hot summer colors in February

Another project we worked on this weekend was birthday invitations for F’s third birthday.  If you remember back before Valentine’s Day I scored these glass bottles of rainbow colored flowers from Michaels off the clearance rack.  E’s been dying to get started on these even though we have a lot of time to spare.  Saturday afternoon was sunny, but cold, and seemed like a good opportunity to sit for awhile and dream about summer.

I thought it was a great idea, but then we sort of stepped back, squinted our eyes and agreed.  It was okay, but we really liked a little more card showing through so we tried a looser approach the next go around.

We can always add more flowers if we want, but for now we like the scattering of flowers over the stripes of flowers in the fuller one.  While we sorted and glued we talked about ideas for the piece we’re going to layer over this flower garden.  I love her ideas, and I love knowing that she feels comfortable sharing them with me.  She has really good ones, and really crazy ones, and she knows I appreciate them all, even if we don’t use them all.  I want her to get to a place where all ideas are welcome, valued.  When you let yourself consider any possibility, you can be assured that the path you eventually take will be a good one.  

We talked about summer and parties and colors and poetry.  We worked in silence, which is never really silent with her.  She clicks her tongue, she taps her foot, she hums and whistles.  Her moments of quiet are accompanied with lip movements to lyrics in her head.  She can’t focus enough in the mornings to get out the door with everything she needs, but give this girl a bottle of glue and a table full of paper and she nails it.  Her focus hums with activity like a machine.  I love the energy, the concentration, the conversation.

After awhile she asks for a soundtrack to the afternoon’s activity.  I let her choose the soundtrack, she lets me choose the volume.  Fair trade, I think.