Fun and Creativity and a Bum Knee

I just love creativity - whether it's taking pictures, sewing, writing, or enjoying the creative works of others. In fact, when my life is lacking in creativity, I tend to be in a real funk and feel as if something was missing. Which it pretty much is. After all, we're created in the image of God - the ultimate Creator, so it makes sense that creativity would be a part of who I am.

This weekend was such a treat for me - Friday night, Lucy and I went to our local Archiver's store and spent the evening cropping. We try to go somewhat often and the past couple of times we were there, I just felt like I wasn't making much progress, which was rather frustrating. But on Friday, I decided I would just work on a mini album and not take my massive cropping luggage with me. It would be fun to have a change of pace and my hurting shoulder and knee would appreciate the lighter load. (Sorry, no pictures tonight...I'll explain later.)

About 10 years ago, my family, my sister's family, my parents, and Lucy's family had a progressive dinner. I took a ton of pictures that night. So I decided they should have their own little dedicated album, rather than try and cram them all into the chronological album for that year. I was able to get all of the photos onto pages (included title and section pages) during our six hours of cropping time. As always, we had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and for a change, I actually accomplished quite a bit.

Saturday, Mom and Lucy came over and we stamped Christmas cards. We haven't done any stamping in a number of years. We used to stamp quite often. In fact, I was a demonstrator for Stampin' Up! for about seven years. I've wanted to make Christmas cards for a few years, so it was also a lot of fun. Of course, we had the obligatory lunch break - at Chipotle - which provided delicious energy for the rest of the day. I was quite happy to discover that in my stamping supplies, I had a box of pieces and parts of various Christmas cards I had started. So the first part of my day was spent assembling and completing what I'd already done. By the time we packed it all up Saturday afternoon, I had a total of 41 cards done and read to go. As long as I can get another day or two of card making in, I should be able to make all of my cards this year. Another day of fun, fellowship, and creativity.

I almost got to add one to this list today - attending a local craft fair with my mom. I debated the wisdom of this, since my knee was hurting quite a bit. But it was a rather small fair and I figured I could always leave early if necessary. I had intended to go after church. John and I came home and while I was walking up our stairs, the bursa at the back of my left knee popped - loud and painfully so. In fact, I couldn't bend my leg at all, nor could I walk. So I found myself sitting in the middle of our stairs. I texted Mom to let her know I wouldn't be able to make it after all. John and Zach did get me into the recliner in the spare room/studio/whatever room. Give the extremely limited mobility of my left knee, it looked like I'd pretty much spend the rest of the day and night in that chair.

Fortunately, after some ice and ibuprofen and rest and support, my knee IS a little better. But better is far from walking normal and doing stairs again. Fortunately, the bathroom and our bedroom are both on this same floor, because I will be here until tomorrow morning, at the least.

So the knee is the reason there are no pictures to support this post. It's far too much work to take them and upload them right now.

In addition to creating, I so enjoy games and laughter. Last night, Mom and Dad came over and we played a couple games of Liverpool Rummy - always loads of fun. This afternoon, Mom and I squeezed in a game of Scrabble, even with my bum knee. Mom won. By a pretty nice margin, too. All it takes is a little bit of table space, which I have a with a small folding table.

So it's been a mostly fun weekend with plenty of creativity, fantastic company, laughs, and a bit of pain thrown in. How about your weekend? Did you do anything fun? Creative? Hopefully not painful.