Blank slate update

I have decided on the color scheme!!! It seemed that 'cool' was most popular, thank you to those who commented and emailed me, your input was helpful in my decision making process.

My husband Mark weighed in also and said we needed to pick a color that allowed us to put furniture from our house out there (he plans on buying some new things for our house), so that means we have to go somewhat warm (as most of our furniture is heavy and dark). I found a compromise. I have chosen colors inspired by the stonework on the outside of my house and a tray with a glass bead handle that my husband won at a silent auction this week.

On the walls I will do a light, yellowy beige, the trim will be white and in some of the rooms the walls will be a light sea green blue/gray.  The accent colors will be burnt orange and turquoise. The fixtures stainless steel and the countertops black (with flecks of blue and yellow). I found a tile at Home Depot with all the colors in it for the backsplash in the kitchen. I am very pleased with how this is going!!!

If you are interested I did a video update and posted it to Facebook.

Blank slate

Yes, I know I am a lucky girl right now. I get to choose the color scheme for the granny flat we are building. This week I need to choose do I go warm, like my current house...

or cool...

I think my mother would like cool, Lily & Matthew wants cool. Mark likes bold, warm and colorful but will go with whatever I choose. I am torn. When I am looking at house books I always like to look at the cool, sea colored, shabby chic houses, but when I am in a furniture store I always go with big and heavy and medieval.

torn, torn, torn

I have this blank slate to work with. I think I will be mood boarding this week. 

View from door to French doors off living room

View from living room towards back bedroom (left) and study (right)

View from living room to kitchen, that window will have the sink below it

Taped, floated and ready for paint. Oh, I have to pick cabinet and counter top colors too!!

Do you have any suggestions for helping me make that choice?

Kitchen re-do video

The dust has been cleared away and I am officially back to an organized life. Phew, my advice - don't go into a kitchen renovation lightly. It really does affect every part of your world. Thankfully, I am loving my new kitchen; the space and style suits our family. (you can see a little of what my old kitchen looked like in this post from 2009)

The new look Cole kitchen

I have a lot of catch up to do in terms of Somerset art deadlines, so it will be a while still until I am back to regular blogging. I promise to be here on Saturdays. After that, if I get to visit your blog and do more posts I will consider it gravy.

Here is a video I made last night of my kitchen.



Mentioned in this video are:

Shannon Mucha, my dear friend who came over on numerous occasions to help me arrange my house and reestablish order.

And the Wishstudio playgroup 'wish play create'. I am leading the first of 5 weeks of crafting classes. Mine is on August 30th. You can sign up for it here at the Wishstudio.

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I am busy planning my year schedule. One thing I am super excited about is that Laura is starting ballet and jazz. I just have this feeling that she has what it takes to be a dancer and this could be the beginning of that path. I found a class that is on the same time that Lily is at gymnastics, so schedule wise it is doable. I have always loved dance. I recommend this dance video, the quality of the recording is not great, but the feeling is all there. It is a beautiful picture of marriage.

My dream has always been that one of my children would be a dancer, one a singer/musician, a writer and one an artist/photographer. (I do not tell them this, I do not want to be a stage mother and I don't want to influence them from their God given path, but I am sure that it oozes out at times). Oh, but to see talent develop in front of me would be bliss.

Laura will be doing ballet this year!

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On to this week's giveaway. 

To recap - I like to giveaway something handmade to folks who sign up to follow my blog. It is a way to practice giving and to say thank you for being a part of my blog. I have been doing this on Saturdays since late last year. I use the random generator to find a winner. 

This week I am giving my 'winner' a choice of gifts. 

First choice is this little birdhouse. It is wooden and decorated with scrapbook papers, stamps and paint. It was featured in a Stampington magazine, but I can't remember which one! 

You can see it hanging from it's beaded handle in my craft room:

The second choice is this ATC notebook. I showed how I made it a few months back in this blog post.

and the choice goes to

Nelesc of The Reconstructed Life

Let's talk over email. I can get your mailing address and your choice and mail it off next week.

Thank you to everyone who is listed at a follower of this blog. I appreciate your shout out of support.

I am underwater right now. In a sea of remodeling. It will be all OK in the end, but living through it is tough when you have 5 kids and no kitchen, not to mention unfinished concrete floors and a crawling baby! The things we do to improve our lives always take work, thought, creativity and agony. Like college, like exercise. Hard at the time, but worth it in the long run.

The process should be complete next week and I will be able to reassemble my life and get back to blogging.

