Creative Weekend Challenge #12

 It’s the weekend! That means another creative challenge for those who might want to play along someday 🤣

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples abilty to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So here’s another instalment of the Weekend Creativite Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling/emotion that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul! 

What’s your favorute way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

• Colouring 
• Mixed media / Painting
• Papercrafting
• Fun Nail designs
• Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together community group by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt and your entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L12.

Join us here:

I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh Love 

Be Totallyawake4-life

Weekend Creative Challenge #10

It’s the weekend! That means another creative challenge for those who might want to play along someday 🤣

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples abilty to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So here’s another instalment of the Weekend Creativite Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling/emotion that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul! 

What’s your favorute way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

• Colouring 
• Mixed media / Painting
• Papercrafting
• Fun Nail designs
• Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together community group by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt and your entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L10.

Join us here:

I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh Love 

Be Totallyawake4-life

Weekend Creative challenge #9

It’s the weekend! Whoot Whoot - fell asleep last night before posting this so here it is this morning!!

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples abilty to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So here’s another instalment of the Weekend Creativity Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling/emotion that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul!

 

What’s your favorute way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

• Colouring 
• Mixed media / Painting
• Papercrafting
• Fun Nail designs
• Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Need some inspiration on where to start getting creative? Here’s some Zentangle Mandalas for colouring or water colour painting sourced from Google! 

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together community group by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt and your entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L009.

I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Come join us in our Facebook community! 

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh Love 

Be Totallyawake4-life

Weekend Creativity Challenge #3

Happy FriYAY! 

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples ability to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So here’s another installment of the Weekend Creativity Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

 

 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling/emotion that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul! 

What’s your favorite way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

• Colouring 
• Mixed media / Painting
• Papercrafting
• Fun Nail designs
• Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in my Totallyawake4-life community group by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt and your entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L003 in this case but I will change the number with each new prompt. 

I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group here from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Need some inspiration to get you going? Here are a few motivational word mandalas from Pinterest to print off and colour of paint! 

 

 

 

 

Come join us for more Self care, motivation and clean living fun and tips as well! 

Happy Stampin’ 

Margaret 

Live, Laugh Love 

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

 

*post contains affiliate links

Weekend Creativity Challenge

 Happy FRIYAY and a long weekend to boot!

I had done a poll up a while ago to try to come up with ideas to help improve engagement in the group for members by posting more meaningful and inspiring content to help with promoting health and wellness and one of the things was ways to help with supporting peoples creativity! 

Nurturing one’s creativity is SO key to helping to ensure a healthy mindset … human beings are all born with an instinct to express themselves through creativity but sometimes external factors impede peoples abilty to engage in creative expression and so their full healthy mindset is also impeded! We need to get back to ensuring that everyone has at least ONE creative outlet for expressing themselves. 

So introducing the new Weekend Creativity Challenge - each week I will post a photo prompt, like below, that you can use to get your creativity mojo going! 

Choose from the photos colours or imagery or just the general feeling that it brings to your heart! 

You can create with whatever medium speaks to you and inspires you! There are so many ways to nurture one’s creative soul! 

What’s your favorute way to nurture creativity?

Here are just a few of mine:

Colouring 

Mixed media / Painting

Papercrafting

Fun Nail designs

Poetry/Short Story/Blog writing

Snap a photo of your creative work and share it in our Facebook Community by the following Thursday night at midnight to get your name entered into the draw! 

Here is my creation using inspiration from the colours in the photo.

Bonus entry if you share the creative prompt image  and your own entry on your own social media in a public setting and tag my Totallyawake4-life & Nailin' it Together group and use the hashtag #TA4L001 in this case but I will change the number with each new prompt and have it in the prompt to help remember it. 

I will be doing a monthly prize draw inside the group here from all the creative entry’s shared and that show up tagged outside the group (remember the settings needs to be public otherwise I cannot search the hashtag to see them)  … let’s help spread the joy and benefits of creativity together 💗

Happy creating! 

Margaret

Love, Laugh, Love

Be Totallyawake4-life 

*post contains affiliate links 

Paint Pouring Night

One of my continued learning goals for my Continual professional development for the College of Early Childhood Education professional development is:

• Ensure that I continue to maintain my passion for my work in face of the isolation of working alone at home.
• Ensure that I practice self-care strategies and take time to recharge myself with things I enjoy doing.
• Help organize and attend monthly professional development with home childcare colleagues to help each other with self care and reducing isolation.

To help ensure that this goal is met I regularly get together with fellow home childcare providers to network and engage in a fun night out connecting. Sometimes we do fun things to recharge and other times we engage in professional development and sometimes like tonight we combine the too .... Krisy has gathered us together in her home to host a paint pouring night so that we can learn how to do it and than bring our new skills back to the program with the children.

Here are some collages of our amazing night of collaborating and connecting over creating some cool master pieces! As you can see we are masters of reduce reuse recycle and did not want to waste the paint as we poured so used some stamped coasters that were duds to repurpose into poured paint coasters!

 

I am really looking forward to sharing this technique with the kiddies and have added the supplies needed to my wishlist to budget for in the meantime I picked up a cool spinning tray to use with art and just tempera paint for pouring with them!

If you are in the London area and would love to try out the paint pouring Krisy has a page on Facebook called Pouring Abstract that you can check out. She is great with both adults and children's parties! 

Have an amazing day!

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life

Light Up my Life Craft

Everyone loves a little love note ~ having the crew create one by hand for mom and dad is always a hit specially this fun one where they get to make little fingerprints! 

What You Need

• Washable Ink pads in various colors (tempera paint would work)
• Fine Marker
• Cardstock weight paper or construction paper in white and a Christmas color of choice
• Computer and printer or a 'neat writer'

What You Do

•  If you are not a neat writer yourself you can create a 'sentiment' for your project in WORD and print them out for the children on an 8.5x11 paper and than cut to size for your card front. We did 8 x 5 size for our white for our card front and insert and than folded a full size card stock for our base of the card.
• Have children ink up their finger with color and make a collage of finger prints around their paper.
• Wash fingers well when finished ~ great reason to do some water play to help soak off the evidence if it is going to be a surprise card!
• If using tempera paint let the finger prints dry. When dry revist your project to draw lines to connect the fingerprints into sentiments
• Children can write a personal message inside or draw a picture for loved one!

Like hand print crafts fingerprint art is always a fun and appreciated keepsake for loved ones that the children love to make!

Have an amazing day!

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life

 

Handprint Christmas Tree ornaments

 

Ian the Elf brought the crew everything we need to make our annual hand print keepsake ornaments ~ this year we voted for a Tree theme! 

 

What You Need

• Large clear ornaments ~ we get ours at Michael's
• Acrylic paints ~ green and various colors for the 'lights'
• Plastic disposable cups - to hold ornaments while you work
• Metallic Marker
• Hairspray
• Glitter
• Funnel
• Soapy Warm Water and washcloth you do not care about 
• Rubbing Alcohol

What You Do

•  Wipe glass or plastic with rubbing alcohol to remove any oily residue
• Paint childs hand and place firmly on the ornament ~ you can orient it either fingers up and closed or down and spread open for the branches we opted for up so they would fit on the ornament.
• Place paint side up into a plastic cup to dry.
• Once dry you can revisit and decoarte your tree adding lights with toothpicks or fine paint brush dots and tinsel or stars and whatever the child wants. Let dry again.
• If using clear ornaments you can carefully remove the hanging top as they are fairly fragile and glitter them up by spraying the inside of ornament with hairspray make sure to direct spray to cover entire inside and than use the funnel to carefully pour in glitter.
• Cover top with your thumb or return the top and shake to distribute glitter. Repeat as required to get full coverage. 
• Add a ribbon to your hanger hook!
• Wrap and put under the tree for the big day!

Hand print ornaments are always a hit with loved ones ~ something extra special about capturing their little hands for prosperity! If you missed our other post on the 10 keepsake hand print and photo ornament ideas you can view it here

 

 

Have an amazing day!

 

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life 

Elf on the Shelf Marshmallow Fun

I think that Ian is so missing the SNOW while he is here with us in the balmy 10+ degree freaky weather we are experiencing in Ontario right now! 

I do not think he is alone ~ lots of winter sports fans on social media who are missing the fluffy white stuff but shamefully I admit I am one of those Canadians who could do without the white stuff this time of year ~ I love FALL but our cold snowy winters are so not my favorite especially getting 5 children bundled up in winter gear ~ a light jacket and shoes is so much EASIER! 

So since he is missing the snow and building snowman ~ he brought the crew an invitation  to make some Marshmallow Snowman and forts and so forth!

Elf on the Shelf ~ Marshmallow Fun

Ian's Marshmallow invitation poem

I do not know about you, but I love to play out in the snow

Elves make fortes and snowman as the winter wind does blow!

But sometimes in the North Pole it gets so for every cold

That we cannot play outside “stay in the workshop” we’re told!

So when this happens to avoid getting ourselves in trouble

To the marshmallows and toothpicks we head on the double

We build our fortes and snowman inside the workshop

Having fun of our own and playing until Santa says STOP

So today I brought you some good old fashion elf fun

You can build with some marshmallows till the real snow does come!

The crew love this invitation ~ it was a lot of fun and when they were done I let them 'eat' one marshmallow from their structures for a treat cause the weather is gorgeous and we can run off the bit of sugar high that a marshmallow treat! 

I did not get too many photos of this years fun cause this crew, love them as I do, they can sense when my attention is divided and were using that as an excuse to try to do more 'eating than exploring' with their marshmallows. They had some nice 'toothpick' free towers being built although no one in this group but Ian and myself were inclined to actually want to build a snowman ~ they were more about building structures and trains and things!

 

A marshmallow TRAIN!

Raising a Roof up in here!

Making  a marshmallow circle while counting the 10 marshmallows!

Have an amazing day!

Margaret

Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Be Totallyawake4-life