Do you and your ideas shine bright like a diamond?

I have a box where I keep ideas, like props I want to play with some day. In that box sits a light bulb twice as big as my palms.

It’s hard to hold onto ideas, sometimes. They’re fleeting. Unclear. Brilliant but bygone as soon as you try to fill them with details and words.

This light bulb wove its way to the top of the box and the top of my mind, after decades encased with a clip between plastic and cardboard. “It’s my time,” it whispered, then rattled some more.

The sun had barely crept over the mesa when the light bulb woke me that day. At first it asked to simply be held and beholded. It was slippery, that idea. My lack of opposable thumbs didn’t help!

I sought a twist-tie in the kitchen, but it was too short. Then I found a rubberband in my junk drawer, where other ideas toss-tumble and jumble, waiting their turn. Now I could hold that idea more firmly, testing its shine as the sun spilled over the peaks, past orchards and pastures, into my window. I leaned into listening to the idea, so quiet at first.

When have you heard an idea beginning to form? Does it whisper? Does grab your attention with a blinding Aha!!! ???

Snowflake, having finished her breakfast, had questions about this idea. But it was too early to clarify with any coherence, so she glared instead.

“Too bright,” she mutter-meowed.

Truth. Beauty. Love. Good words. Good ideas. But where do we go with concepts like that? We must lift up ideas to be seen, examined, experienced…

Let new ideas swirl in the light of day dawning…

Go toward the light. To the window! To the view!

“Staying indoors is not good enough,” said the idea. “Go outside and play,” it insisted. Ask other bulbs how do they grow…

When queried, “How do you do? And by the way, how do you shine?” the grape hyacinths answered, “We simply bloom from our bulbs into blue. We just be as we do.”

“So that’s how you shine?” I and the light bulb replied, our question mark rising an octave.

“I’m beginning to see,” I said to the light bulb, meaning this idea about shining your light.

Aha! I declared as we brimmed full of photons. We are diamonds in the sky, day and night.

We can twinkle in daylight, we can twinkle in dark. We can dream in starlight and sunshine.

What ideas are coming to life because you’re shining your light?

How are you holding the light that YOU are, not just in your mind but your soul?

We love the idea of YOU and your light! Please keep shining brightly!

View this post on Instagram as a reel with music.

A post shared by Shelly L Francis (@shellylfrancis)

Sensible Shoes (aka the Magic Slippers) #ced2010

Today was Play Friday at the office, though nobody had put it on the calendar per se. It was Aries Birthday Cake Day — that was on the calendar. It was also Bring Your Baby Chihuahau To Work Day — again, not on the calendar.   

It Got Away

It got away!

Play Day meant Magnetic Emotikin was at work, I mean at play, in the hallways. He started the day trying to float red-heart balloons up the staircase. He was so sure the balloon was tightly tied to his wrist, but alas, the persistent helium plus magnetic pull of the ceiling stripped the balloon from his wrist almost instantly.   

Magnetic Emotikin hung around the stairwell most of the day, except when he fell and Trista brought him back to his regular office. Around lunchtime, he hung out in Flamingo Pose by the microwave. He didn’t really know it was Flamingo Pose as such, but it looked good, felt good, and stretched his hamstrings nicely (and reportedly made the Art Director laugh).   

Bring Your Baby Chihauhau To Work Day

Bring Your Baby Chihauhau To Work Day

When MagEmoti got home that night, he told Big Emotikin about his day, and Big Emotikin couldn’t help but wish he had magnetic feet, too. Butterfly wings are great, at least for pretending to fly and be magic, but magnetic hands and feet convey a certain credibility at photoshoots. And damn if those inlaid magnets don’t  just shout “Super Hero!”   

So EmotikinWorld Girl (aka, the Photographer) put on her CreativeEveryDay hat and decided to fashion some magic slippers with magnetic insoles for Big Emotikin. Those slippers really were magic, reminiscent of those of the Gold Shoe Easter Bunny.   