For now, please excuse the dust of my absence. 

castle influences

I can see how my taste in house style has it's roots in my Irish heritage. You can see it in my bedroom here and my living room here! Now if only my floor tile was as rustic as the floors of Bunratty Castle :)

New bedroom and Starter Kit #3 winner

I mentioned last week that we are switching bedrooms around. We painted our girl's old bedroom and made it the master. Before I announce the winner of this, the third of my Artistic Mother Starter Kits, I thought you may enjoy some views of the room (the color of the walls is more green than in these photos):

The bedding is from Anthropologie, the furniture from Cierra Interiors and the bits and pieces are from a combo of Marshalls & Tuesday Morning. 

This room is not fully complete, we need curtains on the double doors that open out onto the front porch.

We chose some new colors and went bold. I am glad we did as the room feels like we are on holiday in the Southwest!


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So on with the winner of last Saturday's GIVEAWAY!

Again, thank you to ALL those folks who entered for the chance to win the 'Artistic Mother Starter Kit'. 

The randomly generated winner is C-Joy. I do hope that these supplies give you a burst of creative energy!

AND just for fun.....

I am going to send an ATC to the first person to comment on that post..... Paper Pumpkin!

I will talk to you both via email :)

For everyone else:

This Saturday I will be giving away another kit, so if you don't mind coming back to leave a comment again (sorry to make you do that, but it is the fairest way I think). I will have another tutorial or something fun posted too to make it worth your while!

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In May I will be doing another Saturday Follower giveaway. The ranks have grown! As there are now over 540 folks following this blog I will be giving away 2 handmade things each Saturday in May. So please check back in to see if your name comes up!

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Thoughts on change and Starter Kit winner #2

I love moving house or renovating. But it is ever so bitter sweet. I remember when Mark and I sold our very first home. I was so driven to sell the house and to find a new one in a better neighborhood and ecstatic when it sold in 6 days. But as we drove away for the last time I cried. I cried because that era of our life was over. I would never again lie in that bedroom and see the branches scratch the window just so. I would never again experience the way the light moved around the kitchen. All would become only a memory.

That is life. I know. We move on and what was familiar becomes the past. We learn to love the new; and soon the new version becomes our beautiful reality. I have a special place in me that revels in the thoughts of those old versions of my life!

This week in our house we are painting and shifting space. My girls have slept in the downstairs bedroom for 5 years. In that pink and yellow room I painted a giant castle on the wall (I never quite finished it). The girls would lie in bed and make stories up about the castle; it has been the backdrop for many an adventure. But it is no longer! The girls are moving to new bedrooms (Laura upstairs, Lily to the guest room which is now purple) and we are moving in to theirs! Painters came and primed and painted over the castle.

It has become a part of our memory.

I can hear the conversations in the future ‘Hey, Mom remember that castle? I use to imagine that big blue bird would fly off the wall and out the door’ ‘What color were those flags?’ ‘That was a cool castle, why didn’t you ever finish painting the garden like you said your would?’ ‘I wish I could see it one last time’. Thank goodness for cameras! I only wish they captured the feeling, the surrounding memories, the smells too.

Isn’t there something both exciting and sad about change?

Sail away!

When this room is completed I will share some photos - I am telling you it is wild - we painted the walls purple & sea green/blue/grey, the floors are burnt orange tile. We bought this bedspread from Anthropologie similar colors!!!! Oh my, it is different. So stay tuned.



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So on with the winner of last Saturday's GIVEAWAY!

Again, thank you to ALL those folks who entered for the chance to win the 'Artistic Mother Starter Kit'. 

The randomly generated winner is Chandra of 'a project a day'. I do hope that these supplies give you a burst of creative energy!

AND just for fun.....

I am going to send an ATC to the first person to comment on that post....

Stefanie Lin aka Artsy Momma 

I will talk to you both via email :)

For everyone else:

This Saturday I will be giving away another kit, so if you don't mind coming back to leave a comment again (sorry to make you do that, but it is the fairest way I think). I will have another tutorial or something fun posted too to make it worth your while!

******************

In May I will be doing another Saturday Follower giveaway. The ranks have grown! As there are now over 520 folks following this blog I will be giving away 2 handmade things each Saturday in May. So please check back in to see if your name comes up!

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I was so excited to see my blog will be featured in the upcoming Artful Blogging magazine! You can see my spread layout on Stampington. Those eyes on the cover under the title are my Laura's! What a joy to me!

It will be available May 1. 

Making artist's papers

This morning Laura slept late so Lily and I decided to fill in the time looking at craft videos on Youtube. We looked at a whole bunch, Lily was so inspired that she wanted to craft too. The video that finally put her over the inspirational top was this one about making artist's papers from Stampington & Co. (In Week 1 of the workshop in my book, The Artistic Mother, I have directions for making background papers, which is pretty much the same as 'artists papers')



At first I was reluctant as I would have to get out all those supplies and then Laura may come down and want to do it too and then we would never get school started. But when Lily offered to get the supplies out I knew she really wanted to craft and I didn't want to deny her just cause I was being a little lazy. As I looked at her earnest face I envisioned the project I had the wave of motivation I needed.

