Art Lessons with my Five-Year-Old

You may think from the title of this post that I am giving Noah art lessons.  But no, instead, Noah is giving ME art lessons.

 He and I have started doing some joint drawings (we both work simultaneously on the piece), and boy, can I learn a thing or two from him!  Oh, how I wish I could draw like a five-year-old!  There are just no thoughts of, "Does this look right?", "Would this color look good here?"  There's just pure freedom!  I envy that!  I swear that these pieces are so much better than anything I can do on my own, aren't they??

So I am going to start doing this a lot more, and you can bet that I am watching him like a hawk to try and glean some of his talent!  I told him that HE was giving ME art lessons, and he loved the idea of that!  I just pray that he can hold on to this freedom, and not start to develop the awareness that so often happens as kids grow up...

Lil' Vintage Story Books #29

Welcome again to Lil' Vintage Story Books, where we share our favorite vintage children's books!

 Today's book is a cute little one called "The Little Lost Puppy", by Margaret Otto, illustrated by Jesse Spicer, and originally published in 1976.

 It's a cute story about a boy who has lost his puppy.  He asks three policemen to help him look.  (Can you imagine what a policeman would say today if you asked him to help you look for your puppy?)

The three policemen each find different things.  One finds a yellow canary that a little girl was missing,...

 

...one finds a kitten that a lady is missing, and one finds lots of animal tracks behind Mr. Dump's house.  Everyone in the town is concerned!

 Then Mr. Dump comes up with his big watchdog.  He is very grumpy!

 His dog has spent the morning chasing other animals around the yard, thus all the animal tracks!  First the kitten was chasing the canary, then the puppy was chasing the kitten, then the watchdog was chasing the puppy!

 The policemen reprimand everyone, and tell them to keep their animals where they belong!

 Thank you, Mr. Policemen, for helping Tommy find his puppy!

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****Announcement!!!****  

Next week will be the last Lil' Vintage Story Books party for a while.  I am going to take a break for the summer.  We will be in and out of town, and with three little ones at home, I know I will have a difficult time keeping up with it!  If anyone is interested in continuing on your own blog, let me know, and I can hand over the reigns to you!

Project Life Overload!

Okay, I'll just preface this post by saying that if you don't like scrapbooky stuff, you should probably skip it, because what we've got here are a bunch of pics of my latest Project Life scrapbook pages!  I've been busy, still trying to catch myself up to date with Riley's book, and then starting on Noah's.  

I've decided to change my way of working on these pages a little bit.  Whereas I was trying to do "themed" spreads in Riley's book, it was becoming difficult finding enough pics to fill a page with one theme.  So from now on, I'm going to try to do one spread monthly, catching up on all the fun things that happened that month.  

So the following pages from Riley's book were still done thematically, and I began Noah's book doing the monthly thing, if that all makes sense!  (I will also add that these pages are durn hard to photograph, since they're covered with plastic, so bear with the sometimes-not-perfect photos!)

 This is a spread about two trips we took last summer, one to visit Grandma and Grandpa in North Carolina, and one to to Helen, Georgia.

 Here's the NC page...

 ... and here's the GA page.

 Then I did a spread about turning six last October.  This time, I added a small half-page in between to include the large portrait. 

 Here's a view with the half-page turned to the other side.

 I love the color-scheme that emerged with this spread- orange, teal, brown, and green.

Isn't that vintage ephemera on the top perfect?  How lucky that I found the phrase, "I am six years old today"!

And here's the first spread in Noah's new book, beginning in February. 

His last art journal ended with his birthday (in February), so that's where this one picks up.

 I wasn't so lucky with this vintage ephemera on the bottom- I added the name "Noah" over the top so it made sense!

I love the pointing finger washi tape I found!  It's by Cosmo Cricket.

And there you have it!  I'm still enjoying working in these.  Something about working with the divided sections is very soothing to me- I love trying to balance out all the sections so they work well together.  And getting to play with fun scrapbook elements like washi tape is fun, too!  But you know me, I've always got to get some vintage in there someplace, so that it still feels like "me"!

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

I hope all the mothers out there had an enjoyable day yesterday!  Mine was nice- I had the perfect mixture- a little time to myself, a little time with my own mother, and a little time with my kids.

My husband took some nice shots of me and the kids, and then I took some of just the kids.

 This was the cutest with them all smiling.

Then I told them to be silly.  It's funny to look at the progression in these.  (You can see the collage larger if you click on it.)  Avery didn't really know what she was supposed to do, but you can see her watching the boys and mimicking their faces!

Those silly kids!

Lil' Vintage Story Books #28

Welcome again to Lil' Vintage Story Books, where we share our favorite vintage children's books!

 I found today's book out thrifting this week, and all I can say is, "How have I not seen this book before?"  It's called "The Animal Fair", by Alice and Martin Provensen (no illustrator listed), and published originally in 1952.  I have a reprint here- I wasn't lucky enough to find a vintage copy.

This book has got the cutest illustrations throughout!

 It's a long book (60 pages), and is broken into smaller stories and poems about animals.

 Everything is just so whimsical and fun!

 I love these guys on the left page.

 This poor tiger- nobody wants to come to his party!

 I absolutely love this spread!  No story, no poem, just an illustration of birds flying south in the Fall.

 This bear is prepared!  Notice how his clock is labeled for the seasons!

 Even the end pages are lovely!  Oh, those little buildings and that fox- swoon!

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Backyard Baseball Team

The boys have been very into playing sports in the backyard lately.  They love baseball, so we've worked out some "Backyard Baseball" rules, considering we have a limited number of people in the family with which to play! 

Rule #1  Always make sure to have your baseball glove and stand in proper stance (extra points if your glove coordinates with your outfit!).

Rule #2 Hit the ball, even if it takes 15 throws to get to that point!

Rule #3 Run to the pink frisbee (the base).

 Rule #4 Try not to bonk heads as everyone collides at the base.

Rule #5  Have fun! 

I'm linking up with Paper Mama's photo challenge for Favorite Photo of April.

(By the way, if you're wondering, I've used the "Dusk" filter from PicMonkey on these photos- love it!)