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Art Camp Day 1!
Art Camp Day one ended with a splash. I was so nervous about hosting this camp for nothing. Everything went smoothly and I *think* everyone had a good time. I did anyway.
It’s so funny, on the morning of camp Bug and I were rushing off to the craft store to get last minute supplies and I was a wreck of nerves trying to hit up two stores before 10am. I kept asking Bug what time it was (because of course I left my phone at home like I do when I’m stressed and she had hers). I was obsessed with worrying that we might be late. Finally, Bug just grabbed my arm, looked me in the eyes and said, “Mom, you got this.”
Sometimes I wonder if I’m the one with anxiety and maybe I invented that she has anxiety. She was such a huge help, picking out paint colors for me, helping me unpackage paint brushes and canvases, making sure I bought the right snacks… She’s an expert at pushing my buttons when she wants to but when I really need help I always can count on her. It’s kind of nice to have a built-in assistant. She has been painting with me since before she could even talk after all so she is pretty qualified.
I didn’t have a hard schedule planned. I had some rough ideas on what topics we might cover but I pretty much let the girls (no boys showed up for some reason) paint what they wanted to. I helped them with simple concepts like blending and perspective as they got to it. Since the age and skill range was pretty varied, it was easier just to peek over shoulders and offer gentle suggestions than actually teach a full blown step-by-step lesson. I don’t think they minded.
Some students were more prolific than others, of course. I love how some kids paint with wild abandon, just splashing giant swipes of color every which way with no hesitation at all. Meanwhile others carefully plan out each detail and get lost in perfecting exact precise shapes.
I think my biggest goal with this camp is to help everyone find their groove. I see a lot of kids hung up on perfection or just stressing out too hard about not knowing what to draw or paint. If I can get them past that initial fear they will find that they are incredibly creative. I think everyone is creative they just override it with fear. If I can unlock their method of being creative I can unlock a whole world of joy. This applies to grown-ups too. I think we just get stuck and lose our creativity but it’s still in there.
We unlocked a lot. Actually they weren’t really locked that tight. Kids are usually walking explosions of creativity naturally.
After several intense hours of painting, I started to worry that some of the kids might go home saying that camp was boring (not that it was but you know some attention spans are different than others) so I let Joon break out her water-balloon-filling-contraption that she got for her birthday but had never had a chance to use. The water-balloon-filling-contraption was a piece of crap and didn’t work at all but the water balloons themselves worked great!
It took about half an hour of concentrated teamwork to fill the balloons and about five seconds to use them all up. Splish, splash, scream, splat, done. But those five seconds were pure joy, let me tell you. It was the perfect ending to a day at camp. I clicked and snapped my camera phone every which way and caught as much of it as I could.
And then I sent everyone home soaking wet with a few masterpieces under their arms. Not bad for day one! What am I going to do for Day Two? Paint Twister? Nah, just kidding. Though that might be a fun idea for next year.
Can’t wait for Day Two! Next up Sketching!
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46 and Beyond!
I turned forty-six last week. I thought I would write a really long post about all the things I’ve learned in my vast and extensive forty-six years but you know what? I don’t know squat. I have learned a lot of things, most of them private and embarrassing and I think anyone older than me would probably smile and roll their eyes over. I hate it when I read posts from thirty-year-olds thinking they are so smart so I’m going to be even smarter and stay mum. All of you youngsters can learn the hard way just like I did. Just kidding. Let’s take a walk sometime and I’ll share some wisdom privately. Or just laugh. That’s good too.
Anyway, this birthday was kind of a bust. First of all it was the HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR, clocking in at a sweaty 108 degrees. That meant we pretty much bunkered down the hatches (aka closed all the windows and drew all the shades), turned on the AC and didn’t leave the house all day.
I did, however, leave the house in the morning to have breakfast with my pack of girlfriends. Do you have a pack of girlfriends? They are the best thing ever. Everyone should have a pack. There are five of us and we go out to breakfast monthly. Sometimes we go on excursions. Sometimes we bring each other food when we are sick or having surgery.
This birthday my friend Ana gave me a gold friendship bracelet, the fancy kind from Nordstroms. I love being a grown up and getting grown-up friendship bracelets. I like regular friendship bracelets too but I love this one so much because I feel like I’m part of secret club and when you get into your forties you trade up from embroidery floss to GOLD. Age has perks!
So yeah, it was hot.
Payam promised to make me the chocolatiest of chocolate cake and EVEN THOUGH IT WAS 105 degrees in our kitchen he persevered and made it for me anyway!! I couldn’t even believe it. There he was wearing his batman apron and dripping in sweat while he mixed and measured and the OVEN PREHEATED. That is LOVE folks.
It was really really good too. Flourless so it pretty much tasted like dark-chocolate-flavored butter which is my favorite! That evil cake called to me all week long. “I’m in the fridge, Brendaaaaa…. You know you want me….” I’m telling myself that since it didn’t have flour in it it was Keto or Adkins or something. We’ll see what the scale says next week.
Isn’t it amazing how resilient our bodies are? If you eat a 2000-calorie piece of cake you can get on the scale the next day and it won’t budge. You’ll amazingly stay the same weight. BUT you can also work-out for two weeks straight and eat 1400 calories a day and it won’t budge either so there’s that. Resilience baby.
The other reason my birthday was a bust was that every single night of my birthday week, Joon had rehearsal for the play she was in this summer. We had planned to go to my favorite restaurant for my birthday dinner the night before my birthday but of course a last-minute dress rehearsal was called and that jacked that up and then opening night was my actual birthday so it just didn’t happen. We had McDonald’s instead.
Whine, whine, whine. Would you like a glass of wine?
I was a diva about it for about half a day and then I snapped to my senses and realized that this play Joon was in was REALLY COOL and I need to grow up and be the bigger person. She didn’t have a big part or anything but it was a fun summer camp that lasted a month and a half and she made a ton of friends and really enjoyed herself. I was the idiot fool that happened to have a birthday right when it ended. I should have been born in August instead. And really? Do I need more than breakfast with my girlfriends, a gold friendship bracelet, the chocolatiest-chocolate cake ever AND my kids singing me happy birthday at ten o’clock at night? No, I do not. It was NOT a bust it just was challenged. A very challenged 46th birthday.
I did however tell Joon that if she wants to be in a play on my 50th birthday, I’m not going. She can send me a birthday photo postcard of her and the cast to my hotel in Paris.
And that was that!
Here are some pictures from my morning walks with the dogs. We’ve moved our walks earlier and earlier to beat the heat which makes for prettier pictures with better light. I’ve finally cracked the dog-walking code. In order to really enjoy dog walks you have to find a podcast you really like. I don’t dread them anymore. I think of dog walks as my podcast hour instead and sometimes I even find myself taking the long way home because I’m so hooked.
In other summertime news we made the most awesome swimsuit cover-ups on Alphamom this week. They were so fun to make! I’m sure this craft has been around forever but when I searched it on pinterest very little came up.
Joon showed me how to make really cool starburst designs and Bug outdid herself in stencil work. We spent hours on them, which when combatting summertime boredom translates to major currency. They didn’t binge-watch Friends (what they’ve been doing all summer) for three hours straight which says a lot.
Then they we headed off to Payam’s mom’s pool for a photoshoot. They turned out great. Don’t you love how Joon’s personality is so different from Bug. They are both nutballs but Joon is definitely the more out-going of the two.
It was a really big deal that Bug finally got up enough courage to jump off the diving board. So much of a big deal that she asked me to document it on sport-mode. Gifs all around!
Happy Summer!
