How often do you stop to take in the little things? Like moss growing on a rotting log….a mother bird feeding her twitching, wiggling baby bird? Or busy little ants working in a crack in the sidewalk? I’m often distracted by all of those things. One that is standing out to me right now is the fact that I was paddle boarding by a beautiful water lily and noticed little droplets of water catching the sunlight off of the petals. I turned my head just a little as I went by to have the beauty linger and tipped my paddle board over losing my glasses in the process. The thing is is I’ve been paddle boarding for a couple years now, and the only time I ever fell off was when my oldest son thought to throw me with a huge wave with the jet ski, that was hilarious! This time, I’m not even sure how I ended up tipping over. I got back on my board and tried to find my glasses and a couple minutes later I did the exact same thing twice in a matter of 10 minutes when I hadn’t fallen off in two years, other than the jet ski incident.  I don’t know if it was a fish who kept tipping me or the rudder catching on weeds. It was worth it for the most part. The droplets on the Water Lilly Petals that is, except when I realized later that it would cost $400 to replace my eyeglasses.

My point is, I often stop and look at the little things. I really appreciate my iPhone camera as it does an amazing job at up close photography. It’s nice not to have to carry my big camera everywhere when I can be walking or hiking and something catches my eye and off I go taking 10 pictures of some fungus on a leaf. That’s what my creativity is for today… some of the pictures I’ve taken of the little things in nature enjoy!

Long time, no entry! I really do admire the bloggers out there that put effort into their blogs every day or even once a week. It is quite mind-boggling. A friend of mine recently started a blog just to keep herself accountable to her goals as well as help her clear her mind. She’s a really good writer and so funny so I’m glad that she’s starting to do this. It’s fun to see her thoughts on paper and how healing it can be, it’s also pretty cool to see from someone else’s perspective! 

This has since inspired me to get back to my blog. I have been thinking about it, but then I thought what if I don’t have anything to write about. Yesterday on our walk, we were talking about stream of consciousness writing that we both remembered one of our teachers in high school or middle school requiring of us. It is something that helped me through some things in college and later in life when I didn’t know why I was off, or what was bugging me. They were things just back in my mind somewhere and it seemed like once I wrote them down, they weren’t as big as I thought they were and then they were gone. I’m going to try to touch base on my blog outlet every now and then again. Mostly as I mentioned on my very first entry when I started, I  just wanted a place to record my creative thoughts and projects and things that inspired me so I wouldn’t forget them.

Which leads me to this entry, Inspired Creativity. This is the first week of the summer that I’ve actually had quite an open week and the first weekend we will be home since the middle of May and not something on our schedule. Although I just invited a good friend over for cocktails and dinner on Saturday, so I’m looking forward to that. At that least it is in our hometown and in our own home on my own porch which I love. I keep thinking I should paint something or I should get out my fabric and start another quilt. It’s just that when I think about painting something, just to paint that it is much more difficult than if I paint something to be a gift or that I’m thinking of someone and want to paint for them. Something I feel that might be special, then I can paint it with ease. I’m going to close by posting a few of them here that I’ve done in the last couple of years. Each of these I did for special people. All were done because of the loss of a loved one. I always tend to feel like something homemade is better than any amount of check you could write or card you could get at the store. That’s my thought anyway. I love when I get inspired like that and would love just to be able to sit down and paint… just for me! Just because 8 want to. I have all the tools and supplies I need so maybe by talking about this today on here, I’ll just do it. 

If you find yourself coming across this entry, enjoy the paintings here. I love that God has given me creativity that I’m able to share it and the ability and the means to execute it . 

Painted for dear friends who lost their son too soon to a heart failure. He was my age. He loved to fish. Copyright Kirsten Thompson. 2024.