Caffeine for the Creative Mind

After reading this flickr post i was inspired to by the book Caffeine for the Creative Mind, it is filled with 250 exercises to wake up your brain. The creative exercises cover design, writing, photography, problem solving, idea kindling and play.
I am going to try and do one exercise each day and keep you updated regularly on how its going. We will see how that goes!
I decided to use the book that I made at the retreat for the exercises, this will keep them all in one place and its a good enough reason for me to keep it for myself?
I started off with the project in the flickr post, i went for a walk with my camera and took lots of photographs of patterns.
The exercise really got me looking at things in a different way, i was surprised at the amount of different patterns on manhole covers. I did get a few funny looks when I was photographing these, crouching down on the pavement next to the main road but I don't care!

One of the other exercises i tried was dressing you brain i don't have a piccy of that one but if you want to try it yourself the brain templates are here: http://www.wakeupmybrain.com/cftcm/exercises/MyBrain.pdf

While i was out i decided to do another exercise, take ten photographs of things that don't belong, it was supposed to be things around you but i think i will do that another day. I came across quite a few things that didn't belong! (and a few things when i got home when does a hula hoop ever belong on the back of the door, who has been feeding our cherry tree chocolate? and those mints aren't hot why are they arranged on that coaster?)


In this exercise i had to draw a squiggle/line with my "off" hand and then turn it into something sports related with the strong hand. I think it ended up tennis related because the tennis was on!

I still have today's to do so I'm off to make a list of thirty items you would find in a mad scientists lab!

A Grand Day Out

On Wednesday i had a simply super day out with a very good friend of mine, we try to get together whenever we can to catch up. Our get togethers always include food, be it lunch or dinner and we always manage to fit cake in there somewhere!
We went to mugdock park for a walk, in the mud! it was a really nice afternoon but it had been raining heavily during the night, whats a little mud between friends!
The park was lovely and so was the sky, there were some really interesting clouds in the sky, i dont look up nearly enough!
There were some people out doing some archery (that does not sound correct! performing archery?) lets go with having archery lessons. I would love to have a go at this it looked really fun, i bet you have to have pretty strong arms though. I took loads of phtographs of the archers, trees and water.
We had a couple of great burgers in the cafe and some caramel shortcake to keep us going on the walk back to the car.

After the park we went to the west end I should probably mention where we are as that could be the west end of anywhere! We are in Glasgow.
Hunger had us again and we stopped in for some chips and garlic bread, then off for a bit of a charity shop cruise, no excellent bargains but you can't be lucky every day can you?
Before going back to the car we went to an ice cream shop calles 3 steps 2 heaven for some amazing ice cream.
Let me talk you through their amazing 3 steps:
1. choose 2 flavours of ice cream (i chose strawberry and coconut with chocolate drops)
they pop them on a marble slab and start to mix them together
2. choose 2 toppings (i chose hazlenut crunch and white discos, one of the big white chocolate discs with the multi coloured sprinkles.)
they mix this into your ice cream, put it in a tub
3. then choose a sauce (i chose strawberry)
sauce over your ice cream and voila! a huge tub of your own creation.
The nice young man serving me was kind enough to let me photograph and video him make my ice cream.





This was my first visit and it wont be the last, it was amazing, the shop is lovely and the service was great so if you find yourself in Glasgow's west end they are in Cresswell lane just off Byres Road, 3 steps 2 Heaven.
its my boyfriends birthday this mont so i think i will be taking him there for a birthday treat, shhhh dont tell!