Conversations With Cora

I may be a little bit biased, but Cora is one funny kid.  She's always loves to make people laugh, so now that she talks all of the time she says some pretty funny stuff.  I usually text myself whatever funny/cute thing she says or make a quick drawing in my planner so I don't forget.  Here are a couple of my favorites from the last couple months:

Whenever she is asking nicely for something, she says "ma'am I...?" instead of "may I...?"

"I am berry thirsty... my tongue wants some water!"

We had a couple cookies and I shared a bunch of mine with Cora
Me: Can I have a bite of your cookie?
Cora: No... it's too small :(
Me: but I shared all of mine with you...
Cora:  yeah.. I ate yours all up!!! hahahaha nom nom nom

"I am not a princess... I am a... KING!"

Pushing the fridge door open and letting it hit her in the back...
Cora: (angry face) QUIT PUSHING ME!!!

"Give you a kiss?  Maaaaybeee... no!  That is not a good idea."

Ben: Can I have a bite?
Cora: You eat yours!  I eat mine!

Every time she's eating anything
Cora: Did you buy these (nola bars, fruit snacks, cookies)?! Thank you Momma!  You are the best!

Sunny Sundays

Life has been insanely busy lately and we've been clumsily trying to adjust to a new schedule and routine.  Slow days like Sunday make recharging a lot easier.  Cora spent most of the day running around outside with my parents and she had a blast.  Ben, Clove, and I joined in on the fun later in the day.  There is something so perfect about their backyard that I wish I could bottle it up and move it to my own home so I could enjoy it all day everyday.  I'm hoping this week is just as beautiful and relaxing as Sunday was.

A DIY Christmas - Painting

Now that Christmas is over, I can finally share some of the DIY Christmas gifts that I made.  I did not expect to share most of these pictures, so sorry (not sorry) for the terrible picture quality and messes in the the background of almost every pulled back shot... I would rather spend time creating than cleaning.

This first one (above right) was pretty quick and easy.  I put dots of black and white all over the mat and let Cora go wild.  She added some more paint on her own and discovered a couple new painting techniques while she was working on this... it mostly involved her flinging paint everywhere.  I printed the 11x14" out through Shutterfly and taped it on the filler paper that comes with the frame (both frames were purchased at IKEA).

This next one took me a little longer.  Going along with the unintentional Wisconsin sunset theme, I decided to do a painting inspired by a picture I took of my sister and brother-in-law sitting on the dock together.  I started out by painting the whole canvas area gray (moodier sunset), sketched out a rough idea of where the horizon/trees, dock, and people were, then added in larger blocks of color.

I started adding in the warmer colors of the sun and played around with how that would look in the sky.  I also started working in more colors and details into the water.

Looking back, I kind of love how it looked here ^ but I'm also super happy with the final result, so I'm glad that I kept working on it.  below is where I hit my oh-crap-why-did-I-think-this-would-be-a-good-present stage of creating.  While I was really happy with the water, the sky was a challenge for me and I had to take a break from it for a couple days.

Quick sidetrack: in my art class in high school, we used magazines as palettes, so I started taking the leftover paint and folding the paper to make ink blot-ish art.  I still love to do that these days and will usually make sure to also put the 'blot' in my sketchbook so I have another layer to sketch on.  Here I used some of Alisa Burke's coloring page printouts as palettes.  I'll let it dry and then make a card or something out of it.

Back to the painting... So I kept at it and tried some different textures for the sky and finally came up with something I love.  I added all of the black/dark gray details and called it finished.  I couldn't get a super accurate picture color-wise because of the lighting in our home is always dark, but I also think this piece looks a million times better in person because you can see all of the details and texture.

I threw it in a frame and let it hang on my wall for a couple days before I wrapped it up.