Posts Tagged ‘grandkids’

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How to engage all your senses


2010
04.30

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Last day of April and the Creative Every Day theme of the five senses is hours from being over. I thought, just for the heck of it, I’d do a little post about a quick way to engage all of your senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.  The quick and easy answer is – grandchildren.

Taste

Take the Davies Five to dinner at Fiesta Vallarta in Paonia, Co.

The food tasted great but there was a bit too much action inside to even think of a photo.  Looks like we have touch and sight engaged here, maybe even sound also.

Then, give your daughter and son-in-law two nights at the Redstone Inn.  Offer to watch the three kids.  Buy a special snack of jello people and give as much whipped cream on top and on the plate as the kids can handle.  I suppose jello has taste.  I think of it more as touch however.

Smell

For a pleasant image, imagine the smell of fantastic Mexican food.  Do not think of changing diapers.

Touch

Let the kids fingerpaint for the first time.  Try to get them all to sit still (ages 6, 4, 2) while  you get everything set up and try to protect the table.

Fingerpainting  apparently involves exaggerated motion.

It involves contorted positions.

It involves smiles.

Now we display the results trying not to touch the wet paint or put plates upside down on our heads.

Sound

Needless to say, all of this involved immense, mostly pleasant sound.  We also read books and Annabelle played music.  Jackson played Mario Cart.  Now (I’m not jinxing this) the three are quietly playing with the doll house and trucks.

Sight

It was all quite a sight.  But we did more art – creating piggy banks we could look at as we accumulated life’s fortunes.

Yes, I made one also.

Now, I’m sitting on the sofa writing this, watching it snow/sleet again, and thinking that Karen and Steve have been gone three hours tops.  Wow – and there’s still dinner, baths, laundry, and tomorrow.  And Sunday.

My senses have been fully engaged, that’s for sure.  And I’m already hitting on May’s theme of intuition.  My intuition to buy frozen pizzas for dinner was spot-on.  And hot dogs for tomorrow’s dinner.  Fully organic, vegetarian feed, no hormones, etc. etc. so it’s not as bad as it sounds.

Oh – one last example of sight.  The sky on the way to the store today was enough – too much really – to take in at one time.

Want a last-minute infusion of the five senses? I have some grandkids that would be glad to accommodate you while I take a nap.


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Me and My Shadow


2010
01.20

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Posted in Art, General, Photography | 2 Comments »

We’re still in Creative Every Day’s Body month.  Last night, during this ever-lasting photo-sorting project, I came across a wonderful photo of the Bakersfield Six less One (Xavier was just barely born). That’s what I call my six grandkids who live in Bako.  We were at the beach in Ventura in 2000.  More reflections on body sprung into mind – the physical body, yes, but the spiritual body also.

I started thinking shadows.

Have you ever noticed that wherever you go, your shadow goes too?  Duh, of course, you say.  Anyone ever tell you after you’ve been ill that you look like a shadow of your former self? Did you ever try to run from your shadow?  Have you been told to step out from behind your shadow? Is Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem My Shadow one of your favorites?  It was one of mine.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an errant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Shadows show up everywhere.  Like in the lyrics for Everybody’s Talking at Me:


Everybody’s talking at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can’t see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.

Lots of negative connotations in shadows: escape from your shadow, run from your shadow, shadow of your former self, shadows of their eyes.   I played around with the photos a little.

How about life?  We can move so fast that we (and our shadows) are a blur.  No time to think about where we’ve been or where we’re going, let alone concentrate on the present.  Moving so fast that our shadows become indistinguishable from ourselves.

Or remaining so static that we become shadow people – shadow ghosts.  An empty life.

Besides reflecting on shadows themselves, I just liked the image so much – the expression in the five little bodies – the twins on the left, obviously relating to each other somehow, the two oldest on the right with Ali pointing out something to Sarah, and Dax in the middle.  All of them seemingly unconcerned about the approaching wave although it appears they aren’t in swim suits.  So I decided to do a journal page as a small study of something I may turn into a bigger collage.  Instead of using a negative connotation, I turned it around into stepping out of one’s shadow into embracing your own body and self.  I’ve spread the kids out to give them more independence.

Photos are full of stories, both real and imagined.  I’ve talked about that a bit on the “About” page of my webpage, as well as a former blog post on how to photograph people.  And Taking Better Photos of People, Part Two.

