Too cool for school! My little dancer doing her best. I love this shot, the lines make it seem that there was a lot of movement (whereas in reality I just moved the camera!).

Yesterday my four year old picked up a piece of chalk and started doodling on the chalk board. This is what she drew:

I’m fairly sure I haven’t shown her how to draw petals like that but I’m so impressed at her perspective. The person next to the flower is me apparently!

Then this morning she rubbed it out (so glad I snapped a photo) and drew this one:

She said this was herself and she drew it for her sister. Notice that it has knees and a lovely big smile. Very sweet.

I am always amazed at how well she draws as I have always assumed that most of our drawing talent is learnt not inherited. Maybe I’m wrong about that one (anyone know?). I always felt like my own drawing skills were learnt and yet when I think about it there is an awful lot of artist ability in my family, on both sides. My Mum oil paints, my Dad can draw and was a graphic designer of sorts for a long time, my brother is brilliant at photography. One uncle has beautiful hand writing, calligraphic even, another uncle can water-paint, a cousin has an art teaching degree, another cousin is good at charcoal sketching and another cousin is another brilliant photographer and another one is a trained graphic designer. I once found some notebooks from my Nanna’s school days and her sketches were pretty good too.

So, the odds are against me, artistic ability just may be inherited. I’d love to read some articles on that.

Can you believe it! This is what Miss K found under our deck this morning. She started saying ‘Mummy, I can see lots of eggs’ and pointed under our deck. My first thought was ’sure’, and that she was pretending. I couldn’t see them at first as they are about half way up under the deck but sure enough there they were.

Last week we had a lot of trouble keeping our chooks in. Our new chook Helen (who seems to be missing in action today) should have been called Houdini and managed to get out no matter what we did. We clipped her wings and she seemed to stay put but in the meantime she laid all these eggs! Unfortunately they won’t be any good because the weather was so hot here last week but what a strange thing to find!

There is a simple title for this photo. Waiting. Here’s little L was watching out the window for her Daddy to bring her big sister home from Kindy. She always gets so excited when she comes home but she also enjoys her time with us by herself!

Time to review and reset some goals again with the Weekly What List. Firstly the review

Review of the Weekly What List for the 1-7 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day. – Not completely but I did drink more water.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day – mostly yes
- Eat less lollies. – on a whole yes.

Spiritual
- Memorise this verse (emphasis is on the word PATIENCE): Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride. – I would say that I have memorised it, I’m yet to really think deeply about it.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN – yes, did that.
- Make pendant for C – did it but not happy with the outcome.
- Sew another dress – No.

Family
- Go to the park with L, weather permitting. – sort of, we went to Sculpture by the Sea
- Continue Doll’s House with K – Yes

Friends
- arrange more morning teas – Yes arranged one or two
- birthdays – started.

Now for this weeks What List:

Weekly What List for the 8-14 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day
- Eat less lollies.
- Don’t buy Ice Magic.

Spiritual
- Continue to memorise this verse but also get to know its meaning more: Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN (yes again, have to try to do this every week)
- Fix pendant for C
- Take photos of work for listing on Etsy

Family
- Play outside more with L, even if its earlier in the day.
- Continue Doll’s House with K – time for carpeting and more walls.

Friends
- arrange more morning teas
- send off parcel

Strange photo of the day I know but this is what our passionfruit (from our garden) looks like when we take them out of the freezer as they defrost. I know, I’m a bit odd thinking something like this is interesting but I do. I love the colours, the texture, the pattern! My artistic eye notices the strangest things and I’m compelled to take a photo of them.

We keep our passionfruit in the freezer after they fall off the vine. They last a long time and are perfectly normal once defrosted. I’m fairly sure there’s only one or two more on the vine now.

The theme for this week was ‘yellow’ so we did a brightly coloured tray. It allowed me to try out a few different things with the girls although not everything was eaten.

We had; banana chips (didn’t get eaten), apple slices, bikkies in cream cheese dip (one liked it the other didn’t), cheese stars, peaches with stars cut out, wholemeal bread with apricot jam.

I managed to remember to take a couple of shots of the other paintings I did the other night so here they are.

I singled one of the pods out for this one. The white part is the shininess from the oil which is not dry. Red takes ages to dry!

The burnt sienna painting ready for layer two.

This is to show the size difference. The smaller one is 4″ x 4″.

Sometime this week I will get the paints out again and continue with these. I am loving that bright red!

We never thought this would happen but…….our banana tree is growing fruit! We inherited the tree which looked quite young when we moved in and haven’t even checked it as we weren’t expecting anything. We were quite excited to see that we have a nice bunch emerging out of the flower (that we didn’t know we had). We assumed you couldn’t really grow tropical fruit here in Western Australia without some sort of shade house.

I got the oil paints out again last night and set up a little study to practice on. These are seed pods I gathered in New Norcia last year and they were a vibrant yellow when I first got them. The yellow has dulled but I still painted them as their bright original colour.

This time I had a few rules for myself.

1. Treat it as a study not a finished painting
2. Use a limited palette
3. Do more than one

I did three in total, one of them has no colour at the moment because I’m using the method of under-painting using burnt sienna. When its dry I will paint over it and share it. The other study I did I forgot to take photos of, mainly because it only started to work when I was nearly finished for the night.

I have been more of a painter of people and portraits in the past but am finding these studies a good way to get my painting hands back again. This one is still quite tiny, 4″ x 4″.

This is the still life setup

The painting area

The study so far