Seven Creative Takes

 

In addition to everything else, I've been playing around with Canva. Seems like some of the imagery on my blog could use an update.  

Something I've noticed since getting off of social media is I'm a lot more motivated to do the stuff I actually enjoy and like doing, and I feel like I've been more creative. My mind is clearer now, and I have some more ideas. 

Not all of them are good ideas per sey, but they are ideas. 

1.) I Started Planting this Season's Garden. 

As you can probably tell by looking at the back of this picture, we let the garden get away from us a bit this summer. (And Bermuda grass is evil. That stuff comes back no matter what you do). 

Chris has a plow attachment for the tractor and was able to get most of the grass at least ripped out and loosened. I pulled out all the grass from one row, put in some carrot seed, and then mulched either side of the row and watered the whole thing as throughly as I could (even in September, the heat gets pretty intense here). 

We'll see what happens. I'll be planting other stuff too as we get further into the season (South Texas planting seasons are WEIRD. Seems like most other people are harvesting right now). 

2.)  I Painted a Pink Propane Piggy

This tank has been screaming at me to paint it to look like a pig ever since we painted it white. I finally got around to it the other evening. 

I'm going to add a curly tail to the other side eventually. 

3.) I finally managed to make Little Girl's birthday dress!

I found a pattern at the thrift store (circa 1980s!!) and sewed a dress that matches the one on the doll I made her (from the same pretty bedsheet. Still have enough to make a shirt or something). 

I'm pretty stinkin' happy with how it turned out. Any sewing that isn't mending (I feel like I'm finally getting a hang on that for the most part) is kind of a complete crap shoot when it comes to whether or not it'll actually turn out into something I can use. The last thing (other than the very...amature doll dress that I made) was a blouse that failed miserably.

It's still hanging up in my closet, more out of shame and a faint sense of denial than anything else. I bought the material for that darn thing new, goshdarnit. (This is in part why I prefer to use salvaged material from old bedsheets or clothes in my projects. There's less at stake). 

4.) I wrote a new post that wasn't a Quick Takes! 

If you'd like to, you can see it here. 

Kind of a heavy topic, but it felt good to write. 

I have another "heavy" post like that coming down the pipeline that I keep putting off. I know what I want to say, and it feels really important to say it, but I also know it's going to be really involved writing, editing, and refining it. It's intimidating. 

Not that that's a good excuse...(insert favorite appropriately uplifting saint quote here. You know the ones I'm talking about). 

5.) I Made a Shadowbox Thing!

We had this perfectly square box arrive in the mail, and it just screamed potential. 

I have a very large collection of old Magnificats, travel magazines, beer boxes, and churchy calenders (the ones they hand out free every year in the back of the parish). Decided to finally put a few to good use, and I'm reasonably happy with the way it turned out. 

I mean, it looks like a middle school art project, but it was a lot of fun to make and it sparked a pretty good conversation about the annunciation with Little Boy. It's currently hanging on our dining room wall, and it seems to fit in pretty well. 

It also led to Little Girl wanting to be the Virgin Mary for Halloween, and Little Boy wanting to be the angel Gabriel.

I actually have mixed feelings about this. I make all of our costumes, and good homemade angel wings are really hard to do well. It'd actually be easier to do a knight helmet (last year's costume...he was a Halloween Knight dressed all in orange, purple and black and it was freakin' adorable) or a dragon head than decent wings that will stand up to more than a millisecond of wear. 

I refuse to use those store-bought wire and cloth ones that look like butterfly wings. Feels too much like cheating, and I want to make a badass angel costume more than I want to make a cute one. 

 I could go the Book of Revelation route and make him a weird wheel headpiece with a thousand eyes. I imagine selling him on that would be difficult though... 

6.) I Made a Cool Sign for our Gate. 

More than any political sign (even more than "Larry Martinez for School Board!", and that's saying something), I've been seeing these red and white "Pray" signs popping up all over our small town and in Corpus. It seems like there's at least one on every street. 

Image Source

I actually really like the idea of these signs, seems substantially more productive and unifying than putting a political sign out (especially this year), but I didn't know where people were getting them -- if they were from churches handing them out, or people were buying them somewhere, or what. 

So I decided to make one out of cardboard and hang it on our gate. We still had a cardboard dove hanging around from the Pentacost party a few months ago, so I decided to toss that on there too. 

It's not the most elegant thing in the world, but you can read it from the road so I'm counting it as functional. 

I think I might make hanging stuff on our gate a regular thing. We have a pretty steady stream of cardboard between ordering stuff online and buying our produce at a mom and pop grocery store that puts your order into a nice thick sturdy berry or banana box so you can carry it out to your car. 

 Is it obnoxious? Maybe a little. But subtlety has never been my strong suit anyway. I've been trying to figure out what "liturgical living" is going to look like for our family, and I really think this is going to be a part of it (it doesn't hurt that the kids love to help me paint stuff too). 

7.) I'm Learning to Cook Low-Carb. 

Chris has committed to cutting out sugar and carbs as much as he can to control his diabetes. Since I do most of the cooking, this means I've been having to experiment a bit. 

And I'm using fancy shmancy ingredients like almond flour and coconut flour (Almond flour is expensive, by the way. $20 for a 5lb bag! Store/ generic brand!!), as well as strange new things with vegetables. 

It's been a bit hit-or-miss. Some stuff works out really well, and some stuff...doesn't. 

We made some fried breaded pork chops the other day using coconut flour to bread them, and they actually turned out pretty decent. That was something that went over really well, and you honestly couldn't tell much of a difference between 'regular' chops and that one. 

Another time, I tried to make a mashed potato substitute out of mashed up califlower. That did not go over too well, even when I added a bunch of cheese. 

And last night, I tried cooking jicama (a root vegetable that looks like a brown turnip and tastes a bit like a water chestnut) the same way I was cooking potatoes for me and the kids (browned in chicken fat, then put in the oven with a little broth in a covered cast iron pan until cooked). It...didn't taste exactly like a potato, but it wasn't half bad either.

So the experimenting continues. I'll let you know if I come up with something that hits it out of the park or fails so miserably as to become family legend. 

Post Script: I was messing around on my blog and found settings on there for the comment section. 

Everyone should now be able to comment on my blog, not just those with Google account. 

Kinda sad it took me this long to figure that out, but that's ok. 

See the rest of this week's takes here.