My favorite room

Welcome to our screened in porch, a room that is half way between indoors and outdoors. It was my favorite room in our new house from the first time we were ever here! In fact I had a picture of this room up as my computer "wallpaper" while we were still in Brooklyn getting ready to move...helping me to hold onto what we were moving to.
Now that we are really settling into the new house, this room has become the place where the kids like to hang out most often. It has also become the room where we bring nature in. Jasper's frog lives out here on the bookshelf in his aquarium, and really Froggy has looked so happy since we put him out here, its so different than living in an aquarium in a Brooklyn bedroom!
Also, since arriving here Jasper has discovered the many small lizards who crawl around our new yard and spends much time trying to trap them and make them his pets. We keep them in this tank, and then release them a few days later, after he has studied them thoroughly...

The window sills in this room have become a place where our circle rock collection is growing,

and for bits of things from the sea.

This afternoon it was transformed into the staging area for creating extravagant Father's Day cards to surprise Frank with tomorrow morning,

The kid's crafting table and art supplies found a place out here as I am still setting up my studio, and even though I had ideas about having their art space in my new studio, their table just might remain out on the screened in porch,

it really is a space that lends itself to creating as it floats in golden light on long hot afternoons.

After dinner

After dinner, and before bedtime, a special time has developed at our house. A time for goofing around, playing family games, getting out instruments...

A time for snake charmers,

and tired princesses,

to come together and put on a show,

for the best sort of audience, for a very amused and proud mama and papa! Watching my children's imaginative play is truly one of the great joys of my life.

A little silliness

Recently we've enjoyed getting back into doing our family mural projects, where we lay a big paper down on the floor and just go at it all together with pencils, markers and paints. Often now Jasper will be the director, telling us the story of the drawing while we are making it, and telling us who should draw what and where. We are all liking this structure, as with his direction the pieces become like a dialogue and a family story.

This is one of our favorite ways to play as a family, and these sessions can definitely get a little silly,

Here is a recent finished drawing, that the kids immediately wanted hung up on their bedroom wall. The story of this drawing became about our family (see there are the 4 of us) wandering on a path through the woods where we saw lots of animals and then finished our journey at our new house in Charleston....see it there at the end of the path? 

I love the poetry in that story, and how doing these family drawings really helps our family bond and talk about things that are going on in an indirect way, helping all of us to feel safe, secure and together.

Bead collection

During our big studio clean out I came across this bag of beads, a collection from ages back, I probably started it in high school! It spans many years and lots of travels from my younger days. With many of the beads I know the stories behind them, and each is so lovely, yet I had never found the perfect thing to do with them.

Immediately I knew that Carys would love my old bead collection. She just loves little things you see,

I showed it to her and her eyes lit up. One of her favorite things recently is to string beads onto elastic cord, and that's just want she wanted to do with these,

Creating the prettiest exotic necklace, with so many colors that it really goes with anything, which is good because it has been on her neck for days now! I even found her asleep with it on the other night.

The perfect accessory for an almost four year old lady!

Spring Weekend

At the end of last week we were blessed with a couple of warm days into which we packed outdoor creativity that we've been longing for. Out came the side walk chalk...

We began some spring gardening in our large whiskey-barrel containers at the front of our house, planting purple pansies and cleaning out all of the leaves, acorns and twigs that had collected over the winter.

Then the kids decided that they wanted to do some painting outside on our deck. I have been painting on wooden panels lately so they wanted to paint on wooden panels too, which is fun since it makes their creations a bit more substantial and I can hang their paintings up right away and it makes them feel so proud!

My boy knows just how to melt my heart...

Although the weather has turned colder again after that colorful glimpse of spring I feel like I know that spring is coming, it is close, and that is keeping my spirits up especially as now spring is officially here! 

Happy Spring to all!

Right now...

I am loving,

The thrill of opening our shutters to a light coating of snow yesterday morning!

Seriously, if it is going to be this cold I feel like we might as well have snow to make it beautiful, and I do think that the city is rarely as beautiful and quiet as after a snow fall.

