Year 3 Half Time Report

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."~ T.S Eliot

 This post marks the half way point in Year 3 of this Campaign.  I really feel like I've come a long way.  I also feel like there is so much further to go.  For the most part I enjoy that feeling.  I'm always amazed at myself and the discoveries I make.  The items I find to create.  I've always known that creativity is endless, limitless and boundless.  As vast as the universe itself.   I'm testing that knowledge.  I'm yet to say, "Well, I've crafted everything I can here.  I've created everything I can."  It's looking like it will be a long time, if ever, before I say that.
Another thing that I'm finding amazing is that, I'm changing in my approach to the world, in general. Attitudes, beliefs and world views change.  It's a lighter feeling.  I like it.  A lot.
I keep meeting more amazing people.  I keep connecting with the folks in my life at a deeper level.  I'm creating a life I sort thought was possible, but was afraid to go after fully.   This moment never looked so good.

When I started this Campaign and when I really wanted to go for Year 3, I kept thinking that this was really going a little too far for me.  What I've discovered, is that I haven't gone far enough, yet.
Thank you for being on this ride with me.  Now, let's...
Create to feel great!

26 weeks complete!  26 to go!

I like to celebrate with flowers.   This week it's Kanzashi flowers.   Folded fabric.  I can not stop making them.

Role Model

This week, I met the most amazing and creative person.   We got connected through a mutual friend.  When this creative woman called to ask me if I would like to come over and take a look at some fabric she was giving away, I could not resist.   Free designer fabric.  Yeehaw!  I'm so there.  What I didn't know is that I was going to be in for a great afternoon and full of insights around the creative process.

The house she lives in is a testamony to creativity.  I've rarely met anyone, who like myself dabbles in everything and I do mean everything.   Creativity oozed out of her.  She shined like a bright bright beacon. Now I think I have a lot of energy, at 71, this woman made me look like a slug.  She said that it is the creativity that pumps her up.  In our brief time together I learned and was reminded of some key life points.
Some the highlights were:

Stay curious.  Always ask questions and don't be afraid to ask the deep ones, and this goes for asking those questions to yourself.   Then shut up and listen for the answer.

Positive creatation is as important as food, water, light and air.  Don't ever go a day without creating something.  No matter how small.

Laugh and play.  The best way to do that is to stay curious and in the moment.

Make mistakes and make them often.  There's magic in them.

Try something new, all the time.

Something can be made out of what looks like nothing. 

Don't be afraid to tell you story and share it with the world.
That last point was important for me to hear.    She gave me a ton of fabric, of which I know not what I'm going to make out of it.  More importantly, she gave me reminders of power of positive creating can bring to ones life.  Her attitude embodied what I want to do with this Campaign.  To infuse positive thoughts and creative actions into not only myself but the world.  In the hopes others would do the same.
I wanted to share.

Until next week...create to feel great!

25 projects complete!  27 to go!

This week's project is something new...Button Fairies.   They are made with a mix of paper images and buttons.  The buttons make a tail and the fairies have to have a loop for hanging.  Who doesn't love a fairy?

All In The Amazingly Awesome Mind

I know I write a lot about how we can change and create our lives.  It is a reminder to myself more than anything.  This week I've been thinking a lot about how to create.  How to create my life to be even stronger, more peaceful and more fulfilling.  Time to think, dream and create are becoming more and more important to me.  It is the soil to grow great ideas, discover our passions, uncover our purpose and live a fantastic life.

Everything really begins and ends in our minds.  Those crazy wildly often negative but more times positive minds.
We create our world first in our minds.  Even when we are physically in the world, we carry with us what we have created the world to be in our minds.  It can be a set up for surprise, disappointment, delight, joy or heartache.  That is all up to us and how we use our minds to create in the moment.  Our minds are very powerful and they do get wasted all the time.  Wasted in what I call "useless creating".   We worry over and fear the unknown.   We sit on the throne of being right, we just know how it is all going to go down.  We use our talents to pick fights or disconnect from people we say we care about.  The list goes on.

