New Year's Resolutions or how NOT to paint a mural!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to finish the mural in Peanut's bathroom.  I started it last Christmas break and I'd REALLY like to finish it before she decides she's outgrown it and wants to repaint the walls!

This is my first attempt at a mural and I've certainly learned what not to do:

• Don't ask a child - especially a creative one - for their ideas.  Peanut wanted the walls of her bathroom to look like you are underwater and have people swimming on the ceiling, looking down at you.
• Don't make the entire room part of the mural.  Keep it to one wall, or better yet a portion of a wall.
• Don't use every color under the sun.  Limit the colors used so you're not constantly switching colors and cleaning brushes.

Only one of 2 boxes of paint that we're using!

• Don't go for a realistic look.  Cartoon creatures and environments are much easier and quicker to paint.

So I did rein Peanut in a bit and suggested we lose the swimmers and peerers on the ceiling (which is just downright creepy), but her mural in progress still has a beach, a seal, coral, a crab, an underwater castle, a sunken ship, a dolphin, fish, a sea turtle, a treasure chest, an octopus, and 2 mermaids.  No wonder it still isn't finished after a year!

Here is the mural in progress -

The "beach" section of her mural is above her tub surround, with everything lower than that being the underwater portion.  There's a forgotten pail and bucket of shells on the beach and a cute seal climbing up the rocky shore.  We chose .8 miles for the distance on the beach sign because she was 8 years old at the time.

The other day I finished the first mermaid, who is holding up her mirror, which is surrounded in shells.  Peanut chose the colors for her tail.  I still might add some sparkle to her tail but otherwise I think she turned out pretty good, especially since I just made her up without any type of reference photo.

The Oldest helped and added the sea turtle.  She really did a wonderful job!  He looks like he's just chillin'.

Merry Christmas!

This red ornament is on of my favorites - other than the ones the kids made, of course.  It's glass and I love the way it captures the light, which is what I wanted to capture here.

Happy holidays everyone!

Christmas is almost here and I'm ready (almost)!

So, I'm finally getting a chance to post.  The presents are wrapped, packages are sent, cookies are baked, and the Christmas cards and letters went out yesterday.  Whew!  I'm a little behind with the Christmas cards I know, but I needed to wait until I could get Middle Child a haircut.  For some reason he didn't want me to cut it.  Silly boy!

Our Christmas letter was a quiz again, but this year's quiz was 3 truths and a lie.  Each question was comprised of 4 statements, 3 which were true and one was a lie.  The goal was to pick out the lie in each set of statements. I don't think anyone is going to get a perfect score, because Dear Husband and the kids took the quiz yesterday and nobody got them all correct!  These are truths and lies about our own family!  Okay, I admit there are some  tricky questions in there. Good thing I'm not a teacher - the students would all be crying and I'd be getting barraged with nasty emails from the parents. Better to work alone, I think...

I've always enjoyed arts and crafts, but didn't begin oil painting until after James was born. I went through a period in the late 90's and just into the 2000's when I got in to painting ceramic Santas. Most of them have since chipped and broken in our many moves since then, but I found a few that were still intact when decorating for Christmas.  Aren't they cute!  I loved adding all the little details. Usually, my Santa was a bit more flashy that just a red suit with white trim...  he wore stripes, plaid, and other patterns and drove a sleigh with leopard print seat.  All but the first few have my "trademark" - a patch sewn on by Mrs. Claus with her lip print.  Even his fab clothes needed patching once in awhile and, let's face it, Mrs. Claus doesn't have much to do in the North Pole.  You can see this the best in the bottom right corner on the knee of the tall Santa and the hood of the round one.

Never fear, I'm still working on my 50 by 50 goal.  Recently I've started a painting of one of my favorite holiday ornaments.  Which I'm hoping to have done by Christmas.  Here is the step-by-step progress of laying in the background.  In the photo in the top center, I've put in the dark areas, but haven't started the background.  I first added the darkest areas and marked where the tree lights would be.  Little by little, I worked from dark to light and from background to foreground.  The background still needs some details, but I need to work on the ornaments first. Once they're finished, I'll return to the background and add just as many details as needed, so that the focus can be on the ornaments, not the background.  It doesn't look like much now, but it's going to be beautiful once those ornaments are in!

The Best Harry Potter Birthday Party! Part 2: The Hogwarts Express and Sorting Ceremony.

Here are more photos from our Harry Potter party for Peanut.  All the details of our Hogwarts Express and sorting ceremony follow the photos.  Enjoy!

Our Hogwarts "Great Hall", complete with house banners and house points.  We made the banners and purchased dollar store vases that we filled with colored popcorn for the house points.  During the party, points were added to or taken away from the 4 houses...  Professor Snape (Dear Husband) kept finding excuses to reward Slytherin and penalize everyone else. The girls loved teaming up against Snape!

Check out the sorting hat I made!  I found the directions here:

http://littlefuryous.tumblr.com/post/99683184657/paper-bag-sorting-hat

I think her paper was thinner than mine and her sorting hat turned out more wrinkly, but I love the way mine turned out.  I added a paper pocket (about halfway up, on the inside back) for my cell phone, so that the sorting hat could talk.

After the guests purchased their supplies in the shops on Diagon Alley (quill, notebook, wand and pet- see my prior post on this), they were instructed to go to platform 9 3/4 where the Hogwarts Express would be leaving shortly.  They made a "train" line behind the conductor (You guessed it - Dear Husband again!) and wound around the house making train noises, periodically being interrupted with "Aaaanything from the trolley?".  We made a "trolley cart" with a laundry cart, tablecloth and large tray.  They could buy Licorice wands, chocolate frogs, lemon drops, jelly slugs and Bernie Botts Every Flavor Beans with their remaining wizard money.

