Playroom, New Friends and Art Shows

I actually attempted to take clean up the playroom before I took this picture. However, whatever I show "interest" in, my kids are right behind me and want to do it too. I sweep, they want the broom. I empty the dishwasher, they want to stand on the door. I go to the bathroom, they want to watch me. I want to check the mail, they run straight for the road. In this case, I just touch a toy to pick it up and they automatically want to play with all of them. So, this is what you get. At least you can see it in it's practical glory while it's being used.


I have leftover yellow fabric from the kids bedroom curtains that I would love to use on a cornice board in here although I'm not sure how that would work. It seems kind of long to do one across 3 windows so I might have to resort to a little valance. I really don't want to cover up much of the windows view at all, but I do want to hide the blinds while they're up, especially the annoying one on the right that refuses to be cinched up all the way. If you have any thoughts or advice, let me know. I'm all ears!


The adorable little alphabet cards are from Land of Nod. I originally ordered them for baby shower gifts. For a great price of around 20 bucks for the box, I would take the baby's initials and frame them in 3 separate picture frames. It worked for about 2 people before I started running out of letters. It would've been perfect if I knew a baby named Quinn Xylophone Unevercall. Plus, being flowers and fairy's I was somewhat limited to girl babies too. Anyway, the leftovers found their way into the playroom and I plan to replace the missing ones with modpodged letters from the craft store.

NOW, onto one of my original reasons of this post...did you notice the beautiful circle rug in the playroom? It is so incredibly soft and fits the space perfectly with it's multi-colored goodness. The best part? It didn't cost a dime thanks to these two people below on the left.

Chuck and Glenda, some new friends of mine and old friends of my in-laws (pictured on the right,) invited us to their house nearby to give us some things that they weren't using anymore. One of those things was that gorgeous rug. They've been following my blog for some time and could appreciate the house renovation since they were in the middle of their own! They had a beautiful house filled with distinguished furniture, a gorgeous wooden curved staircase in their entryway and meaningful artwork. That last one was my favorite and Glenda shared a great tip with me about it. I wish I had taken pictures of them now, but 2 pieces of artwork that stood out to me happened to be painted by high-schoolers. She used to work in a school and approached the art teacher one day to find a talented artist in the class that needed some encouragement or a nudge in the right direction. She showed the selected student a picture she had taken of a nearby river and asked if they could do it in the style of Monet and then gave them whatever specification she wanted: size, color, etc. When the product was finished, she got a large beautiful oil painting to the tune of $25.00 and the high school student probably made his first ever sale. Both parties win!

And speaking of student artwork, I was asked to judge a local Christian school's art show last week to which I responded with an enthusiastic, "Are you sure?" Of course I love any art show, but as to my qualifications, I wasn't sure they had the right person. I was paired up with another local school's art teacher to co-judge with and I went about judging from the "appreciation" point of view and for her's, it was more technical. We made a good team. I can tell good art when I see it and I thought I'd show you some of their stuff.
This was some of the 5th graders work. Amazing stuff, huh? They made their designs on the paper using glue and then once it dried, they oil painted the rest. I'm a sucker for anything birds (as is the case with much of the blogging world it seems) so I loved that little bird on the bottom right.

I also loved this bouquet of flowers created by a 4th grader! I thought it looked very "Van Gogh."

This was part of the high school exhibit and we kept looking at it saying, "This is not high school work." It was a tough competition, but this piece was one of my favorites and ended up winning 1st place. It was a collage of painted paper cut out to create the image on the print. I so want to hire this girl to do a collage of my house.

The same girl also did this church (bottom right) which was also so very impressive with the shading. I seriously felt as if I were standing on the front lawn watching the sun rise over the steeple.

So there you have it! You never know what kind of talent could be in your neighborhood. Might be worth checking out sometime!