The Art Of Not Being Penny-less

HAVE YOU gotten out of bed with a big yawn and a stretch and a niggling feeling there is something important you forgot that needed your attention yesterday? Oh, yes … that gift for someone special that you still did not get. It is a dilemma we all have faced, including Penelope who is only six years old and penniless.

That is the start of the story accompanying another set of watercolour pencil drawings my daughter gave me several years ago for Mother's Day, complete with original font for the prose. Penelope's Gift of Time: Because No One Can Fill Your Shoes is from a child's simple perspective while the motivation behind the theme is mine.

During my walks, I often see the very elderly or ill accompanied by uninterested strangers. Tiny tots are ignored by nannies and parents who are lost in their cellphone screens. The Penelope story is about discovering nature's true gifts and being fully engaged with someone near who deserves attention.

This is the second in what I expect to be a growing series featuring the Penelope Puddle character and her small sidekick umbrella that takes on a best-pal role. In fact, I have big plans to evolve the umbrella's "personality" in future. I just need a few more decades of time in which to do all that I want to do with the concept and art.

Although I no longer get them as gifts, I have a wealth of Penelope drawings tucked away to play with whenever I find the time. An upcoming visit with my daughter for Mother's Day will give me a chance to thank her again for providing me with an always welcoming friend that absorbs my imagination and never accusingly asks, "Where have you been? What took you so long?"

Postscript May 11, 2015

A soft light glowed through the glass at a restaurant we randomly walked into on Sunday for a Mother's Day brunch. When we were seated, I noticed a sign on the wall over my daughter's head that read, "I don't eat my friends."

The Heirloom Vegetarian served up a plate of food that turned out to be one of the tastiest meals I have eaten anywhere. The vinaigrette on the super fresh salad was laced with the perfect amount of tang and the creamy sauce, spiced with a bit of seaweed powder, melted beautifully over the mouth-watering nutty meat substitute. The exceptional flavours sweetened our conversation.

As the reflection on the window from the outside shows, the day was not cloudless. So I was amazed that the sky still cast a wonderful glow.

Visit Postcards From Penelope Puddle to view more BC scenes.

To see more sights from around the globe visit OUR WORLD at the sidebar.

Copyright by Penelope Puddlisms

Toy Story 3 Takes Lid Off Make Believe

UNDER THE PILLOW, in a cupboard, or stuck on a treetop trying to escape … where has my lost imagination gone? Now that I’m grown it tends to disappear on a regular basis. Sometimes I find it in strange places. At other times, it’s a movie like Toy Story 3 that brings back the ability to pretend.

Imagining when I was a child was natural and key to my existence. The forest fairies I would visit and the house builder I pretended to be with my alphabet blocks enriched my world. Boxes were trains and ribbons were roads I traveled on with my tiny toy cars and dress up dolls.

Creativity can get snuffed out early when school begins and we learn to colour inside the lines. By the time college rolls around, the stumbling blocks of reality and adult pursuits put a lid on the toy box as well as the imagination. Boundaries are set and mental dives into impossible realms rarely occur.

That’s why adults and kids alike will relate on so many different levels to the characters in Toy Story 3 and its brilliantly conveyed plot about a boy whose toys must be given away before he leaves home for college.

It took a thriving imagination to write such works as Toy Story, Alice In Wonderland and Harry Potter. It also took creative thinking to discover the world wasn’t flat, develop a safety pin, make the first fire and turn the first wheel. There is incredible value in quantum leaps of the mind. This is what cracks boundary walls, allowing the light of new ideas to seep through.

After seeing Toy Story 3, the stuffed toys and inanimate objects (pictured above) I have hung onto for years took on new meaning. It is not that I think they are secretly alive. But I did give them a much needed dusting and wished them a very good night before drifting off to sleep.

You can read the children's story I wrote several years ago about inanimate objects coming to life called Couch & Company HERE.

Copyright by Penelope Puddlisms