Chalk Art and Big Dreams

I had a few big goals lined up for 2011. The first one was to participate in the Sketchbook Project. It was a lofty goal to do something completely different from my norm. However, it was too far from my norm and I stood like a deer in headlights at the pristine, little book. Alas, it still sits on my shelf, untouched, except for the place I entered my name, and mocks me every day that it did not get to go on the grand tour with all the other lovingly embellished books. Perhaps in time I'll find the courage and inspiration to make it up to the little book.

Goal number two was to get into a craft show. I DID it! I'll be exhibiting this fall at the Horseshoe Craft & Flea Market. I am super excited! I'll be making lots of Halloween decorations over the next several months to get ready. There is one more show this summer as well, if you get a chance to check it out, do!

The third goal was to participate the Denver Chalk Art Festival. Two outta three ain't bad, right? =) I had the pleasure of working on a collage of The Fifth Element with one of my very best friends, Steve Oatney (and his beautiful girlfriend Defne). We started talking about how we would like to participate as we were walking around the festival last year. So I put that on the goals list for this year and I am so glad I did. It was so much fun working in an actual art medium, rather than a computer, on my favorite film with my best friend.

The square was one of the smallest, a 6x6'. We had a great location in the shade on Larimer, and even though the pavement we had to work on was less that stellar, it worked out just fine! We didn't win any awards, but it got me all pumped up to do more drawing and illustration. Here are some pics of the finished piece. Enjoy.

Wicked Witch Hat Centerpiece

While searching the interwebs one day, for who knows what, I stumbled upon an image of an adorable witches hat with a floral arrangement on top. I've looked and I haven't been able to find it again. Needless to stay it was stuck in my mind and I wanted to make one for myself. Keep in mind, floral arranging is NOT my strong suit. Funny that when I was a little girl I thought for a while that I might become a florist. But I digress.

I figured the basics for putting the hat together would be pretty simple... a hat, some flowers and other embellishments. I picked up a hat at the thrift store for $1 that someone loved intensely for one halloween and then tossed like a Christmas tree. So special. Then BAM, it's on the thrift store shelf... (ahem, yes, I am altering and mixing in irrelevant movie quotes. back to the scheduled blog post).

To make the floral arrangement :
(1) take a piece of floral foam and cut it into a 5"x4"x1.5" block and then round the top corners to end up with a piece that looks like a half circle.

(2)Then use about a 24" length of black tulle and wrap around the block, covering twice and tie in a knot at the top. This will be used to float throughout the flowers and also functions to thread the decorative ribbon through that goes around the hat which secures the flowers to the hat.

(3) Thread 2.5 - 4" wide ribbon (depending on your preference) through the tulle leaving a short end sticking out of one side (keep it long enough it can be used as part of the decoration), loop around hat and run ribbon through opposite side leaving a small piece sticking out of that side. Tie knot in ribbon under tulle.

(4) Stuff hat with newspaper or bags to keep from collapsing.

(5) Use red, orange and yellow flowers (or your choice) along with branches and other wispy accessories and build your arrangement in the foam. Keep in mind the depth of the hat rim and make sure the flowers you use will not obscure the rim entirely (unlike mine which almost covers the whole thing). Also angle some of the flowers back along the sides to conform to the hat shape help conceal the foam block. Start with the largest flowers and build filling in with the smallest.

(6) Stand back and admire your lovely handiwork. Then find a table or special place to display your beautiful centerpiece. Add mini pumpkins, gourds, skulls, etc to decorate as you see fit.

I've scored a few more hats on my recent trips to the thrift store. Not sure how many I need around my house so you may see some end up in my etsy store (next year)! Have a beautiful Halloween!

Reniassance Birthday Party

I am not really sure who came up with the idea for Z to have a Renaissance/Dragon birthday party. But I've gotta tell ya, it was a ton of fun to put together! It started out more on the "How to Train Your Dragon" theme, but morphed into Knights and Princesses and general medieval-ness with a few Dragons thrown in for good measure. When I asked Z what he wanted to do for his birthday many, many months ahead of time he asked for a pinata. I thought yeah, ok, we'll see. Then when the theme narrowed down and the dragon aspect had been tossed around I actually found a dragon pinata! I knew the theme could be locked in and we were good to go!

I started working on his costume in January thinking that 5 months would be plenty of time to get it done. Alas, as I write this it's still not finished. Not to worry, I have a few weeks before the start of the Colorado Renaissance Festival. I plan to have it complete for our yearly visit there. I did, however, make lots of other things for the party like the cake, games and decorations.

With great info from Nancy at dabbled.org, Peggy Weaver's fondant recipe and a simple tutorial from FamilyFun.com I had the courage to make the cake myself (and with lots of help and support from my MIL!!! - thank you!). It was so much fun to work on but I have 100X more respect for cake artists. An entire day of work went into that little guy which was promptly gobbled up by a pack of 6 year olds in less than 2 minutes!

