friday fun

Spring is a fickle season around here, so we grab whatever chance we get to get out into the warm sunshine. A couple days ago the kids and I went out for a walk, our trusty National Audubon Society Field Guide to New England in hand (specifically, the Baron’s hand). We picked dandelions; admired daffodils in myriad combinations of yellow, orange and white; pointed out forsythia bushes (and one apple tree) in bloom to each other; and scuffed around in the shattered and ground-down remnants of last year’s acorns. We also spotted a new-to-us butterfly species, and thanks to the guide, identified it as a spring azure (what a lovely name that is!).

Have you learned a new name recently? Identified a flower, a tree, an insect, a shrub with strange leaves? Learned the name of car part, a chemical process, an architectural feature, an interesting rock?

Dream journaling is that staple of creativity-enhancing courses that I’ve always skipped in the past. Honestly, my dreams are just not as interesting or coherent as the stories I come up with when awake. They largely involve me neglecting to study or show up for classes and thereby failing the Super Important Exam That Determines The Rest of My Life–Dum Da Dum! (gee, no, I’m not reliving the anxiety associated with my academic career, no sirree!).

But, I thought dream journaling might be a fun experiment for a couple weeks. I haven’t been recording daily, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from my badly-scribbled morning notes:

1. I actually dream every night. In fact, I have at least two, possibly more, distinct dreams.

2. I dream quite frequently about being in a house FULL of rooms. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms. In the latest iteration of that dream, we were staying with some friends whose decent-sized house had turned into a MANSION of high-ceilinged rooms with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. And I was creeping around this house in the middle of the night to meet with a spy (I know that plot point comes straight from Quartz!).

In other versions of this theme, our house has been many many times larger than it really is. Considering that we’ve had to remodel this place room by room, I was not thrilled by being confronted with rooms full of peeling wallpaper, asbestos-backed linoleum and ancient bathrooms with rusty claw-footed tubs. In one dream, house also had a porch exactly like David’s rental when he was bachelor and a side alley exactly like the one of my childhood home…

3. My dreams are also populated by people I barely know: moms I meet while waiting for my kids to be done with gymnastics/dance/swimming, old high school acquaintances I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. They often play major roles, which accounts for some of the bemusement I often feel in my dreams.

4. In some of my dreams I am me. And in others, I am someone else, like a bubbly college student (that was last night), some blonde(!)  named Ivy/Evy, or a character in a MWT novel being chased up endless spiral stairs by Roman soldiers.

5. So far, I have not found anything that is the least bit useful for fiction writing. In fact, the only dream I can remember that inspired a story idea is one that David had. Which I appropriated because he’s not doing anything with it.

Do you dream journal? What kinds of dreams do you have? Do they help with your creative process, or coping mechanisms, in any way that you can tell?

Coloring is often dismissed as boring busywork or a creativity-killer (and when it’s forced on a child, I agree it can be so). That said, my children will often want to color of their own volition. I find coloring to be soothing, allowing my hands to work, pencils and markers gliding across the page, while my mind is elsewhere. Coloring is companionable, everybody sitting in comfy silence, broken only by requests for a particular shade of green. And, when there are so many beautiful and fantastically detailed drawings to choose from, coloring is just plain fun!

This week, the kids and I put up a rainforest (complete with trees named Tom, Bob and Ben) mural in our back hall. While looking for rainforest animals to inhabit the mural,  I came across these fantastic offerings by children’s picture books writer and illustrator Jan Brett. Her whole site is full of eye-pleasing coloring pages.

An art blog (I forget which, otherwise I’d give credit), linked to this lovely clipart site a long time ago. Many of these illustrations would make great coloring pages.

Where would we be without lists of the best? Here are (someone’s take on) the Top 10 Coloring Pages Websites (note: not all of these are free).

Dover publishes some real little gems of coloring books.

How do you view coloring? What memories are associated with it? Do you have any favorite coloring sites?

It’s warm, sunny and GORGEOUS out here. My Friday Fun was taking the kids to the park after lunch. The last time we were there (before all the snow and cold weather), Baron was not yet walking. It was so much fun to see him crunching through gravel and clambering over the wooden structures to keep up with his sibs today.

best part: All three kids swinging in a row, with me administrating pushes as necessary and calling out “Pump, pump! Pump your legs NOW!”

funniest/potentially bad parts: Sir I. yelling at the bottom of the slide: “I’ll catch the Baron, Mommy! I’ve got him!” So I send the Baron down and as soon as Sir I. sees the 25-pound toddler hurtling towards him, he jumps back and Baron plops onto the gravel (and pops right back up, unfazed). What was that about catching your brother, Sir I.??

Next time, I made sure that I was at the bottom to catch the baby. Sir I. tries to help the Baron get in position on the top of the slide, but Baron insists he comes down on his tummy. Well, at least he didn’t insist on coming down headfirst as well!

The not-fun part: David not being around to come to the park and enjoy the beautiful day with us! I missed him.

Writers need to get outside and get moving, too! What’s your favorite outdoor activity? Do you run, swim, or garden? Do you like to wander the woods taking pictures of flowers (that would be me!) or sit on a dock with your toes in the water? What memorable (in a good way!) outdoors experiences have you had?