Countdown to Creating

It doesn’t do much good to have a blog about “creating” if you can’t make the time in your life to actually do it!

Somehow or another I seem to keep myself distracted enough with normal life, that creating seems to go by the wayside. I’m not complaining. I am in charge of how I spend my life, and I’m doing very little that I don’t WANT to do. But sometimes I have to wonder what happened to that girl that NEEDED to create. She pops out every now and then, but she doesn’t stay for long.

I guess part of it is I have enough “stuff.” (I can’t believe I just wrote that. It seems almost sacrilegious!) I don’t need anything else for my walls, floor space is at a premium, and I have way more jewelry than I need. I almost feel like am imposing on my daughter and daughter-in-law when I make them something, for fear they’re afraid to tell me they don’t like it.

What I NEED, NEED, NEED to do is spend time every day scrapbooking. Not only do I have enough supplies to stock a small store and many, many thousands of photos that need to get put in albums and the stories told before they are forgotten, but it would, if I let it, satisfy my creative needs (such as they are these days) plus get myself organized, make me feel like I’ve accomplished something, and done something that is of value to my family all at the same time.

But how to keep myself interested?

Buying a few new embellishments used to be enough to keep me going for weeks, but I have SO MANY now, that buying more is just a waste of money. And for ME to say that means I REALLY have enough. No, more than enough.  A ridiculous amount is more accurate.

So. We just went on a month long vacation in Sunriver, Oregon. We rented a house big enough for all ten of us, but then my son and his family were unable to go, so it was just 6 of us. We spent a lot of time out and about, BUT, I took a scrapbook project and was able to spend a fair amount of time working on it. I didn’t do anything terribly creative – just got the photos sorted and put into the album, figuring I’d go back and add artsy elements later. I ALMOST completed a whole vacation (Alaska 2013.) Another few hours, and I’ll be ready to decorate.

I’m mentioning it now because now that I’m home, I need to keep the momentum going, and SOMETIMES putting it out there to my little corner of the world helps me to follow through.

And then I see these words on the wall of my scrapping space.

 

See? I’m just doing what I’m reminding myself to do. There seems to be a conflict of interest going on here! Heeheehee!

Anyway, I DID make a little purchase while I was gone. Well, not so little. I actually bought a TYPEWRITER. A TYPEWRITER! I make myself laugh just typing the words! There are just some projects that are more difficult to do on the computer. Memory Keepers brought back the regular old typewriter. I tried to resist. Really I did. But I saw it come across my Facebook feed, and was instantly obsessed. I gave myself a few days to think on it, just to make sure I wasn’t making a hasty decision. And then I did it.

I haven’t taken it out of the box yet. It’s going to be my prize for when I complete this scrapbook. Good incentive, huh?

I have a few things I need to do before I pull the album out to finish. Like unpacking. But the countdown begins. Then I’m going to create myself silly. No really.