She picked out pink and purple paint and got a large paint brush off my craft table. I found a piece of bubble wrap conveniently stored on the ground in my craft room and tore a few pages out of an old journal for the background. Lily choose a few stamps. I grabbed my favorite Staz On ink and a piece of yesterdays local newspaper and we were good to go.

A few weeks ago in nature class we studied flowers and we pressed a few (sadly, not grown in our garden, but bought from the florist). I remembered them and suggested she use them in her artist's papers. Everything was was coming together smoothly and easily.



Step One:

Here she is stamping with acrylic paint on bubble wrap, just as in the video.


She worked in a conveyor belt style, completing each step on each background sheet at the same time.


Step Two:

She randomly stamped a heart and snowflake rubber stamp with purple and orange Staz On ink.

Step Three:

Lily then glued on the pressed flowers. She planned out where the flowers would go first and then used regular liquid school glue to glue them in place. It was then that she decided to give these papers to her friends. I suggested that because the substrate is old paper they would need to be mounted onto something. We brainstormed ideas and decided cardboard would be best and that we could make them into wall hangings! For Christmas gifts! Way to go Lily thinking ahead.

Step Four:

She typed up her friends names and choose pretty fonts. I printed them onto card stock and trimmed them with her choice of decorative edged scissors. Lily glued them in place.

Step Five:

Later I mounted them on cardboard, covered them in scrapbook paper and layered the papers on top. I decided to do this portion as I used a kraft knife to cut the cardboard (so the lines would be straight) and then spray glue to fix the papers in place and she is too young to do either.

Step Six will be to add wire hangers. I will get to is soon, as I promised her :)

When artistic desires clash

As a visual creature, I like my house to be ordered and stylish.
As a Mom, I want my kids to live creative beautiful lives.

Sometimes these two desires butt heads.

Like today. Every Thursday my husband runs a reading/discussion group called ‘Great Books’. Tonight it was our turn to host. That means I wanted my house in order for my guests. Not perfect, just orderly: chairs pushed into a clean dining table, cushions lined up on as I like them on the sofa, vacuumed floor rug that follows the lines of the tile floor, DVD’s & toys put away, clean towels in the bathrooms, toilets flushed (really! with 4 little kids that has to make it on the list). After a full day of school that seems like a whole bunch of work.

Today I was feeling a little tired, too many late nights, pregnant, working on book marketing ideas, Artist On Call work write ups, episodes of Dexter on Netflix Instant Play (! *guilty smile*).

After morning school I told the girls it was a media free day (no lunchtime educational video), just play instead. Sounds nice and quiet – but for my girls that means serious creative mess time. I should have seen it coming. Within an hour they had completely dismantled the living room and created a ‘camp ground’, with chairs and blankets and pillows and bedspreads. And filled their tents with bears and dolls.

As I was following my initial urge to crash into their playtime and remind them they have to put all that stuff back, my husband came in from a meeting. Without his saying a word I could hear his measured voice in my mind – 'don’t worry, they are having creative fun, who cares about the mess?' He’s right I know, he values creative play way more than a tidy house, and he always loves to see evidence of happy homeschooling lifestyle. His very presence reminded me of that.



So I swallowed my clean freak nature at least for a few hours and embraced their play, we even did afternoon school in their camp on pretend mud.

Eventually the room was cleaned up and reassembled (minus the coffee table that has permanently lost it's place so Matthew has a place to juggle); Lily at 7 has become such a good little helper so I didn’t have to do it all alone. But it really did take mental discipline to decide to be the artistic mother for those few hours and not just the artistic person with a nice house!

Pond

The bird swooped from such a height
we never saw it coming
her eye on the carcass
on the muddy slopes of the pond
my children with chatter and questions follow
we can’t know what it was,
what life lay down to such a rough funeral

we throw broken crumbs to the fish alive
they jump in anticipation
as the arc of white puffy bread flies,
my children delight in this chore,
this feeding of unnamed fish

I unfurl my giving in lunches,
laundry and time
making ripples wide and even
while the stone of my love lies
on the bottom of what becomes
their whole life long

Close

home

Preparations

This week I have been focused on getting the house ready for school. We are starting back early as I am sure I will want to take a few weeks off school when I have the baby. So we need to get a headstart.

I love getting ready for school. I love making a plan and looking ahead. I love buying new books and supplies like I did when I was in school. I started by clearing out last years books and bringing in this years books (though we don't have Matthew's books yet, I cleared him some shelf space).


