Happy Thanksgiving!

Jovey said her new tradition for Thanksgiving is to make a "Thanksgiving picture" for everyone. 

She wants me to add a description for those who are obviously not artists.  ;)

This is a turkey house, surrounded by rockets in the starry sky.  An evil queen (on the left) and a good king (on the right) are sitting eating honey.  And there is a dead fish.

I think she's got a good grasp of this holiday.

Halloween spoilers

Jovey drew our family in our Halloween costumes for this year, and I had to share it.  Sorry to spoil the surprise.

It's a day

Jovey drew this really great picture of me the other day, so maybe Mother's Day isn't so bad after all.  ;)  I mean, I look ahhhhmazing.

Miley was asking me questions about college and all the classes I took.  After I had explained a lot of them she added, "well and then you had all those Mom classes too."  Uhh no.  Her mind was blown, her eyes were wide with shock.  So she asked, "How do you know how to be a mom then?"  I told her I was just winging it.  I may have destroyed her faith in me.  ;)

Dave and I have been watching The Goldbergs, we're behind, but catching fast.  Anyway, the dad in the show explained that being a Mom is a job, and all her customers are jerks, complete jerks.  Bahahaha.

I am grateful for all the mothers in my life, and I am very grateful to be a mom to my two cute stinkers.  Can I just get flowers every week instead though?

I appreciate you mothers, keep doing what you're doing. . . and I'll try to show how much I appreciate it more often.  One day is not enough.  ;)

a sad tale

Jovey found a rolly polly.  It was her best friend.  And then she dropped it.  And stepped on it.  It died.  She cried and cried.  She went into her room and said a prayer that Sprinckle Polly would be OK in heaven.  Then Jovey could smile again.  Miley drew her a picture to memorialize her best friend.  Jovey accidentally ripped it while admiring it.  She cried again.  Miley used some tape.  Jovey colored all over the picture and kept it forever. . . or until Mom found it on the floor.

The end.

Happy Love Day

I've been sick (cough cough)

Jovey woke me up one morning, weeks ago, by sneezing right in my face.  And then she did it again the next morning as well.  I really had no choice but to get sick.  Stupid head cold has drained my energy. . . and the blog of content.

Here's what I have to share from before I caught the plague (which turns out still happens and recently here in my state, freaky), and a little since I've been coming out of the fog. . . .

Dave was the victim of a series of 'pies' in the face.  He may never eat whipped cream again.  The smell would not wash off of him.  I may not be eating it either.  He was a good sport and didn't cry in front of anyone.  ;)  Miley especially liked this activity.  Too much.  I should have pied her, but then I'd just have to clean it up so nobody wins.

I finished sewing our Halloween costumes.  I am rather proud of them.  It was my first time sewing real clothes, so I started extra early to compensate for my inexperience.  Now I'm relieved to be finished and now have nothing to make for all of October.  That will be weird.

You can see the floor of my office again too.  Yay for that!

My little yin yang dogs. . . Nilla was given a mostly clean bill of health.  Her liver enzymes are improving, but it takes a long time for them to recover.  After two months of meds and maybe a month more she'll be back to normal levels.  She acts perfectly fine now though, so we are very happy about it.

These two cheeseballs are wearing me out.  Well, the 2 year old is giving me a good workout in patience.  Apparently she just realized she was 2 and had to put it to good use before she was no longer in the terrible category.   Any liquid in her reach has to be spilled, anything out of her reach has to be attempted by stacking/climbing/scaling, and she knows how to do/work everything so of course no longer needs our help or supervision.  Oy, please let 3 be calm.  ;)

Miley chose this outfit for her school pics.  I never buy animal prints, which is why she extra loves this skirt.  I'm hoping the smile in this pic is not what she used for her school pictures however.

We were not so good at keeping up the art lessons over the summer.  We only got through a few artists:  Van Gogh, O'Keefe, and Frida Kahlo, (I think that was the extent of it) before giving into lazy summer.  Recently we picked it back up with Monet.  Monet was my favorite artist for a long time.  Miley absolutely LOVES his stuff now.  She calls his art magical and they both called their paintings of Giverny, 'the magical bridge.'

I used tape as a mask on the paper to make a bridge and then they finger painted away over it all.  Later I took the tape off to reveal the bridge underneath.

And then they painted every surface they could get their hands on until the paint ran out.

Labor day found us without plans once again.  Miley is always disappointed when we don't plan.  ;)  Step in the Jackmans to save the day.  Swimming and food at our place worked out nicely.

Miley started tennis.  She kept yelling to me about how hot she was, while 'listening' to her teachers.  Yeah, it was hot, and I was in the shade.  My poor girl.  I was sure she would never want to do it again. . . but she surprised me and said it was fun and couldn't wait for more.  Maybe she experienced heat stroke or something.  I'm glad she liked it, cause I'd love for her to play, so we can have a fam tourney someday.

After cooking at tennis, we found that my car battery had exploded and would not be rejuvenated.  Fortunately tennis is on the other side of town from home.  Four hours of sitting outside in the heat almost did in my love of tennis, Honda, and also where we live.  We survived, but I'm sure that experience set back my healing by a few days at least, cause I still have a cough.  Dang it.

That's all the pics I have to account for the last three weeks.  I must have been really sick.

art education - van Gogh again

 Our last three van Gogh lessons include. . . the Bedroom.

We'll color this one with oil pastels, because they go on thicker than crayons and we talked about how van Gogh applies paint thickly.  We'll talk about perspective, simply.  It should be a good introduction whether she understands it all or not.

