Join the "Embrace Your Art Challenge" with Me

Has January been a meh month for you? Are you ready to scrap your resolutions and throw out the fancy inspirational words and just get to work? Want to be more creative, but feel like there are a million reasons why now is not the time?

Watch this:

Then, join this: The 28-Day Embrace Your Art Challenge  (via Ria Sharon/Skillshare)

I'll be signing up as a way to keep myself committed and accountability to my goal of staying creative as a mom.

A Life of Learning: Brush Lettering

For an early birthday gift, my husband offered to pay for a year of Skillshare Premium, because he's wonderful like that. Seriously, nothing says "I love you" to a life enthusiast like the gift of free classes. I'd taken a few of the classes included in the free membership before, but the premium membership gives you unlimited access to all the premium classes as well. I was clicking "Enroll" for everything from "Food Photography: Capturing a Moment Worth Eating" to Seth Godin's "Modern Marketing Workshop". (Now if only I could pay for a year of free time to actually take the classes...Oooh, just saw a new knife skills class that might be fun. *click*)

One of the classes I was excited to take was Brush Lettering Made Simple, taught by Andrea Campos, an art director, hand letterer, and self-confessed type junkie. After a few attempts at freehand brush lettering following tutorials I found online, I realized I had no natural talent for it. I needed a structured class, with a teacher and assignments (yup, nerd through and through). So, pen in hand and head hung humbly, I was ready to learn.

Why I'm Blogging: A New Mission Statement

If you give a mom a blog, she will overthink it (or maybe that's just me). But the more I blog, the more I'm learning about what I want this space to become.

The truth is, I haven't told anyone about this blog. The problem with me and any project that I start is that after I take the first step, the step that's way up there beyond my reach suddenly seems so appealing. Give me a potted succulent and I will start Googling propagation. Give me an oven and I'll want to make a layer cake. 

It's the reason it took me so long to get this blog started in the first place. After I quit blogging after college (on Blogger, when it was still Blogger—I even had the t-shirt),  I tried to start a new blog at least six times, always stopping after the first entry, always stuck in draft mode. On my computer, I've started so many blog folders that the one I'm working with right now is called "Blog Again—Really." Whatever I did just never seemed good enough. Nothing I did was ever at par with all the shiny, pretty blogs out there. Of course, I knew it had taken them years of practice and polishing to get that way, but try telling that to this perfectionist.

And if that's how much I second-guess my blog and myself as a blogger , you can probably guess how harshly I judge myself as a mom.

There are a lot of amazing moms in the blogosphere who can do it all: teach homeschool while running their own business or creative endeavor while wearing the trendiest, figure-flattering clothes while staying slim even though they cook the most delicious dishes, all while remaining charmingly humble and relatable. How I wish that were me, but I'm finally (almost) making my peace with the fact that that's not who I am.

For one thing, I can't cook. I can't tell you how to get fit after baby or how to look stylish in a nursing top. I don't know how to choose the right lipstick for you skin tone. And I can't even fake wanting to learn.

The thing is, I shouldn't have to. 

It's time to let go. It's exhausting just thinking about trying to keep up with the moms with the budget, the body, the blog experience, and the business savvy needed to be that mom. More power to them; I'll enjoy watching their lives blossom and their children grow from the comfort of my unmade bed (and the discomfort of the monoblock chair I crop out of every home office photo). As for my blog, my life, I can only bring to the table what I have:

Words. Ideas. A love for learning. The courage to make mistakes and admit them. And the two cutest multicultural kids east of Manila. 

So here's what you'll be seeing more of moving forward:

• Playtime and playschool ideas (and war stories) 
• Products, places, books, and other things we love 
• Creativity prompts for the busy and sleep-deprived 
• Nap time projects and printables
• Words to live by
• Shared knowledge (I will always, always be learning something new!)
• Stories from my life as a mom of a toddler/preschooler and an infant

The craft projects and artwork won't always be pretty  The reflections won't always be positive or have a happy ending. The mom you see won't always have her hair brushed or her act together. I think I'll be okay with that. I hope you will be, too. 

Maybe you're a mom like me: a reforming perfectionist trying to embrace and engage with the messiness of life. If you are, say hi, stick around, and grow with me! It's going to be an interesting journey!

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On Being an Artful Parent

By Ella and Mommy

On my shelf is a wonderful book called The Artful Parent, which teaches parents how to bring out their children's creativity. (A book that I need to reread ASAP, as our morning art sessions haven't been ending in the best way.) In the morning, before her after-lunch bath time, Ella plays with her art materials. It's occurred to me that the artful parent should probably be creating her own art, too. It's only fair, right? Why should children have all the fun?

Hello and Welcome

Before you meet me, you will probably meet Ella. She's the one running five feet ahead—more, if she's barefoot and I have heels on—the one who never looks where she's going yet never seems to bump into things, or at least nothing she can't climb over and conquer. Always curious, always experimenting, always looking under, inside and (her latest favorite) through things. Constantly in motion, the blur in most of her photos, she's just learned what it means to live out loud, loudly.

If ever there were a life enthusiast, it's her, not me. I, her mother, simply tag along (at a respectful distance when I can help it), experiencing life more fully because she first poked it or picked it up. It's because of her that I finally decided to write a blog.

Before I was her mom, I was the editor in chief of a lifestyle magazine for tween girls, which in between Bieber news and 1D swooning aimed to empower young girls to be their best selves, embrace their individuality and explore their worlds confidently. I'd like to think of those seven and a half years as boot camp. Within a few months of having Ella, I'd packed away my comfy, carefully decorated boss-lady cubicle (with a view!), unsure of what my life would be like after saying goodbye to the life I'd known for so long, being who I thought I would always be, letting go of the goals I'd always had.

That new life, it turns out, is all sorts of wonderful.

Because I'm not so sure of myself anymore, I can do things I don't really know how to do, like gardening, making things, decorating, cooking, baking—oh, and parenting. Life is more fun when you're able to make a mess of things on a regular basis.

This realization didn't happen at once, mind you. I'm still learning how to be an imperfectionist. I was an editor for so long that sometimes all I can see around me are the mistakes. Sometimes, it takes all my inner strength to resist focusing on the flaws, in my life, in my work, in myself, but if I can start embracing this beautiful mess of a life I've been given, my hope is that I'll get better at embracing the messiness of being a mom to my beautiful daughter.

Because she's always running ahead of me, barefoot when I just bought her new shoes, never looking where she's going and never going where she's supposed to, the blur in my carefully composed photos, the curious finger in the middle of my layer cake. I'm grateful for every day that I get to learn how to love her better and love all the things I'm learning because of her.

Once upon a time, my motto was "live, love, laugh" (because it was everyone's motto) but now it's this:

"I believe in the transformative power of God, love, words, travel, music, and coffee."

That pretty much sums up all you need to know about me. At any given time, I will have at least two of the above fueling my life. Preferably all. At the same time.

Anything else you want to know about me? You can email me at shiloah.ma[at]me.com.