Time for Creativity

Sometimes you just need to have your soul fully, delicately, and wonderfully filled. And sometimes you don't even know that it's what the deepest depths of your soul needs, but when the opportunity comes those deep depths of yourself just soak it all up.

This past Wednesday the staff at the Cathedral gathered to decorate Easter Eggs. This time to explore and be reminded of the creative side within me was just what I needed, it was just what we all needed.



Of course, the problem now is figuring out how to move from being creative to paper writing... or maybe accepting the creativity that can and should exist within the words on a page, yes even in academic papers!

But as this week ends and we soon begin the journey through Holy Week the opportunity to explore my creative side once again and engage in some repetitive and delicate work with good company filled with creativity and laughter is feeding me.

Weekend Visitors

Taylor, Rhys and Aaron

For the first time since I moved back into Kamloops after spending the summer at Sorrento Centre Taylor, Rhys and Aaron came for a weekend sleepover. They are growing up, really quickly. It won't be long before they are all taller then me. It won't be long before they are all wiser then me. But, they will always be my youngest siblings even when they get to that age when I am no longer "cool" to hang out with!

We had a great weekend together. They came bowling with the youth group on Friday night, we spent Saturday painting, shopping and swimming and Sunday was filled with Church and lunch with Stewart.

Our painted creations!

Painting was the big task for the weekend. The basement suite I'm living in this year (which I love) has really bare walls. So, I picked up some paint and canvas and gave the kids the all important task of painting lovely pictures for my walls. And that is exactly what they did! On Friday night I told them that they needed to think of what they wanted to paint... "you can paint anything you want," I told them. Saturday morning Aaron said to me, "I can paint anything I want?" "Yep, anything you want," I said. After a few moments of thinking he turned to me and said, "I can paint the stairs?" Wait a minute!! He thought we were painting the walls! Am I ever glad that I didn't just put the paint on the table and go do something else... that would have been interesting!

Stewart came over for lunch and a visit on Sunday after church. It was wonderful to spend time with Stewart and the kids were really excited to see him. Stewart and I looked through some pictures of our childhood years - I must admit... we were pretty cute toddlers!

I did a lot of cooking with my crock pot over the weekend. My first roast beef in the crock pot turned out just amazing - so tender and delicious. And then Sunday morning I put sloppy joe stuff in before heading to church and we had an amazing lunch when we got home! I love my crock pot... it's amazing!

The weekend was great and I can't wait for the kids to come over again... although I have decided I'm never having triplets. Going from having responsibility for zero children to three children is exhausting!

Mila's Daydreams Video

This is one amazing mom!! When her little baby girl falls asleep she creatively designs a scene surrounding the little one with objects of all sort. Take a look - super creative and rather amazing! (I suggest you click on the button on the right side of the screen to make the video full screen size... you will be able to see much more detail!)

Enjoy!!

Bulletin Boards

I enjoy making bulletin boards at the church. Making them with youth, by myself, making them themed and not themed, complicated and easy. And always colorful!! So, recently we have done a lot of "new" bulletin board displays. On the large board in the Sunday school/youth room (well, hall) we made one themed around Martin Luther King Day, we talked about how we should all treat one another equally, how things were different years ago, and all that stuff. And my brilliant brain decided that one of my favorite poems would attach to this theme and make a fabulous bulletin board display! The poem goes like this: "We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are dull, some have weird names, some are more popular than others - but they all have to learn to live in the same box." So, I spent my week coloring massive crayons (I loved it), we made an amazing crayon box at youth group, and some Martin Luther King activities to go all around it. It was fabulous!

Then yesterday we talked about loving our neighbors and did a bulletin board around that. You know, we had to get into this whole Valentines Day theme somehow. So, we brainstormed who are neighbors are and how we can show love to them. 

Decorated it all with a whole bunch of wonderful foam hearts, and put it upstairs on the bulletin board, I've never done anything with the board upstairs, so we'll see what the congregation thinks of it all. We ended our evening together with a game that involved racing for candy, it is one of the only days that I easily get away with feeding the youth candy, it was tons of fun. Deana made cupcakes for us all, they were so tasty, we pretty much just had a great time together!

Last week I wasn't at youth group because the British Columbia and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement's Council was meeting in Burnaby. So the Leadership Team did the meeting and they did some artistic responses to two Psalms. Psalm 96 and 121 - they did a great job and we now have some poster board sized artwork along the wall by the stairwell. 

I think I'm done doing bulletin board stuff until spring comes - when a new array of ideas enter in my brain, ideas that I of course must do something with! Excitement!!