A new way to do watercolour

I heard them laughing as I was washing dishes - I thought "They are painting. They are laughing. This CANNOT be a good combination." As I dried my hands I thought of all the things they could be doing with watercolour paint: painting the walls, the table, each other...

But no. Lukasz was testing out a new way to paint. It was a little messy, but not as bad as I'd envisioned. And oh, how it made us all laugh.

Note: It gets really good 50 seconds in. :)

{this moment}

- A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Wishing you a lovely weekend!

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A happy tree

Yesterday afternoon Lily came to me and said she needed her watercolour paints. I set her up with paint, a brush and water, and she sat down and created this:
My jaw literally dropped when she presented this painting to me. She further explained, "The wind is pushing the leaves to down o the ground and that is why there are more leaves on one side of the tree."

She then went on to paint three more similar paintings.

I shared it with some of my friends, and these are the comments they made:

"That's beautiful... it's a keeper!" - Lynne

"Wow. So neat." -Kelly

"Frame it!" -Andrea

"Such a great painting! She's got a great eye!" -Maaja

"Wow. How old is she? She captured the essence of that tree better than most average artists would have. She's really got some artistic vision." -Emily

"That's better than some of my high school students." -Tip (a high school art teacher and artist)

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"A happy tree" may seem like a silly title, but in all simplicity, looking at this tree makes me happy. And proud.

Our little Leonardo

She climbs... she talks... she paints!

More daring each and every day...Today was Lily's first time painting. I bought the paints and paper and brushes a while ago, but was hesitant to let her loose with them because I knew it would inevitably mean a big mess to clean up. But I was wrong. She is a very tidy painter. As soon as there is paint on her hands, she comes to me to get it washed off. She did put a nice fluorescent green streak in her hair, but she didn't seem to mind, so I left it until her bath.

Tentative at first:

Adding more colours:

Now she's got the hang of it:

What a masterpiece! (Yes, I'm getting it framed. :)
I think it'll look great hanging in her bedroom!

Today Lily went out on the balcony before we started painting. I was watching her from just inside the screen door and she started calling to me "Play ball.... me!" So I went out and kicked the ball around with her. :)

While she was painting this afternoon she turned and saw the moon in the sky, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. She said, "moon! All... clean!" I guess because it was so white and bright, it looked clean. But she never says it's "clean" at night. Hm.