When You Don't Have a Dog. . .

You have to improvise.

The Torch Has Been Passed

Thomas The Tank Engine has once again found his way to our house. The bad news is that he takes up a lot of room. The good news is that I now know what to get Charlie for Christmas.

Team Day

AJ's school had team day yesterday. It is a day that consists of a lot of game playing, crafts and general hoopla. The kids love it. The theme was Rock n' Roll with a little Peace and Love thrown in. Hence all the tie dying last week.

It was so fun to see all the kids in their shirts. It was a sea of color. Every single kid's shirt was the same color as the rest of their grade. But each shirt was completely unique.

I was asked to lead an art project for the day. The organizers wanted to do symbols with the kid's hand prints surround the symbols.

1) So I painted the symbols on the canvases.

2) Then I taped the canvases off to make sure the kids didn't get any paint on the actual symbols. (This ended up being a good call. There is always that one kid. . . )

3) and the painting started

Here is the beginning:

Here is the end:

And here are the final products:

They are going to be hung in our new cafeteria.

Career Advice From a Third Grader

First Student: I want to be an artist when I grow up!

Me: That is fantastic! Do you like science? You could be a medical illustrator. Do you like buildings? You could be an interior designer. You can totally make a living being an artist. That's great that you want to do that.

Second Student (looking at me): Yeah, you might want to get a real job.

Men at Work

I know this picture is a little blurry, but it cracked me up. Both of them were so intent on their work.

And speaking of blurry, I really need to figure out how to take a decent indoor shot. If I use the flash, the picture looks horrible. If I don't, the picture is blurry. Maybe I should ask one of the three professional photographers I know. Nah.

Tie Dying- In Bullet Points

• 650 ish shirts
• 1/2 day where the water had to be turned off
• Almost 100 packages of dye
• Thousands of rubber bands
• 5 shirts dunked in the wrong color

Countless kids saying the following:

• Is this dye going to come out of my clothes?
• The red looks like blood!
• That doesn't look green!
• Can you make it say my name?
• Can you do flames?
• Can you make a rocket ship?
• Can you make a dog?

And then I answered with the following:

• No
• I know
• But it is.
• No
• No
• No
• No

Teaching is so rewarding.

Artistic Expression

You may have noticed in some of the pictures (including this one) that we have a bunch of white pillows on the back of our sofa. That is because the cushions on our sofa made it so uncomfortable, we took them off and got plain square pillows to replace them. I have gone and gotten about 20 samples of various fabrics in the hope of designing new pillow covers for them. So, that was what I was doing tonight. This peaked Charlie's interest.

I wish I had gotten a picture of Charlie while I was the one drawing. He stood at my side, hands folded, still as a statue, watching every move I made. Then, when I finished, I gave him a paper and pencil so he could try himself.

This was the only picture I got. Because once he realized I was taking his picture, he said "Cheese!" and did this: