a random head.

And we finally got someone over to tune our piano today. Of course I couldn’t resist pulling out my Fool’s Guide to the Piano for Complete and Total Musically-Inept Dummy Beginners (Yeah, That’s You) book and spent twenty or so minutes doing right hand and left hand warmups (ie: training my fingers to respond to serial numbers instead of Twinky or Pinky or whatever cutesy names they call themselves). Oh, piano. Where have you been all my life? Plunking out Ode to Joy sends me into such raptures.

(And now since I am clearly getting very silly, I must end quickly and retire to my sleeping couch. All of these ramblings where just to say that simple projects, fun with my kids and even the most basic musical exercises can be so satisfying to my creative urges, For once, I am content to not be perfect.)

* I mean the actress is gorgeous. My sketch of her–meh.

Filed Under: creativity, drawing, short stories

friday fun

April 17, 2009 2 Comments

So. You’re digging up a pumpkin patch. Next to a stone wall. In a patch of earth next door to a place that (for good reason) calls itself The Granite State. What do you find?

Rocks. Lots and lots of rocks.

After a while (say, two minutes), digging up rocks gets very boring. You start thinking about what else might be fun to dig up. Buried treasure. Dinosaur bones. Dinosaur eggs.

Then your brain gives you:

Mrs. Susanna Wiggs, 37, discovered a race of nearly-blind, short, hirsute underground cave-dwellers while digging in her garden. Her shovel broke through the roof of the immense cavern they had dwelt in for centuries, followed shortly by both her feet. Her plummet a thousand feet into their realm earned her the epithet The Shattered Goddess.

Okay, that’s what my brain gave me.

What would your brain like to see dug up in this scenario?

Filed Under: creativity

of things domestic

April 9, 2009 Leave a Comment

Yes, I know this is a writing blog, but you really are not all that interested in my revision angst or my sullen moping about what an untalented hack I am.

Instead I give you:

Bread! Since we got back from Florida I’ve baked bread three times. We haven’t had to buy a single preservatives-stuffed loaf from the grocery store. Hooray!

Chocolate cake! I haven’t made a chocolate cake from scratch so long, I’d almost forgotten the primary purpose of cake pans is not to heat frozen convenience foods in. This was a double layer chocolate cake with homemade frosting. Mmmm.

Also continuing with the yummy food trend, I made those chocolate chip scones twice and crepes with strawberries and maple syrup for lunch one day.

Gardening! The kids and I walked down to town and bought sugar snap peas, bush green beans, lettuce mix, carrots, tomatoes and (due entirely to the persistence of Sir I.) pumpkins. I planted four rows of peas, two squares of lettuce and one square of carrots. I have never had luck with carrots, so this is one of those hopeless long shot sort of things. I also started digging up a place for the pumpkins. I found a cool tool that tells me what to plant when, hopefully cutting down on my Indifferent Gardener tendency to kill my plants.

On the other hand, my house looks like three hurricanes have torn through it—make that two hurricanes and one slowly-creeping glacier since the baby is just scooching, not crawling. I’m behind on laundry and every flat surface (including, darnit, the poor piano) is buried under a blizzard of paper.

What cosy domestic activities have you been up to?

Filed Under: creativity, gardening
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »