"As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood."

 

It has been so long since the last time I wrote, for so many reasons. But it feels like the right time to give myself a push to get going again. Like many of us it seems, I have been struggling for motivation with many parts of my life recently, waking up each morning and feeling like we are just repeating the previous day... and many before it. One thing that hasn't been lacking motivation though has been my creative side and I put a lot of that down to that amazing boy of mine and his constant need to be making something new. 

A few weeks back he came to me with his latest idea and I was over the moon as it was something I had tried to get him interested in years ago (with no joy). As with many things with kids though, they initially don't share your motivation for an activity until they see a YouTube video (with completed product) and its all the motivation they need. So Opeie started playing me some vides by a very talented chap called Adam Kreutinger and I was hooked from the get go. I went on a bit of a binge for a week after that watching design videos and learning various creative techniques every evening before buying various supplies to get us creating. 

 Once things started to arrive, I tried not to over think the process and just throw ourselves into it and learn from our mistakes etc, that way of creating has always worked out well for me. There's something really magical about learning new creative skills and it always puts me in a happy place.

The plan was to build puppets of ourselves and we were both very excited. We wanted to create something really playful and not too serious. Making the Foam bodies was super easy and I think contact adhesive is my new favourite thing. Once those were made it was on with the sewing and thankfully we had a few good days of weather in a row so we threw the beanbags outside and sat in the sun chatting while we stitched. It was so much fun watching them come together and really great seeing Opeie so focused on what he was doing. As expected we made a a few mistakes along the way, like cutting the fleece the wrong way round and losing the stretch but that's the great thing about learning this way, that will never happen again.

One of the things that I love about attempting these new projects is realising that actually, craft wise, I can put my hands to most things and come out with something I'm pretty chuffed with. But more importantly, the confidence that it gives Opeie in his ability to create is incredible to watch. I love a creative project but that is massively magnified when the two of us are creating something together.

Making the outfits for the puppets was really satisfying. I made myself some dungarees using the leg of an old pair of Opeie's shorts and although the thought of it seemed quite daunting I managed to pin, cut and restitch an old shirt of Opeie's to fit his puppet nicely. I love being able to use things from around the house, sadly my washing rail is looking a little worse for wear now though as I've pulled lots of the rails of of it to make the army rods, oops!

And now it's time for the real fun to happen. Opeie wants to learn how to make videos about all the things we get up to which I think is going to be lots of fun. So we're setting up a Youtube channel to document that and hopefully have a ton of fun along the way. Check it out HERE.

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

Day 99:

The plan for today was to go for good stomp around snail beach, we made pizza and wrapped it up for lunch but when we arrived the weather just didn't want to play ball so we drove a little further up to Stiperstones and dropped the backseats so that we could sit in the back of the car and paint. Before we could start painting though Opeie asked whether we could do a drawing activity he had created where we design products for a supermarket based around themes. I love things like this as you end up drawing things that you would never usually think of drawing. 

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."

Day 83:

I don't know what we'd do if it wasn't for all the creativity in the house, it seems like we are always drawing and painting these days. Since becoming a single dad the evenings have always been the hardest for me and this whole lockdown thing has just magnified that. That feeling of being alone and disconnected is horrible. sketching has been a huge way of taking my attention off of that and has helped to keep me in a much more positive headspace. It's been great to look back on all the things we have created and I look forward to putting it all into a fun photo diary for Opeie to look back on. 

"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."

Day 82:

I never really understood why people created self portraits? It always seemed like such a bizarre thing to do. Currently though we are living in a pretty bizarre world so as I enjoyed creating the picture of Opeie  earlier in the week so much, I thought I'd give it a go. Its definitely not something I could see myself doing again but I'm glad I had a go. I'm really loving this new style of drawing, we may be mid lockdown but this limited life that we are all living has definitely unlocked my creative side and given me a real hunger to keep those creative juices flowing.

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul."

Day 81:

We've been out and about taking photos of Opeie's LEGO minifigures for an upcoming project of his. I really love how we've managed to get through these bizarre months by being creative every day. I like to think that by the end of all this Opeie will come out of it a lot more confident with his creative abilities and even more open to trying new things.

"“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”"

Day 73:

Ive said it so many times since this lockdown started, The #creativelockdownproject that has really kept me and Opeie in a happy creative headspace and I don't think I've ever been this creatively motivated in a long time. Its been great to really reinforce to Opeie that art is everywhere and it doesn't have to be something that has taken a chunk of time to create, to make people smile. as the creative word today is 'books' Opeie decided to search through his collection and make a book rainbow. It certainly put a smile on my face.

"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."

Day 71:

Today was one of those days where everything just seemed to fall in to place. A mixture of great moods, fun, creativity and a picnic in the woods. Last year Opeie and I found a really lovely area not too far from where we live which we've used a few times to sit and do home-ed work. This evening we decided to take the garden parasol, a blanket and some art supplies for a relaxing peaceful evening under the trees. Just what we needed to take out minds off the current madness. We took loads of pictures of our paintings but this little guy that joined the party (with his heart shaped markings) really summed up how I was feeling.

"The creative adult is the child who survived."

Day 68:

One thing that I have loved about this lockdown period is the projects, tackling those little jobs that I'd either been putting off or just didn't seem to be able to make time for. Last year when Opeie was deep into his beetle project I decided to up-cycle a bureau for him, beetle style. A place for a Coleoptera enthusiast to keep his entomology books, research material and beetle hunting items. Typical individual homeschool kid never used it and kept all his bits in various sections of the house, so today I thought I'd reclaim it for myself and use it for all my painting and sketching things. Opeie helped me repaint it, the feet had been waiting to be done since I painted it and we found all the creative bits we needed to really make a fun space for me to create. It was the perfect little project to start pulling me out of my funk and it was great getting my sidekick helping too.

“This is the way.”

Day 62:

I never really thought that much of Star Wars, always swayed towards the super heroes instead but over the last few days we've been watching the Mandalorian and I'm pretty hooked. So as todays word over on the #creativelockdownproject is 'Kindness' and Mando is so lovely to Baby Yoda 'this is the way' we went with our pieces. I am loving painting, its really keeping me in a lovely headspace and all this creativity is working wonders for Opeie too.

“The real world is where the monsters are.”

Day 34:

Todays picture is actually from yesterday, it was really colourful and that's how I'm feeling today. We both slept well, we were out early for a walk again and now we're eager to get some creativity pumping. Opeie started to flag yesterday afternoon and was really fed up (we're all going to have days like that) so I'm going to do what I can to hold on to this positive start to the day.

"Creativity is contagious, pass it on."

Day 28:

Most days we have no problems keeping ourselves fully entertained but recently this self isolation craziness has started to take it's toll. The last couple of days, every now and again we've both been a little fed up but its to be expected so we're doing all sorts to try and keep a positive head about us. Today we started a 30 day creative isolation project where each day someone is nominated to come up with a word and everyone involved has to create something around that word. Todays word was 'Spider' so this morning was taken up creating cute spiders made from printing with a sliced up toilet roll tube. If it hadn't have been for this today I think we'd have probably spent the morning staring at the walls.

Stay creative peeps, it really does help. 

"Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges."

day 20:

Today was one of those days that was pure perfection. We woke up, had breakfast in the garden and didn't leave the garden all day. It's not great being confined to our homes but this weather is making it so much easier. While looking for something in Opeie's bedroom today I found some chunky chalks so we decorated the back of the house. The last couple of weeks has been one creative activity after another to get us through the days and this one so far will stand out above the rest.

Go and do something that really makes you smile, trust me it will take the edge off all this madness.

“Colours are brighter when the mind is open”.

Day 16:

While Opeie was mark making with inks yesterday he commented on how lovely the water was when cleaning his quill in a glass of water. The blue pigment was really striking and he decided that he wanted to keep it to make 'potions'. This morning while we were sitting eating our breakfast we were looking at the water again and decided to fill a few bottles with different colours for the sun to shine through. A little bit of colour during these strange times is really good for the soul and has made us realise that we can add a lot more little happy colourful touches to the house to make us smile.

"Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones."

Day 6:

During these crazy confusing times its really important to keep busy, if we don't I think many of us (especially the creative folk) will start to wilt very quickly. We've been concentrating on the creative side of things the most while we've been shut away, as the satisfaction that you get from completing a project or producing a piece (no matter how small) can fill you with all those happy vibes.

We've recently started a couple of online drawing classes and todays character illustration was just what we needed for a self isolation pick-me-uk.

Keep creating people, I think we're going to see some amazing pieces of work off the back of this pandemic and its going to be amazing to see. 

Bringing back the festive cheer, with a Coleoptera Christmas.

Its crazy to think about how much I was dreading this Christmas. The run up to what should have been one of the most amazing days of the year for the boys was clouded with negativity, with both boys saying "I wish Christmas wasn't happening this year!". I can't believe what an absolute disaster this year has been. With so much going on in the boys and my own head its no surprise that they were feeling the way they were. Seth point blank refused to write a Christmas list and Opeie wrote a heartbreaking letter to Santa explaining how much he had been let down this year. So the Christmas lists were put on hold. I boycotted advent calendars this year (clearly they didn't need the Christmas countdown) and I concentrated on what should always be the most important part of the festive period, being around the ones that love you and embracing festive activities together.

Despite all the doom and gloom I was pretty confident that with some serious effort I could pull it back. So at the start of December I decided to blow off the homeschooling and spend the month concentrating on Opeies emotional well being. I arranged lots of meet ups with friends and we filled December with Christmas crafts, tailoring this years Christmas celebrations with his main interest, Beetles! It's crazy to think that this love of beetles started with us reading Beetle boy together.  I have loved fully embracing this new passion of his.

While Opeie had his friends round one afternoon, me and my bestie Helen sat drinking coffee and making snow flakes for the window. After a crash course on how to make them (with a few disastrous outcomes) we were soon sitting there chatting away cutting out beetle themed snowflakes to cover the windows in the house.

Having to pretty much start the Christmas decoration collection from scratch again this year actually ended up being a good thing as we could give the tree the beetle makeover that it needed. Thanks to a special someone we ended up with glittery beetle decorations and opeie used his big dung beetle for the top of the tree. we finished it off with brown (dung) baubles too. It definitely suited our more Coleoptera loving sides.

One of the things I was really stressing about this year was the stockings as Opeie was unsure which house Santa would take our usual stockings to and it was something that was really upsetting him. Luckily though, it turns out that I am Santa, is pretty slick with a needle and thread and didn't let us down this Christmas when we came downstairs on Christmas morning and found fancy new beetle stockings hanging up for us, even Rose got a mini one full of little treats. It really added to the excitement and Opeie was all smiles.

We filled the house with Grinch themed paper chains, we made a gingerbread house, mince pies and basically jam packed our December with family fun. by the time we had reached Christmas Eve the magic was back and we ended up having the most amazing Christmas morning, which just goes to show that a little effort and creativity can go a long way. With Christmas out of the way it's time to start working on making 2019 the most fun it can be and I'm thinking the beetles are going to be playing a huge part in that.

Happy new year all.

"Problems are hidden opportunities, and constraints can actually boost creativity."

When it comes to home-schooling, the learning never stops, but over the school holidays we definitely kick back and relax a little. The boys have had so much fun so far over the Easter period and it'll be sad when Seth goes back to school after this week. Ive been trying to get Opeie into a little coding recently and have borrowed books from the library and a BBC Micro:bit but he just hasn't shown any interest. I think part of it is because I want to have a go and learn with him but I didn't want to push it as thats the quickest way to put any child off an project.

Yesterdays activity, which I assumed would only last for a couple of hours ended up filling our whole day and in Opeie's words was 'One of the best Daddy-School days he's ever had'. Back in November we bought Seth a LEGO Boost kit for his birthday (Ok, so I was trying to get them both into coding) and with his obvious love of LEGO, it seemed like the perfect gift for Seth and something that Opeie may have been interested in at a later date. Seth sat and built it after his Birthday and had a little play but it ended up on a shelf untouched. So yesterday as the weather was awful and it was clear that we were not going anywhere, Opeie and I decided to have a play.

After learning the basics and working out what each of the commands does we began building a track out of LEGO so that we could work out the commands to get Vernie the robot to the finish line. For dramatic effect we used Opeie's Creator 3 in 1 robot (Which looks like it could be Vernie's child) and placed it at the end of the course. So Vernie had lost his child and needed to be programmed to get to them safely. One of the many thing I love about the boost is being able to key in the turning Degrees. We hadn't covered that yet so we drew a circle and I spent some time explaining Degrees and how the number we entered, would affect the robots movement. Seeing the actions in motion rather than just being on paper meant that this sank straight in with Opeie

It wasn't all movement that we needed to code though which made the activity even more fun. I placed the traffic cones (that come with the kit) across the track and Opeie stopped the robot at that point, recorded himself saying "Oh no! traffic comes, please can I have some help?" and also added that into the chain of commands followed by a 360° spin and flashing disco lights on the chest once they were moved.

Opeie's next obstruction was a Nexo Knights robot who was blocking his path. Opeie programmed his robot to stop and say hello and then recorded voice commands so that they could have a short conversation before high fiving and continuing along the route. Desperate to make use of the rocket launcher on his shoulder, Opeie built a LEGO target before adding in some coding to make Vernie stop and shoot it down. When the command for 360° spin didn't quite go around all the way (probably due to being on carpet), Opeie worked out how many more degrees he needed to turn and then added that into the line of coding too, which straightened up Vernie, keeping him on his path.

When Vernie finally made it to Vern Jr, Opeie had recorded an excited reunion piece to finish off our afternoon of LEGO fun. These are the sort of homeschooling activities that really reinforce our decision to teach Opeie ourselves and this is also another huge win for those amazing bricks, turning a dull and rainy day into a colourful learning adventure. 

"Don't limit your challenges, Challenge your limits"

I love those occasional emails that we get where we are asked to show our creative side. If you are a regular GFTP reader then you will be fully aware that we are big crafters and love to show a bit of creative flair when we can. We have only ever been asked once before to come up with something creative using those amazing bricks that we love though. When one of our readers came up with an idea for an interesting build. That was until I opened a recent email titled 'The Debenhams Big LEGO Challenge'. These are the sort of emails I love to open and when I explained the rules of the challenge to the boys, like me, they couldn't wait to get stuck in.

The Rules:

After being sent a LEGO kit from Debenhams awesome LEGO Range, along with a Mechanical timer we had 15 minutes to come up with 'the most adventurous creation' using the bricks inside. I know what you LEGO enthusiasts are thinking "I could build something cool in 15 minutes" and I thought exactly the same thing but when you get into it, 15 minutes really isn't that long at all.

So... We had to be strategic.

We couldn't start as soon as we received the kit so the boys and I spent a little time assessing the kit on the front of the box trying to decide what we were going to build. It didn't take long for Seth to come up with an amazing idea, so we sat and worked out what parts were going to go where.

On the day we got the all clear to start, we didn't dive right in and start building, as I said 15 minutes really isn't that long. So we opened the bags and separated the parts clearly so we knew exactly where the parts we needed were. I'm used to building under pressure because Opeie is always coming up with ideas for things he wants building and he is really impatient, but I've always had a lot longer that 15 minutes to play with. This was going to be tough.

After discussing what each of us was going to be doing, Seth wound up the timer and we started building, completely focused on what we were trying to create.

I know it probably sounds like we had our plan well mapped out but when it came to the execution it started falling apart pretty quick and those minutes kept ticking by at what seemed like a crazy speed. We lost Opeie in the first two minutes when he decided he was going to go rogue and build the Minifigures and freestyle his own creation which he named the 'Ultra Jestro Super Suit'.

As for me and Seth, we stuck to our plans and attempted to create a mask that you could wear like a pair of glasses that resembled Jestro, the Nexo knights antagonist. While Seth worked on the glasses section using those awesome translucent wheels as eyes, I worked on the nose and mouth section making the most of all those teeth included in the kit. Had we have had a little longer we could have used a lot more of the parts included in the kit but we stuck to the timer and here is our creation...

Attaching both Seth's part and mine together was really tricky and to finish it off Seth did an awesome job of making curved arms that sat behind the ears. I don't think it came out as either of us had planned but it was a really fun and exciting build and as always the perfect father/son bonding time together.

Seth said it would be really cool if we were set a challenge to create something using every piece of a lego kit, which I thought was really interesting So the offer is there if anyone wants to take us up on that haha. LEGO kits are amazing but it's sometimes easy to forget that they are a creative building toy too. I think Debenhams has done a great job of reminding us that.

You can find their full LEGO range HERE.

Now get building!

"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."

As I watched Opeie doing his work today, sprawled across the kitchen surface, I chuckled to myself thinking maybe a classroom environment with chairs would be more comfortable? Obviously, I don't actually think that. This world of home education has been amazing for so many reasons, one being having the flexibility to learn wherever he chooses. Maybe learning Symmetry on kitchen work-tops boosts productivity? who am I to question Opeies practices.

Today was one of those awesome, effortless home-schooling days, we had planned to visit a place called Venus Pools which is a great place for bird watching. We were going to take paints and canvases and make an artistic day of it. During Seth's school drop off though, the sky was thick with fog, it was freezing and poor Opeie was looking a bit peaky and dark around the eyes (we've all been a little under the weather lately). So we decided to head back home into the warm and curl up on the sofa reading books. After a few books, we made our way to this custom kitchen top chaise Lounge and as I cleaned the kitchen and prepped lunch, Opeie learned about symmetrical patterns and then we covered a few pages of number bonds and times tables.

The great thing about the way we learn at home is that to break up any academic work we are doing there is no end to the amount of creative things we can do in between. A lot of them being general tasks around the house that need doing, which aside from being creative also teach great life lessons. As much as we want Opeie to be a well educated and creative grown up we also want him to reach his adult years knowing how to do things that will benefit him, like being able to cook and look after himself. Today's fun task was prepping tea for when Seth came home so that we had plenty of time to be doing something fun together. Seth's tea time request was pizza, so It was Opeie's and My job to make the dough.

The remainder of our afternoon we talked about all the things that we want to do during our home-schooling fun and Opeie informed me that we wanted us to have some singing time which I thought was an amazing idea as he sings to himself all day long, making up the lyrics that he doesn't know to his favourite country songs, so I'll be printing out lyrics for us to learn as part of this learning adventure. This self-guided motivation is exactly what we want for Opeie and we'll embrace all of his ideas if we can.

And then it was time to put on our jerseys and grab our sticks for hockey time, the perfect end to a perfect day of home education.

"Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended."

Motivating the boys to express themselves in a creative way is a big thing in our house. Both myself and Mrs M are creative people and we are always motivating each other when we've got things in our work life going on, so that is obviously going to rub off on the boys. I love it when an unexpected drawing session breaks out because i know I'm going to love the end product.

Ive written many posts about Seth's creative flair. I love his innocent and adorable sketches, they really put a smile on my face and it seems that his little brother is following suit. I wasn't in the room when this fortuitous art session got started, but when i came back in i was greeted by an adorable sketch by Opeie...

When i asked him what he was drawing he simply replied "it's all the things i dream about". I asked him who the people he had drawn were and he told me they were our friends Chris and Katie. I love how our friends mean that much to him that he included them in his sketch. They are family to us and they always make a huge effort with the boys so its really no surprise.

I can see many great sketches coming as Opeie is really starting to embrace his creative side. Its almost time to start our usual Christmas craft too and it'll be lovely to have Opeie more involved this year.