TA-DA! Tuesday #8

Another Tuesday and I wish my TA-DA! were having gotten Mom's house in sufficient order to satisfy the home evaluation necessary to allow her to go home from the nursing home but my efforts were inadequate and the job was WAY too big for my nearly 3 week prescence - 6 weeks wouldn't have been enough what with time spent negotiating and debating with my other 3 siblings who I felt overpowered by since they reside so near and my life is so far away.

What's YOUR TA-DA! from the past week? I know Connie and Christine had their Creative Dig Workshop happen in Cleveland this past Saturday and Heather got to go...(color me green with envy). Did you start anything new? Finish something that challenged you? Get inspired or amused by something unexpected?

My big TA-DA! is I'm back home again! I'm SO delightedly happy to be back to: MY chair, MY bed, MY super starry night sky, MY kitchen, MY bathroom, MY desk and computer. MY wildly untamed back yard with it's scrubby oak framed view of perfect sunrises & MY studio space. But change is on the horizon I found out...Dearest Darlin's son has asked him to allow he and his wife of just over a year and her two young sons and a baby on the way to move in here, probably just after the first of the year. I have 'power of veto' but can't imagine using it so am starting to think of how to live with a young family in the house - moving my desk to the bedroom and what to do with my 'studio' space if it's to become a bedroom again. Darlin' suggested moving it into the front room but I fear (there's that ugly word of challenge) having it exposed to 'terrorist pre-school boys' who could quite possibly not only wreck things but would make it necessary to be concerned about child proofing and protecting them from my scissors, rotary cutters, chemicals, etc.

And so...while I didn't get to bring home my newly acquired easel and have to wait for it to be sent, I'm finding myself with the fresh perspective that my home is in its way my easel with each room a fresh canvas. Unfortunately - some of the canvasses are spec work and I can't be totally original and ME in them. But, oh boy, will I pour my heart into the ones I can!

TA-DA! Anyway!

I know I said I would be on hiatus but I JUST CAN'T RESIST! It is Tuesday and I've been holding this little gem captive in my heart since Saturday when all I really wanted to do was do a little dance and sing-song my little treasure to anyone at all who would share my little portion of joy and unfortunately those who surround me at the present time both have no appreciation for it and have been highly critical. :( Saturday morning I got to get out in the fresh air and sunshine and under the wide open skies of middle Ohio. Foolishly I left my camera in my carry on bag next to the bed I've been enjoying in my brother and sis-in-law's guestroom so I don't have actual pics of the sweet rural barns and fields with big rolls of hay/straw or the maples beginning to be torched with their brilliant reds and oranges rising out of the green, but I'm savoring the images in my heart. My brother drove the rural roads and I was able to just soak up the scenery Saturday morning. We arrived in the village I'd always adored visiting and thought I might one day happily inhabit in my youth and after being pelted on all sides for days with WAY TOO MUCH stress, anxiety and frustration I found myself smiling and smiling and smiling just to BE in that place. We stopped at a few yard/garage sales and I picked up a handful of books to take home, replacing the ones I'd brought with me and passed on to my little sis and THEN...at the end of a driveway in front of a sweet little white frame cottage on a corner I saw AN EASEL!! My heart began to race with excitement! Two precious older women within the garage attached to that driveway were still busily laying out items on tables and I inquired as to which 'artist' was giving up her easel to be told a dear friend of theirs who had to downsize to take up residence in a rest home sadly had to let it go. But happily for me - TA DA! - it means I'll be taking home an easel that I got for just pennies more than the price of a pack of chewing gum! (After spending a good deal of time figuring out how the pieces went together that afternoon, I hope when I disassemble it they'll fit in my suitcase!)

TA-DA! Tuesday on forced hiatus...

to be resumed September 29th.

I am bummed! I DID load my TA-DA! Tuesday little banner on a thumb drive to take with me on this trip and I'm sure if I asked my brother would show me where to plug it in on his laptop or I could figure it out, but honestly - I'm sooooooooooooooooo overwhelmed here in OH it's hard to feel a sense of TA-DA! about ANYTHING at all. Getting a cup of coffee in the morning without the phone ringing to DEMAND I JUMP would be a TA-DA!...maybe this morning, but I doubt it.

I'm so worn out - barely time to post this much, let alone visit all the places I love to read and I so miss the community I've come to have such deep regard for. Please leave comments though. If YOU have a TA-DA! to share it would lift my spirit so much to hear.