One of the first things I put togther were the Jousting Stick Ponies and Pool Noodle Lances. While searching Family Fun.com for ideas for the cake I found the great section they have on Medieval Party Ideas. One of the games they suggest is an obstacle course type game which requires the horses and lances. I found the stick ponies and the pool noodles at the Dollar Store! Score! To make them more like tournament horses I dressed them with felt "armor" head dresses and embellished with little rhinestones. I also cut off the leads they had on, which looked more western, and replaced with coordinating colors of ribbon. The pool noodles were decorated with crepe streamers (it's what I had on hand, although in hind sight I wish I had used the colored duct tape like FF.com recommends. The streamers fell off after just a little bit of rough play).

Next we wanted to have games that were somewhat Renaissance authentic. I found several sights with references to games children would have played in medieval times. The games are fairly simple and use simple materials as well so they are super easy to make yourself.

The first is a game called Queek. It's played on a checkered surface like chess. The game pieces are stones which are thrown onto the checkered playing area. The Player calls out whether the stone will land on a light or dark square. If it lands on the correct square the player gets a point. The game field is made from a large scrap piece of mat-board. Eventually I'd like to make a larger quilt version. The game pieces are made from small flat-ish stones. There were no references to how many people could play the game so I made six sets of four stones and painted them different colors so it would be easy to tell whose were whose. Once again, Z and I went on a hunt to find as many similarly shaped and sized stones as we could and he had a blast painting them all.

Next is a simple game of Ring Toss. It's played just like Horse Shoes. You toss your rings at a stake and ones that land around the stake earn 3 points, touching = 2 points and the ring closest to the stake gets one point. You can play with single players or two teams of two. I made the rings from 3/8" rope from the hardware store. I cut them in lengths of about 30" and twisted them over on themselves. I used hot glue to bind the ends and wrapped tape to secure. Then to make it easy to distinguish each teams rings I cut scrap pieces of fabric (that I used to make the decorative banners with ) and tied over the taped areas. Voila, instant function and flair! The stakes are made with discarded tree branches. One end was whittled into a point so it could easily be driven into the ground. Primitive game play in the most fun way!

Last but not least, the decorations. Unfortunately I didn't get very good pictures of all the decorations. I made large Royal Banners out of thrifted curtains I cut up, altered and added the Fleur de Lis.

The Castle wall was used as part of the "Storming the Castle" section of the obstacle course as well as a fun decoration/prop/photo op booth. It was made from a large cardboard box (from my just-delivered-new futon) which was hinged together and fastened with bolts and painted to look like a stone wall with leftover grey primer I had on hand. I added curtains with the remaining fabric from the banners and tied them back with left over rope pieces from the ring toss game.

I believe a fun day was had by all and a sweet little Six year old got to celebrate his birthday in Royal Style!

Getting Organized

Sometimes drawing the line between getting your child everything they want and "you don't need that" is a toughie. Luckily there are a few things that keep my little one happy all the time - cars, crafts and trains. (Not necessarily always in that order). Keeping said things tidy can present it's own set of challenges, but I think I have come up with a solution. You can't imagine how happy I was to hear from a friend that, after seeing my son's toy closet, she was inspired to clean and organize her son's as well.

It seems like such a no-brainer now after seeing the closet all put together, I wonder why it took so long to get to this point. Keep in mind this isn't *all* of his toys. There are a few shelves in the playroom for books and cars and a toy box in his bedroom for little odds and ends and stuffed friends. The garage houses the outdoor toys like scooters and sports equipment.

Let me tell you how I set up the closet. The shelves were already built in and the closet is actually supposed to be a linen closet. If I ever get the opportunity I'd like to refit the shelves with the elfa line from the Container Store, but that is a whole other post! So, using what I have, I sorted the toys into containers and placed them with the ones that Z uses most often or doesn't need help/supervision with on the bottom. There are a few extra large bins at the very bottom that he doesn't play with as much, but since the bins are so big and cumbersome I placed them low to make it a bit easier to get out.

The top holds art supplies, craft kits, board games and items used infrequently. There is also a hook on the door for bags and such. To help keep everything in it's place I made labels for the bins with pictures of the items inside as well as text. Since he can't read yet the picture helps identify what goes inside while the text reinforces the word recognition. I plan on printing out some of the photos you see here in this post to attach to the back of the door. That way, when there is a playing frenzy and a bunch of the bins are out being used he can see from the picture where they belong and put them back in the correct place.

It's not so much me being OCD (which I have a tendency to be) but rather the hope that everything will return to the same place and actually *fit* in the closet! The biggest challenge will be weeding out old toys to make room for the new. For now there is a little wiggle room.

I hope this inspires you and now you'll want to go organize something! If you do, send me a link to see what you've done!

Happy Spring

Doing a little digital house keeping and updated the blog to a new springy-green! I am cultivating lots of real green growing things too. Z and I have planted parsley, oregano, basil, sunflowers, cherry tomatoes, watermelon, avocados, and palm trees. We still have cucumbers, carrots and potatoes on the list and every time we are out and he sees seed packets he wants more, more, more! =) I cannot wait for the yard to get put in so we can get out there and set up the garden. Will keep you posted on our progress.

Yeah, my hubby is an iGeek

That's why I love him... besides he's so darn cute!

Check out the article from the Boulder Daily Camera. And check out the photo gallery. He's the uber cute one at the bottom of the page in the grey iPhone tee (that I made for him with printable iron-on transfer) with the apple logo behind him... rather angelic don't you think, like a big apple halo! ;) See if you can spot him in any of the others!