Art and Storytimes...

This week was a mixed bag, but we rolled with it.  Started the week off okay.  I think trying to force education on my two year old didn't work so well.  We've had to adjust for his level of learning. Monday we did painting.  I had my Seurat book, Magritte book, and my Modern Art book from college out for them to look through.  That didn't happen, however.  My daughter and I read a few books on Epic! that were really great.  We read "My Dog Thinks I'm a Genius" by Harriet Ziefert and "The Little Paintbrush" by Bjorn F. Rorvik and illustrated by Thor Hansen.  

I had some Crayola paints, two 9"x12" canvas boards, paint brushes, q-tips, sponges, and FINGERS to use to paint a beautiful painting!

Their finished products.  My son had more fun squeezing the water out of his sponge than anything. 

Tuesday we did Read Along with Michelle Obama on PBS Kids for the first time.  We found the video on their YouTube channel.  It was so great!  We'll definitely be doing this every week.  Mrs. Obama had a special guest for the second story too, President Obama!  The first book was "Giraffe Problems" by Jory John and illustrated by Lane Smith (one of my favorite illustrators).  The second book was "The Bear Ate Your Sandwich" by Julia Sarcone-Roach.  Both really fun books.  

My daughter and I made a road of Play-doh.  All of her characters and animals were finding a new home.

Wednesday we did another online event with Laurie Berkner.  She uses the hashtag #berknerbreak. We used her Facebook page, but I think it's live on her Instagram and might be on her YouTube channel too.  It's at 10am.  It's a half hour program and she has a theme every day.  She does it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  The theme was HELPING.  She had a brightly colored banner behind her so she could spell the word with the kids.  There were a lot of shout outs to people watching her Facebook live feed.  She sang a few songs and were easy to pick up if you didn't know them, like us!  I think the kids would've liked her Friday show better.  It was dinosaur themed and my kids both know the "We are the Dinosaurs" song. 

We didn't do as much as I hoped on my theme of the week, but like most people these days, I'm learning.  I am realizing now that I have to do two different things for my kids.  And that's okay, when I accepted that on Monday I noticed things were much better.  I wasn't so frustrated and the days went more smoothly.  Hope you all had a good week.  Check back next week to see what we were up to. Thanks for reading!

Baking Week

It was suggested to me by a friend to start a blog about my projects with my kids during the covid-19 pandemic.  Thought I'd start this up again and see how it goes.  I try to watch PBS News Hour every day to stay up to date with everything going on.  I really feel for parents during all of this.  Especially parents with kids with special needs.  Our teachers are SO important in our society.  It really does take a certain type of person to be an educator, in my opinion.  And some parents are not, and that's okay!  That's why we have schools!  Or at least we did...  It will be interesting to see what happens this fall with our education system.  With my eldest going into kindergarten.  I'm nervous and curious to see what they do about the classroom this coming fall.  

So in absence of school and libraries for my kids we do things at home that I have picked up from what my daughter did at her preschool and what they do at story time at our library.  I pick a theme over the weekend to do throughout the week.  My daughter had school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  So I tend to do writing and that type of things with her on those days to keep that up.  (Which the past two or three weeks I've definitely slacked on that one!)  I try to do an art craft at least once during the week.  I try to read books on the theme at least on MWF.  I kind of slack off a bit on Tuesday and Thursday to give them a break.  I know it's not the best policy to do, but we incorporate TV and/or movies with our theme of the week.  Because I still have to get the dishes and laundry done... And my son won't leave me alone if he's not occupied by a screen.  Even then he sometimes gets bored and finds me.  Outside time is put in in our mornings as well on the nice days.  That usually takes up at least an hour of our morning.  

So back to BAKING WEEK!  I really only did it Friday, I'll be honest.  So we started with Blippi.  My son LOVES Blippi, and my daughter too.  My daughter likes a lot of different things right now, but Blippi is at the top of my son's list of things to watch.  He has a video on visiting a bakery and he goes behind the scenes and makes things at the bakery.  

We haven't baked in a while at our house so we made soft ginger cookies Friday too.  If you make it from the link, it's a double batch from what's in their cookbook I have.  And we alter the spices at our house too.  Definitely recommend them, they're my husband and my favorites!

