Twas the season

to make KRING-LAH (Kringle)

Christmas is just not Christmas until I make Kringle. A Norwegian dessert that has been modified by my Norwegian grandmother (replacing raisins for chocolate chips, etc), this has become one of my holiday staples. It looks so beautiful and festive - shaped like a Christmas wreath with red-hots as holly berries. In reality it's like a thick chocolate chip cookie with frosting and red-hots.

This year I made about 50 (yes five zero) for the choir in my church congregation. I am the choir director and was in charge of the Christmas program this year and I made this treat for all the participants. The Christmas program had almost entirely music and turned out spectacular (a tad bit longer than anticipated, but really awesome.) I don't like to do things half way. And Yes it was crazy. Especially since we were flying out of town the day of the Christmas program. But I enjoyed doing it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

YUM

Ballet portraits

So my daughter attends a ballet studio which is fabulous, and yet also pricey. And every year they do a fundraiser because apparently they are a non-profit organization (which I still do not understand completely) and do not make enough to meet their costs.

I could not even consider giving more money to a studio after already paying its tuition, so I decided I would donate a painting for the silent auction instead.

I browsed the web looking for some inspiration and came across a photo:

 

I totally fell in love with it. The ballet studio she attends is very diverse, with many ethnic backgrounds and I love it doesn't matter what her skin color was, she is just dancing beautifully.

So I took that as an inspiration, and with a different color and a different medium (acrylics), came up with this:

 

I really like how it turned out, but I have to say I felt a LITTLE uncomfortable giving away a painting that looked so similar to the original artist's work with my name on it....


So I ended up painting a whole new painting. I changed the dancer - and with a similar idea came up with this:

 

I felt better about giving this one away, and I was happy that I got to keep the first one to put in my daughter's room!

I was, however, tempted to keep both of them! They worked so well together (I would not hang them like this, but you get an idea):

 

But alas, I did end up parting with it. I'm STILL waiting to hear how much it ended up selling for!
(I did not attend the actual silent auction as tickets to attend would have been $200 which is WAY above our date budget)

Before I gave it up, I tried this on a red wall in my house. It is interesting how it changes....

 

Fall preschool crafts

Yep, I've been busy. One of the things I've been busy with is teaching my 3/4 year old preschool co-op.

We've done the schedule differently this year and I have been busy teaching 5 weeks of preschool in a row. It was a lot of work, but now I have at least 2 months off before I have to think about it again.

And I got to use all of the fun fall holidays in what we taught.

Topics we have covered:
Apples, Halloween, spiders, pumpkins, Veteren's day, Thanksgiving

Crafts of course are my favorite part of preschool.

We got to do lots of fun crafts - I didn't get pictures of them all, but here are a few I caught on camera:

Apple tree mosaics

 

Googly Spiders

 

Halloween sensory box

 

Haunted mansions

 

Crepe paper lanterns

 

Veteren's day flags

 

Indian corn husks

 

Turkey puppets

 

Leaf-feathered turkeys

 

trains, trains, and more trains....

More for this room:

 

It all started with this project:

 

I wanted to duplicate the plaids and lines in the bedding. And it worked... but seriously debating whether it was worth the painful detailing (they are really small trains). Especially for a perfectionist.

Which then I had to do this one because new brother came along:

 

Here is some closeups of the letters:

 

We better not have another boy anytime soon, cause I do NOT want to paint train letters again for a VERY long time.

And then I saw this being sold at Canton which is a flea market on steroids in the middle of now where Texas (which I totally recommend. It's a lot of fun). Seriously, the place is ENORMOUS. and I saw this little train a carpenter was selling and totally fell in love. It wasn't hard to paint - just a LOT of detail. It took me a crazy amount of time to finish it, but eventually it got done.

 

Here is some closer shots:

 

Hopefully this is the last rolling project for this room!

 

Pulling out! CHOO CHOO!

Boy's room paintings

So I'm finally posting my boys room. It has been a work in progress for a LONG LONG time. I'm pretty much done.

 

Here is what I started with:

My mom got my son this bed set for his birthday from Pottery barn:

 

I was really excited about it. Pottery barn has adorable stuff, but often the bed spreads are too much for me- too busy, too many patterns, or too many different colors. But I really liked this one. It's called railway express. (It's long since retired now)

But right before they cleared it out I used up a few giftcards I had been holding onto from my wedding (yes, from years ago) and bought the coordinating rug (which not only was on clearance, but was the last floor model which means I got it for a super deal) and lampshade. Also - I bought a curtain panel - which was WAY cheaper if you bought the double wide panel - which I did and just cut and hemmed to make two. Which worked out fantastically because I was able to take the extra fabric and put it on the coordinating curtain (which the people before us had left).

All in all, this room was decorated pretty inexpensively, which makes me (and especially my husband) happy.

Anyway, here is some more closeup of the bedding:

 

And here are the paintings I made to match:

(acrylic on canvas)

 

And again.... the finished product:

 

More to come on other stuff in the room!!

Decorating kids rooms - part 2

So in the spring, I made THESE paintings for my sister-in-law who was having her first baby.

Her friend saw them, and wanted me to make some paintings for her own daughters' room. So I agreed - especially since she wanted to pay for them! This is the first time I've ever sold any artwork, so it was kindof fun.

She wanted something really simple (which was tough for me - I hate making things simple :) and something that matched her bedding.

It took me way longer than I expected, since this summer turned out crazier than I had anticipated, but they turned out. And I keep learning a lot - the more I do.

This was the bedding: "Tiddliwinks" from Target

 

And in the room:

 

And here are the paintings:

I used this iridescent pearl paint and I LOVED how the paint looked when it dried. It looked so cool. You can't really get the full effect in a picture, so you'll just have to imagine. It looks a little overpowering (almost fluorescent) in the pictures.

Oh and these are acrylic on canvas

 

 

 

After I finished the last one, it felt unfinished, like it needed a fourth (two pink, two purple). But I left it up to Melanie (my SIL's friend) and she liked it as a group of three, so it stayed how it was.

Here is the finished product in their room:

 

I really like how she hung them and how they look in between the purple curtains.

I can't imagine ever doing this for a regular profit - since it's pretty time consuming... but I did have fun doing it!

Decorating kids rooms - part 1

So this spring I surprised my sister-in-law with paintings for her nursery.

Surprisingly, the wood plaque took me longer than the paintings. Who would have thought?

Things I learned:

- cheap acrylic paint is CHEAP quality. Better to spend the extra $.50 per bottle.
- colors on the computer are not the same as in person (which is why I bought the matching lamp to match the colors. I'm glad I did)

She had gotten this cute bedding:

 

 

So I made these to match:

These is acrylic on canvas.

 

 

 

This is a wood plaque painted with acrylic paint, the star came was a cut-out from cardstock, and scrapbook letter stickers were the words. The whole thing was covered in decoupage. It would have been much easier without the stripes (which I had to repaint multiple times - due to wrong colors and not straight enough). Oh well, it turned out cute.