by Sara le Roux, Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District
Wow!
100 Days – we’re almost all done!
It’s certainly been a challenge 🙂
I chose today’s activity to be all about reflection….
When we started this journey 100 days ago my aim was to spend more time with Izzy and Boo developing their creative skills, turning off the television and best of all, to just have fun together!
I’m a firm believer in taking time to reflect and look back on events – ‘taking stock’ so to speak. We seem to spend most of our days racing around! Whether it’s working, shopping, chores, family – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve caught myself saying “I can’t believe its Friday already!”
My husband and I have a tradition that began the year we met. Every New Year’s Eve we take a walk together before midnight. This used to coincide with when our dog needed to go out, but with the arrival of our children we now settle for a sofa chat with a glass of vino.
We sit, we chat, and most importantly we reflect on our past year.
If you’ve never done this before you should definitely try it – just sit quietly for a few minutes, and think about what you achieved in the last week, last month, or in our tradition – the last year!
Believe me, once you get started you’ll be amazed at what an eventful time you’ve had. It’s always useful to have a close friend with you when you do this as its pretty much guaranteed you’ll have forgotten half the things you did because you were so busy at the time!
I love our annual ‘stock takes’. It gives me the opportunity to pause and celebrate all the things that we have done (however big or small) and the challenges that we have overcome. Every year we have been amazed at what we have managed to pack into the last 12 months and by reflecting, it’s almost like concluding a chapter before we start our next one…
We talk about our hopes for the New Year and what we would like to try and ‘get done’ – our big plan for the year ahead!
So with that in mind here are my ‘Top Five’ reflections on our ‘100 Days Of Creativity’ Challenge.
- I will no longer make assumptions about my children’s abilities – Boo and Izzy manage to surpass my expectations every day and are just plain awesome – I somehow have to learn to let them challenge and ‘stretch’ themselves each day and just be there to wipe some tears and keep cheering them on.
- Writing a blog is HARD WORK! Nevertheless I don’t regret starting the challenge as without the (self-applied!) pressure to finish it, I might have missed some of the many side-splitting laughter moments that we’ve had.
- Always have a backup plan! (or in my case a backup child too!). There were certainly a few days when Boo ran for cover when I suggested a ‘make’ so pretty quickly I learned to have a few different activities planned – painting, sticking, and sometimes even creative games, and fortunately one of them would normally peak his interest – failing that, Izzy was always happy to get involved 🙂
- Keep On Creating – Little and Often! I know from talking to other people, that one of the biggest factors holding people back from crafting at home is the prep and clean up time. Most of my activities lasted no more than 15 minutes and probably took the same time to prep and then get tidied up. This can be a little disheartening at times, but I promise you it is worth the effort. Boo has gone from having a fairly ‘blah’ attitude towards arts and crafts to now being a bundle of excitement (most of the time!) when I suggest doing a ‘make’. He points out pictures in magazines and programmes on the TV that show people who are painting or crafting and when we are out shopping he always spots the art and crafts materials.
- Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. With all the best planning, not every ‘make’ turned out to be worthy of Pinterest. I could post some absolutely classic ‘after’ photos of the cracked stepping stones, and the PVA sun catcher that we did in the jar lid – but I forgot to remove the inner card piece first! It doesn’t matter – what counts is that we were having fun and taking part – however it turns out we will have a lasting memory of that day.
So there they are… my Top 5 Reflections. I could’ve listed so many more though as this really has been a journey for all of us.
But we’re not done yet!
That’s the awesome thing about creativity – it’s a learning ‘journey’ -not just a day trip or a weekend getaway. Izzy and Boo are changing so much every day and I can truly see how encouraging them to develop their skills to create, explore and problem solve will have a long-term impact on their developing little personalities.
So what next?
Well I’m going to sign off for just a couple of weeks and get things back to something resembling post-Christmas ‘normality’
But we’ll be back really soon with more Izzy and Boo adventures!
For now we’ll leave you with today’s exploration – we spent our time collecting most of our ‘makes’ together (some we’ve gifted and many others just wouldn’t fit on the table!) and remembering what we’d done…….
Sara, Boo & Izzy x
Enjoy Creative Fun 