We read "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak the other day.  I should have read "The Little Red Hen" with them.  I love that Golden Book.  Verizon sent links with free service to a few educational site until June 22nd in an email.  I took part in the Epic! site.  My daughter LOVES it!  They have a reading buddy feature.  They read books for 20 minutes and they get to feed their pet a snack.  They have a great selection of non-fiction books that we really liked to get at the library when we lived in Columbus, OH.  They have a fair amount here in Muncie, IN, but not as much as they did in Columbus.  So today we read two books on that website about baking.  Really cute books.  "Save the Cake" by Molly Coxe and "Grandma's Kitchen" by Madison Lodi.  "Save the Cake" is felted and fabric animals photographed for the illustrations.  "Grandma's Kitchen" is illustrated by Francesca De Luca and I really like her style.  

Thursday we made a three tiered cake out of construction paper, buttons, ribbon, cardboard, and stickers.  We practice using markers, colored pencils, crayons, and gluing.  I didn't end up having them cut with scissors today.  I cut out the shapes to save time of the cake layers.  They helped me glue them together.  My daughter glued lots of buttons on herself.  I don't know if anyone remembers the song "not a river, not a lake, not a puddle, not a stream" from elementary school about glue.  I taught it to my daughter.  She puts so much glue on the back of buttons and apologizes so much for it because I taught her the song!  Haha!  She keeps doing it though, haha.  

Before lunchtime we turned on Sleeping Beauty so I could finish baking the cookies.  Why Sleeping Beauty you ask?  For the cake baking part of course!  Love the mess they make trying to make Briar Rose's birthday special without their magic, such a fun scene.  We made it to lunchtime with out too much of a crying issue with both kids!  What a day/week.  I've been struggling with feeling exhaustion.  Haven't felt that way in months.  I haven't been very motivated to stay on track with keeping the kids engaged in something other than TV lately.  It's been bad for three weeks now.  I think I'll be better this coming week.  I have a plan!  Check back in the coming week to see what we do.  Thanks for reading!

Weekly inspiration No. 2

I'm a bit late this week, but I'll get into a better routine eventually.  This past week I looked into the artist Chris Gilmour.  I was going to do Wassily Kandinsky, but I thought that might get a bit boring.  I was going to piggy back artists that were friends or inspirations of the artist I did the previous week.  But I decided to go a different route.  At first I thought I'd share my favorite artists, but that wasn't really the goal of this project.  It was to learn about new artists and the need to be inspired artistically again.

Strongbox, 2006

I'll start with probably my favorite that I've seen of his work.  As you can see, his medium is cardboard.  He uses cardboard and glue.  This is one of his later works and you can kind of tell if you look at the right side and on the pieces on the open door that you can still see the print on the original cardboard.  There's an interview on his website where he said that he started out by using cardboard in it's purist form.  Meaning he would use pieces that didn't have tape, print, or labels on it.  But in his later work he enjoys seeing the cardboard for what it is.  People discard it everyday and he wanted to use it in a way that everyone knows it, even it's more unappealing sides.  I enjoy that he changed his perspective in that way.

Aston Martin, 2006

This is another piece I enjoy.  It's life size and he did all the interior and the inner workings of the engine as well.  I read that a lot of people who viewed this work wanted to get inside and try everything on the car.  It's incredibly detailed.  He also did a Fiat car too that was life size, and detailed as well.  I think it's so cool he wanted to recreate these cars to the "t."  Seems like he did a lot of research and sketches to make these come to life.  That is something I don't tend to do.  If I'm making something, painting, or drawing something I tend to just go and enjoy the mistakes and layers that end up happening.

The Triumph of Good and Evil, 2010

It's crazy to me that he does everything out of cardboard and glue.  Everything is so detailed.  He has done a few statues like this.  I mean he's done a few busts a few human formed statues as well.  This one is my favorite of his human figures.  It's so fantastical and it looks huge!  I'd love to see his work in person.  Just to see all the detail of his work.  The dragon is so cool looking.

Chris Gilmour grew up in the UK and now lives and works in Italy.  He has a wikipedia page if you'd like to read more on him there.  His biography on his website and the wikipedia page are pretty similar.  I didn't find too much on him, but I was really glad to learn about him.  When I was thinking of an artists to do this past week, I wanted to find the grad student that was student teaching with one of my professors in art school.  I think it was my second year of art school.  He like to work with cardboard as well.  He showed us his portfolio one day in class and told us about why he liked to work with cardboard.  I couldn't remember his name and he wasn't listed in a Google search, that I could tell anyway.  From my memory he liked to do sculptures of everyday scenes, like a kitchen or something along those lines.  I was bummed I didn't find him, so I settled on Gilmour instead.  

I'll leave you with this last piece and what he said about it.  He said in that interview I read that he felt that his most important piece was the wheelchair.  It created the most reaction, emotion, an/or feeling from his viewers.  Most people didn't go near it or want to touch it.  It made a lot of people uncomfortable it seemed.  I thought it was interesting that he chose to do a few wheelchairs.  But now it makes sense.  It's intriguing for artists to hear the reactions of their viewers.  Most of the time it's nothing like what you would expect them to think of the piece.  I find it incredibly fun to hear what viewers think of my artwork, so it's cool to hear that an accomplished artist feels similar to me on that point.  

Wheelchair, 2003

I'm back!  After a long hiatus due to my wedding, I'm happy to be back.  Well, I am sort of happy about it.  I don't feel like I have a following whatsoever.  But this is really for me anyways, much like my artwork.  Not very many people enjoy that either.  The wedding day was fantastic!  Only two hiccups really and they're nothing that big at all.  VERY minor gripes.  Here, I'll show you a picture or two to show what it was like...

Not sure who took this for photo credit, but this is the ceremony at the Kinney Bungalow in Narragansett, RI.
6.7.14

Right before the first dance.  Nice shot Chantal, I really love this picture!

Kevin's brother Brian took this picture.  It was right before the reception started.

So that's a taste of our wedding.  It was a beautiful day.  And now things are pretty close to normal.  I mean we still have crazy amounts of plans every week, but this week we actually had some time to do some yard work that we wanted to do.  I've done a lot of thinking these past weeks, and I came up with an idea of what to add to my blog.  Kevin and I got on a fair amount of trips and I'd say we're foodies sometimes.  So I made a profile on Yelp and started doing reviews and taking pictures of things.  So far I made 7 reviews of different attractions, hotels/inns, and restaurants.  It's time consuming, but I find it fun.  I look at Yelp a lot when we're going somewhere new.  So I thought that might be a good place to do my reviews.  Here's one of my reviews I did of a restaurant we ate at on our honeymoon in Nova Scotia. The Grand Banker Bar & Grill review.  I think I'll do my reviews on Yelp and talk about our trip or why we ended up where we did on my blog.  That's the plan.

Another thing I have been thinking about as of late is my artwork.  I'm in a dead holt rut right now.  It really sucks feeling the way I do.  I'm at a point now where I don't trust my skills so I don't do anything.  I'm scared to be honest.  Scared of starting something, again, and not finishing it.  It's something I always do, I should be used to it by now, but I don't like that about my process.  So I thought of doing smaller items for sale.  Small watercolors for instance.  Watercolors I could take wherever if I get a pan set, and keep it small and sell them at a reasonable price.  I thought of doing greeting or note cards as well.  I could make sets and sell those on my store as well.  I really think I might try that.  And I might stay away from oils and acrylics for a while.  I need some distance.  The ink wash drawing of the acorns I did within the past year made me remember why I don't paint in oils or acrylic.  It just doesn't give me the feeling I enjoy in my brush strokes.  So, I am going to give that a try.

So that's all that's new for now in Heather's world.  It's weird having a different last name, but at the same time kind of cool.  I can be a new person, fresh start!  I mean I still feel the same and nothing's changed except my last name, but it's interesting how that makes you feel different.

Summer vacations and sketches...

This summer has been rough for me.  Wedding plans have been extremely painful for me.  I hate doing it.  I know it's going to come together in the end, but I hate that most of the responsibility is on me.  I don't like doing this myself.  Kevin is in not much of a rush to get things done, but I won't do it myself.  I might sound like a super bitch, but if that's how it's going to be we just won't have a wedding.  Nothing will get done because I won't do it myself.  I refuse.  We're giving this wedding to our families.  I think if it were completely up to us, we would've eloped and had a party or something...  I don't know, but I hate this.  So with the wedding planning bringing me down, and work bringing me down even farther a vacation was definitely in order...

Photo taken by Chris Jelden or Amanda Jelden.  This is the view from Hen's Nest: the name of the cottage we stay at in Hinesburg, VT.

