When They Do Art

Occasionally I throw in some art into our homeschooling curriculum. Sometimes it's to teach a specific skill and sometimes it's just something for fun. This project fell into the "for fun" category, while at the same time tying into Charlotte's study of the seasons.

I got the idea out of the Mailbox Craft book here:



I chose to have Charlotte do the winter one since, well, it's winter. Eric tagged along on this project. It was basically a simple project. I cut small strips of masking tape which the kids taped onto white watercolor paper into the shape of the tree of their choice. Afterwards, they used "cool" water colors for a wintery feel. When the paint is dry, remove the masking tape, and you have left a white tree.

I think the kids liked it. Here's Charlotte's tree. She used several shades of blue and even a bit of grey and purple in there. Not bad for a 6 year old:



And here's Eric's tree.


Now I know art is supposed to be about the process, not the end product, but it's moments like this that have me wondering what words Picasso's Mother had for him in his early years. Do I have a surrealist artist on my hands? Ya never know.....

It Lives

As we pulled out the boxes of Christmas ornaments, Charlotte's eye fell on one in particular. She pulled it from it's box and sure enough, it still lives. Un-Be-Leivable.

If you want to know what I'm talking about, you'll have to bone up on your reading.

Where's The Tree?

Last year we had some Christmas tree woes. You can read about that here and here.

At the end of last year, Mike snipped off all the prelit lights and we threw them in the trash figuring we could salvage the tree and throw on some new lights. We happened to score 5 strands of those large ceramic bulb lights for $1.74 a box, and I figured we could use those. I think they look pretty cool, and since I was getting outvoted on the white lights, I could deal with those ceramic lights in color.

Fast forward to this year. I'm a few minutes into stringing those ceramic bulbs onto our tree and I'm beginning to worry about how hot they're getting. One quick look at the box crushed my plans since these lights can't be used on artificial trees. Who knew? OK, guess we'll put them on the tree outside. So on November 30th we went to the store to find those mini lights in color. We went to Menards, Walmart, and Target. None of them had the basic Christmas lights we were looking for. Seriously? On November 30th? We dragged our sad behinds home and then I remembered we had a couple strands of mini color lights that I'd used on the outside tree last year. So I started stringing those on, figuring we'd eventually find some Christmas lights for the rest of the tree and could finish the job of putting our tree up.

Sometimes I Can't Help Myself

Last week I took the kids to the park after lunch. This is a cool park with a playground, walking paths, a pond and bridges, so we always enjoy going there. It was a fairly brisk day with the wind, and I was hunkered down on the park bench trying to keep warm while watching the kids play some imaginary game that burned off some energy.

I happened to look up over to my left and saw this magnificent tree without it's leaves. The sky was a bit overcast, and the sun was trying to shine through. I tried returning my gaze to the kids having fun, but I had already formed the photo of the tree in my mind, so I had to pull the camera out of the bag (which was sitting next to me, of course). Miraculous though it be, I do occasionally take photos of a subject other than my children. :-). Not to worry, we went on a little hike after they got tired of playing, so I got photos of them, one of which may become our Christmas card photo. ;-D


Here's shot #1 straight out of the camera. Not bad, but not spectacular.


Here's the same photo after I enhanced it in Photoshop. Definitely has that sunset feel to it, no?



Never content to leave my camera settings alone, I opted to switch the white balance to fluorescent because I learned a few years ago (from playing around with it) that it cools the colors for a wintery feel. Here's the photo straight out of the camera. Again, not bad, but not spectacular:



And here's the same photo after it encountered Photoshop. It's gone from a daytime to nighttime photo (I really like this one the best too).



I'm glad that sometimes I can't stop myself from taking photos. Sometimes it's worth it to drag the camera around with me everywhere we go.

My Cat On Drugs

I don't know what it is about cat nip that drives cats crazy. My cats are nutso when I rub it on one of their toys. I couldn't find one the other night, so I just dumped some dried cat nip into a little plastic basket of the kids' and Milo was all over that. Mike and I were just cracking up as he tried so hard to get every last little crumb. The container's size would not deter him.

A Rare Occasion

It's a rare occasion that I catch a genuine smile from Eric when he's in front of the camera. I had rather hoped his fake-pained smile would pass quickly, but it's been hanging on for a couple years now. This week we've been getting some really nice autumn weather, the leaves are plentiful, so the kids were outside playing in a huge pile of them. There's no way I could resist a photo op like that, so I joined the kids to watch them in their fun and capture it for their scrap albums (if I ever get around to printing out photos from the past 18 mos.)

I tried the photo below in color and black and white. Both look good, but I'm a fan of black and white photos. For some reason it looks a little darker on my blog than it did while editing it, but that still doesn't hide the fabulous expression I caught on my 'lil man's face!