Grand Rapids Art Prize

We met my parents, brother, nephew and friend in Grand Rapids to see Art Prize; "...a radically open competition. Open to any artist in the world who can find space. Open to anybody in Grand Rapids, Michigan who wants to create a venue. Open to a vote from anyone who attends." It was very cool and Kaia had a lot of fun, between her, her 3 year old cousin, 2 month old Katalin and ssoooooo many people, I only got pictures of a couple exhibits, but they were all over the city, inside and out.

This textile rainbow tunnel was Kaia and Katalin's favourite. Katalin especially was so vocally and animatedly excited about it that the artist came to beg a picture of her admiring it. It continued outside the window lined corridor as well, with colourful rocks spiraling away on both sides.

Kaia really, really wanted to play with and on this rainbow river of blown glass rocks, and also particularly liked the these rockets.

Her and her cousin Ion got stuck at these paper covered table for a long time and we took turns walking around and staying with them. :) Here they are with Grandma.

Kaia and Ion were so excited to be together and terribly cute! Oh, and once carousal was spotted, it could not be passed up without a couple rides!

Fall Equinox with a Harvest Moon

So this year's harvest moon (the full moon closest to Fall equinox) falls on the equinox, how neat is that? Because of this, the moon was giving off a spectacular amount of light. Well, we wanted to celebrate both the moon and the fall. We started with a Harvest Moon painting. I cut a hole in a piece of watercolour paper. Kaia really liked the crayon resist technique we used on the leaf banner, so we started with crayon again. Once we had our picture down, we went back in with watercolour.  

Kaia loves adding salt to watercolour paintings. As it dries, the salt absorbs some of the water and paint where it sits, leaving a speckley texture. Once the paintinng is completely dry you can then gently brush it off, or just leave it. It will fall off on its own with time. If Kaia had a full container of salt to shake out, she would happily shake the entire container out, so I put a reasonable amount in a small shaker for her to use. It's so much gentler on both of us than trying to regulate and stop her salt usage. Then, because she's 2 (and shiny is always better, isn't it?) she added some glitter.
 

Our finished painting:

Detail of the grass:

Later on we got the kite down. There wasn't a whole lot of wind, but Kaia was really excited anyway.

After dinner we went outside to enjoy the moon and have a small fire on the back patio. 

It was nice.

 

Herb Harvest

Brought in some of the herbs to dry! Harvested at least half of the rosemary, thyme, oregano, and savory, and bit of the basil. Took in a cabbage, too, and another musk melon. Ohhh they are so juicy good! Brought in a little kale, too, but our kale has been plagued. :(

Aside from those herbs, cabbages and muskmelon, this bed also has broccoli, kale, peppers, onions, parsley, sage, dill, and some of the tomato plants.

Here's the basket we brought in today! Minus the melon because we ate that already, it was so good... : )

 

Speaking of harvest, we went to the DeGraaf Nature Center's Heritage Harvest Day, too. Kaia's dipped a candle and made a corn husk doll. We saw a hammered dulcimers band, (so cool! Katalin loved them, too,) a bench built (which Kaia tested,) watched some dying, spinning, and weaving, made a little friend, made a big friend, ran through some giant mud puddles, and got to have some apple cider and even some vegan chocolate chip cookies!