Flex Your Creative Muscles...

...every day!  It doesn't have to be anything spectacular.  These pretty things are cupcakes.  They look okay... they have white icing, with chocolate shapes (very Hallowe'en, all stars and moons), and it looks like they have a chocolate sponge base, which you can just see under bits of the icing. They have a secret ingredient, however.  Instead of making my normal chocolate cup cakes, I added a little ginger to the mix.  So...spicy chocolate cake.  I like chocolate ginger sweets, so I figure I'll like chocolate ginger cake. 

It's like anything, really.  You can stick to the recipe (or the pattern, or the rules...), or you can ask yourself, what if I just add...   and try it.  That's creativity!

ps for the bakers among us, these cakes are made using a basic Victoria sandwich mix, with the addition of a half teaspoonful of ginger (from a Bart jar, if you're in the UK, though any kind of preserved ginger, including ground, would be fine in its place).  Oh, and a lot of cocoa powder.  I'm from the school of baking that assumes that There Is No Such Thing As Too Much Chocolate...so I just tip the packet into the mix until it looks as if I've added nearly too much.  You have to practice that to get it right... dirty work, but someone has to do it, not to mention try the cake...

Quote of the Week.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

                                                                                                                                      (anon)                   

This is one of my favourite ever quotations, and it's the basis for a lot of what I do and teach. I think we confuse ourselves between what we can and can't change.  We  have a lot more power over our circumstances than we like to believe.  It's more comfortable to dismiss an issue as something that we have no power over, instead of recognising that we do have a choice as to whether we take responsibility for it, or not.  There are always choices.  It's just that some of them are so small as to feel unimportant, and many of them involve the lives, freedoms and choices of other people.  It can feel impossible.  But it isn't.  

What many of us forget, is that in order to give to others, you have to give to yourself, first.  For most people reading this, that giving to ourselves will take the form of creative work.  It is a wonderful way of giving yourself joy and meaning.  I believe that it is essential that we make space in our lives for creativity, however we perceive that to be.  This blog is about making that space.  I hope you will find it useful.