Married to the Empire

Friday, May 15, 2009

Creativity

I started reading Emilie Barnes' The Spirit of Loveliness this week, thanks to this post by LizzyKristine. I impulsively bought the book from Amazon after reading that, and so far, I'm glad I did!

I'm not very far in, but the chapter titled "The Spirit of Creativity" really resonates with me. The definition Mrs. Barnes gives of creativity is great. She says:

Creativity is a God-given ability to take something ordinary and make it into something special. It is an openness to doing old things in new ways and a willingness to adapt other people's good ideas to suit our personal needs...It is a way of seeing, a willingness to see wonderful possibilities in something unformed or ordinary or even ugly.

She also says it's something we all possess. How true! Unfortunately, we don't always recognize this in ourselves because we often equate creativity with art or grand decorating schemes or something, well, obvious. It can be so much more subtle than that, though, and simply show itself through meals cooked or objects reused in interesting ways.

On that note, I was very honored to receive the Kreativ Blogger Award from Danita. (She's a sweetheart!)



Can I confess that the spelling of this award is killing me? My creativity does not extend toward spelling.

Apparently, the tradition with this award is to list 7 favorite things, then list 7 bloggers who deserve this award. I'm a rebel, though (ha!), so I'm only going to list 3 of each. Because I'm lazy like that.

Three Favorite Things:

1. My friends and family
2. Books
3. Fried Chicken

I'm not complicated.

Three Bloggers I'd like to pass this on to:

1. Sue at Bella Bluegrass: She takes the most incredible pictures of her cat, Bella, then comes up with really clever captions for them! I absolutely love this blog!

2. Carrie at With All That I've Been Given: Her blog title really says it all. She takes what God has given her and uses it in wonderful ways. I'm always inspired by her posts.

3. Kelli at There Is No Place Like Home: She makes beautiful cards, tags, and bookmarks, and her blog is what has kick-started the desire in me again to make things besides food.

7 comments:

Sue said...

Wow, thanks, Anne Marie! :-) I've never received a blog award! Unfortunately, I'm not blog-savvy enough to know how to pass it on...
(btw, I have to agree with you about the spelling :-))

~Kimber said...

Love, Love, LOVE Emilie Barnes!! I've made it my personal goal in life to read all her books! And this is one I haven't heard of yet!! Off to Amazon I go...

Kelli said...

Thank you for much for the award, Anne Marie! That is very sweet of you! I have never heard of the Dallas Etsy Bash. I will have to look into it for next year. :0)
~Kelli

Anne Marie@Married to the Empire said...

Sue, you're under no obligation to pass things on, but if you WANT to, it's easy. Just copy the picture of the award to your computer, then paste it onto your own blog. Easy peasy!

Kimber, this is my first Emilie Barnes book, and I think I'm hooked! I'll be looking into other books of hers.

Kelli, I wish I'd been able to make it out to the Bash this weekend. I think it would have been good, but I couldn't talk my husband into taking me. (I have absolutely NO sense of direction, and downtown Dallas confuses me terribly with it's one-way streets and whatnot, so I prefer to have the hubby drive!)

lizzykristine @ Uplifted Eyes said...

How fun! I'm glad you're enjoying the book! :)

*carrie* said...

Anne Marie,

I'm just now reading this post--thank you so much for this award. I feel honored (though undeserving as I've scarcely posted about stewardship lately, even though I write several posts in my head each day!)

kathy said...

As much as creative spelling hurts me too, I think that I read that this award is actually German in origin. And thus not so painful (sort of)!