Portable Easel and Sketchbox

I had this idea, of Spud owning his own portable easel that housed a sketch box, for a couple of months. I searched high and low for one locally, that wasn't too big, too plastic-y, or too expensive. I found all kinds of things online but they were in the US which meant too expensive to ship or they wouldn't ship at all.

Finally, at good old Opus, I found the Sooke Mini Table Easel for $25! I filled it with 3 Niji waterbrushes (these are genius for al fresco watercolour painting! They hold the water in the brush handle, simply squeeze), 25 Sharpies (so many colours! and they don't run when you paint over them), 2 bamboo mechanical pencils, kneaded eraser, watercolour pencils, all of which were chosen for their portability. And a sketchbook with heavy paper that can withstand a lot of water without getting wrinkled. 

I love it because he can use it at home, but we can take on adventures and document what we see. Our first adventure was on Christmas Day. It was a wee chilly. Next time we will bring gloves.

Here is Hubs practicing the new ukelele that Santa brought, at the same time! Art and music on Christmas Day. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Santa Ornament 2011

I recently posted about Santa's habit of adding an ornament to our tree. Look! He did it again ... that's one cute Robo-Santa!

 Thanks Santa.

Happy Holidays!

More cards, from our Christmas's past, here and here.

Living Room Sleep Over By the Tree

Spud: "This is the best morning, ever!"

Wish this could be a Christmas tradition: a family sleepover on the living room floor, dozing off to the Christmas tree lights, waking up with a movie and breaky in "bed". Maybe when Christmas Eve lands on a weekend, and we aren't travelling, and we aren't entertaining the next day ... so once every 14 years? You're on!

Makes Me Happy: Holiday Lights

This year we did 2 light tours! Just can't get enough of driving around, as a family, with cocoa, Christmas tunes, and of course a pre-mapped out route on our gps. This house was a highlight with 50,000 lights! But they are all wonderful. Some of my favourites are when a string of houses in a row does it up tastefully and together they just make the whole street so pretty. It's hard to capture that on camera.

We also took in the winter solstice labyrinth this year. It's not a particularly spiritual event for us but I LOVE it. It's so warm and pretty and always takes way longer to walk through the whole thing than I think is even possible — it's just set up in a standard sized gym and it took us about 15 minutes to complete. And there's something sort of cool about participating in a ritual so old — it makes me happy to think of ancient people finding warmth and comfort on the longest night of the year in this way.

Makes Me Happy: Fall Hike at Lighthouse Park

Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver, BC.

I love how green our part of the world is. Makes me very happy.

Classic Paper Chain Garland

This is such a classic decorating project and very well suited to little hands, I can't believe I've waited this long to do this with Spud!

I repurposed some card stock I had leftover from a work project and we made patterns and textures using metallic silver pens and red felts. Add one eager child, a cutter for making paper strips, some glue, and voila!