Magic Gold Shoes

Magic Gold Shoes

Magic Magnetic Gold Shoes

Magic Magnetic Gold Shoes

Shoes strapped on, magnets situated, magic headband and wings in place, Big Emotikin transformed into Shamanikin and commenced to climbing all over the house, wherever he could find the proper metal footing. The red antique toy car, the fireplace front, the lampbase, oh – and the stove and the stove vent. YAY!   

Shoe Testing
Shoe Testing

Leaping Off Tall Oven-Vents

Leaping Off Tall Oven-Vents

Oven Jumping

Oven Jumping

Scaling Walls With a Single Shoe

Scaling Walls With a Single Shoe

Consulting the Light

Consulting the Light

Shamanikin Sees the Truth

Shamanikin Sees the Truth

Shamanikin engaged his inner superheroability and magic sticky gold slippers to scale the brick wall, up, up, up to the magic crystal. There, after consulting the Light, Shamanikin learned the truth…  

… 

Stylish shoes matter.   

And they lived happily with sticky feet

And so they lived happily that night with sticky feet

(This post brought to you by ProMag magnets and Sulky Premium thread)  

Not really. 

PS Thanks to the Creative Every Day Challenge 2010 for inspiring me on a Friday.

The Snow Day-After

Yesterday’s storm, which only began about three in the afternoon, dumped almost 9 inches in our backyard before midnight. This morning’s picnic table begged for a measurement. Yesterday, knee deep. Today, armpit deep.

Armpit deep the morning after the spring storm

Armpit deep the morning after the spring storm

How deep was it really?

How deep was it really? Armpit deep...

Still, that’s pretty deep, even for these Emotikin. It was too cold to play this early in the morning, and the sun had stayed asleep behind the clouds. The Emotikin decided to crawl back in bed and watch Kung Fu episodes, Season 2, for the whole day.  Too bad Terry didn’t invite them to Starbucks with him. 

I got home from work about 5:30, still an hour before dark. I couldn’t wait to build a snowman, and the dogs couldn’t wait to find a tennis ball under the snow. While they kept looking, I rolled snow. The Emotikin gave me directions, being quite know-it-all about how best to pack and roll the crusty snow. While I rolled, packed, & molded snow into a play pal, the Emotikin refused to put on mittens, and Bella Luna went inside, pouting, like sisters sometimes do. 

Emotikin scaled ice chest to afix the nose.

Emotikin scaled the ice to afix a nose.

Big Emotikin kept Bella’s scarf and decorated our emerging friend with lava rock stones for eyes and a carrot (one of two that I bought at King Soopers on my way home from work just for this  purpose.) I heard myself singing in my head, “And a carrot nose, and two eyes made out of coal…”  

It wasn’t a perfectly pretty Frosty the Snowman; he lacked a scarf, a magic hat, a corncob pipe, and a better rounded belly…not to mention those great rubber boots for dancing around town. But since we’re expecting more sun tomorrow, Emotikin and I tacitly agreed that Frosty was good enough for a photoshoot–at least this time. Really, we just wanted to play.

Playing on the birdhouse
Playing on the birdhouse

Posing on a mountain of snow

Posing on a mountain of snow

The sun was dropping fast on the other side of the house. The backyard was becoming too cold. What else could we do? The front yard! Let’s go find Gnome! 

Tune in to the next posting for the Great Garden Gnome Rescue!  

Spring snow! Soggy dogs!

Knee deep!

Knee deep!

Sweater weather on the way to work, mitten weather on the way home.  I couldn’t wait to take the Emotikin out in the backyard to measure the snow. It was emoti-knee deep on the picnic table at six o’clock.  And that was less than 3 hours of snow.  

Catching snowflakes on one's tongue!

Catching snowflakes on one's tongue!

You're not the tennis ball

what ARE you?

Abby and Mia love the snow. I’m so glad I cleaned the kitchen floors on Sunday. Murphy’s Law of Mopping is not a myth. 

Mia, come here

Mia, come here

 

Wipe your feet please.

"Wipe your feet please." "But I want to go back outside."