I’m rediscovering my creativity

A couple years ago I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I can’t remember exactly how she worded it, but basically a big message from the book (for me, anyway) is that if you get joy and satisfaction from creating something, whether it’s writing or painting or sculpting or gardening or singing or WHATEVER, it’s important to keep doing that.

And not to put pressure on yourself to turn this thing that brings you joy into something you try to make money from.

To enjoy creating for the sake of creating. Like you did when you were a little kid.

Not so you can sell it or profit from it, but because it allows you to express yourself artistically.

Brene Brown also talks about this – about the importance of having a creative outlet. All of us.

A lot of my creative outlets fell by the wayside after I got married.

I love plants and gardening, and I love decorating.

I loved these things when I was single, and then once I had kids, well… forget it.

Plants were just an opportunity for my babies to eat dirt, and five kids in less than seven years kind of put a hold on decorating. That was pointless.

But now that my youngest is almost eleven(!), things are different.

So I’ve been doing some redecorating while the kids have been with their father.

I have no money to spend, so I’ve been doing some redecorating by shopping my own house.

I literally haven’t spent a thing.

I love my back porch. But I don’t love what it looks like.

It’s just been kind of ignored.

So I’m not totally finished yet, but I just wanted to share some pictures of some of the things I’ve done.

Here’s what my poor little back porch looked like a couple days ago:

I gave one of the kids a haircut like a month ago and I used that stool and it’s been out there ever since.

The furniture is mostly used as a drying rack for my clothes.

I decided it was time to do something about this.

I did luck out because I’m plant sitting for my mom. I have five of her hanging plants here, so that definitely helps.

I also took all my plants out of my bedroom and put them on the porch.

I had some old plant containers that had some potting soil in them, and I had a spider plant that was not doing too well because it needed a bigger pot.

It also had a ton of little babies on it.

So one thing I did was repot the spider plant and cut off all the babies.

I used the cute little bottles I got before Christmas at Stew Leonards to propogate the babies.

They look cute while they are hopefully growing roots!

I had three trunks out in my garage that were just sitting there. I also have about ten old windows in the garage.

I’ve turned some of them into frames hanging inside.

I stacked a couple trunks and an old window frame on top of them.

Then I lined up the baby spider plants and some mason jars I had in a cabinet in the kitchen.

I mean it’s kind of dirty Schitt’s Creek Rose Apothecary, right?

I’m not done yet, so I’m not going to show you the whole thing until tomorrow.

I love this old milk jug – I just put a plant on the top of it and voila. It looks like it was supposed to be there.

I wish I had cute planters but that’s a next summer thing. The cheap plastic ones the plants come in will have to do for this summer.

One of the trunks has some really old wooden trays in it, so I took one out and used it to hold some books.

I’m hoping maybe one of the kids will sit out there and maybe even crack one of these babies open.

I’ll be out there reading or journaling with a cup of coffee as the sun comes up tomorrow.

I can’t wait to show you the whole thing.

You don’t need to spend tons of money (or sometimes even any money) to change things up in your house!

Shop your garage, basement, attic… anywhere.

You might be surprised by what you find!

 

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