A slice of our Summer

Helllloooo! It's been awhile since I last wrote a blog post. I had a friend recently ask me if I still planned on blogging and thought, 'boy, I guess I took enough time off it's time to get going again'. Did you have a great summer? I hope you made time to play, relax and explore. There were not a lot of home projects except for the farm table the hubs is working on right now (more of that to come). Our children went back to school this week so it's back to routines, which is good for everyone. I thought you might like to see a slice of our summer:

Our family had a great time visiting Martha's Vineyard in July. We had a big family reunion with cousins and Aunts and Uncles. There was plenty of card playing, ice cream, boating and beach days. 

                                       There are some impressive old Captain's homes to walk past.

                                                                and pretty gardens.

                             Oh, and of course, the many darling ice cream shops were visited frequently.

                       Many bursting window boxes on white painted homes add New England charm.

                                                              Quaint little fishing villages                  

Pretty sailing days to the beach. 

Farmer's markets 

On Instagram I showed a couple of rooms in our beloved family home. The original part of the house used to be a carriage house in which my grandparents made into their home. We love coming here to be with lots of family and gather. I love the chart room and old nautical lantern my Uncle put up.

The main part of the barn is cozy and has a gallery wall with many of my grandmother's paintings. A few years ago my sisters and I did a makeover in the loft and you can see more pictures of the chart room.

Now, it's back to schedules and non-beach days, but I think it's important to take time and disconnect for a bit. I can't wait to show you some projects from our Art camp that I taught with my friend this summer. Are you still in summer mode or school mode? Either way, I hope you're doing well and look forward to showing more projects and adventures with you.

Summer Art Camp

As summer comes to a close (so sad) I thought I would share with you a fun summer tradition. For the past few summers one of my good friends and I put on a Art Camp for our kids, their friends and neighbors. We have loads of messy fun making different crafts, painting and baking. This year we had an older girls group (9-12) and a younger children's age group (5-7). Here's some of the creative things these kids did this summer:

 Painting on canvas is such a treat for these kids. We talked to them about sketching first and then they pick a still life they want to do (or not). These make for great works of art on their walls.

The girls also decorated their own tote bags using fabric or painting on them. My daughter Alison uses hers for her music bag now.

                   We made banners for their bedrooms or for their birthday parties using paper and fabric.

                                          It can get a bit messy when creativity is in the works.

          The older girls did some beautiful watercolors and we taught them about sketching and landscapes.

We had a day for the younger children to learn about Pop Art and showed them some of Andy Warhol's works. The children traced some shapes we had for them like a ducky, ice cream cone, crown, sailboat. etc and we used a grid method to break up their paper. Then they used poster paints to fill up the space. 

 Another activity was watercolor where they learned how to do Pointillism. Pointillism is like Impressionism but with tiny dots to create an image (think- George Seurat). The children used q-tips to create a pointillism effect.

Kids love to decorate cupcakes. They got to decorate a cookie monster and Elmo cupcakes. I didn't get many pictures of these because everything was gobbled up to fast.

 Lastly, we did a spaghetti art throwing day to learn about Expressionism. Think Jackson Pollock and splattering paint. Instead of throwing paint, we had the kids throw painted spaghetti at large pieces of paper to create an expressionist look.

 As you can imagine- it was a lot of spaghetti to clean up. However, they had fun running through the sprinkler at the end to get all cleaned up and I hosed my house down.

We also had lots of little side projects like these where we taught them to blend colors and using the color wheel. Summer is such a fun time to do art projects with kids. We had a great time and I'm sure we'll do more next year. What about you? Any fun art projects you made?

*All images are my own.