So, yesterday marked the first day of being with my kiddos part time instead of them being in daycare full time and me working full time too. Monday was a bit of a struggle, today was a little better and i am hoping that tomorrow is even better.

At our house, we do something called - good day bad day during dinner. It's where we ask each other, even the kiddos, what was the good part of our day and what was our bad part of our day. We ask the kids what we should start off with first and usually their response is - bad day bad day!!

When we do this, even when I have had a bad moment in my day - I have to pause and really reflect and consider - was it really that bad? And usually, it isn't, so I end up being all meh, I didn't really have a bad day but I guess..insert the supposed bad day incident but in the whole grand scheme of things it's sort of lame. I guess, I should be real thankful...and I am. Because even if the guy in front of me cut me off today, or the person in the grocery line who pretended not to see me with my 3 items and 2 kids while they unload a cart full of crap - I am going to assume that they are just having a bad day, perhaps much worse than what I think my own worst day is and let it go because in the whole grand scheme of things, there was so much good in the day that the bad, was merely a blip on my radar.

These photos were actually taken by Charlie while I was on a bridal shoot in South San Francisco, a couple of weekends ago. From what Jax tells of the day, he had a taste of alligator soup. Fitting that, one of his favorite songs or rather rhymes to sing lately is called alligator pie..It sure gets stuck in your head! I had never heard of this rhyme before Jax but upon looking it up, it turns out it is a classic from the 70's!

This is how Jax likes to sing it,though:

Alligator Pie. Alligator Pie
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna - die (then he makes a kind of eh, stick your tongue to the side, play dead face)

Alligator Pie. Alligator Pie
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna - flyyyyyyyy (with arms wide out and pretending to fly)

Alligator Pie. Alligator Pie
If I don't get some, I think I'm gonna - say bye bye....(you get the idea..)

What about you guys? What kid songs or rhymes get stuck in your head from time to time?

What does it mean to be original? Well, if you ask me - it's kind of hard to be truly original - without taking any inspiration from any other source for inspiration or anything from someone, or somewhere else. I read something the other day that really struck me and stuck with me. It was about creativity and originality:

“If you can start to look at authenticity, rather than originality, you will become more creative.” - Scott Bourne 

Scott Bourne is a photographer, specializing in wildlife photography. I think, a blogger and definitely as an artist, there is always a struggle to remain original in our work, but in trying to always remain original - we also close ourselves off from new opportunities, new ideas, and new adventures. If you can somehow block out all the inspiration out there - then maybe you can remain original - but without any inspiration at all...what then?

  “Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.” - Chuck Close

That's a quote from one of my favorite living iconic artist, Chuck Close - you can read more about what he had to say on this here. Maybe it's that you open yourself up to inspiration by just doing and not waiting for it to happen, for inspiration to find you. Basically just go out and do - and don't worry about the rest of it. Like Scott Bourne says: 

  “To sum up- if you want to be more creative, start loving yourself enough to give yourself permission to fail. In fact better yet, don't even worry about wining or losing. Just DO...Don't focus on NEW- focus on authentic. Being original isn't being new, it's being you.”

So, I think I will do just that - watch out 2013 - I'm just going to be me, can't fail too much at that now, can I? 
But I'll be open to it ;)

What about you guys - any new years resolutions you'd like to share?