SUNFLOWERS will be our next project.  I love his paintings of sunflowers.  I did this paint-by-numbers years ago.  So fun and tiring.  We won't be doing that again.  Instead, we'll be buying some sunflowers to look at and sketch.  We'll be concentrating on simple shapes and talk about the role of sketching.  I haven't decided if we'll break out the paints for this one or continue coloring with pastels.  We'll see.

Finally, we'll try our hand at painting a poppy field.  Hoping our results look similar to the pic on the bottom.  With this project we'll be focusing on the thick daubs of paint and texture that van Gogh liked to use.  It should be fun.

Some of our project ideas came from http://www.thatartistwoman.org/, http://practicalpages.wordpress.com/, and http://artprojectsforkids.org/

Create some art with us, it'll be fun!

art education - van Gogh

Miley has been pleading for some art lessons.  I guess she's not getting enough at school.  Stupid common core, or budget cuts, or something. ;)  I love doing art projects so we decided we'd have a weekly art date, her and I.

For the next few weeks we'll be studying Vincent van Gogh.  Why van Gogh, well he's one of my very favorites.  Miley however, wants to know if there are any girl artists to study, so next time we'll be working with Georgia O'Keefe.

First van Gogh though.  We started talking a little about van Gogh, who he was, where he lived, etc. etc.  You'll have to look it up cause I'm not typing up that stuff for ya, sorry.  We looked at a lot of his work online.  You can find a large collection at the van Gogh museum, which allows a closer view of them so I could point out brushstrokes.  One of our favorites was this one of trees.

After we talked about van Gogh we did this project. . . which you can find by clicking on the picture to head over to the page.  We talked about how van Gogh did a lot of portraits, including self portraits and then we used markers and did the thick strokes he uses to finish his self portrait.  The link has the download all ready to go so I didn't have to behead him myself.

After that we did our own self portraits in short thick marker strokes.  Masterpieces.

  (she's a serious artist)

Project number 2 - The Starry Night

I printed out the rough line drawing of Starry Night and then we used oil pastels (crayons would work too) to color the light parts (yellow and white).  We looked at the original while working as well.  After coloring the light colors in van Gogh's short thick strokes, we took some black watercolor, and did a wash across the whole picture.  This made it more of a night time feel and it was fun to see where we colored the light colors pop out.  Then after it dried we finished adding details with the other colors.  Wallah, a starry night x2.

Miley wanted to teach her Dad some art, so he was invited to this lesson.  I have three more van Gogh projects in the works.  I'll post them another time though.

sisters

I found this in the massive pile of stuff Miley has created and couldn't part with. . .

Ahhhhh.  She's a sweetie and her sister would totally make one for Miley if she could figure out how to use a writing instrument.  Soon maybe.  ;)

In the meantime, here are some pics of these little beasties, I mean besties. . . .

I found them watching a show like this, totally content.

IMG 7527 from Mindy on Vimeo.

IMG 7478 from Mindy on Vimeo.

Miley-isms

So romantic. . . that is what Miley says when she has enjoyed a meal with you.  I have no idea where she learned it.  I asked her what it meant and she said, 'it means that we had so much fun eating together.'

Apology accepted. . . Miley kept saying this to me the other day and I kept telling her that I wasn't apologizing for anything.  Punk.  ;)  I think she had it confused with 'mission completed' because she kept saying it when she was done with a task or I asked her to do something.  She didn't mind saying something absurd, cause after I told her what it meant she still used it all day long incorrectly with a smile.

Gibberish. . . Miley thinks she can speak Spanish, in fact it's one of the things she's convinced she'll teach her baby sister one day.  Dave has taught her some, but she thinks she can ad lib the rest and it will work.  She says something nonsensical and when I say what, she'll turn to me and explain that it means 'I love you mom, will you get me some juice?' in Spanish.  I should have known.

You're a mom and. . . I told Miley she needed her hair trimmed after her bath.  She asked if she could 'have a moment to say goodbye to her long hair'.  Oh my word.  While I was cutting the tiny 1.5" off she said to me, 'You're a mom, a fixer, a doctor, and a hair stylist?'  That's right, just adding to my resume.

What is a Miley post without some artwork. . . this is titled Sun Shines a Rainbow on You!  And I hope it does too.

chalk dust

I may have mentioned before that I do not like chalk.  Yeah, still don't.  I see photos of people who have walls in their house painted as chalkboards and I shudder a little.  That is a lot of chalk dust to live with.

I can't help but buy art supplies when I see them, even if it is chalk.  Look at all those colors!  Kiddo's last set of chalk was left in a bucket in the rain, but we found a use for it too.

Painting trees. . .  What was needed:  Some soggy chalk (which held up pretty well actually), a paint brush, water, trees, a kid and her mom who like to paint.

Rub the wet chalk on the branch use a wet paintbrush to spread it even more and blend it into other colors.  It doesn't hurt the trees and it added some nice color to our yet-to-be-spring landscaping.

The chalk went on much brighter on this tree.  I don't know why, the bark didn't soak it up as much?  It last forever too.  We did this in March and we still have the colors today.

I painted the fence/wall outside for kid to use to her heart's content, but the patio and driveway still saw their share of color.  I may have contributed a little.

It's not a tumor it's a bun.  ;)

That was Miley's ferris wheel.  She is really looking forward to the fair already.

Here is the mostly finished wall project.  I'm thinking about adding a border or something to clean up the edges, but haven't decided yet.  It totally works though.

If you are wanting to make your own chalkboard paint all you need is to add dry un-sanded grout to your paint.  Buy it at a home improvement store.  You don't need much, like a couple Tablespoons to a cup of paint.