you spin me round round

Here is Ella at Kinder for the last time. So beautiful - dressed up to the nines - spinning a full circle on the trapeze and yelling to her friend Felicity to 'leap onto me!'

the smell of green

We've had lovely rain lately.

house-bound house-found 2

Ale's birthday star, Ella's skirt design, love bag, alphabet, bye-bye in chinese, Ella's jobs, cupboard of tiny found things, Blondie lyrics, and Proper Moments for Drinking Tea ...

christmas crafty plans (present ideas carefully hidden), collage dragon (from school), recipe for 'icky-sticky fruit pops', paintings, mandala

Folding girls, dolphins, people and stars - a project with Nana.

house-bound house-found

We are a little bit house-bound at the moment - and spending a lot of time in familiar spaces. So these pictures are of our everyday things, things I see all day everyday. The tour goes like this:

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Stop 1: inside the the dishwasher

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Stop 2: on the wall with the skillet and pan

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Stop 3: back to the dishwasher - the shiny side

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Stop 4: the big picture - whole kitchen

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examine and see

I am going to school

Orange hat, green hoody, lime dress, rainbow leggings, pink socks, red boots - tall little girl full of anticipation. We went to Ella's first school orientation visit - she was so keen and nervous and shy.

And just a moment ago:

what you see - around and about

big screen entertainment

Ella and Jamie get themselves into the frame at ACMI.

bag painting

Two bag artists stand proudly by their work. I keep paper bags and every now and then we get them out and decorate a few for gift-bags. It was hard getting the logistics of this art project sorted out because Ella had everything carefully set up on a special little table that Jamie wanted access to so mucho shouting, shrieking and paintbrush snatching. This isn't the kind of vibe you hope for in a chilled out spring garden art project, but we pressed on. I hung the results to dry on the climbing frame and decided to take a few pics - both artists quickly edged into the frame to appear with their work.

open for business

In our garden - a small cafe.

It's spring in the Pirate Park

how to paint

Another rainy afternoon, so what about a bit of painting for everyone? This was the first time our boy got into painting and I think the pictures can tell the story. We are talking Max Mess of paint and water for both small painters, plus a very large range of large and small brushes plus various painting tools: spot-maker, line-maker, wedge-thing - all pressed busily into lots of squishy paints. So much for limiting the number of tools out at once. Everything was out, everything being squished and mixed and sloshed about. Pure painting happiness. Sadly Jamie's masterpiece could not be saved - by the end it was a puddle. But Ella's has been remade into a book cover as part of my new book-binding project - will try and get some photos up soon.

Grey - with colourful spots

We've had a lot of grey lately so I've been on the lookout for bright. There's a lot of it about, as they say, if you look closely.

Eat, walk, explore

a happy grubby curry-eating boy.

A very busy walk - and what a fabulous big blue street-drum

A bit of winter colour, a few problems with a camera.

the house in the city

Ella writes: This is Ella's drawing - she did it by herself on KidPix. It's a rainbow picture.

Doing ArtTivities

Ella writes: Bookmaking and activities. Headdress with an aeroplane - that was very fun. I made a book by myself. i love making books. i love doing activities. I've been learning letters a lot.

Pink is a Primary Colour

This is an old photo but I had to find something that properly illustrated this comment by Ella the other day. We'd been doing a lot of painting in the morning, with plenty of experimenting with creating different colours by mixing things together. This involved a lot of messy paint and a lot of questions "How do you make green?" "How do you make purple?" etc. Many green and purple spots later, we were up to "how do you make red?", which led to "red is a primary colour." Later at dinner colour mixing resurfaced in the conversation and I asked Ella "how do you make pink?." Ella says, "Pink is a primary colour" and Edward says "Yes, for you Ella that is certainly true."