Creativity- Create an Idea Notebook

It is good to have a notebook to write your to-do list, but it is also good to have a place to write your ideas when they come.

It never fails, my best ideas come while I am driving or trying to fall asleep! I’ll think of or hear a good quote on the radio and think how that relates to a topic (life is a blog post you know), and if I can’t get it written down, I’ll forget it! So keeping a notebook near at all times is good!

Children need Idea Notebooks too. It will help them to ‘remember’ things, but also help teach them to organize their thoughts and follow through with some of them.

Both of my daughters have a homemaking journal with lists, recipes and basic things they will need for their home one day. One of them is especially "in to" her journal...I’ll let you guess which one. ;o) She cuts out pictures from magazines of decorating ideas, garden ideas, wedding dresses, anything that she likes that she may want to use in her home one day.

In my homemaking journal it has our phone trees and addresses, the church directory,  most used recipes, food art ideas (that’s my favorite part), crochet patterns, quilt ideas, birthday list,  holiday ideas, craft ideas…any inspiration I may want to use in the future. I use page protectors and plastic dividers with pockets that I can add business cards or anything else that needs to be ’stuffed’ somewhere. 

Boys can keep Idea Notebooks of woodworking projects, house plans, experiments they want to do or have done, tool reference guides, auto repair guides, gardening information; any kind of basic information that would be a quick reference for them.

I have a separate notebook/binder that I keep pictures of most of my finished projects crochet/quilts/cakes/sewing, crafts, etc… I try to add small piece of the material too because pictures do not show the true colors. If it is a quilt I try to add a finished block. Again page protectors are a must. I try to journal who it went to and any history with it. I hope one day my grandchildren will enjoy seeing the things I made and you never know, it may inspire some creativity in them!

I cannot encourage parents enough to have their children  journal their activities or thoughts. I have not always been consistent with this, but the journals I do have span all of their school years  and they are PRICELESS!

I have found the cheapest place to buy page protectors is Sams.