En Plein Air

In an effort to get the children out of the house and involved in more productive pastimes than seeing who can pinch/kick/punch each other the hardest without mom noticing (there's really an art to this as there is a fine line before your brother starts to scream and then the game's up) I packed up our paints and took the crew outside for a double whammy of artistic pursuits and fresh air.

John was only mildly impressed with this new medium.  He still prefers his crayon rocks--not to draw with so much as to put in and out of their bag--but I'm sure this early love will eventually evolve into artistic passion.

I wish I could say he learned his lesson after one taste but alas, he also tried the blue.  Maybe he thought the different colors corresponded to different flavors?

The boys have been begging me to get them wooden bird houses to paint from the craft store which I always refuse because I just knew they would spend twenty minutes picking out the perfect one and 1.5 minutes actually painting them, but I finally relented.  I remember my grandmother taking me and my brother and sisters to the craft store every week while we stayed with her during the summer and letting us pick out any projects we wanted to do and I suppose I wanted to capture a little of that summer magic with my own boys.

I have a lot of latch hook rug kits, paint by numbers and iron-on/puffy paint decorated shirts in my past.

And friendship bracelets.  A lot of friendship bracelets.

I was wrong about the birdhouses though.  The boys totally spent five minutes painting them before they declared their masterpieces finished.  I still maintain that the mess to time-spent-happily-occupied ratio is not good enough to justify any more painted dwellings for our avian friends.  The boys disagree however and would really love to make a whole village.

We'll see.

Oh, and we also found a frog :)

Painting and impromptu nature study.  I suppose it was an afternoon well spent even if we didn't quite get the mess : time spent actually painting ratio completely right.  At least they stopped attacking each other for the duration.....