Today was one of those very cold, clear days with blue skies and fresh snow. I snapped photos until I realized my finger tips were starting to ache and sting, not a good thing when the temperature is -20°C!
Our children have made some fairly elaborate gingerbread houses with friends over the years. This year B11 and I went back to basics with a yummy little gluten free cottage.
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Houses made in previous years:
2008 House
2008 Church
2008 Village
2007 Lighthouse and Little House on the Prairie
Every Christmas I choose a different colour scheme for the Christmas tree and other decorating. This year A15 put in a bid for lime green so we went with it, hanging new balls and buying some sparkly green candles. The candles were pretty but they made a big mess over the candlesticks and the mantle.
We have a new IKEA in the city and I will head there this week to stock up on candles; it was too scary to go before Christmas only days after it opened.
We enjoyed some relaxing family time and some fun with friends as well. It was lovely to have Andrew’s mum here with us to celebrate Christmas and experience a bit of Ottawa winter. As always we were spoilt by Andrew’s excellent cooking; the turkey was done with the new Smokenator 1000!
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I am still hoping for a white Christmas but we have less snow now than when I took these photos two weeks ago
If there is no wind the world can stay looking magical for hours. This snowfall was two weeks ago and stayed for a couple of days until the unusually “warm’ temperatures made it disappear.
Art Class: Lino Printing 2
Published December 3, 2011 Hand made , Homeschooling Leave a CommentTags: Art
We continued carving and printing our linocuts and designed a second smaller one each as well. Here is a squirrel S12 carved .
The lino cut below shows the amount of carving required to create a design with little or no background. As you can see in the card the finished product looked great. L14 printed it in red ink and sponged extra colour onto the paper after printing. I bought speedball printing ink for our second week and it worked well.
A15 printed her shoe in a few different colours and we are hoping to print it three times in colours which will work in her room then frame them.
My own linoprint is posted on my paintings page
Several blogs I read post links to a selection of interesting posts and sites each weekend. I am not promising anything as regular as that. Any readers visiting here know that there is nothing regular about my blogs at present but I have come across a few posts lately that really appealed to me so I thought I would share.
Take a look if you like:
- I love wearing scarves so this post was right up my alley: 25 Ways to wear a scarf in 4.5 minutes. I most often wear my scarves in the “The Modern One Loop” but within 48 hours of watching the video I had worn the “Infinity”, the “Bunny Ears” and the “Hidden Knot”! I’ve even taken to rearranging my friend’s scarves while they are wearing them.
- I was quite taken with a post by Layla from The Lettered Cottage. She posted some photos of a very whimsical campsite where she and her mother spent a few days, along with a very personal list of Things I’d tell my 17-Year-Old Self.
- I came across this dress which is quite lovely. So…I am going to see if I can make one just like it.
- Having been introduced to slacklining when we bought one for B11 a few years back, all of us were astounded by the trailer for I Believe I Can Fly. We have now bought the documentary and I can’t wait to watch it.(HT: Cup of Jo)
- B11 and I were impressed by these paintings by Alexa Reade. They are not quite what they seem or perhaps they are.
(photo:A15)
Ottawa hosts a Busker’s festival every summer. A15, B10 and I went downtown to see what was happening. We have been several times before and I am always amused to see how many Australian acts there are. We stopped and watched four acts this year and two were Australian. I told B10 it was because Math and Science in the Australian schools had been replaced by Circus Studies and Street Performing Arts. He wants to move!
The Juggle Bugs below were great but it was early on the first night and hard to drum up an audience.
Flame Oz came out after dark and they were pretty impressive.
Art Class: Lino Printing 1
Published November 2, 2011 Hand made , Homeschooling 3 CommentsTags: Art
As a lead up to creating some lino prints we spent one week designing potato prints. Although it may have seemed like a step back into kindergarten it was a good exercise to get everyone thinking about positive and negative designs and carving the mirror image of what they wanted to see in their final print. The lino blocks are of course a little pricier than potatoes so the preparation was worthwhile.
B11 created some car logos, cars being his current passion. I carved a leaf and some abstract patterns. There was a paisley design, a few names and letters, an eye and a quite impressive albeit mirrored image world map.
The following week we began by designing our lino cuts. Everyone had to decide whether they wanted to create a negative or positive design. One way you carve your design out of the lino block leaving lino around the design. The other method is to carve away all that is not your design so that it remains at the end to be inked. Once the designs had been transferred or redrawn on the lino blocks everyone started carving. The carving tools are very sharp. A few of the students made me nervous. Band aids were needed!
The first prints were done using Stampin’Up Craft ink and the coverage wasn’t too bad; the smoother the paper the better the print. I am going to get some ink specifically designed for block printing and see what the difference is.
We have six big trees in our backyard so the raking task is huge.
At least this year B11 can use a cool tool to do it.
It’s way more fun than a rake.
But as you can see he’s not even half way there yet.
