"I Need a Boat"

So Kaia's been on about boats an awful lot lately, and finally decided that she needed a boat. Desperately. Now. Well, I had some big pieces of cardboard hanging out in the garage just in case we suddenly had great need of a boat (right?) so I hauled that out. It was pretty exciting on its own.

 Not a boat, though, so not exciting enough. I got out yee old roll o' packaging tape, and while I got started taping everything together, Kaia got a head start on decorating. Once everything was put together, I cut portholes and a door. I think I should have given the door an arch, but oh well. Didn't think of it in time. 

I traced a CD spool for most the windows, but wanted bigger ones in the door and back of the boat. I used a tupperware lid for those, then cut them all out with an exact-o blade. Kaia loved punching all the holes out once I had cut all the way around, and kept all the circular cut-outs to use as plates in her boat. 

 

We hauled the whole thing outside to the front lawn, and got out our paint jars. Katalin was up and very happy laying on a blanket watching us and chirping at the trees. At one point I ran inside to warm up my coffee (I do this all day...) and popped it in for 30 seconds, so was gone for, oh, 35 seconds about. When I came back she'd moved on from painting her boat to body art :)

When we were done painting, Kaia wanted to, "watch it dry," so I pulled her little table outside for dinner. It was a lazy one! Veggie burger with ketchup and veganaise, broccoli, and apples.  

 

After dinner, the boat was dry and it was time to play!

The Making of a Faerie Family

 
Kaia spent most the day throwing up (ugh) and we spent a lot of time in the bathroom, curled up in blankets, reading books. She was feeling better come evening, though, so we decided to make a faerie family. First we got everybody ready and went acorn collecting for their little heads.

 

Then we gathered some rocks for the faeries to stand on.

We picked leaves to make the faeries' wings. 

 

After that, Katalin was fast asleep, so Papa took her inside to rest, and Kaia and I headed out back to find the rest of the things we needed. We gathered pine cones for their bodies, more leaves for wings, a few flowers, and small twigs to make arms. We were accompanied by two of our kitties, Olive and Stormy, who love to come along on walks to escort us and scout the perimeters.

 We also found a number of mushrooms that needed close inspectoring!

After playing with  a variety of sticks and then digging in the sand for awhile, we headed back home and spread our treasures out on the table.

 

Then we commenced with the hot gluing.  Kaia picked out the bits, and I glued them together. I even managed to do all of them with only one lasting burn. Those glue guns can be evil and vile!

 

And, voila! A family of faeries. Kaia headed to bed while they were still drying (I sprayed them with fixitif to try and preserve the leaves a bit,) but she spent all morning this morning playing with them. Win! I'm not sure how long the leaves will last this way, but as Fall sets in we will certainly be collecting and pressing many beautiful, colourfully painted leaves that we can use to replace these if necessary.

 

(Thank you Twig and Toadstool for the idea)

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.