Do you maybe have sky colour?

I occasionally do creativity “preservation” sessions with kiddies. They are wonderful to work with. I once had a little princess (Isabel) and her chess-champ brother (Adam) over. They made this beautiful castle:

with this beautiful damsel:

and this super-strong superhero on his way to save the day:

We made our own custom tower-heads and carriages. When Isabel wanted me to pass her the blue she asked: “do you maybe have sea color?”.

How nice to see the world in your palette.

Then there was Emily the three-eared giant (so that she could listen better) by the lovely princess Isabel:

She is bigger than my husband (what he wouldn’t do for me:))

I recently had another little girl that came over for the second time. The first time was a little bit hard on me, because the little one didn’t speak a lot, which meant, I had to balance out the conversation ALL IN GERMAN (whew!).

So, we set up another date to play and wonder.

This meant getting ready. In preparation, I read the german version of “The Little Prince” aloud to my husband at breakfast in an attempt to loosen the tongue a little, should conversation be up to me, you know? I also removed gold from the palette for the session, as, in our first session, she made EVERYTHING in her best-loved color: gold:).

We decided to make fantasy animals, by drawing our favorite animals, cutting them up and using their parts to create our own animals.

Now, with gold removed from the palette I wondered what was coming. Surprise number one: she talked!! Yay! Then she made the most beautiful peacock, an oh-so-cute owl, a butterfly, a horse within a camp (so that he couldn’t runaway) and a flamingo with an egg hanging mid-air (so cute!!!!!!!).

As you can see the animals are super-cute. I felt nervous…

Would she really want to cut them up?

SO, I cut my animals up and glued my new animal friends into shape. When she was ready I assured her that she didn’t have to cut them up if she didn’t want to. And, to be honest, not sure I would’ve had the courage if they were mine… Then, without any hesitation, she cut off the legs of the peacock!!! [shocked!]

Here are her fantasy animals:

Strutting Rorse and Flutterfly

Flying Chorse

Flamingowl with magic wand (the pink oval shape was the flamingo’s egg)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: that was natural creativity for you in action.

We can only learn from them.

play for all & all for play

-liesel-

from impossible blossom to impossible sweet blossom

At the moment I dream of visiting Japan and as the cherry blossom season starts in Japan, I thought this beautiful poetry could lighten up Monday for all of us:

From Blossoms

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

PS. I recently watched a really great movie, Cherry Blossoms (original German title Kirschblüten – Hanami), that really moved me – it made me look at my life differently.