Here’s a peek from a Bigger Picture Moment we loved last week written by May:

My imagination took me to a place where I could garden year round, where produce would be fresh, crisp and healthy in a month I had always known to be frigid.  Initially, I felt jealous, but then I began to think about the work that goes into gardening…I look forward to the harvest, the culmination of two seasons’ planning and labor.  The garden rises to a crescendo as the frenzied picking and putting up of the fruits of that labor begins.

Be sure to visit May’s blog, Acheiving Clarity to read the rest and be inspired for this week’s Bigger Picture Moments, hosted today by Sarah at This Heavenly Life.

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Often just like writing, inspiration for a photo comes immediate and you simply must capture the moment. Other times picture taking is less inspired.

In the spirit of creativity that is being nourished here on this site and in your hearts, we’re bringing back Bigger Picture Captures.

Each Wednesday a thought, a word, or a moment will be shared and you will have the opportunity to capture the creativity with your lens and share it.

No need to worry about blogging it (unless you want to of course) or linking it up. All you have to do is Tweet it, facebook it, or Instagram it.

We know that a lot of you are participating in the P365 or P52 challenges. This is  a little more creative inspiration to get your camera out and take a picture of something different.

Use #BPCaptures anywhere you are collecting your pictures, and get ready to CREATE!

…

January is almost over (whew!) but most of the colors that we see on a daily basis are pretty much the same. You have brown barren trees, grey over cast days threatening snow showers, and if you are lucky (lucky?) snow surrounding you everywhere.

Blah. Right?

So today’s prompt is SPARKLE.

Sparkle in January? Whaaat? Well…

It could be the happy gleam in your dear child’s eye or the glimpse of childhood you see in your grandmother’s smile. Your capture could literally be sparkles or it could be snow glittering in the sunlight. There are so many ways to interpret the word sparkle this time of year!

There is so much sparkle around you if you really look! So get busy. Find your sparkle and then use #BPCaptures anywhere you are collecting your pictures, and get ready to CREATE!

Let’s have some fun!

During the next eight weeks — through the end of 2011 — we’ll be writing our In This Family prose.
In this family we hide around the corner and scare the crap out of our family members when they come walking by.  We pledge our loyalties to Marvel (not DC!) comics.  We have a dance party during the closing credits of every movie we watch – “Shake your booty, Mommy!”  “Uh… shake yours!”

In this family we unwind with Lego construction and run-and-tickle sessions.  We appreciate a good wrestling round (“Watch out for the baby!”) and a tall stack of pancakes.  We’re always up for a jaunt to the playground.

We’re a passionate, motley, sometimes sloppy lot, but we excel in a few things:

In this family we greet Daddy with screams of excitement when he arrives home from work.  We tell baby sister how sweet she is and give her kisses when she wakes from a nap.  We’re pros at free-throwing forks and spoons straight from the dishwasher into the silverware drawer.  We excel at selecting the perfect pair of superhero underwear to express how we’re feeling today.

In this family, we’re careful with those we love.  We’re mindful of the power of words, so we choose the ones we use carefully.  We leap onto couch cushions and from one adventure to the next, and the faces we look for –as we glance back in mid-air– are the ones of those who love us most.  We crash along in the sunlight of His love and grace; we envelop one another when the skies turn grey.  In this family, joy born of love is our currency, and we’re rich with it.

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Air Force wife managing 4 little troops at home. My patience, faith, and laundry pile are ever growing.

What do you do in your house?

The only real requirement for linking up with this meme is to write out your In This Family prose.

Also, we’ll be featuring three In This Family prose pieces here! Please fill out this form if you would like to be featured here.

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Sometimes I feel as if my mind…or maybe my heart? Possibly my spirit…somewhere in there, anyway, is just teeming with energy and ideas and innovations and creativity. Crafting and writing and cooking and blogging and nesting and mothering and teaching and beautifying and simplifying… I can’t seem to stop thinking up more for myself to do. And I enjoy it, which is funny to me because when you look at it objectively, there should be NO time for all these Projects of mine. None. Why on earth would I want to add MORE?

Sometimes I DO get overwhelmed.

But if I try to curb those creative impulses, life seems suddenly dreary. I have more time to relax, but I don’t feel rested. I feel unsatisfied, incomplete. My husband has always observed that I don’t know HOW to relax and just do nothing, and he’s right. Just doing nothing is very rarely relaxing for me. It’s creativity that relaxes me. When my hands are busy, my spirit is at rest.

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I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, bemused at myself for constantly adding more things to an already ridiculous to-do list. And I’ve been thinking, it isn’t just me. You do it to. You, my blogging, Pinning, writing, cooking, homemaking, mothering, wife-ing, nail-painting, crafting, reading (and if you think reading isn’t an act of creation, you aren’t doing it right), photographing, soul-diving ladies. Us. We constantly create in a thousand small, barely-noticed ways. Mostly feminine ways, it seems like, and that makes sense. We are constructed to create life (or at least, to seriously facilitate the process) and we don’t just do that on the large scale. Thousands of tiny acts of creation, tiny little births that might seem insignificant, but they still matter because they make life that much more lovely.

I don’t think it’s trivial, and I don’t think it’s busywork. I’m pretty sure that even the smallest act of creation is vitally necessary.

