Oh, 52 projects, how you mock me. By my very rough calculations we’re somewhere around week twenty-eight / twenty-nine, and I’m just posting week fourteen. If only I’d challenged myself to a biweekly to-do list marker-offer. I’m so full of excuses here, the weakest being my lack of working scanner at home (oh all-in-one printer, how I curse thee!). Truth be told, the scanner doesn’t actually keep me from marking things off my to-do list, it just keeps me from scanning and posting the nifty little 52 project banners on each post. Another truth be told – I don’t even really like the banners and if I’d known how much I’d let a silly little hand drawn banner get in my way of real to-do list progress, I’d have never instituted the system. But I do like me a system, perfect or not. So now I have to take my sketches to work, scan them and then email them back home to me. That’s eating up serious time I could be tackling more important world problems like organizing closets and repainting my bathroom.
Still, I have been doing lots of things on that list, and so now that I have an alternate plan for posting in place, I plan to update this little category on the blog over the next few weeks. And maybe by the end of the year I’ll reach 52. If not, well, even a respectable 30 or so will be nice. I know I’m enjoying the benefits of those early projects every day – and continuing to work on some of the ongoing ones (like publishing the blog).
So today it’s: week fourteen: update kid art around the house.
Recently I’ve posted about some of the kids’ artwork that I’ve loved, and how I’ve framed / mounted some of it. Many of those pieces are going to find their way onto walls and shelves that are just now / or still waiting to be finished. Earlier in the year I updated the kid art in this big frame, and I plan to put a couple more pieces in to finish it out as well (including F’s fabulous balloons from the other day). The main idea of that collage it that it be easy to switch pieces out at will – and that’s important because right now the piece is certainly skewed to the oldest. She’s way more prolific and had a head start. But besides framed and mounted art that we have around the house, we also redid the shallow built-in shelves at the top of the stairs on the third floor to accommodate a rotating display of artwork – 2D and 3D. Seemed like a great idea – but then I didn’t actually rotate it.
Now I have. I took down a large giraffe E made in Kindergarten, a watercolor she did in preschool, and thinned out the collection of pottery we had going on the middle shelf. I left the paper wrapped containers on the bottom shelf that hold chalk and magnets for the magnetic chalkboard wall just opposite, and I also left the birthday hat display on the top shelf. I did E’s hats for the first six birthdays, and plan to do the same for F. You can see F’s hats filling in the gaps between E’s, and the recent addition of hat number three. We’ve also been using another shelf to house the growing collection of paperback books that E plows through. They fit really well on these shelves, and might stay here – although all the books in our house are moving around right now.
Now the artwork is a little more balanced (as in – there does appear to be a second child in the household). Roughly left to right from top left corner: E’s light art, photograph, E’s sunset behind a mountain, acrylics, E’s flag print, F’s paper fish with paint stamps, E’s ceramic painted fish, E’s splatter paint, F’s crayon drawing, and on the shelf, various E clay sculptures from clay camp and school and girl scouts, plus a lantern from printmaking with a battery operated candle inside. And the phone. Nothing too creative about that.
So, it’s a small thing, really. But still I like it. It’s all dusted and straight and colorful, and it makes me happy when I get to the top of the stairs. And everyone should have a little bit of happy at the top of stairs (especially when there are 35 of them!)
