Last week Kelly Light asked my to contribute to her fundraiser, ripple. It’s for a great cuase and a good way to get some original pieces from your favorite illustrators.

As a child I remember pouring through my 1981 edition of Childcraft’s Make and Do book year after year making things. I even had a little song made up for it and still sing it in my head when I see the book:

“Makin’ do, makin’ do. I just love o’ makin’ do.”

We went to the library Tuesday and they had their books sale going on and I spotted the 1974 edition and had to have it. Fifty cents later it was all mine! It wasn’t full color and the illustrations throughout are amazing and very Mary Blair’esk:

I had the Woog browse through the blue one this morning and see what things she could make by herself and of course she choose things that required supplies we didn’t have, like coffee can stilts. She then found a page about making clay animals and did that. My favorite things to make were:

I always wanted to make potato stamps but I guess they were too messy or we didn’t have potatoes. But I see potato buying in my future though. Looks like a good Woogie Wednesday project. Hey, maybe we can do a Julie & Julia type things and go through the entire Make and Do book in a year. Yeah, not likely!

In other news, since I switch my blog over to WordPress, my RSS feed seems to have changed so be sure to update your feeds.

A first grader is officially in the house! We made it through kindergarten. After her graduation we put her to bed crying because she wanted to stay in Kindergarten and be with her teacher. I don’t know if she fully realizes that she won’t go to school all summer and when she goes back she’ll have a new teacher and classroom. Hopefully we will be able to gear her up for first grade and she will be as excited to start as she was for Kindergarten.

Over the last week or so we’ve been getting all our end of the year gifts in order which took a lot longer than expected and tried to work them all in between deadlines. Here’s just a few things we did to complete the school year:

We have a lot of fun summer things planned like teaching the the Woog to sew, tie-dye, etc. and we’re bringing Woogie Wednesdays back in full force so be on the lookout for that. For me, I’ll be using my summertime to work on a few projects that have been on my list to start and complete for some time now. They’re going to be good, I promise

^quick iphone shot

I finally was able to switch my blog over to WordPress so I can post again but my comments didn’t transfer over like I wanted so I’m having to go back and manually copy each of the several hundred comments over so that might take a while!

I’ve been in the process since Easter of redecorating and reorganizing my studio. I’m not done yet (deadlines, life & motivation have been in the way) but hopefully I’ll get it all painted and pretty in the next few weeks. I’ll post a full tour when it’s all up to snuff.

My favorite stress reliever (apart from sleep and a good movie) is going to antique stores. I love browsing old things and digging through junk and there’s something very relaxing about it. I love items that hold a memory like finding things that my grandmother used to have or something I had as a child. The above is a huge old suitcase I found a few months back for only $18 and inside was an old pin of pilot wings. I wonder were they were going when they got those wings and who exactly was F.C.T?

Last week I went and did an Earth Day project with the Woog’s kindergarten class and we made Junk A Doodles®.

There’s a Tea Party coming with 19 squealing little girls. The Woog turns 6!

This week, the hero of the week in the Woog’s class is Vincent van Gogh, so we did a little Woogie Wednesday project to learn more about him. Starry Night is my favorite piece of his (and the Woog’s too!) so we took the project outside and used sidewalk chalk to recreate the work on the deck.

I remember when I was in 5th grade, we did a starry night project using oil pastels and I thought it was so fun. I remember meticulously making my swirls and dashed lines.

Ironically, I was going through the pictures on my iphone the other day and found several I took while at the Met last summer. These were pretty awesome to see:

Starry Night is on display at MoMA so maybe next time I’m up that way I’ll get a peek of it if it’s still there.

A leprechaun came to the house today and did some silly things! We found a note this morning:

taken with my iphone so it’s a little blurry

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!
Can you find all 10 things changed by me?
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
-Mr. Leprechaun

P.S. Don’t forget to eat your Lucky Charms”

There were 10 things he changed in the the house so we ran around trying to find them all. Only one was the most obvious:

taken with my iphone so it’s a little blurry

Here is all the changed links in order of when they were found:
1. Shamrock drawn on chalkboard
2. Suitcase in bathtub
3. Lampshade upside down
4. Can of ravioli on the tv cabinet
5. Kit hanging upside down by her shoes on the window curtain
6. Flamica shoes on her huge baby doll
7. Her Liz Lomax cow parade bank upside down
8. Book in the bathroom upside down
9. Tennis shows on the freezer
10. Her picture turn upside down in a frame

Last Friday he came to the Woog’s school and did silly things in the classroom and when she got home, he had totally messed up her room AND “tinkled” (out chosen potty word) in all our toilets without flushing. They all had green tinkle in them!

Silly leprechaun!

This week is read Across America week in celebration of Dr. Suess’s birthday. The Woog had activities all week at school and today they were to come as one of his characters so, I sent her off with a wocket in her pocket. It was so cute to see little Cat in the Hats, Cindy Lou Who’s, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 running around the Kindergarten hall.

We also worked on a Woogie Wednesday/Weekday/Weekend project of the Cat in the Hat. We made a Junk A Seuss-le:

As a creative person I have always loved Dr. Seuss and his weird and wacky world. I love the rhymes and his playful use of made up characters. When I was in Orlando once I saw one of his taxidermy pieces and thought they were awesome. I’ve always thought I would make my owe sometime with my art. I found another artist who did one here. I found a cool flickr stream with pictures from the Seuss exhibit at Fresno Metropolitan Museum:

photo via jentwo

My favorite book of his has to be The Shape of Me and Other Stuff. It was one of the books the Woog always wanted me to read her so I have it all memorized plus I love how Suess-like the simple shapes are. Amazing! What’s your favorite Dr. Suess book?