Activity: Mirror Mono-Prints

We have achieved two sleeping kids. All it took was a bit of exhaustion (Pumpkin was up for an hour at 4am) and a fever (poor Peanut). Nothing serious, but it will be a quieter day around here.

Last week was more fun. Searching my mind and our resource for a project we came up with mirror prints. Sew Liberated's Painting the Sky inspired this project. Unfortunately, I have neither the weather nor the courage for outdoor painting, so we had to adapt for indoors. We used square mirrors from the IKEA (long live IKEA), dropped primary color paints on, “painted”, and then pressed paper over with our hands. Then we added more paint and did it again. My artist friend informed me that we made mono-prints. What a cool word. It was really fun. I wanted to do more and more, but we kept it short and sweet.

It's the first time we've had paints out since our move, and it was so nice. I forgot that painting can be a 20 minute, minimal clean-up activity. The mirrors rinsed off easily with water and Peanut wears a t-shirt smock that's a piece of cake to take off and hang to dry. We are also in possession of a two and a half foot pile of packing paper that can also double as table covering. There are now marbles at home and plenty of string, so I predict some more paint experiments in the not so distant future!

Rather busy

We've been keeping busy around here - both Mama and Peanut. There has been some painting.

This project was made possible by a very thoughtful gift from an artist friend. These Melissa and Doug Spill-Proof Paint Containers are fantastic. Peanut can pick them up, put his brush in, and pull it out on his own. It's got a funnel shaped opening that makes it easy to put a brush in and out, but nearly impossible to spill.

We're also learning to do more cooking tasks together.

Someone once suggested letting kids use an egg slicer to cut mushrooms. They were so right. This task was a huge hit. Peanut went through nearly a pound of mushrooms cutting them all on his own. He was completely consumed by this project and so proud of himself, too. This little find may be a major factor in our determining our menu for the coming months.

I'm also getting back to knitting.

This project was inspired by the Rib-A-Roni a hat I saw on Ravelry. It might have been better if I had actually followed the pattern, but I didn't. Saw the picture and then kind of went for it. It turned out ok except for having a bit of an unexpected peak. He likes it and wears it. That's plenty for me.

And just for the record - I'm not much of a photographer and Peanut does smile, just not for pictures!

What have you been doing?