Drawing Craig

We're coming up on the second anniversary of Craig's passing. I had the idea, a while back, that I'd like to draw a picture of him for his wife Shellee, but it took me a long time to get it done.  (A lot of my ideas are like this.  I'm full of ideas--less full of actually doing.  I admire people who are good at Getting Things Done!)

I started the drawing almost a year ago. Back in May of last year, I was asked to give the Young Women (at church) a drawing lesson for their weekly activity. I thought this would be a great time to start on my drawing of Craig. I could show them how to do a graphite transfer tracing, and how to draw eyes.



Step one: print out two copies of the photo. Scribble all over the back of one copy with a dark pencil, making sure to cover the whole area that you'll be tracing.



Step two: tape printout, pencil side down, onto your drawing paper. I do have some drafting tape but it's hard to find these days. You can also take some regular masking tape and stick it to your clothes a few times to get it fuzzy. The idea is to have tape that will come off without tearing the paper. (I suppose you could use temporary Hermafix or something like that, too.)

Step three: trace over all the outlines on the photo, making sure not to shift the paper. I generally use a mechanical pencil for this part. If you can, try not to press too hard because you'll make grooves in your paper that can affect the drawing.



Step four: remove printout. You now have all the outlines of the photo transferred to your drawing paper, and all you have to do is fill in the shading.

(That's the tricky part, of course!)

I got the drawing partly done, and then didn't touch it for months. Then I saw that there was going to be an art show at the church. (Motivation!) The submission deadline was two weeks before the show, so I finished it up enough to look presentable, took a picture to submit (and got accepted), and then I had two more weeks to really finish.



When I draw, Doug is my consultant. He's got a good eye for this sort of thing. After I've been staring at something for hours (or days), sometimes he can see something that I haven't noticed. So I'm used to giving him a how-does-this-look a few times, when I'm finishing up a drawing. This one was a little unusual, being his brother. Not just "Does this shading look right to you?" but "Is this Craig? Did I get him?" Kind of a different experience.

We got the drawing packed up and mailed last week. In the end, I think two years was just right for something like this. A friend on Two Peas said, "The first year as a widow is such a fog, the second year is when you begin to feel all the real anniversaries and the third year is usually is when you can begin to breathe again." I know Craig's family still misses him terribly.

Eyes on Dr. Seuss

It's Dr. Seuss's birthday! Kate had a special assembly at school today, and she said their principal dressed up as the Cat in the Hat.

Dr. Seuss's whimsical artwork is certainly distinctive and probably instantly recognizable to just about everybody.  There's one particular thing about his illustrations that I noticed a while back--how often he draws characters with their eyes closed. 



I first noticed this when reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I had commented to Doug that the kids come across as rather annoyingly smug.



You've never milked a cow like this?  Obviously, you're not as cool as we are.  In fact, we are so cool that we can milk this cow with our eyes closed.  Even the cow has its eyes closed.



The closed eyes seem to indicate that a character is calm, relaxed, untroubled by the bizarre circumstances he may find himself in. Stuck in a pail? Not to worry. Balancing an umbrella on one finger? Piece of cake.




Many characters have their eyes closed when first introduced.





Mr. Brown never does open his eyes for the entire book. He seems to be a remarkably self-assured individual. Either that or he developed his unusual talent to compensate for his lack of eyesight.



Closed eyes come in clusters.



Even Knox, at the beginning of Fox in Socks, is happy and calm, until the Fox starts making things difficult for him.



He does have his eyes closed in many pictures, though, as you can see, it's rather a different kind of eye closing. The fox has that familiar annoyingly smug expression.




Not until Knox finally gets the better of the Fox at the end does he look happy again.. (Hopefully he won't trip going down those stairs with his eyes closed.)



Sam I Am and his unnamed companion are both in a good mood at the end of Green Eggs and Ham.

And of course we can't forget I Can Read With My Eyes Shut.

In closing (heh) here's a picture of Doug when he was three years old, with a copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (along with big brother Al and baby Craig).



Happy birthday Dr. Seuss!

Sometimes you can't grab the camera.

"Don't get mad, take pictures!" is a phrase some of you might be familiar with from the scrapbooking (and blogging) world. If, for example, you discover that your child has decorated himself with your stamping ink, or covered the kitchen floor in plastic baggies, just treat it as a photo op!

The other day, when I was working on lunch, I discovered Andy squatting next to a pile of noodles in the middle of the living room carpet, with an empty colander beside him. I must admit that the camera was not the first thing that went through my mind. Whoops! Apparently I wasn't feeding him quickly enough.

The Big Four-Oh

Yes, I spent my fortieth birthday playing with Legos.  (Excuse me--LEGO bricks.)  Second childhood?

I've been getting used to "going to be forty" for a while.  Now that part's past and I am forty.  Funny how that happens.  I don't feel forty.  (Apparently I don't look forty, either.  People are often surprised to learn how old I am.  Or maybe it's just that my kids are so young.)

Doug and the kids were all recovering from colds, so I went to church by myself. (I think a lot of other people were sick too--we only had one child in nursery.  It was a very low-key kind of day.)   Then home for birthday lunch and LEGO!



First, the pictures with the adorable children!





The card Kate made for me.




