Vol. 3, No. 243, August 31, 2018

3243 - Eye Survived.

Today I completed my first week as a Middle School Art Teacher. It wasn't live at first sight, but I'm not giving up yet. Today I introduced my 7th grade students to drawing a realistic eye. We watched a YouTube video and then drew our own on a large scale. Here is my demo the iris will be painted later to look like a color wheel.

Vol. 3, No. 242, August 30, 2018

3242 - Vincent's Vases.

Tomorrow, my Sixth Graders are going to start hanging their van Gogh flowers, which meant that I needed to create the vases. These are the two vases I made and hung for the first two classes.

Vol. 3, No. 241, August 29, 2018

3241 - At It Again.

Today, my sixth graders continued making their van Gogh flowers. Some of them were trying to make rose stlye flowers, but were struggling wiht how to color them realistically. Therefore, I decided that I needed to make an esample. Looking at the finished product, there are somethings I would change, like the shape and placement of some of the petals and a little bit of the shading, but overall, I love how it turned out.

Vol. 3, No. 240, August 28, 2018

3240 - The Museum.

Today was my first day with Kindergarten. I only had half of the class, so rather than doing the standard first day rules and introductions, we read a book. The book was The Museum by Susan Verde. The book ends with the girl painting her own canvas. I gave each student a piece of paper and asked them  to  draw something fun that they did this summer. For my example, I drew fish and seaweed to represent my work at the theater this summer.

Vol. 3, No. 239, August 27, 2018

3239 - Just Because.

While today was the first day of school, I didn't actually make any art at school. Which meant that as I was winding down for the night, I also needed to do a project. I checked National Day Calendar to see if there were any good holidays today, and I found National Just Because Day. The picture on the post was of a peacock. So i thought 'why not?' I decided to cut out a peacock stencil and use my blow markers to make this peacock.

Vol. 3, No. 238, August 26, 2018

3238 - Post-It Palooza.

I decided to begin 7th and 8th grade art with a brief drawing lesson. Tomorrow, I am going to teach them about the history of Post-It notes, and then have each student decorate a Post-It note sharing something about themselves. I made my example tonight. I decided to fill my Post-It with art supplies.

Vol. 3, No. 237, August 25, 2018

3237 - Wolf Walk.

I got a large dose of Miller Time as we all ventured to Great Wolf Lodge for a weekend of fun. This morning we participated in the Wolf Walk, a storytime during which we traveled around the lobby learning about different animals. When the story was over, there was a mystery craft. The craft was making an origami wolf. The Miller Littles loved howling like a wolf and feeding their new wolves some lunch.

Vol. 3, No. 236, August 24, 2018

3236 - Helpful Hearts.

After sleeping in this morning, I conned the Miller Littles into helping me with my project. I wanted to make am example of the school collaboration project, so rather than do it all myself, I had each of the Miler Littles do one section. I had Littlest Miller follow the instructions for the Kindergarteners (4 sections using crayons). Oldest and Middle Miller followed the instructions for the older kids, 5 sections using colored pencils.

Middle and Littlest Miller gave up halfway through, so I had to finish theirs. When each section was finished, I lined them up to reform the heart.

Vol. 3, No. 235, August 23, 2018

3235 - Blended Beauties.

I spent the majority of my day either in meetings or traveling between meetings. The little time that was left over, I spent finishing organizing my classrooms and planning out my lessons for the first day of school. My sixth graders are going to begin with an collaborative project based on Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Each student will draw a 6" flower and color it with oil pastels. One of the directions is that they need to demonstrate blending of colors.

Vol. 3, No. 234, August 22, 2018

3234 - Procrastination Pallet.

I had an exhausting day of meetings, classroom prep, and open houses. As I was leaving for the day, I couldn't think of anything "creative" that I did today. I added another table to my room this year, which meant I needed another sign. So I grabbed paper and the stencil to make a new sign.

Vol. 3, No. 233, August 21, 2018

3233 - Getting High.

Each year at Annandale Elementary, the Art department does a collaborative art project. Each student in grades K-4 makes one piece, which the other art teacher and I combine to make some sort of collage.

A lot of work goes into these collages, so I am going to spread the background information out over multiple posts. What I can tell you right now is that this year's collage is going to be made out of hearts. Artie A and I started the collaboration today by creating a heart stencil that could be divided into 4 parts and then we started tracing. We need a total of 192 hearts in order for each student to decorate 1/4 of a heart.

As it turns out, the process of tracing hearts is time consuming and pretty toxic when you are using the wide Sharpies. We only got about 1/3 of the hearts traced before we had to move onto other things for the day, which means that I will be working on it more whenever I have free time.

Vol. 3, No. 232, August 20, 2018

3232 - Back To School.

Today was the first day of teacher workshops. Which also meant it was the first day back in my classroom. after attending a meeting this morning, I spent the rest of the day working in my room. One of today's tasks was to make a new name sign for outside of my classroom. I was planning on making it based off of a poster that a class had given me at the end of the year last year. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the poster. Therefore, the final sign isn't as cool as I was hoping it would, but it good enough to get me through until I can make a new one.

Vol. 3, No. 231, August 19, 2018

3231 - OCD...Occupational Color Display.

Today, I continued spray painting my supplies for school; bowls, trays, cups, and bins in all of the colors of the rainbow. I guess now I am ready for school tomorrow.

Vol. 3, No. 230, August 18, 2018

3230 - Spray School.

