Our Summer Part Two

City Museum , St. Louis, MO

St. Louis, MO is a fabulous place to visit. Some of my favorite people live there. There are some really cool places to visit (more info coming soon on my new travel blog ), and the best one of them just happens to be my sister's house!

Taylor at City Museum

Kitty , Brooke and D

D at the City Museum

Kitty and Brooke

Missouri Botanical Gardens

St. Louis, MO

Paul , Kitty 's husband

Paul and my mother .... oh wait , that 's not Mom, that's my sister Kitty !

D

Brooke

This is an exhibit by glass artist Dale Chihuly.

In the next couple of weeks we will be studying Dale Chihuly. We were inspired by ourvisit to the garden where they have some of his amazing work on display . I have two great projects to do with the kids , look for our future post!

Garden/dinner at Kitty 's house

photo by Taylor

D and Marie, Paul 's Mom

photo by Taylor

Fitz , our cousin (my nephew )

photo by Taylor

* We are sorry to Stephanie and Molly that we not do have pics of you to post!*

The Magic House

St Louis, MO

D

Taylor

Brooke

Kitty and the kids , The Magic House

All the kids

What a great trip , what a great time!

Our Summer Part One

photo by Taylor

What a summer!  We spent a good deal of it preparing, visiting and trying to get home from our trip to the States.  I hadn't realized how long it was since I had put up a post and thought that I would get some done while we were traveling.  Our trip ended up taking a bit more energy and time (as did the time needed to adjust to the time zone and life after) so that never happened.   Hopefully, you can expect a good number of posts to be up soon. 

photo by Taylor

The purpose of our trip was to visit family, meet a new nephew and see a few special friends.  Unfortunately, there were a few favorite family members, friends and a reunion on the Caroom side, with the most wonderful people, that we didn't get to see this time. 
I am working on a new blog of our travels so there will be more detail on these visits in the future.  For now, here are pictures of our trip and the people that we love!
I will post our trip in three posts.  Here is part one:

BALTIMORE, MD:

Baltimore Children's Museum-

a wonderful place to adjust to a different time zone!

AUSTIN, TX:

Taylor and Brooke have arrived in Texas!

Jackson, our new family member!

Jefe, Cameron's Dad, Doug

Nana, Cameron's Mom, Patricia

Cyrus and Carter, Cameron's brothers

Jessica (our sister in law) and Taylor

Carter (again) and D-

I love this picture!

Catherine and Brooke (Cat is Cameron's sister)

Jackson and Ryder (Cat's boyfriend)

No family visit to TX is complete without seeing our honorary sister, Ashley.

Degas "Painting life through a keyhole."

Edgar Degas was born on July 19, 1834 in Paris, France.   Degas originally studied law before taking up art.  He liked to paint indoors and is well known for his many paintings of dancers.  He used charcoal and pastels as often as he used paints.  He liked to paint/sculpt how life was and not posed.  He said he liked to paint life as if he was "painting life through a keyhole".   As the artist grew older he had severe eye problems but still made paintings, sculptures, and drawings, from memory.   His work was shown along with Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne.  He died in Paris, France in 1917,  when he was 83 years old.

One of my favorite consequences of doing a study on Degas was being exposed to all the great art work that he created in addition to his paintings of dancers.   I had no idea how diverse he was and I especially enjoy his sculptures, mainly the horses.

We used several books for the above information and if you are interested in finding more information on Degas or any other famous artists please click here.

I chose this clip because it shows a variety of Degas' work:

We did two projects because I couldn't decide which one I wanted to do more.  I love working with pastels and I had just received an order of burlap. 

Our first project was from The Usborne ART Treasury.  Pastel dancers.  An easy project using black construction paper and pastels.  It gives you tips on how to make the dancers.  We personalized it a bit (because I made a mistake and didn't like the hair on mine) and cut it out.  The girls really liked this so they cut theirs out also. 

D wasn't as into making this project as others but he did like to mimic the dancers:

Our next project was from the book Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga. 

This was a project also done with pastels.  Chalk on Cloth.  It called for a cotton cloth with a rough weave and we used burlap.  You soak the fabric in milk and then draw a picture on quickly before the cloth dries.  You turn the painting upside down on a piece of scrap paper and old newspapers, then you cover the painting with aluminum foil and iron.  This sets the chalk design into the fabric.

Taylor:

Brooke:

I wasn't sure what we were going to do with them but using them as book covers on our travel binders worked out very well.

D made a smiley face for Nick.