Life in Texas (The One Where We Painted)

First off, this is the BEST picture of my two year old niece, Sabrina.

It captures her spirit to a T!

Ok, so on to the painting I promised.

I have some blank walls in my house! Like, a lot.

I thought it would be fun to enlist my nieces help. We took a trip to Hobby Lobby to buy paint and canvases. I let the girls take complete control over their artwork. Ella painted a desert scene and Lanaia used Bindi as her inspiration.

Even Sabrina got messy!

Life in the Desert

When I first moved to Arizona, there were people (cough, mom, cough) who said how brown it was. How there were no flowers or green places. Yes, Arizona is brown. And yes, we do have flowers. If you spend enough money on water, you can even grown grass!

After six years of living in the low desert, I have learned to love the subtle beauty of cactus and sage bushes.

Last Sunday, I was getting restless. I packed up the dog, my camera and hit the road for an adventure.

One of my favorite signs to see! I wish I had a picture of the couple that was riding down the road.

Not your typical desert house. Reminds me of home.

If you know anything about Phoenix, you’ll recognize Central Avenue!

Life in Art

Wanna find out how to turn this:

(Yes, that IS the largest coffee filter known to man! If you can find a machine that it will fit in, let me know!)

Into this:First you'll need to grab all your supplies.

Go...now...really...I'll wait for you!

You'll need:

Round Coffee filters of any size

Washable Markers

Spray bottle with water

Pipe cleaners or twist ties

*Pretty ribbon (If you are super fancy, I am not!)

Ready...Set...Craft!
My Mother's Day project for school turned into a "Shoot, you need to get something done...TODAY!" type of project. Thankfully, our art closet is full of awesome supplies and usually gives me some great inspiration. I like to do something different every year so my repeat moms don't have two or three of the same projects at their house. I usually like to make something with flowers and this year was much of the same.

We first started with the giant coffee filter and some washable markers. Which is basically super absorbent paper towel. In fact, you can use paper towel for this project, too. Smaller coffee filters do the trick too.

I told the kiddos to just color huge chunks the same color.

Grab a spray bottle with some water and go to town! The more water you spray, the more the color will bleed.

When they are dry, pull the center into a cone and tie it off with a pipecleaner or twist tie.

For some reason we only had orange left!

Add as many "flowers" as your heart desires. We found out that three worked well because our filters were so big.

*(Here is where the fancy ribbon comes in handy)

There you have it. Super simple art. What a fun way to spend a sunny day outside with your kids. Also a great way to get rid of all those extra markers you have lying around the house*.

*You know you have a ton!