The smallest big things + A Giveaway!

  I keep circling back to this: Every day I need to write, to paint, to read, to share. Yet every day there are innumerable other things that fill the hours: building lego cars after dinner with Sprout, reading long chapters from my favorite classics to Bean, bedtime snuggles, morning time bustle, the day awash with movement and doing.

Navigating motherhood and creativity is something that I'm always trying to do, and today I'm excited to share Renee Touga's e-book, Nurturing Creativity: A Guide For Busy Moms, that will prompt, and motivate, and inspire you to make the most of your busy moments with little ones.

Renee has generously offered me 2 copies of Nurturing Creativity: A Guide For Busy Moms, to give away to my readers!

Leave a comment to enter, and I'll pick the winner's at random tonight. Enjoy!

xoxo, Christina

UPDATED: And the winners are: Emily and Sandy!

Flirting with chance:: it's your turn

Hello lovelies, I had no idea so many of you would play along on my little game of chance. It was an amazing day, and a challenge to try to fulfill at least suggestion from almost everyone who commented and to document it in some way. But it was also so much fun.. It was an adventure filled with many moments of resistance and joy and delight. Here is my the interactive piece I did for the class project.

I want you know know that the best thing I rediscovered through this project was just how amazing YOU are.

You are generous, sensuous, playful, romantic, and thoughtful.(Yes, you.)

You nudged me stop and take care of myself and pause; drink warm tea, luxuriate in a foot bath (the first I've ever given myself), throw myself in the snow; dance, twirl. Mostly the whole thing pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me contemplate when I started taking things so seriously.

I was struck by how infrequently I really allow myself luxuriate in the moment. My life has gotten so busy that I'm uber focused on tasks and projects most of the time. If I stop to linger, it is to browse through my favorite photography blogs, to read something, or to stare out the window. Text and images have become the only way I fill up this hunger for beauty that lives in my soul.

My fingertips and taste buds, tendons and feet were grateful to be remembered; to be used, engaged, made to move, revel, relax, reach beyond.

How often do you flirt with chance? When do you allow yourself to step outside of your ordinary? Do you allow yourself the chance of random conversations with strangers? Moments lingering over tea? What senses do you nourish throughout your day? Which do you neglect?

To thank you, I am sending you on your very own chance encounter mission this week. It felt so taken care of by you in this unexpected way. I am so grateful for the opportunities you offered me to dig into ordinary moments of my day, and to find in them so much beauty. I hope you feel the same.

HOW TO PLAY:

In the comments share a link to your blog with photos (and words) documenting your discoveries. One person chosen at random will receive an original tiny art piece in the mail, and I'll feature some of my favorite of your photos/posts later this week here.

YOUR MISSION: This os permission to allow yourself to play; to follow whimsy and to explore who you are in this moment.

1. Make yourself your favorite breakfast. Use extra butter. Cream. Real maple syrup. Bacon. Whatever it is that you love . 2. Buy yourself tulips. 3. Take 10 minutes and pin, tape, or post some images that you love to a wall in your workspace. 4. Go outside, set a timer for 4'33 seconds and just breathe and listen. 6. Buy a pint of raspberries. Stick them on your fingers like you did when you were a kid. Eat them one by one. Don't share. 7. Do something for a stranger: buy the person in line behind you coffee, pay a toll, fill a parking meter, give them a flower.... 8. Clear a space, get down on the floor and stretch for five minutes. 9. Dance to this song. 10. Take a self portrait, of your face, in good light. Revel in your beauty.

Document in some way. Ready. Set. Go!

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)

Today there is coffee from three hours ago, milky sunlight, and feathers strewn telltale on the snow. The neighbor’s dog: a black, curly, stupid thing came again, her tongue lolling, killing hens. I chased her in socked feet across the snow, shrieking. Then pulled on boots, and called my friend who came with his quiet farmer hands, and his shotgun (just in case) together we found the hurt birds, and the scared ones.

In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.

Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.

Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.

Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.

It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.

Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?

I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.

That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. ~Goethe

So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?

Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)

UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina