Fancy Finger Painting

Kate is an art junkie.

If there is anything vibrant, liquidy, of gooey texture, or particularly messy, she seeks after these things.

As such we like to give her lots of opportunities to express her creative side. Even if it ends up looking like a puddly swamp mess.

 

 I wish I had her inhibition and could enjoy being this sticky and colorful!

 

 As Jackson Pollock once said: "Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."

Kate is colorful, bright, bold, spontaneous, fearless, fun-loving, and not afraid of what others think of her. She loves to feel and explore the world. She knows it's ok to make messes, because we can always sing the clean-up song later.

I think her life motto is: "It's always a good time for finger paints." I could really learn a lot from her :)

September - The Month Of...

HOMEMADE CRAYONS!

This project was not originally one that we had thought of at the beginning of the year. But when things like "glass blowing" prove to be monetarily challenging, you get creative :)

Making Kate her own crayons was actually Jon's idea - and I loved it! He found a recipe online for making crayons and it is very simple. You basically melt caranuba wax over the stove and add in pigment (like good gel paste food coloring or other natural plant pigments.)

We had these cool fishy ice cube trays from IKEA so we decided to use that as our mold and make Kate fishy crayons :)

 

We made sure to use a pan that we were never planning on using for food again. You can use it for future projects and wax melting, but otherwise it will destroy your pan. Luckily this one was super old and ready for the recycling anyway.

*sprinkle sprinkle* like waxy snow!

Margo thought the whole thing just looked delicious :)

The wax melted beautifully at a medium/low heat. Once melted all the way you turn the heat down as LOW as possible.

The next step is to pour about 1/4 cup of wax into another container for adding color. The approximate measurement is 1TB of pigment per 1/4 cup of melted wax.

Our first attempt did not go super well. We thought you were supposed to reserve a bit of wax and add the color, then put that wax back in with your melted stuff on the stove.

So these first crayons are not very pigmented.

After reading the instructions a little more closely, we did the next ones with more concentrated doses of food coloring, and they turned out ok!

The best part is that the extra wax on the outer edges of the mold can be re-melted down with the other wax to recycle and use in more crayons.
We made green, red and blue for our first try.
After letting the fishy crayons cool, we popped them out of the molds:

Obviously this is something that we can continue to get better and better at. We decided that next time we'll order pigment online so that the crayons have more color to rub on the paper.

Jon gives this project a rating of: "Unsuccessful, but definitely try again."
Steph gives this project a rating of: "Fun and worth playing with for better results!"

We're really hoping that this is the first step in creating baby Kate's very own homemade line of toddler art supplies ;)

January - The Month Of...

Sculpture!

 

 

Jon and I have both always wanted to try sculpture. After looking into the different materials and forms, we decided to go with 3-dimensional round sculpture style using clay.

 

At first we decided to each sculpt animals... then it turned out that we were basically planning to make the same thing - and oh yeah I HATE CLAY.

 

I just didn't feel like it really did what I wanted it to. It was all together too soft and too firm at the same time. What I decided I really wanted to use was play-doh. HAHA

 

 

After abandoning the animal plan, I decided to make something that would make me happy... snack foods :) So I modeled a triscuit with tomato, lettuce and cheese toppings, a fig newton (dang, I love those!) and some fruit snacks. It turns out I found my calling in clay sculpture world = snack foods.

 

Jon was having a great time with his clay and actually did really well with his animal plan!

 

 

There's his little sleeping fox behind my triscuit creation.

 

 

We still have a TON of clay left, so we will probably be making more things. One thing's for sure - sculpture is not my favorite art form. At least this kind. Maybe someday we will take a class or try for metal or glass sculptures. I could see that being fun. This is the year of exploration after all!

 

***

 

In the middle of January I also took a spontaneous trip to Utah to visit my best cousin, Megan. Kate came with me for the short weekend. We had a lot of fun, but were literally in Utah for less than 48 hours! Short short trip.

 

Here is Kate sleeping in my arms on our first flight together, which had a layover in Portland.

 

 

She is such an amazing baby. She was cooperative the whole trip. 4 flights total in a 3 day period!

 

I got sick on Friday after we landed, so after lunch at Cafe Rio I slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.

 

On Saturday we went out to lunch at Zupa's with my Grandma Andersen. Afterward we spent some time at her home visiting and looking through some family history. Kate napped on the couch and was happy enough to sit for a couple pictures with me and Great Grandma!

 

 

Saturday night we went to dinner with my Aunt, Uncle and cousins Chelsey and Megan at Rumbi Island Grill. It was the closest thing I could get to a Teriyaki Chicken Bowl since Hogi Yogi no longer exists. HAHA I am so happy to say that, although I miss their food a little :)

 

Chelsey and Kate:

 

Andersen & Nielson families with Kate:

 

Sunday morning we left really early for the airport. We had connecting flights from SLC to LAX and then SMF.

 

Me, Megan and Kate:

 

 

Kate and I got a window seat from LAX to Sacramento:

 

It was totally adorable to watch her in wonder looking out of the plane window:

 

I also let her try a little orange juice on the flight. She definitely LOVES it!

 

We had a great time seeing some snow, visiting cousins and relaxing in Utah, but we are so happy to be back home in California where it is warmer! Here is Kate with the blanket and burp cloth set that Great Grandma made for her. We love the puppy dogs! It is so cozy.

 

 January has definitely been adventurous.

Bring it on, February!