TA-DA! Tuesday #6

I'm almost ready - my bag is packed. In the morning I'm off, on a roll that once begun I can't turn back from.

I'm headed to my hometown, Dayton, OH., for almost 3 full weeks. This is not a vacation - FAAAAAAR from! My mother has not been well and come next weekend will have been in a nursing home for 3 weeks. My mission, whether or not I choose to accept it, is to make ready for her to return again to her home. Mom has lived a hoarders life for 30+ years and it only got worse after my Dad passed away 12 years ago. Mom will come home with limited mobility and somehow my sister, brothers, sis in law and I must make some negotiable space for Mom and her mobility assistance devices to negotiate within her house. My two adult daughters are going to come from IL and MI to help with this mission so it is going to be a family reunion or sorts as well. Part of me could be a bit excited - but the over riding anticipation is one of dread. I know there is going to be conflict and turmoil and I know there is going to be exhaustion and a fair amount of anguish, fear and other unpleasant feelings. I wish this didn't have to be how I'm spending the bulk of this month.

When this became evidently necessary I had just begun settling in to restructuring the studio for functionality and was anticipating several weeks of productive time in it before some opportunities to show and sell some of what I do and even taking into account the miserable economy I was hopeful to get some of that sweet nectar of admiration and approval from viewers of my work that artisans/folk artists feed on and crave like drug addicts jones for a fix. I can't find the words to express - and I'm virtually NEVER at a loss for words - how deeply and terribly disappointed my heart is.

I intended all this past week to have the studio all ready for me to open the door and walk in and dive right in to my process with massive enthusiasm and gusto upon the day of my return and to be able to post a proud photo, or two or three for TA-DA! Tuesday this week. I didn't make it nearly as far as I'd intended, though there is significant improvement and I CANNOT WAIT to resume!

I will have internet access whilst I'm away and I hope many will share their TA-DA's for Week #6 of TA-DA! Tuesday. Please leave a comment with your progress in creativity this week or a link to your own blog where you share. I eagerly look forward to giving 'Thumbs UPs' for each one!

I Wish To Begin - Wishcasting, I Guess

Nahhhhhhhh - no I don't. Wellllllllll - maybe I do. I'm not a 'wishcaster' but many of the bloggers I've taken to following are and therefor, it being Wednesday their blogs are full of wishes prompted by Jamie Ridler's weekly prompt to make a wish and cast it OUT THERE/HERE into the blog world for others to support. Today's prompt by Jamie as discovered by me at BohoMom's, Heather's, BlissChick, Sarah, Suzie and a few others' blogs is 'what do you wish to begin?' And everyone I've read today has some fine and dandy things they wish to begin, admirable things. Things I really do hope (wish) they get to begin because all that I've read would make a difference. Reading, I was stirred deep inside and a wish bubbled up from within me in a SHOUT I can't ignore. Now, I don't so much KNOW about the power of adding your wish to someone else's compounding the capability for that wish to actually come about, but as rebellious as I can be about making lists and the like because I lose lists and therefor if I NEEDED it written down in words on paper in order to remember things I'd STILL be lost if the list got lost, so why bother? BUT - I have learned there DOES seem to some mystical power in putting something in writing that comes I suppose from having given it substance in print/script so here goes...

I WISH TO BEGIN to finish things I've started.

As I've been on the road to recovery from perfectionism I've been paying special attention and really noticing ways my perfectionism has nandcuffed me in the past. My home is FULL of vivid reminders - the half painted front room that wasn't going the way I'd planned when I started, so I stopped; the bare curtain rods hanging above the slider door in the family room because I feared the curtains I intended to make and hang on them wouldn't have the PERFECT decorator appearance I want; the book I've compiled research for and outlined that I fear the message of will be lost because I'm not capable of conveying it adequately or don't have the credentials to back it; all the quilt tops and blocks I've unearthed in the studio that haven't become quilts because they were/are SO BEAUTIFUL at the stage they're at that I thought I'd wreck them if I continued; the fabric and tools and supplies I've stockpiled because I was too timid to cut and to use; the garden landscape plans I've drawn to scale on grid paper and started to erect hardscape to support but doubted I could execute and care for properly...there's MORE even, but those are the most glaringly visible and the most mocking.