Upon arriving at Hogwarts, the girls were taken to the great hall for the sorting ceremony. Dumbledore (Middle Child) greeted them and after a short welcoming speech, turned the floor over to Professor McGonagall (me!).  One by one, the guests sat on a stool and had the sorting hat placed upon their heads.  The sorting hat commented on their attributes (bravery, wisdom, dedication, ... or whatever) and called out their house.  

[While the guests were on the train, I called Dear Husband's phone, put mine on speaker, then put it into the pocket in the hat.  That way, he could sit in another room and be the voice of the sorting hat.  We "sorted" the kids based on a short quiz that they took as they arrived at the party.  There are many sorting quizzes online and we just modified one to work for the ages of our guests.]

After the sorting hat called their house, McGonagall fastened on their house tie (felt ties we made). We ended up with 2 Hufflepuff, 3 Gryffindor, 2 Ravenclaw and no Slytherin which worked out well. Peanut was thrilled to end up in Ravenclaw...  she was so worried!

Once the sorting was done, Dumbledore announced the feast (pizza).

Stay tuned for part 3 - attending wizarding classes!

I've finished "The Thief" ... Finally!

We hung up "The Thief" for the Harry Potter birthday party as a replacement for "The Fat Lady" entrance to the Griffyndor Common Room.  It looked so good on our walls, that I decided to finally get it finished.

So I've been working on this painting on and off for at least 4 years.  To be honest, it's been mostly off, with the painting stacked in a corner of my basement.  I'm sure the few who saw it thought it was finished, especially after I used the partially finished work in a marketing brochure.  I think I put off finishing it because I was afraid I would ruin it.  Guess what?  It's now finished and I didn't ruin it - in fact the new changes made it even better.  Yay!

Detail of the face

Detail of the ill-gotten gains

What do I love about "The Thief"?  Well, I'll tell you.  I love the idea of paintings as portals to another world, so I painted a frame around the canvas (that's right, it's not actually framed) with this little guy coming through the frame and escaping into our world.  I also love the facial expression and twisted body position of the subject.  Middle Child was the model for this painting, but I intentionally painted him to look like  a character out of a Dickens story, with shadows under his eyes and messed hair.  I also think the nifty little still life he's clutching under his arm is pretty fun, too.  Yup, this is a keeper.

The Best Harry Potter Birthday Party! Part 1: Diagon Alley

I don't have a post about painting today because I've been totally immersed in planning (and recovering from) Peanut's Harry Potter birthday party.  We finally settled on a date the Friday before Thanksgiving, which was the following Wednesday.  That left only 5 days to plan and prepare - Yikes!

The family really came together in making this event amazing!  The Oldest had 4 costume / character changes and Dear Husband even wore paper goblin ears (which looked awesome!) to play a goblin at Gringotts.  Middle Child was fabulous as Ollivander, Professor Binns and Dumbledore.  We left Peanut out of the planning and numerous run-throughs of the characters, plot, and behind the scenes changes, which left her plenty of time to fret over which house she would be put into.  

I'm getting ahead of myself...  Today I'm only posting about Diagon Alley.  If you're not into Harry Potter or birthday parties, you can skip all my babbling and just take a peek at the pictures.

Our version of Diagon Alley - complete with a dementor!

The line-up of wands that we made for Ollivander's Wand Shop.  I'm particularly proud of these!

A few days before the party, an "owl" dropped letters onto everyone's porch saying that they had been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and to meet at Madam Malkin's in Diagon Alley at 4:00 the following Wednesday, rather than platform 9 3/4.  That way the kiddos could shop for their school supplies together before boarding the train.

Click Here for our Hogwarts Letter

The stops the party guests made were:

Madam Malkins - Our coat closet was cleared and filled with any robes, capes, hats or gloves we could find.  Madam Malkin (The Oldest), measured each girl and helped her find a robe or cape to wear.  Because they hadn't visited Gringotts yet, she told them they could borrow the clothes for the day.

Gringotts - The next stop was Gringotts (aka the study), which the girls LOVED!  As I said, Dear Husband wore paper goblin ears, plus a sport coat and glasses at the end of his nose.  One at a time the girls approached the goblin and he gave them a hard time about why they were there, a lack of identification (an ID or a wand), and not knowing their account number.  Eventually, he dug into his desk drawer and pulled out a fabric bag filled with wizard money (poker chips).

Flourish and Blotts -  Once they had their wizarding money, the girls proceeded to buy their school supplies.  First on their list was a notebook and a quill, which they could purchase for 5 sickles at Flourish and Blotts.  The quills were made using cheap pens, ribbon and craft feathers and the notebooks were ones I had around the house that I covered with scrapbook paper.

Ollivander's Wand Shop -  Of course no wizard is complete without a wand, and for 7 galleons (or 7 blue poker chips) they each purchased one.  We made the wands shown above by sanding down the tip of a wooden dowel,  adding handles and designs with hot glue, and painting them with acrylic paint.  The Oldest and I got better at making them as we went along, eventually adding more elaborate designs like vines or a snake twisting around the wand.  Of course we had to go further and add tags with the wands' specifics - birch, veela hair core, 12 ", slightly bendy.  They were so fun to make!  The girls were told by Ollivander (Middle Child) that the wand chooses the wizard, so each girl put on a blindfold and approached the table of wands and let the wand choose them.  

Eeylop's Owl Emporium - The last purchase was to choose a pet from Eeylop's.  We had unicorns, dragons, owls, and cats.  We purchased Beenie Boos - a favorite of Peanut and her friends - which the girls could purchase for 5 galleons.  The dragons were particularly popular!

With their armfuls of supplies and a few extra knuts, the girls were ready to board the train to Hogwarts.  They were so excited when they realized that they could keep what they had just "purchased"!