The present!  LEGO Medieval Market Village--1601 little plastic pieces of fun.  I've been drooling over this set for a while.  Half-timbered houses!  How cool is that?



Kate couldn't wait to help unload the box.  "I think there's more in here!"  (She's wearing a watch that Becki Foutz brought back from Hawaii for her.)



"Cows!"



This is what 1601 pieces of LEGO looks like. Lots of bags.



Mother-daughter LEGO time. What a nice way to spend a birthday!



Kate helps put together the tree.



(The tree is kind of annoying--it doesn't stay together very well.)



It's not a simple set to put together!  Its was especially tricky trying to assemble everything while Kate was playing with the pieces.  I would spend long minutes looking for one specific part, only to discover that Kate had attached it to something random in a humorous manner.  This happened several times.

We still haven't quite finished.  I'll post more pictures when it's done!

It was a lovely day, with many calls from my family and aggressively off-key renditions of "Happy Birthday" (except for Barb and Kyle, who for some reason prefer to sing in the key of "on.")  Doug cooked for us (twice) even though he wasn't feeling entirely well.  I had plans to put some candles in a Honeycrisp apple, in lieu of a cake, but we got busy and ate the apple without the candles.  It was quite tasty.

Operation Tamale: the first attempt

I don't think I've ever mentioned here that Doug served a mission in Texas (San Antonio, English speaking). His first encounter with tamales was not with frozen, store-bought tamales, or even restaurant tamales, but fresh, handmade tamales in a family's home.  It must have been a memorable experience.

We had some neighbors from Mexico, here in our apartment complex, and the mom said that she would invite us over when she made tamales so we could learn how it was done.  Unfortunately, the day that she sent the kids over to tell us it was tamale day just happened to be the day that we were going to the fair.  And then they moved.  Alas.  So we did not get to learn tamale making from Mrs. Medina.

This Monday, while Kate was off enjoying the Presidents' day holiday at her friend Maddy's house, we made our first attempt at our own chicken tamales.  Doug had previously purchased the corn husks and masa, and looked up recipes online.  (We didn't follow just one recipe, so I don't have a specific one to link to.)



Initial assembly.  Rolling them up in the corn husks is a lot like using a bamboo mat to roll sushi.  Practically the same.  My sushi-rolling experience definitely came in handy.



All wrapped up and ready to steam.  They weren't holding together very well, so we tied little strips of corn husk around them.   I think they look kind of cute that way, like little corn husk dolls.



And after steaming! They were a bit crumbly put tasted pretty good. Not bad at all for the first try.  If anyone out there would like to share their tamale-making expertise, we'd appreciate any tips!

One Month of Swag Bucks

In one month of doing Swag Bucks I've been able to get $35 in Amazon gift cards and $5 in PayPal cash. (At this point I'm thinking--more LEGO!)

The other day Kate asked me something (can't remember now what it was) and when I told her I didn't know, she said, "You should look it up! Maybe you can earn Swag Bucks!"

(Here's my referral link in case anybody's interested. If you sign up under me I'll get points for your searches!)

Mini We

Our family in LEGO minifigs!  Aren't they cute?  I think I got Doug down pretty well, aside from the hairline of course.  And I wasn't able to get the girl's and boy's hair in the same color.  The fun thing is that Kate really does have a pink shirt with white sleeves like that.

Kate gets a kick out of the LEGO family.  It's so funny to listen to her playing with them.  ("Oh no, Andy's been captured!  You have to help him!")



Minifig Kate has her own pet dragon!  Kate thinks this is awesome.

I got some of the parts directly from LEGO and found some on BrickLink. BrickLink is a very cool site. A little hard to figure out at first, but very, very cool. (While I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for Bricklyn Bridge. Great service!)

Post-Pasta

(As opposed to ante-pasta.)

100 Butterflies

It's the one hundredth day of school! I know when I was in school we never even knew when the hundredth day was, but this seems to be a fairly common thing now.  There's even a song about it on Starfall.

Kate's teacher gave each of the students a big sheet of paper to put one hundred things on.  Grandma Mary sent Kate some cute butterfly stickers for Valentine's Day, so we decided to do one hundred butterflies.



Kate put the stickers together and then made these cute little fingerprint butterflies with my stamping ink.




Here's the final result! Stickers, drawings, stamps, fingerprints (the large fingerprints are mine), and lots and lots of punchies. The funny-looking one at the bottom is a Shark Butterfly.

We also sent along one hundred raisins for the "100 day trail mix."  (Actually the paper that Kate brought home said "trial mix," but I'm assuming that was a typo.)

What an exciting week it's been at school!  And it's only Tuesday!

Making Valentines

Being a parent with a child in school is a new experience. There are all these things that I never had to think about before. It didn't dawn on me until the afternoon of the 13th that Kate would need some valentines for her class.I asked her if she would like to make some and she thought that was a great idea.



My budding crafter. It was so fun to see her really getting into it. She said, "I'm going to do it my own way!" and she did. She made valentines for all the kids in her class, her teacher, her reading group teacher, and the librarian (they have library on Monday), and one for her friend Trinity who's in a different class.



They had a big party in their classroom. Kate came home all excited and bearing treats.




Taking inventory of the Valentine party haul. (Candy! Exciting!)



Doug brought me some daffodils. Awww.

Happy Valentine's day!