It is amazing how many bookshelves a room can hold!

Matthew will be in 6th grade this year. He uses a curriculum by Veritas Press. The only subjects he will do with the girls are Art and Poetry and the only subject I will do exclusively with him is a 'drawing dragons' course. He pretty much schools himself, his dad reviews his work and answers his questions and does the discussions with him. That way I am free to school the girls.

The girls are using some Veritas Press and some My Father's World for school this year. Lily is in 2nd, Laura 1st and Annie, well she is just along for the ride and pretty much does lots of coloring and talking. Lily and Laura are going to be doing many of the same subjects as I don't have time to do them separately. Besides the usual Math, Bible, Phonics (Laura) and Grammar (Lily), Literature, History, Science, Greek (Lily) Art, Art appreciation, Poetry listening we are starting sewing this year! I am so excited. Laura really wants to learn to sew and I found this fun course called Kid Sew. I would love to make my girls some dresses, so I will be learning right along with them!

It took me all week to clear out the room. I was slowed down by 1) Annie having chickenpox, resulting in me having to go to the doctor to get three shots to ensure I don't get it (as pregnancy and chickenpox don't mix well) and 2) my girls constantly playing and wanting me to play too and do their hair and take their picture:


When one of my girls dresses up or gets their hair done, the rest must follow:


I am almost all ready for the school year. Now if we could just get to bed early Sunday night so we can get up and get going Monday morning.

Vacation preparation

We are off to Ireland for 5 weeks on Tuesday. I didn't get too much made this week by way of art as I have been cleaning like a crazy woman. A family headed by 2 artists will be staying at my home while we are away, and I wanted the place to look a nice as possible for them. Their own home is lovely, artistic and always neat and clean so I have a high bar to meet! But it is good for me, I love a deadline and each year when we go away is when I get my 'spring cleaning' done.




I am taking some art supplies with me, just the minimum:
Some ready made scraps - ie. gessoed and painted
A few printed and trimmed photos
Some unmounted stamps and an acrylic block
My favorite water soluble oil pastels
Paint brush
Glue
Poetry journal
I am also bringing a moleskin sketch book and 2B & 4B pencils, I would like to do some sketching while in Ireland.




I will make a few cards and alter whatever I can while away. I plan to take lots of photos and Mark & I are taking a creative writing class together at an art school that is close to my Mum's house... it will be a week long date. Can't wait!

Matthew and I are starting a new Mom and me project - Keri Smith's 'Wreck This Journal'! We got one for each of us. Matthew had been dying to start, so we did the first few 'activities' the other night. It is going to be fun. It is a perfect boy art project.

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On the book front: This week I received my first author's review of my book. It is a mock up of the book so far, with the text laid out on the pages, but only a few photos for placement purposes. It has to be completely edited before the designer gets it. It is due to the designer, Marissa Bowers, on August 16. The book is 128 pages and has lots of orange highlighted notes from my editor, Liz Casler, so I have lots of editing ahead of me. I am super impressed with the level of attention Liz has given to this text, her notes are super helpful and insightful.

A close friend, Erin Lichnovsky is going over it today to give me her opinion of the feel of the book so far. It was Erin I talked to about the vision I had for this book last year before I spent a few hours in Starbucks writing my proposal. She is always willing to help out (despite being super busy with her 7 kiddos), brainstorm and be honest, which is just what I need. Erin, you are a precious friend. Thank you for your love, time and support.

Granny has arrived

My mother usually comes for a visit in the Spring, but this year she is here a little early to watch my kids while I go to North Light Books for my book's photoshoot. So this year I am especially grateful, but nervous now she is here because her presence means that I am really doing this!

It is one thing to write here at home and make projects with steps that I like to do, it is another thing to show them to the world and say 'here, why don't you buy my book and do this too'! Going with my art and words to Cincinnati is the first big step in my coming out of the cocoon of creativity, where I have been surrounded by my supportive friends and family. Phew! What will the world think? But more pressing: what will the editor, photographers, book designers and whoever else is on the team think?

But stage fright nerves aside, I am excited about this pending trip: I know I will learn so much about the book making process, I am going to meet many cool and creative people, I get to fly alone for the second time since I moved to the States (without a diaper bag and snacks and sippy cups), I get to show what I know I can do, what I like to do and be paid for it.

I am looking to those positives to help me forget that I am leaving my babies and wonderful man for a whole week. But take a look at that photo, my kids are in great hands: my mother's. She spent the whole day today, jet lagged from a 24 hour trip, playing with the kids, doing crafts, wrestling on the bed, watching their 'show' (You Tube video coming soon), walking up to see the horses in 40 degree weather and on and on it goes. She is the best granny my kids could have. She has hit the ground running so that I can do my thing.