TA-DA! Tuesday #5

It's another TA-DA! Tuesday in Studio Lakeside. Seems sometimes I really hafta dig deep to pull out a TA-DA! of significance. I REALLY did feel like it was a TA-DA! when I found the sketch pad I KNEW I had bought at the beginning of the year and really hadn't seen since. Well, in fact, when I moved it aside yesterday on the shelf over my desk to place the NEW one I'd recently bought after giving up on finding it I actually said outloud to myself - "Welllllllll, LA DI DA!!! You were right here ALLLLL this time!" Now I have two, guess I'm 'invested' in actually practicing some drawing, huh? Some whimsical and wonderful faces for some soft sculpture figures, my self-portrait mermaid I've been fantasizing of - think the world's ready for a plus-size mermaid?

Sunday, after wrestling with my dial up internet access and then waiting not-so-patiently for it to FINALLY allow me live access to blog talk radio, I listened to the better part of the last half of Connie's conversation with Christine and Andrea - the other 2/3 of the leadership for Creative Dig Workshop coming up Sept. 26 in Cleveland, OH. TA-DA! I knew they'd likely talk primarily about the workshop, which I would dearly love to be attending but will instead be in flight the 'day of' enroute BACK to CA from OH. I also knew there would be cheerful chat about just being your creative self every day and I hungered for that affirmation enough to be persistent when Internet Explorer kept telling me I was NOT connected to the internet and therefore could not access the website. AAAAARGH! I was not disappointed, except that it took so long to gain access that I only got to listen to part of the show.

You see, I was never much of a fairy-tale believer as a child and never engaged in 'princess' or 'queen' role play and dress-up. I didn't care much for Disney or cartoons or any of the other fantasy child play either. A good friend once asked me if I was EVER allowed to BE a child because there just didn't seem to be any child in me ---- I'd have to dig MIGHTY deep to find my 'inner child'! So it strikes me as kind of amusing that now as I'm actively involved in 'perfectionist recovery' and developing my creative self, my mental picture of 'the process' is building or restoring my 'creative castle'. I think we all must have a mental image of our own 'creative castle' - maybe not as elaborate or ornate as the one in the world recognizable famous Disney logo:

But it's there - our personal vision of where we fantasize going with our individual creative pursuits, our soul's eyes picture of the 'creative castle' we want to inhabit. Maybe you're envisioning publishing a novel or non-fiction work, garnering a blue ribbon/big money prize at International Quilt Festival, being recognized as up and coming amongst painters of your genre or medium or choice or being in demand to speak at gatherings of peers - or any thing else on a wide spectrum of accolades or accomplishment. Or maybe your dream is to teach others to follow theirs or guide an expedition to somewhere adventurous or I dunno...my thinking here is limited, I know. People I know in everyday life don't talk much about their dreams and the ones that do do it with hesitation and reservation. That's one of the reasons I so LOVE the blog world and the creative community I've found within it! Creative bloggers are mostly wide open - like children frolicking in piles of colorful autumn leaves, gleefully heaving huge armfulls of them up in the air and laughing delightedly as the breeze scatters them farther than the velocity and force with which they tossed would have alone.

Hopefully, every day in some way, you find yourself making progress in building your own creative castle. In recent months I participated in a book blogging group going through Keri Smith's "Wreck This Journal" which was such an excercise in stirring up so much in me that had been sunk within - like all the fruit and nuts that separate and sink to the bottom in an unstirred batter left sitting too long while one gets distracted in the middle of a recipe. One of the prompts in the journal was simply to doodle over the title page and not being a doodler and having seen some AMAZING drawings and such from other bloggers journal pages, I pulled out my colored pencils and began to draw a picture like a child in elementary school might. I was craving some sea air and salt water on my skin and so let myself draw a representation of the shore with a cheery sun shining down on it. I remember thinking if I had the talent, it would be pretty to draw scattered sea shells on the sand but what I did instead was put a sand castle on my shore.


Like the sand sculptors on popular beaches, I'm slowly but surely working with bucket after bucket and detailing like crazy my 'creative castle' of my life. Seems I'm about to get caught by the tide rolling in lately...but I'm not giving up. My mission this week - in time for next Tuesday to share here, I hope - is to finish getting the actual studio across the hall from my bedroon into working shape. Just in time to walk away from it for nearly a month. But I look forward to being able to walk back in and be queen of my 'creative castle' then. In fact, it just occurs to me, my first full day back to it will be my 'half birthday'. Think I'm gonna hafta have a party and a giveaway for that - don't let me forget!

What's your TA-DA! in your creative life this past week?