I am loving my boy's newly toothless grin!

and also loving working on more felt projects, this past weekend I created another rainbow garland. First I wet felted a bunch of little white balls that I put bands of bright color around. Then I cut out flower shapes from felt that I had in my craft cabinet, in a rainbow of colors. I then laid them all out in a row, in the order that I wanted to string them...

and here is the finished garland, it is about 4 feet long, and I hung it in the arch way between our kitchen and living room, where Carys likes to touch it each time she walks by.

I am also loving working on a few top secret handmade Christmas gifts, that I'll share here when they are closer to being finished! Suddenly Christmas feels so soon!

More felting!

Here is a peak at a few of the other things that we made in our amazing felting class, even though the class finished early this week the felt fun has been continuing here, I think that the kids and I have found a new addiction.

We loved making these felt balls, that were so easy and simple both kids could make them with little to no help, it was all about rolling the wet felt in your hands, which was very satisfying. Then I finished them with the little bands of color.

Then we learned how to make felted pouches, which was probably my favorite project. I made this lotus pouch first...

and then I helped Jasper make this pouch, since he is six and turquoise is his favorite color he wanted six turquoise stripes, it all turned out great and he has been filling it with mysterious little things ever since! He is very proud of it.

Felting like crazy!

The Felt-a-Licious class started a few days ago and even with getting ready for my show, I am loving finding the time for this total immersion in the felting world. I didn't anticipate how much Jasper and Carys would also love felting with me but we have been having a ball. I wanted to show you a few of the things that we have made so far. First we made the wool felted petals of the flowers above, that we placed on top of each other and picked just the right buttons from our button collection to decorate each one.

Then I decided that one of the felted flowers from that project would be perfect to decorate the new winter hat that I just bought at H&M, so I sewed it on, and then realized that it looks so cute with the hat that I decorated with felt flowers for Carys last year. Now we can wear them together, I just love how they sort of match!

We still had some felted petals left over and the kids and I started making a mobile with them, which then evolved into this hanging rainbow garland..

In between our wool felted petals we strung some beads and felt cut-out shapes. We hung it up by our back door, and the kids love seeing the petals that they felted hanging there in our rainbow. I really love family art projects like this, and am looking forward to more felting to come!

A Catalog and an Interview

The Lovely Clusters fall catalog came out today, oh my goodness, it is full of loveliness! Such talented artists, such gorgeous details.
I'm so excited that my paintings are featured on both the Multicolored page and on the Purple page.

There is such a soft, feminine aesthetic to the catalog that I love, I'm so honored to be included!

I am also absolutely thrilled to share with you that I am featured over at the lovely Dana Barbieri's blog today as part of her Art Biz Mamas interview series in which she asks creative mamas to share their secrets for making their art, while also being responsible for a home and family.

This interview was so rewarding to do, as her questions led me down a mental path that I'm still working my way through in an introspective way. She really helped me to evaluate where I'm going with this online adventure, how being a mother has changed my work, and especially how far I've come, from being a new mama six years ago trying to make sense of my life with kids!
You can check out the interview here, and I'd love to hear what you think. Maybe we can start a dialogue about how others of you make your work while also managing your little ones and your home? Right now, I'm typing this as I am letting the stove heat up to make dinner....so there you go, it is all about doing things where they fit in for me! Enjoy!
xo

August break: sidewalk chalk

Fun for all ages, 

an indispensable tool in our list of summer entertainments, 

a great reason to sit on the front stoop for ages, 

a window into the world of our imaginations, 

the way that my boy taught himself to write his name and birth day this summer (all by himself!), perfect for getting groups of kids to focus and stay in one place, 

fun to make into "clay" when dipped in a bucket of water (not for those who fear messes), 

the thing that I suggest when all other things are "boring", 

one of my favorite simple pleasures right now.
 
Happy Sunday, and check out Frank's wonderful blog post about the paintings that he made during our time on the farm last week.