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Art Journal Collage – Body Theme, Creative Every Day


2010
01.04

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Posted in Art, General | 2 Comments »

The new year.  Just got back from our cabin in Alta Sierra – seven days with from three to six grandkids at all times.  Here are four of them:

I’ll have a post coming about that soon.  We had a great time in the snow (snowmen, snowboards and tubing at Shirley Meadows).

and some wonderful walks by the North Fork of the Kern River.

Now I’m trying to get my brain back in focus!  Because I have to sit at an actual desk on an actual straight-up chair to do this (until the Macbook is repaired or replaced) I’m slightly discombobulated.  It doesn’t feel creative here; it feels workmanlike.  Which, come to think of it, creativity could benefit from.  It evokes that dreaded word discipline.

I’m going to do the Creative Every Day challenge that Leah Kolidas offers on her blog.  Now, I’m not going to do an entry every day.  For a year? I’d wear myself out as well as my readers.  But I’ll dip into the challenge at least twice a month.

What’s good about this is the nudge – Leah has a theme for each month, and a nudge here and there to get moving and producing is helpful and fun.  So here is what I did in my journal the other day.  Actually, I did it at the cabin.  I had no notion of meeting the January theme of Body but looking at it, I see it does.

The images are from a National Geographic story on Stonehenge.  Most of the time when I work, I don’t really know what I’m doing.  For art journal entries, I do a watercolor background of some sort, and then images just arrange themselves on the page.  For this one, I knew I wanted to start with geometric images. Unnoticed by me at the time, the predominant stone, rock, whatever it’s called in the foreground, looks like a person with his/her back turned.  This gives a whole other dimension to the collage.  My mind flies to all the things this could represent about women (I think of it as a woman), strength, resignation, resilience,  power, and more.

The only geometrics that remained exposed after I collaged are the lines that form a V, or a triangle at the top.  They are cradling Stonehenge, which releases another stream of thought now that I’m thinking of the stone as a body.   I like what resulted so much that I may do a large version.

As to explaining how the art happens, I came across a wonderful quote that whollyjeanne posted a link to on twitter. Here’s the quote and it explains the artistic process as well as anything does.  I suppose this is how the collage happened.

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time; this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” ~ Martha Graham

If you want to see other photos or photo collages for that matter, take a look at my web page.

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#Best09 – The Gift I Gave Myself that Keeps on Giving? Time with the Grandkids – An Update


2009
12.26

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I’m updating yesterday’s blog post with three new photos.  These are from last night – Christmas at our house with our three kids, their husbands, and the nine grandkids.  This is the gift I gave myself that keeps on giving – time with this precious group of people

All the grandkids are here – The Bakersfield Six and The Colorado Three.  The Colorado group is the three littlest in front.

All of us – the gift that keeps on giving.  We blessedly like each other and love to be together.

I love this picture – the two little girls in red looking closely at the package their dresses are covering up.

Below is the entry before I updated with the photos.  Sorry – I was just too tired to put them in last night.

Gwen Bell’s Best of Blog challenge question for Christmas day is “What’s a gift you gave yourself this year that kept on giving?” At first, this was hard.  Partly it was hard because after a hectic and traumatic month, it seems I can barely remember yesterday.  But this morning, first at one daughter’s house and then the other, opening gifts with the grandkids, it was obvious.  It was the gift of time with the grandchildren this summer.  Mostly I’m talking about the Bakersfield Six.

I going to reference some older posts so you’ll know what we did to make the summer special.  You can look at The Bakersfield Six Plus One, or A Grandmother’s Dream to see photos and read about the beginning of the journey to the cabin this summer – just me and The Bako Six.  Then Glamberts, Treasure Hunts, Jean Luc Picard and Tie-dyed Shirts continues that adventure.  I had planned a very busy five days full of adventure and the best part was the FUN – so much fun and laughter!

We also went to the American Idol’s concert together – at least the girls and I did.

21 People at Disneyland is a new chapter – and finally, something I guess I didn’t blog about, the Roar and Snore.  I took the grandkids to a sleepover at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and it was such incredible fun that I should blog about it – but now, just take my word.  Here’s a post talking about some collages I made from those experiences.

Also, check out the animal photo gallery on my webpage to see some of what we saw.  BUT to continue…

I make some mini-photo books as Christmas presents for each of the grandkids because the summer was so special, and as they opened them today and we relived the adventures I realized that all the time and effort I put into being a grandma is paying me back a hundred fold.  The memories will live forever – if not in my mind, at least on paper and in photographs to refresh my mind!  Love and laughter made the memories.

This gift will give forever.  It’ll give past my lifetime and well into the next generations as my grandkids make the same kinds of memories with theirs.  Family, love and laughter.  The best gift ever and always.

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