Craft Therapy: I NEED a Garage Sale

So, I said I was going to blog. I said I was going to make something beautiful EVERY day. I said this I said that. Yadda Yadda. I have kind of figured out that this artful crafting thing ebbs and flows. I have people tell me all the time, "I wish I could be creative like you." No really, I hear it almost every time I post a new project or recipe, and my overly self critical brain almost always says (inwardly) "be careful what you wish for!"

Do not get me wrong, I am thankful for my God given gifts. I would be heartbroken if I woke and they were gone. Honest. BUT, we were all given certain gifts for a reason. I think much of the time, my "creativity" (I've told you how I feel about that word) depends on my external situation. My feelings influence what I am able to accomplish. It's almost like a log jam sometimes. I've also told you I'm not a hoarder, but in a way, I think I truly am. Not with stuff, but emotionally. I hoard these emotions, and they stop the process. Today I'm going to blog about that, and show you the artistic process that results. Not really a project, but hey, you get a look inside my world and you get to see what you're asking for when you wish you "had my talent." :O) This isn't a bitter post, just a sharing post.

Let's go with why this is starting. Today, I miss my brother. Remember when I tell you this is sort of a log jam of emotions. I'm like Shrek the Ogre and there are many layers to this onion. Most people consider it a superficial thing and they only see the first layer when I yell or make a bad face about something. They don't get to that sweet layer on the inside of the onion. Oh and at this point I've got an idea for a couple of projects, but I don't really know where to start, so I go look at my craft supplies, but really don't accomplish much because mostly I'm just looking, my heart isn't in it.

 I'm looking, but nothing is happening. So I walk away, rather, I walk in a circle. About ten times. Like a dog sniffing the air before lying down so I can smell trouble coming. Yeah that's it. OH GREAT. There's something I'm going to have to work through. DADGUMMIT! I wanted to CRAFT! Well, maybe I can work around it. I circle again, and come back to the closet and get out a few supplies so I can do what Mr. Possum calls an EASY VICTORY. He seems to think that will help with what's gumming up the works and get me on to my next great thing. If I get a small win by finishing an easy project, then I will get my motivation back. Hey sometimes it works.

This time: Not so much. There you see FOUR projects not completed. I started to sew some tiny paper notebooks for a journaling project. My sewing machine oil dried out while on hiatus for a year. Thank you, again,  arid Alaska. I stopped and took it all apart, so yes that was a small victory. I didn't take pictures of that, but I did make a glorious mess in the kitchen. YAY! :O) Thank you, Mr. Possum for your generous donation of oil. I also found two frames with mats I kept to use for some Walter Anderson greeting cards I planned to hand color with Little Possum. This is a project that should take me less than thirty minutes even with her involvement, but I just couldn't seem to get motivated in that direction. It's just watercolor pencils and water for Pete's sake! There they sit. In the pile. There's an envelope I brought upstairs with a recipe I was going to blog. When I can't craft, I often turn to the kitchen for release. I told you, ebb and flow. It cycles. Now, note the glue gun and the magazine on the stair rail. Yep. I was going to zone out and roll magazines for a recycling project. Also a NO-GO. Wow,  really? I feel like an attempted craft murderer at this point.

Get it? Attempted murder? Murder of Crows? They say these are Ravens, but whatever? It's funny. It took me a minute when I first saw it with the caption. LAUGH, DANG IT! NEVAHMO, SAID THE CROW!

So what is the DEAL??? Four days of this bizarro inability to build. I keep walking around looking for my "missing piece" I keep thinking. I really need to go to a garage sale or a thrift store, I need SOMETHING. I am missing a THING, but then I woke up today and realized, I'm not. I bought a fish yesterday. We got a great deal from a friend who was moving. We haven't had a fish in forever, so really, that should help, but it didn't fix any magic thing. Yes, I love our "new" old fish, Toad, but he wasn't the missing piece and neither would be any old new thing I could find at a yard sale. It's not that. I am missing PEOPLE who are important to me.

I posted a while back about learning from my two moms how to make do with what I had, and that I wasn't treated as a "broken" step child. I was never one of those kids who fantasized about my "real" mom and my "real" dad getting back together in some Haley Mills "Parent Trap" happy ending kind of way. That never really crossed my mind. I don't know why. I just NEVER pictured them together. It probably had something to do with the fact that I had siblings in both families. What I wanted more than anything in the world was to have all my siblings in the same place at once. That was my Brady Bunch happy ending. I HATED leaving one house to go to the other. It felt like abandoning my own children when I had to leave behind my sister or my brothers. I always wanted to grow up and have all of them come live with me.

Of course that never happened, because they grew up, too and they have families of their own. ;)  Which brings us to today's emotional log jam...and the layers of the ogre onion.  Some of the extended family don't quite get along. They haven't for a while. So my peaceful Utopian dreams of all us "kids" living happily ever after were shattered. And by shattered, I mean drop kicked, dragged on the ground, lit on fire, thrown off a building, swept back into a pile and packed into a cannon and fired over a sea of hungry sharks, shattered. Being the wonderful big sister naive interfering idiot that I am, instead of keeping my mouth shut and continuing to hear the barrage of  "I can't believe this, can you believe what they did to me" phone calls, I said, hey, you know... let's get this out in the open, let's be adults let's work this out let's get this over with and MOVE on. Families fight, but then they move on. VERY LONG story short...that ain't what happened. Now they don't speak to me. Now my brother is deployed and I miss him. AND THIS WASN'T EVEN MY FIGHT! I just said enough of the bickering I don't want to hear it anymore! Well, I don't, but I don't hear anything else, either. So, my something beautiful I will create this week is a letter to all of them. It will tell them about this blog, and how much I miss them all, and how much this affects us all.  Then maybe I can clean up some of my other messes.

I mean this really does look like craft barf.

And this is for those of you who think my house always looks perfect. It looks like that, because I only choose the best pictures to post on Facebook or Pinterest or the blog. Don't judge me, everyone does it. It's called marketing. ;) Remember that when you're at home judging yourself against Sally Sue's perfect Facebook  lie life.  One day, I'll post a blog with crafting fails, so you can see how many times I screw up before I post something awesome. <---Yeah, I just said that. I'm awesome. See, I've therapeed myself.  Now, You go "say youself you love you" and make something beautiful today.  And like Toad the kitchen fish says....

"Just keep swimming"...Oh okay, he stole that line from another famous movie fish, but he's not "creative" like his new family, but we love his spirit. Really, his heart is in the right place and what he means is that you have to learn how to ride those waves of ups and downs. That's what life is all about. Thank you, kitchen fish, you are so Zen.