Inspiration

This weekend, my family and I went up the road to Rogers, AR and visited War Eagle mill a Grist Mill (a mill where wheat is ground into flour). Walking into the gift shop, we found bags of flour and corn meal, and a variety of other grains, nicely packaged and sewn up in cotton bags. Just the way you would have bought flour, as much as 100 years ago. The mill is set in a very picturesque setting; with an old bridge, a small waterfall, unique trees with their roots exposed. Looking around, and hiking through a nearby trail, I felt inspired, just by my surroundings.

Sometimes it is not my environment that inspires me, but people that I know. I love to be around artists, musicians, and creative people. I like just hearing their ideas, and picking up on their creative "vibe". I really like to watch a group of artists collaborate on something, to see how they feed on the energy of one another. That really makes me feel inspired.

Sometimes, it is not an actual person or a place, but a song or a story that gets me inspired.

Yesterday, we rented the movie Kit Kittridge An American Girl, it was a sweet movie about a girl's life during the depression. I watched the mother try to come up with ways to make ends meet: taking on borders, growing a garden, and making dresses out of the feed sacks that would have been thrown away. Much like the sacks I had seen at the mill, just two days earlier.

And as I watched, I again became inspired. For this family, it was a necessity to find creative ways to use what they had, to be productive and not be wasteful. In our family, we recycle more than just what goes into the recycling bin. We also reuse a lot of things, but especially containers for storage. But I'm looking into what else we can do to be productive and not wasteful. Tonight I've been researching planting a fall garden. I want to share the experience, of growing and creating with my children.

So help me to inspire others, tell me what or who inspires you? What is your best creation, that came from reusing, upcycling, or recycling?