Crafty Kids

One of the first things many people comment on when they first come to visit is the fact that we don't have a television. We hardly notice unless they remind us, but as the boys are growing older we have noticed that they have a great love of books - perhaps even more so because they don't have a TV to entertain their little minds for hours each day.

Emil usually makes a little reading 'cave' in the corner of our sofa by surrounding himself with pillows and can stay there reading for hours.

So I figured it might be fun to make some bookmarks for their books and that is what we did one afternoon ... totally nerdy, I know. We got some fun supplies, like paper punches, ribbons and wavy cardboard and they had a blast with it.

The next morning I found them busy making more, haven woken up early to keep crafting away while we slept in ...

Watercolor Paper

I have set up my painting studio in the brightest corner of our home with linen curtains filtering the light. A little while back I was in a real bind because I could not find the paper I use for watercolor painting anywhere here.

I use Windsor & Newton Hot Press, 300 lb sheets, because the ultra fine smooth surface is best suited for scanning the images I use in the flash animated ecards. Tim frantically called a long list of stores, but each store said the distributor had stopped carrying the paper. Finally he convinced an employee at the distributor to go and dig around in the stock room. Low and behold he found 200 sheets! Yeah, we bought it all, and stuffed it under our bed. I would have been better to have all the money we paid for it stuffed into the mattress, but hey, at least the paper should last a few years I hope …