little gi

We love "we love to illustrate"!

above illustration by shirley ng-benetiz found on we love to illustrate

if you haven't visited the we love to illustrate blog yet...oooh today is your lucky day!  It is a wonderful site featuring a group of amazing women who illustrate for the children's market and each month each artist contributes an illustration based on a chosen theme.  & lucky for us, this month is not only Halloween, but cupcake toppers!!!

gah! they are all sooooooo super cute!!!  I think the colorful bunch shown above, illustrated by shirley ng-benetiz would look so great atop the marshmallow icing of these s'mores cupcakes.  my kids will flip.out!!

happy downloading!

xoxo

gi

excuse me while i brag a bit...

super proud mama here :)

yesterday while i was getting dinner together & what not, the kids decided to have a little "art club".  & they pulled out their paper & crayons & scissors &, in kelly's case, water soluable oil pastels and sat & drew & colored & painted & clipped & taped their little hearts out.

& i was blown away by their creativity.  i mean i know they are creative, but seriously...they were whipping out their most clever & brilliant tricks yesterday!

like ryan, he was drawing a picture of the Jets v. the Cowboys (booooo hisssss) & in order to do the image of the crowd in the stadium, he gathered a bunch of different color crayons in his little hand & swirled them around in the "stands".  how brilliant is that!!!  here's how it turned out....(notice the score...58-0...cowboys take another lickin'!  LOL!!)

kate meanwhile created a little book entitled "A Haircutting Adventure". HAHA!  how cute is that!  but she seriously spent hours drawing her pages & stamping hello kitty stamps everywhere & making tiny bits of tape to hold the pages together.  i was super impressed with the taping job.  it was meticulous...strips of tape about 1 1/2" long pasted on nice & neat to make the binding.  and the cutting & pictures were so cute!  she definitely is getting really good with that left hand, that's for sure!  (she broke her wrist a month ago...hence the ladybug cast :)

kelly is getting really, really good at adding more & more personality to her little characters.  i've got to find an art class for this girl.  she really has such an original artistic voice, i would love to see her develop it more.  i especially love how she does all the hairstyles. 

 

she is working really hard on her little book.  i'll have to share it when she finishes :)

can't wait until their next session of "art club" :)

happy friday!!

xoxo

gi

 

she's been busy...

a bit ago i had posted about kelly jumping full into sewing.  she really surprised me actually...doing it all by herself, only asking me a few times for help.  she just sat & worked her little fingers away cutting & stitching.   reading the directions in her "sewing school" book & then carefully choosing fabrics and thread colors she wanted to sew up.

it was so cool to watch her learn something & take to it so well.  and the fact that she did it so independently, requiring no hovering from me was even better.

she actually woke me up one day during spring break with a gadget pouch all sewn up for mike asking me to help her just fix the final knot securely.  the girl had done the ENTIRE thing on her own early in the morning before any of us got up.  doing the whole right sides together thing, stitching the seams closed & then turning it all inside out so the raw edges were inside thing....a buttonhole matched right where the button was...i mean this girl followed the pattern to the letter and it looked fantastic.  i was like "wha???  you've done the whole thing already?  get out!"  so awesome...

so then i set her loose in our old clothes to be donated pile & she whipped up 2 pillows out of T-shirts + one pillow made from her favorite fabrics (complete with a felt pocket for the tooth fairy).

and her favorite project is her little monster, zoey.  made from one of ryan's old polo shirts and an old tank top.  adorable & gets lots of loving that is for sure.  (hence the frayed ric rac smile...reminds me of one of our favorite stories "that rabbit belongs to Emily Brown" :)

kinda makes me want to get some of my sewing projects completed.  it's been a busy spring, but watching her having so much fun has inspired me to get back to it!

happy thursday!

xoxo

gi

 

she's caught the sewing bug...

i picked up this book on a lark, thinking it sounded like a pretty good little gift that kelly would enjoy.  well...."enjoy" is putting it very lightly.  she LOVES it!

it arrived in the post at about 10 am & by lunch she already had read the beginning lessons about sewing & gathered her supplies to create her own sewing kit.  by 4pm she had made a sweet apple pincushion, a needlebook with a button closure and a little pillow for her doll jane. 

yep...methinks she likes it :)

this morning she is back at it, creating a little monster out of too small T-shirts she found in the donate bin.  holy moly it is looking CUTE so far! 

happy sewing!

xoxo

gi

 

thank you hip hip hooray for holidays!!

i realize we are not on summer holidays like my souther hemishpere friends...but thank God for hip hip hooray for holidays! this week.

we've had snow, snow, ice & more snow which has sorta made for an insane asylum situation around here.  school has been closed & i've had 3 kids looking at me with blank stares..."what are we doin' today now, mommy????"

ummm...

so mel & tamar to the rescue!!!!  the felt play mat was first up.  such a great project & everything on hand.  my kids LOVED this project & have been playing with their play mats every day since we made them on tuesday. 

ryan chose to make a pirate map.  "i can play with my guys on it & then use it as a pirate map too when i play pirates mom!"  yeah....he is super clever :)  proud mama here :)  i still have to take a good photo of how he has set it all up with his play mobil pirates, it is just so cute...complete with buried treasure, a poisonous flower and "ghost bus" that surprises pirates just when they think they are close to the "x marks the spot".  but here is a photo i took of him, hard at work gluing all of his chosen pieces to his alloted swatch of felt.  you can see a glimpse of his "rickety ol' pirate bridge" that goes across the lake to his treasure island.  the "ghost bus" slams into people taking them by surpirse around where that big bush is...haha!!

kelly created an elaborate rural map featuring a forest, a wildflower patch and a country road.  SOOO cute!!!  since her alloted felt piece was a bit small to fit it all in, she easily switched gears & chose her favorite parts and got cutting & gluing.  that is one of the great things about kids...once you get their imaginations going, they easily are able to go with the flow & just enjoy creating. 

she LOVES this little playmat.  her pet shops & japanese erasers have been having a grand ol' time cruising their country road hanging out at mo's milk stand, cruising by the pond to see what susan the swan is up to or popping in the barn for an apple or carrot :)  awwww.....i remember these days of endless imagination well :) 

kate set up her "little town" with all of her little lalaloopsy houses, strawberry shortcake's splash pool & berry cafe....even a dock on the little village's lake perfect for a picnic.  quite the bustling little hamlet she's got going :)

there is more snow in our forecast for next week.  good thing we've got plenty more hip hip hooray for holidays activities planned!!

hope you have a great weekend!!

GO JETS!!!!

xoxo

gi