Springtime happenings

I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post! By a combination of circumstances, I’ve just been petering out of blogging energy. With the arrival of spring weather here on the BC coast, our family has been getting outdoors and doing a lot of hiking and sightseeing. I think I’ll recap this month with a list of the top 10 creative things I can recall doing:

10. Cutting my son’s hair (thank you, Youtube).

9. Going on tons of nature walks. If you’ve been keeping an eye on my instagram feed, you’ll see that I’ve been a little bit excited to have a way to snap pictures wherever I go. I’m late in the game to getting a smart phone. As a life-long creative person, this has been something I imagined from the time I was a young child, thus I am somewhat childishly giddy taking these photos.

8. Making wire dolls. We still have not finished them, which we plan(ned) to do with papier machee. We were inspired by the illustrations in a book called Balloons Over Broadway, by Melissa Sweet.

7. Touring. I work in the tourism industry, so every spring, we take part in a tourism challenge that leads us on a series of day trips to regional attractions. Here are a few of the highlights:

6. Trying to draw. After finally finishing the painting (see #3) I had been working on for ages, I started trying to draw this scene for a painting. So far I only have a chalk drawing on canvas. I couldn’t achieve something that could capture my sense of wonder at how many layers of mountains there are in this seen (Howe Sound, BC).

5. Making a big map. Inspired by a friend’s version of this, we attempted to draw a big map representing familiar places in the kids’ lives. We haven’t had a chance to finish it or paint in the background.

4. Turning our rhododendron bed into fairy gardens. I wouldn’t have thought of this if it hadn’t been for a trip to Buckerfield’s to buy some sweet pea seeds. In the greenhouse at this store, they had built a little fairy garden. I knew my six-year-old would be enchanted by the idea, and she was. Ours turned out maybe a bit more kitschy than ideal, but we are having fun!

3. Finishing this painting. As mentioned. A few times. But it took a long time so it’s worth a mention.

2. Scavenging in nature, continued:

1. Well, this is very anti-climactic. I can’t think of a #1….I cleaned both the kids rooms, which could be described as creative! And I think that is an important point to make. As a busy mom and full-time career woman, not every moment turns out to be as creative or glamorous as one may think from reading my blog. So here’s to an every day creative happening. The creative part was trying to put all of my kids’ displays back the way they like them, and managing the fallout from having moved things around!