Who's the Black Sheep? You are!

Have you ever thought about who in your family is the black sheep?  The person that isn’t quite like the rest of the family and seems to march to a different beat.  The person that was repeatedly told throughout their childhood that they were adopted.  Maybe the person who claims the title of Black Sheep in your family is extremely obvious or maybe there isn't one.  Oh no, wait.  Sorry, that means the black sheep is you.

Normally when you think of the family’s black sheep you think of the movie starring the late Chris Farely.  The trouble-maker, the screw ball, the fuck up, but some black sheep don't fit the mold (go figure!).  I am hands down, absolutely my family’s black sheep but in a much different way than you’d think.  I’m the boring one. 

My mother paints, molds, sculpts, whittles, photographs and does crazy pieces of art like this.

My dad was a photographer, graphic artist, a well-known mural painter who created stuff like this.

My sister has endless talents, one of which includes musical improv, which is where you make up ENTIRE songs on the spot to create short and hilarious musicals.  Enough said.  And me?  What are my talents?  I’m really good at creating excel spreadsheets, remembering numbers, making lists and organizing.  What a freak!

There was always an ongoing joke in my family surrounding my lack of a sense of humor.  I desperately wanted to be funny like my dad and my sister but my joke delivery went something like this. "Orange (ha ha ha) you glad (haaaaa ha ha) I didn't (he he he) say banana! (Long pause) Get it? Orange sounds like Aren't?  Get it?  I said banana a lot and then I said orange."  And then everyone would look at me and say, "Nice try Kelsey."  I spent most of my childhood trying to keep up and pretend that I was as creative as everyone else but it just didn't come naturally to me the way it did for the rest of my family.

Even at a young age it was obvious that I wasn't following the family norm. When my sister was 14 she would babysit to earn money.  When I was 14 I forced my dad to help me make business cards and found a job at a family friend's outdoor clothing factory.  I wanted to sit at a small table for eight hours a day (listening to Rush Limbaugh over the overhead radio!!) and seal ice packs into plastic packaging sleeves.  During my summer!  For fun!  I'm sure at the time I knew it wasn't a typical way for a kid to spend their summer but it wasn't until a couple years ago, at a small family gathering, that I realized my true family colors.

I was standing around with my sister, mom and cousins.  It was a little after Christmas and everyone was drinking and dancing around, having a good time.  I don't remember exactly what I said that was so nerdy but my older cousin stopped, looked at me with a perplexed look on his face and said something like, "You're different, aren't you?"  I'll blame those loose lips on the festive drinking but it got me thinking.  How did I end up so different?  Why did the wacky family gene seem to skip right over me?  Would life be better or easier if I had the same sense of whimsy and creative abandon?  Maybe.  Probably not.

Being even little different from everyone around you can make you start to second guess those adoption comments but I've learned that I am a very important part of the family dynamic.  My family will always bring the jokes, the entertainment and the fun and I'll make sure no one gets arrested.  They will create amazing pieces of art and I'll make sure they are organized properly.

All (potentially lame) jokes aside, it took a long time for me to realize where I fit into my crazy clan, but as I'm sure some of you can relate, I know I have a place.  Someone to balance out all the off-the-wall creativity.  And, I'm by no means saying that I'm not creative.  I'm just creative in my own, organizing, left-brained, black-sheep kind of way.  I like to create through structure and design.  Give me a room cluttered with paperwork and books and toys.  Give me a closet that is stuffed to the brim with clothes and shoes.  Give me a bathroom that looks like it was hit by a make-up tornado.  That is when this black sheep will create her masterpiece.

How to Organize...Children's Art Projects

With each major life event, you tend to find yourself with more and more things to store.  Moving in with someone, owning your first house, all the gifts from your wedding, when a parent passes away, owning a pet and especially children.  Like gift wrapping, kid's toys would be so much easier to deal with if they were all books.  Books are easy to organize.  But I swear each one of my kids' toys is more awkward, large and pointy than the previous.

I had no idea what I was in for when my daughter started bringing home art projects from daycare.  When she was little, the teachers would hold her hands or feet and make a lot of projects that were mostly the teacher's handiwork.  And still, we cherished these projects.  We framed them, hung them on the fridge and even shipped them off to various family members as keepsakes.  Now we get 1-2 projects a day.  I don't know how to cherish that many projects except to use them as wallpaper. (Note to self, get a patent on art project wallpaper).  Even with my pack rat tendencies, I know that we need to let some of the projects go in order to organize everything, but how?

This project's inspiration came from work.  I work in advertising and I keep binders that recap all the different advertising creative that was executed throughout the year.  I'm only using a simple binder with sheet protectors but it creates a nice clean look that won't get easily damaged over the coming years.  When I realized that most of the art projects consist of 8.5" x 11 paper, it made perfect sense to use this same organization method for our leaning tower of art projects.  Here are a couple tips for organizing and storing your children's artwork:

• Each child and each year of daycare/school gets a separate binder.  It is fun to be able to see how the artwork progresses each year. 
• The size of the binder depends on how much artwork is coming in and how much you want to keep but I use 2" binders.
• Sheet protectors are not an absolute must but they keep the projects from getting destroyed when you flip through the book.  You can get 100 for under $10 on Amazon.
• If the project doesn't fit, try trimming or folding the edges
• If/when your child is old enough, let them help you decide which projects to keep and which to toss.  It helped me feel better knowing my daughter picked her favorites.
• We have 8 x 10" pictures of our daughters from school hanging in the house but when we switch out the new pictures each year, I place the old 8 x 10" pictures in the front of that year's binder as a cover image.  It is nice to have a visual of how old each kid was when they did the art projects. 
• Pull out any holiday themed projects to use for decorations during the holiday.  Each holiday gets grouped together and put in a labeled folder in our filing cabinets for easy access.
• If you are looking for creative ways to showcase your children's artwork, check out this article on artfulparent.com. 

Creativity runs is in my blood.  My mom and dad both were amazing photographers and painters.  My sister is an incredible actor, comedian and singer.  And I'm fantastic at color coordinating squares on graph paper.  Since the arts are so important to our family I don't mind that we will eventually have enough art project binders to fill a bookcase.  I'm sure at some point we can scale down even more but for now, one binder per year works for our crafty chaos.