On the Up Side

I have a hypothesis that migraines actually make people more creative. There are a lot of theories out there about migraines and their causes, many of which talk about changes in the brain during a migraine (you can read more about migraines here). So, I feel like I can say that it is completely feasible that migraines increase creativity. When I get migraines, I am more apt to draw, paint, or any number of other artistic project. While a large reasoning behind this is that watching anything on a TV or computer screen, listening to music, exercising, and seeing excessive light all painfully intensify a migraine, I also believe that I am more creative when I have a migraine.

I will share my most recent example. Yesterday I had one of the most crippling migraines I have had in a long time. After work, I crashed for 2 hours, woke up for about 3-4 hours, then slept again for 10-11 hours. It was a bad one. Anyhow, during those 3-4 hours I was up, I was determined to solve a dilemma I had. The problem at hand was that I had several necklaces in a pile on my bathroom counter. The clutter was driving me mad and it was also frustrating untangling them if I wanted to wear one. The greater dilemma was having no money to change the present scenario. So, in the midst of the migraine, I decided to do something about it. I pulled out my craft box and found some paint, some small wood slats, and a little box of photo-hanging pieces. I had some larger sponge paintbrushes, but no small ones for detail, so I also made some homemade paintbrushes out of paper towels. Although I hope this is a temporary fix, I still wanted something that matched my bathroom. They probably would have turned out better if I actually had paintbrushes, but this is what resulted:

For those of you who haven't seen pics of my bathroom are probably wondering how it ties-in. I have a picture of my shower curtain below. I tried to copy the owl and trees from that:

While I'm talking about creative kicks, here's another project I did this week. This post seems to be turning into a demonstration of my neat freak/organization tendencies, so don't judge. :o) So, I have this thing with being organized for grocery shopping, and I've always wanted to do something like this. I'm the kind of person who eats the same thing over and over but can never remember what I eat or what I need to buy when I go grocery shopping. So, this is the solution to that problem:

I simply listed all of the foods I am most likely to need at the grocery store and have it hung up on the inside of one of my food cupboards, where I also keep my recipe books. This way I can consult the list as well as any special recipes I might be making before I go to the grocery store.

It's also nice since I am continuing to learn and understand how to have a varied diet while still following the gluten-free, dairy-free, fish-free, peanut butter-free, non-acidic, non-spicy, non-carbonated, non-caffeinated guidelines. Easy cheat sheet. :o)