Imagine, and I know you can imagine, because you do it all the time, some amazingly awesome happening to you.  Every time negativity in all it's forms pops into your mind, use your mind to either imagine that amazingly awesome happening happening to you OR use your mind to figure out a way to move one step closer to creating that amazingly awesome happening.  Making to happen.
Try it for a day.  When your day is over check in with you.  What are you noticing?   Try it for another day.
Wake up in the morning with the first being about that amazingly awesome happening.  Keep tuning your thoughts to that.   Keep checking in with yourself.  Keep focusing on the amazingly awesome happening.

I think this is creating in it's purest form.  I'd love to know what happens for you.  I know it will be amazingly awesome!
Until next week...create to feel great!
24 projects complete!  28 to go!

This week's project- the house needed a wreath to celebrate Spring.  The bright colors make me smile even on the rainiest of an April day.

In Praise Of The Little Steps

"Practice yourself in little things; and thence proceed to greater." ~ Epictetus

 Little things really do mean a lot.   Working on little things add up to bigger things.  We start out crawling and learn to walk, run and jump.  Step by step it all adds up.  Along the way we have to allow ourselves the option of failure.  It's important in order to get the bigger things.   Where my frustration, negativity and anger sometimes lives is in the fact I want to be good at something or successful at something the minute the idea hits me.  I have often not wanted to attempted something new because I just knew it would a) be way to much work to master, b) afraid of failing or c) another easier idea comes into place.  


Now I'm all for easy.  I really am.  I'm sort of a lazy person at my core.  I have over the years gathered a lot of value by being lazy.  It is okay for me to like things to be easy. As Tom Hank's character said In A League Of Their Own, "if it was easy everyone would do it.  It's the hard that makes it great."   So, how do I resolve my need for things being easy and my desire to proceed to the great things in life?  Enter my creative process.


I use my creative process to stream line my big ideas.  Thus reducing or eliminating the frustration, negativity and fear in my big ideas.  Using my creative process to assess what it is I want to do or create breaks down the idea into small steps.  Those steps add on each other (sometimes get tweaked along the way) until I've each the end product.  It is pretty sweet for a self proclaimed lazy person.


This weeks project is my testimony to this creative process.  It is my raised bed garden!  I love fresh vegetables.  Gardening is way too much work for me, yet I really wanted to grow more of my own food.  I turned this into an art project.   Yes, getting this garden up and running was a lot of work, but it was fun.  I have all sort of creative touches and I allowed myself to play and design.   When it got challenging for me, like lugging pounds and pounds of dirt in the pouring rain, I looked for the opportunity to create and have fun.

I'm proud of the results.  I currently have peas, beets, carrots, radishes, parsley, onions and chives growing.  I  built pea trellis, bore holes for a soaker hose, made netted covers and I have an array of helpers from frogs, gnomes, angels and pinwheels.  Given my past luck with plants, I have no idea if any of this will grow.  I'll keep you posted.  Bottom line here, I challenged myself to do something new.  It feels like a small step towards the greater.
What would be your small step towards the greater?


Until next week...create to feel great!


23 projects complete! 29 to go!

LOL!

Not only do I live in a funky and creative city, my neighborhood seems to be the center of all this funkiness and creativity.  I love it.   This week, someone has been plaster the neighborhood with brightly colored signs saying "LOL".   I'm really hoping these signs are being put up as a reminder to everyone to Laugh Out Loud.   If it is not, please don't tell me.   When I walk or drive by these signs, I really do laugh out loud.  It feels good.  I'm reminded just how much I love to laugh and the sound of laughter. Laughter lights up life.  It is a song or another way of singing.  My Grandmas encouraged me to have a strong loud laugh.   I will encourage you to develop the same, and use your laugh everyday.  Laughter is like opening up a window and letting fresh air flow in.
So laugh and laugh often.  It really is the best medicine.
LOL.  or  LMAFO we all need.   When was the last time you laughed out loud?  Really.

Thank you to the person or persons who is decorating my city with these signs.  Again, if the LOL signs aren't a reminder to laugh out loud.  I don't want to know. 

Until next week...create to feel great!

22 projects complete 30 to go!

This week's project is a dazzling frame- for a RuPaul's Drag Race craft swap. Yes, you read that one right! 

Transforming Fear- Yes You Can!