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This has probably been better said before, I am sure, it’s just what’s been drifting around the edges of my mind lately. Now I have to run and CREATE breakfast, at task at which I am running very, very late

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Monday’s on the Bigger Picture Blogs Facebook page we’re going to introduce some Creative Inspiration. We will post 1-3 words and encourage you to roll those words around in your head and be inspired. Use them to propel you out of the Monday funk and into a creative mood.

Use them as you will.

Take a Photo
Write a Poem
Write a post
Write two sentences
Paint a picture

The point is to use them to infuse your Monday with 5 minutes of creativity.

There is no link up, no need to post by a certain day. Just inspiration and creativity on what could be an uninspiring day.

We encourage you to write on our Facebook wall or leave a link with what you were inspired to do.

Live. Love. Create.

Have you written about creativity? Do you want to guest post for us on the subject? Just email Melissa at PBinmyHair (at) gmail (dot) com 

Happy Friday!

Live. Love. READ. Create.

Here’s a peek at a beautiful Bigger Picture Moment from last week, written by Emily at The Daily Wade.  Click over to Emily’s place to read more:

Sure, the snowflakes look a lot like the ones from last season. Up close, they are so different, unique and perfect all on their own. They don’t worry about being compared to the snowflakes from last season, those are melted, moving through the Earth’s ground and giving life to plants and animals. A new season for them.

And this week’s link-up is being hosted by Melissa at Peanut Butter in My Hair.  Here’s a glimpse of her Bigger Picture:

The waves of change are rocky though. They can leave you unsettled and  uneasy. Unsure whether you will land on soft beaches or rocky shores. Learning to ride the waves is a lifetime lesson. I am trying hard to ride  these waves over this cusp and on to the inevitable next one. To relax into  the ride and try to enjoy it as I go.

Head over to Melissa’s place to read more and share your own Moment!

Often just like writing, inspiration for a photo comes immediate and you simply must capture the moment. Other times picture taking is less inspired.

In the spirit of creativity that is being nourished here on this site and in your hearts, we’re bringing back Bigger Picture Captures.

Each Wednesday a thought, a word, or a moment will be shared and you will have the opportunity to capture the creativity with your lens and share it.

No need to worry about blogging it (unless you want to of course) or linking it up. All you have to do is Tweet it, facebook it, or Instagram it.

We know that a lot of you are participating in the P365 or P52 challenges. This is  a little more creative inspiration to get your camera out and take a picture of something different.

Use #BPCaptures anywhere you are collecting your pictures, and get ready to CREATE!

…

In honor of the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, the prompt today is going to be your interpretation of one of his most famous quotes.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”

If you want to focus on the word light, or love, or even darkness that is up to you. Be creative with this prompt and let it push you gently in the direction that  stirs your soul. Then capture it and share it.

Let’s see some of your interpretations for this quote today.

We have one more week of In This Family prose before we move on to the next exercise. If you haven’t written yours yet now is a great time to join in! Don’t just think of it as a list of rules, you could also use it for resolutions, what you intend to do for the year. We thought we would inspire you with some examples we found on Pinterest:

Remember this prompt is free form so you can really take it in nay direction you want!

To learn more about this Community Writing Project, click here!

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Creativity.

It’s in all of us in some form, in some level.

Like a fire creativity will flame out and eventually die if it’s not stoked and tended to. Do you take the time to tend to your creative soul?

Yes, it’s hard to be intentional about taking the time to be creative. Especially if there are little children in your home. Taking time to create is something that may feel selfish or a waste of time. I assure you it’s not.

One of my new years goals was to spend 30 minutes a day creating. Sometimes that has simply been making pretty labels to organize our entry:

Photo Credit Melissa Haak

Sometimes it means taking the time to set up and edit a shot for my project 365

Photo Credit Melissa Haak

Maybe you don’t have 30 minutes, but I bet you have 5. Five minutes that you spend doing nothing in particular, falling into the black hole of mindless internet clicking? Pinterest? Twitter? Guilty as charged.

Why not make the commitment to take time today and create. Even if it’s only 5 minutes.

There was an old columnist for the Chicago Tribune that used to run the same article every New Years. He stuck by the belief, that he proved to himself, that if you just spent 30 minutes a day doing a task you could master it by the end of the year.

What do you wish you spent more time doing? Writing? Painting? Photography? What unfinished projects are lying around that you need to be inspired to pick up and create?

What’s stopping you?

——–

If you need an extra push:

Monday’s on the Bigger Picture Blogs Facebook page we’re going to introduce some Creative Inspiration. We will post 1-3 words and encourage you to roll those words around in your head and be inspired. Use them to propel you out of the Monday funk and into a creative mood.

Use them as you will.

Take a Photo
Write a Poem
Write a post
Write two sentences
Paint a picture

The point is to use them to infuse your Monday with 5 minutes of creativity.

There is no link up, no need to post by a certain day. Just inspiration and creativity on what could be an uninspiring day.

We encourage you to write on our Facebook wall or leave a link with what you were inspired to do.

Live. Love. Create.

Watch this video and be inspired to create:

Hat tip to the Deacon for posting the video. If you are reading in a reader be sure to click over and watch, it’s worth your two minutes.

Live. Love. Create.