Hello, friends! I’m giving myself a mini-break from blogging for the rest of this week to work on my motherhood & creativity project. I’m aiming to have it ready by June, but I need to start writing it first! Today I am so excited to have my friend Tamara from Tamara (Like) Camera here to share a beautiful post that is appropriately about the very topic of the project on which I’m working. (There’s also a chance that as you’re reading this we’ll likely be hanging out in person!) If you don’t know Tamara, you need to go check out her blog right now. She is both an amazingly gifted writer and photographer and her blog is full of gorgeous photos of her family and thoughtful, poetic words. I am incredibly honored that she agreed to share her work with you today.
My mom doesn’t like coloring books. She thinks that they are only acceptable if you color outside the lines, on purpose, or even better – you draw the outlines of your own drawings – and then fill them with color.
Before I was born, my mom was an art teacher in the public schools. After she gave birth to my sister and then me, she had the foresight and inspiration to start an art school right out of her home. When we moved in with my dad and new siblings after she got re-married, my dad helped her create an even bigger art school in our new house. The business was and still is called Art Magic, and its existence is the only life I’ve ever known.
We had art birthday parties. We had handmade cards for every birthday, and handmade valentines every February. My mom made my signboard and decorations for my tropical-themed Bat Mitzvah party. She makes us clay baby gifts, as well as Christmas ornaments to hang on our tree every year. My mom does everything with creativity on the brain, and I mean everything. She is a very unique artist, and my walls have always been filled with her amazing shadow boxes, or dioramas. My sister inherited her drawing skills, and my grandfather was a very prolific artist.
With me, it didn’t come as easily or as obviously, until much later in life.
I have always been a writer. I’ve always been interested in photography. My mom encouraged both of these skills with giving me cameras to work with, and in showing me her own photography. She believed in my stories and encouraged me to write them down. I think I have been expressive since birth, but the environment I grew up in has certainly helped shape me into the artist I can finally admit I am – and have always been.
My parenting is different than my mother’s parenting, of course, but I love to watch the way the creativity is so instinctual, because I know no other way of parenting my children.
There’s the game in which I play movie scores on my Pandora stations, and my five-year-old daughter, Scarlet, guesses the composer or movie.
There’s the activity in which she starts a story or a picture, and then I add to it, and then she adds to that, and so on.
There are the times she wants to take pictures the way I do, and instead of just handing her my camera, I start to explain about light and exposure. I don’t talk a lot about composition, because it’s much more fun to see what she will do, like she did in this below photo.
My husband Cassidy was an art and design major, and creativity is pretty much in every part of him. It’s in the foods he makes, the recipe creations he invites our kids to help with, and the castles he constructs out of cardboard boxes. It’s in his homemade Halloween costumes.
Sometimes, I think of him as more creative than I him, but it is more that he is confident where I am not. Together, we are a creative life force and even when we separate our skills, the kids are still getting the whole story. They are still getting two sides of the coin.
Even when you think you can’t, you can. My mom always taught me that. It might just be that you’re not interested, and it’s time to try something else after giving it your best shot. You can always come back to it. These are the things I have learned and these are the things I teach. Even when I think I’m not doing it, I am. I am still learning creativity the way I was taught, and I’m still teaching it even when I think I’m not.
That is the gift we give our children, and the gift they take with them.
Tamara is a professional photographer at http://tamaracamera.com/, a mama of two, a writer/blogger at http://tamaracamerablog.com
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I love that intro so much! Thanks for having me here. And thanks for hanging out in real life too! I’ll try to make sure no one eats your cookies in the car!! (I’m looking at you, Des)
Well and I loved your post. It sounds like you and your family have so much fun together! I hope Sam and I are able to bring that magic alive for Eve. And thanks again for the cookies, I had to take a break from them over the weekend 😉
I am not very creative at all (or so I feel). I’ve met Tamara’s mom, and she’s is living art!
I think we all have a creative side, and one of the ways you express yours is through writing. I got to meet Tamara’s mom on Wednesday and I could definitely see that about her!
TWO OF MY FAVORITE BLOGGERS IN ONE PLACE!?! Love it 🙂
I had no idea Tamara’s mom owned an art school, that is the coolest! I play the same game with my kiddos guess the movie from the song. 🙂
I hope the words are pouring from your fingertips! I CANNOT wait to read your book, Bev!!!
XOXO
I know, I just found that out about her mom as well. So cool!
Got lots written last week. Still more to go, but making great progress 🙂 I think I am going to have to push back my launch date, though. Perhaps September?
So, I read the first two sentences of the intro, quickly then skipped to the “main story.” I saw the photo and thought, “Wow. If that’s Bev as a child she looks an awful lot like Tamara. Or maybe she’s the little one…” then I went back and read the whole intro. Makes a whole lot of sense now. And, it’s a little scary/strange/funny that I can recognize Tamara as a child. Note to self: write more, read less? Or just write more? I don’t know exactly but I relate a lot to the expression of creativity and sharing it with your children. I see different parts of things I love in each of them and I feel I owe it to them to help them build their confidence and knowledge. Looking forward to your project in June, Bev. Glad to see both of you here today!
Haha, I know the feeling! (Although Tamara and I as babies actually do look kinda similar.) I do agree that as parents it is our job to build their confidence and knowledge and enabling them to express their creativity in whatever way makes sense for them.
OH, I did not know that about your husband, Janine! That’s really cool.