Dale Chihuly Art Project

 A few weeks ago I posted some pictures from our trip to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

 The museum is home to a permanent collection of works by Dale Chihuly.

 When it comes to art, I usually prefer more traditional pieces, but I love Chihuly!

 Everything is so bright and colorful and full of crazy shapes.

 

 

 

 Because he lost his sight in one eye, Chihuly doesn't have any depth perception (you can see a short video clip about this here), which makes glass blowing rather dangerous, so he actually paints pictures and directs the workers in his studio to make his creations.

 We watched a video on how to make your own Chihuly-inspired art and had so much fun with it!  We did use the clear Shrinky-Dink paper she suggests in the video because we actually had it already.  Sometimes it pays to be an art supply hoarder.

 

After you have drawn your shape and colored it in (using Sharpies), you cut it out and put it in the oven.  I placed them on top of a bowl while they baked.

 This was Jack's big bowl.

 It's kind of hard to see here, but Alice made two and glued them together.

 Alice tried tracing her hand to make a turkey and when we baked it, the fingers curled into some interesting shapes.

The kids also colored on the little scrap pieces and baked them and they curled up into little pieces that would be good if you were trying to glue lots of pieces together for a big sculpture.  We had so much fun with this project.  The kids worked on it the entire afternoon and we definitely got our money's worth from the Shrinky Dink paper!

Happy Birthday, Jay!

Happy (one date late) birthday to the best husband ever.  In the throes of getting the house ready to put on the market, not much happened in the way of celebrating, but after 20 years together, I was pretty confident that he would rather spend the time packing instead of partying.  Hopefully by the time he's 39 we'll be in the next (and final) house!

Jack Gantos

 Last night we went to hear Jack Gantos speak at the library.  He's a Newbery-winning author who has written a lot of books, including the Rotten Ralph books, which were a favorite with my kids--especially with Jack.

 He was a great speaker!

 This is his childhood bedroom, which, he pointed out, looked like it belonged to a 90 year old nun.

 We writes every day at the public library.  (These are the doors.)

 He talked a bit about the process he goes through when writing a book and even showed some of his notebooks.

 He also showed how he goes about setting up a picture book.

 During the Q & A time, Jack asked about his next book.

 We got a pretty good spot in line to have our books signed.  Jack had his old copy of Rotten Ralph and he got a special cat drawing in it.

 Alice wasn't too sure about getting very close.

I think she enjoyed it, though.  We've already read all the Rotten Ralph books we brought home today!

Throwback Thursday: Not Back to School

 I love this picture from Jack's kindergarten year.  It was taken on the day that our district was starting classes and I was just so thankful that I didn't have to deal with getting a child to school on time while taking care of a baby while my husband was out of town.

 This time around there's no baby, but I'm still so glad I don't have to go by the public school schedule.  We were having some of our floors fixed this morning, so late last night we started moving everything from Jack's room into Alice's room--and the hall, and the bathroom, and the guy room...pretty much anywhere we could cram it.  The kids were delighted.

 By 8:30 this morning, this is how things looked.   We also had to removed everything from our bedroom, so pretty much the entire upstairs was crazy, and it spilled downstairs, too.

Since we usually try to have some Not Back to School fun on public school's first day (see here and here and here), we did go out for some lunch after the flooring people left.  We'll start back after Labor Day--and hopefully I'll be ready for it!

Alice's First Dance Class

 Alice's first dance class was today, so last week we went to the dance store and got shoes and tights and leotards.  When she was trying on her shoes, she told me, "This is the most excited I have ever been in my whole wide life!"  She also said she would try to stay calm until class started.

 She also picked out this bag, which she is very excited to carry.  She starts class in her tap shoes and then halfway through she changes to her ballet shoes.

 Ready to start!

 Hanging up her bag--these look kind of stalkerish and some were taken through the window, but I don't feel too crazy since most of the other moms were doing the same thing.

She told me her favorite part of class was the dancing, so I guess that means it was a success!  She has three programs and a big recital at the end and she is already looking forward to dancing on the big stage!

Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art

 Last week we took a little road trip to Shawnee.

 We visited the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, which is located on the campus of St. Gregory's University.  They have free admission through the end of August!

 The museum was founded by Father Gregory Gerrer, who collected many of the art in the museum so that the people of Indian Territory who didn't have a chance to travel could still see art from all over the world.

 He was also an artist himself and painted this portrait of Pope Pius X (I think--I could be wrong on that name) and there is a copy that he did that hangs in the Vatican.

 The museum is small, but it has a wide variety of items from different cultures and time periods.  Alice especially liked the mummies!

 A cat mummy!

 June Morning was Alice's favorite painting.

 Trying to look like one of the statues!

 The cabinet of curiosities!  This contains items from all over the world, including shrunken heads!

 The kids worked on making their own landscapes.  You can also download a museum treasure hunt on their website.

 Outside the museum they have a nice little area that the kids enjoyed, too.

 We had lunch at a nearby park (where I didn't take any pictures), and on the way home, we stopped in Jacktown.

Jacktown seems to consist of the convenience store and the fire department, so I guess we hit all the sights to see!