Last weekend Kevin and I went on a short vacation with a few of our friends.  We went to our friend's family cabin in Hinesburg, VT.  It is on Lake Iroquois.  It was a beautiful weekend.  It rained the last day we were there, but it worked out because the last day is cleaning day.  We were all upset we weren't going to be able to go to the state fair that weekend, but it just so happened it was this weekend as well as next which we knew that it would be.  There is a Maple Sugar building at the expo that we go to at least twice during our day at the fair, and it didn't disappoint!  We almost immediately got our maple milk shakes, oh my god are they good!  And before we left our friends got a maple sugar cookie and Kevin and I got a maple soft serve cone (it was pretty hot that day).  I even got to see my cousin that lives in NH!  She was there with her family and couple they're friends with.  That was an unexpected bonus!

We also did a day in Burlington that traditionally starts off with breakfast at the skinny pancake!  I was brave and tried the Atlantic Monster crepe.  It was very different, I'll say that much.  I didn't hate it but I don't think I could have smoked salmon every day for breakfast.  We usually walk down to the marina and take a picture of the group.  We did that but this time I had my 35mm camera with us and I had my tripod so I could do the self timer.  I hope we got a good shot.  Our friend Jelden is also a photo enthusiast.  I enjoy that he feels the same way I do about photos.  It helps you remember those great memories.  They are frozen moments of your past that you can look back at later and have a warm and fuzzy moment again.  It saddens me that people don't keep photo albums anymore, but that is for another blog post.  We then went to the farmers market near city hall in Burlington.  Always a good time, except for the part when I was ignored by a pottery vendor.  I am a, what you might call, passive looking person.  I guess anyway...  People tend to not take me seriously or ignore me entirely.  This makes me rage a little, I'm not going to lie.  So we were in an artist corner of the farmers market and there was a potter turning a pot.  So it intrigued Kevin and I .  Plus his table of pottery was very pleasing to the eye and had a very nice color pallet.  A tea pot caught my eye, plus it was the perfect shade of tiffany blue or robins egg blue that we want to use in the wedding.  Not that we would've bought the tea pot as decoration for the wedding, but we were considering the cake plate he had on display for that very reason.  The only thing was, it was in a emerald green color.  Which I guess would work in a pinch, but he doesn't have the only cake plate in the world.  I was going to ask him if he happened to have the cake plate in the blue color of the tea pot when another gentlemen cut me off.  So I listened and waited patiently for the gentlemen to finish talking, it took forever.  In the conversation though the artist happened to mention that he had similar items in his studio that are of different colors, and he could make things of any color you liked.  At that point I was going to ask my question and ask for a card when the artist IGNORED me completely and talked to a child that walked up during the other gentlemen's conversation and was waiting as well...  My blood was boiling at this point.  Kevin was next to me and waiting to cut in, but he just kept his attention on the boy and his mother.  So Kevin ended up taking a picture of the artists wooden name plaque on his table and we walked away...  So mad still, but it was a really cool cake plate and really well made pottery.  However, I don't really want to give this guy my business because he ignored me.  This is a common occurrence in my life and it angers me every time.  You might say, oh just cut those other people off.  I'm not going to be rude just because other people are rude to me.  That's not who I am.  If you don't have the awareness of your potential customers then you don't deserve my attention or business.  And that's all I have to say about that.

We then went shopping on Church Street and then headed back to the cottage to spend some time floating in the lake.  We all floated for a while and then Kevin and I took the canoe out for a spin around the lake.  I was so glad we got to do that this year.  I love canoes.  They remind me of my childhood canoeing with my father.  Boy is it a work out too!

The weekend was awesome, so relaxing and just a good time with friends.  I even got to sew a few bows, although I'm out of barrettes to sew them onto.  (By the way I think I'm going to get my barrettes from this Etsy supply store The Soda Pop Shop.  The store has exactly what I'm looking for, they're a USA store, and it's a great price!  Pretty excited to find her shop.  Anyway, I also had time to sketch some while we were away.  I have been avoiding my artwork completely lately.  I am so apprehensive to make a mark on a page or a canvas as of late.  So I sketched our view from Hen's Nest in my sketch book that is the one that has pages to fill.  It's pretty old.  It has things in it from when I was dating my ex boyfriend in it.  But here's my sketch, not the greatest thing I've ever done, but I did SOMETHING.  And I'm proud of myself for it.