Spring is a time of transformation!  In Portland, Oregon, we had an unusally snow on the first day of Spring.  As much as I love and have been wanting Spring, the snow was a nice little surprise and made me want Spring even more!  Well, as I write, this it is sunny, today was warm and tomorrow looks like another sunny one as well.  Winter.  Hibernation.  Cold.  Bare trees.  For some it can be a time when they sit and plant seeds of fear.  Winter can be a dark time.  Fear really doesn't need the Winter season, it can appear at anytime.   So, would you like to start this fresh green season of Spring with a "rebirth"  Free and transformed from Fear?  You can.  You have the power all within you.  Here's some simple suggestions to get you going.


1. Fear Is a Feeling, Not a Fact

    You can feel fear.  Yet the trick here is to check in with you.  Are you in real physcial danger or is this your mind spinning.  What is the reality here?  Tell the truth.   Take a deep breath, let it go.   Repeat until the fear feeling has past. No judgement how many cycles you have to do here.  Just breath and release until it passes.
2. Your Fear Mind Is a Bully
     If someone was threatening your family member or friends, would you let them get away with being a bully?  Well.  Why do you allow your Fear Mind to beat you up, waste your time, drain your life energy and take your lunch money?  You are stronger than you know.  Stand up to the Fear Mind.  Send it packing.
3. Be Here Now
    All we have is now.   Spending the day that is given to us as a blessing is really telling the universe thanks but no thanks...I'm going to worry about the future and worry about stuff that might never happen and I'm going to waste this moment and all and any future moments worrying.  I'll worry so much, I'll get sick.  Nothing will get done.  So, much for a wonderful future, because you didn't tend to the moment.  Each moment adds up to the future.   BE HERE- NOW!   More breathing might be called for here.
4. Meditation
    Be still.  More breathing.  Sit quiet for at least a minute.  Build on that.  Until you can be still for ten minutes or more a day.   Try being still in middle of chaos.  A lot more breathing here.
5.Express Gratitude.
   Be grateful.   Express it and often.  This isn't a big deal.  A wonderful smile or an acknowledgement.  Finding something to be grateful for no matter how small and even on the worse of you days, will transform you in an instant.  What are you grateful for in this moment?
6. Play! Create!  Have fun!  Laugh!
    Again, not a big deal.  Try this...step away from you computer and do a silly dance.  30 second all out silly dance...just to get the ball rolling.  Oh, and breathe.
The more you create, breathe (laughing is a great form of breathing),be in the moment, be still, be grateful
with all that going on...fear won't be able to find you!

Until next week...create to feel great!

21 projects complete! 31 to go!

In honor of Spring!  Felt roses.  From this super great website...www.howjoyful.com
Wonderful ideas and she does tutorials (unlike yours truly).
Happy Spring!!!

Where To Put Faith

"Watch where you put your faith.  Do you have more faith in the power of your disasters or in the power of God to transform them?"  Marianne Williamson

With the discovery of some mold, stemming from a botched plumbing job, in my house and all the hassle and expense this involves, the above quoted came in very handy this week.  I referred to constantly, it tested me, it questioned me, challenged me and brought me peace of mind. My past pattern has been to get so angry, upset and lash out.  Screaming, "Why??????" At the top of my lungs to the point of making myself ill and alienating everyone within a 600 mile radius of me. I have this quote on my fridge and I looked at over and over again as service repairmen tromped through my house "little lady-ing" me and doing their very best to sell me on their company and scare me at the same time.  The quote brought me calm in the sea of all this.  It cleared my mind and allowed me not to panic and not to eat the entire kitchen on a wild scared nervous binge.  The handle the situation. Listen to my intuition as to how best to deal with it.  This will be resolved.   My little household will be healthier for it all.


The question of where to put faith is one of those big questions only we can answer within ourselves.  I like that this quote gives me choice. I think the universe has our back and really does take care of us.  We can be transformed either way.   I'm discovering there is unlimited possibilities beyond what my mind can imagine for any given situation.  For me, I learning to breathe and go with the flow of positive opportunities.

So, where do you put your faith?

Until next week...create to feel great!

20 projects complete! 32 to go! 

For Spring and St. Patrick's Day a quilted potholder (I don't quilt, but this was fun)