Hen's Nest View 2013.  Please excuse my horrible spelling in the sketch.  Kind of embarrassed about that...

That's the latest news in the world of Heather K. McPhaul.  Hope you all have a great rest of your week.

Art Fairs, Accessories, and a Tasting...

Hello all!  I haven't written in over a month, and I apologize!  Let me give you an update on the latest.  So finished a purse that has been "in the works" for over 2 years now.  I was a vendor at a local art fair.  And Kevin and I did a tasting for a caterer for our wedding in June of next year.  It's been a busy month!  So here is a few photos of the purse I made.  I will be putting that up on my Etsy store today.

Front view of the purse.

It is a pretty tall purse, you can fit a binder in there with an inch or so to spare height wise.

The purse in standing mode.

I added a pocket inside to hide all those unmentionables you don't want people to see.

So that's the purse.  It was a learning experience.  Most of my projects are.  I don't have patterns.  I kind of just put things together how I would want them.  I like when purses have a liner in them so just incase a pen bursts in your bag, the outside doesn't get ruined.  That's happened to me before...  I enjoy having a pocket inside so I can keep things organized. Also I like to have pocket on the outside for easy access to my cell phone and keys, If I don't have my carabiniere attached to the strap of my purse.  I also like the option to close my purse if I need to.  I don't usually zip my bags closed because it's too much of a hassle when you need something quick.  But for instances where your bag falls over and everything falls out, it's nice to at least have a button, velcro, or a magnet to partially keep it closed.  I'm pretty pleased with it.  I think the next one I make will be better, as is the case with most things I make.  You can always improve your design/art I say.

So the Arts and Wellness fair wasn't a complete bust like one of the others I did last year, which is encouraging.  I made back the money I paid for the booth plus ten dollars.  So not a complete loss, thank goodness.  Kevin was nice and kept me company for most of the day.  It's always nice to have someone there with you especially for bathroom breaks.  Although, the staff that was there from Meiklem Kiln Works was always willing to help out and give bathroom breaks.  The staff and volunteers were so nice and super helpful.

Looking out from the back of my booth.

So something kind of awesome happened at the fair.  So I had two prints of a Godzilla etching I had done in art school.  I unfortunately left my etching plate at school and it got stolen.  My own fault, but still I was really proud of it and it bummed me out.  BUT!!!  Three people were interested in the prints.  One woman said she had to have it and borrowed money from her friend so she could get it.  This made me really consider doing the PayPal Here card swiper.  Kevin's Aunt bought the other print I had left.  I felt bad because the third person was a vendor and when he stopped by to check it out, both the prints were gone!  I guess I might have to do another drawing for next year to make it up to him.  That made me think that fan art might sell.  I don't know if I want to do a lot of that though.  

So lastly I will tell you the tale of Kevin and my experience with a tasting.  The nice thing about this caterer is that they're located in the same town that we're having out wedding, Narragansett, RI.  So we started our tasting with some options for passed hour d'oeuvres.  Some of the ones on the plate were ones we chose as an option like the bacon wrapped scallop.  It was really awesome so we're keeping that one for sure.  But some of the other options just wouldn't work for us like the fig pouch.  It was way too sweet.  Then KC, our contact at the caterer, brought out the salad.  Beautiful as well, and the dressing was really nice.  It was a honey thyme vinaigrette.  Nice and light, so we're not going to do two dressing option for our guests.  Sorry guys.  THEN came the main course options that we picked!
Mind you we didn't get to try our vegetarian option, but I think it will be fine.  We tried a cut of beef and a stuffed chicken.  The beef was awesome, but we both wished the stuffed chicken had more stuffing.  We're going to either re-think the chicken or ask if there can be a little more stuffing.  So here are some pictures of the food we tasted and of our venue, The Kinney Bungalow.

Garden salad with honey thyme vinaigrette dressing. 

Chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto, mozzarella cheese, and spinach.  With a side of asparagus and herbed risotto.

A cut of beef with a horseradish aioli sauce.  With a side of asparagus and herbed risotto.

The Kinney Bungalow in Narragansett, RI.

Today I visit with my Grandmother, who I haven't seen since Easter!  I'm the worst!  It will be nice to see her =0)  We'll be getting ice cream as it is one of her most favorite summer pastimes.  Have a great weekend everyone!