In my classroom, I like things to be color coded to match the tables. To color code, I could either pay a lot for colored plastic bins, or collect my own for cheap or free and spray paint them. Being money conscious, I chose the spray paint route. Today's task was painting my paint brush cups. I had collected yogurt cups last year, and had wanted to paint them them, but never got around to it. I thought that based on the shape of the container they would be cute if they were painted as crayons. However as I was spraying, I had time to think and realized that nobody cares how cute the paintbrush cups are. I ran out of yellow paint, so I will have to finish that one tomorrow.

I currently only have 6 tables, but I decided to paint all of the containers that I had, just in case I get more tables.

Vol. 3, No. 229, August 17, 2018

3229 - Cat's Game.

Today was my last Nanny day for the Miller Littles, as I go back to school on Monday, and we had a full day planned; Zoomobile at the Library, school lunch, play at the park, watch theater camp 1's play, get gas and go through the carwash, McDonald's for snack, clean out my car, including taking out all 4 carseats, play #2, family dinner, park outing #2 with family friends. All of these activities took until about 8:30 PM at which time my famiy decided it was game time. As we sat down to play, I asked my sister what I should draw. She suggested a cat; this reminded me that it was Black Cat Appreciation Day today. So I drew a black cat sitting on a wall.

Vol. 3, No. 228, August 16, 2018

3228 - You Name It.

Back in February, I enjoyed some Miller Time at Crayola Experience. One of the activities you can do there is working with Model Magic. We decide to take our Model Magic packets home to us on a "rainy day" this summer. Well, on the rainy days we had, I forgot to take it out, so today, on my second to last day of summer, I decided that we would sculpt. Tomorrow Oldest Miller and Middle Miller have their theater camp performance, so I decided I should make them flowers. I made 6 different flowers, so that they can each have three. As the flowers were sitting in a cup drying, Littlest Miller started asking me what the flowers were called. I didn't make any specific kinds of flowers, so I encouraged her to name the flowers herself. She started naming them after characters from Seussical; for example, the red and orange flower is Mayzie.

Vol. 3, No. 227, August 15, 2018

3227 - Professional Awesomeness.

Everyday for the last week and a half, I have had an hour and a half of alone time with Littlest Miller, when Oldest Miller and Middle Miller are at theater camp and Miss N is napping. We spent some of the days just resting in my room (that's a treat, because she only gets to go in my room when invited),  and watching TV. Today I decided to switch it up, I brought her to my room to choose an activity from my craft bin. She chose sidewalk chalk, solely because I had a piece of doughnut shaped chalk.

CC and CAT, having missed hanging out with me everyday, showed up just in time to go outside with us. We all made our own chalk pictures. CAT drew the Peace Sign; CC drew the flower and the beach scene; Littlest Miller added a shark to the beach scene; and I drew my chalk rendition of Starry Night.

Littlest Miller looked at my drawing and was stunned, shouting out, "That's Awesome!" During supper, Mama Miller commented on the "professional" art.

Vol. 3, No. 226, August 14, 2018

3226 - Splish Splash.

Yesterday, I took the Miller Littles to the splash pad in Litchfield. They were having so much fun running through the water, I decided to pull out my phone to snap some pictures. Today, I decided to keep my project simple and I turned three of yesterday's pictures into a collage. The cuteness of these pictures is making me excited for next year's county fair.

Vol. 3, No. 225, August 13, 2018

3225 - Toothless.

Growing up, I liked the movie "Toothless". Tonight, I got to be the toothfiary. Fortunately, I didn't need to almost dot to do so. Middle Miller lost his fourth front tooth the other day, but his parents have been busy and didn't get time to make a toothfiary delivery. So, I volunteered for the job. I took advantage of International Left-handed Day, and wrote the letter with my left hand. Of course, a letter from the tooth fairy wouldn't be complete without some glitter, so I pulled out the glitter glue and spread some on the corners as well as the money. Tooth Fairy payout has really gone up since I was a kid, I only got a quarter per tooth, the Miller Littles get two dollars.

Vol. 3, No. 224, August 12, 2018

3224 - Summer Style.

As I enter into my final week of summer vacation, I decided it was one to finally get my nails painted. I got two shades of green nail polish as prizes at my cousin's bridal shower, which inspired me to paint watermelons. Since my toenails are really small, I only put details on my big toes.

Vol. 3, No. 223, August 11, 2018

3223 - More Magnets.

Today was Twine Ball Day in Darwin. I had a booth set up, mostly selling Thirty-One products. I was also selling the magnets that I had made. While I was sitting at my booth, I made more magnets during the slow times.

One problem I encountered was that the stones I was using the other day were bigger than the ones I had today. The problem was that I didn't know they were different and I had already cut papers. So I had to go and trim the papers to fit the smaller stones.

The magnets were a big hit with the youth who stopped at my booth. There are two pictures tonight, because I made magnets in two batches tonight and some from the first batch were sold before I had the next batch made.

Vol. 3, No. 222, August 10, 2018

3222 - Don't Skip A Beet.

Today I took the Miller Littles to Story Hour at the Litchfield Public Library. The topic for the day was One Vegetable One Community; the OVOC for this year is beets. We read a book that talked about how plants grow and it showed what was happening both above and below the ground. For our craft we made collages showing vegetables with both above and below ground views. I chose to make beets and had Miss N help me. While I made the sky and the leaves, Miss N, colored the  paper for the beets. When she was finished, A.K.A she started coloring on herself, I used that paper to cut out the beets. I glued it all together and added roots and ants. Then Littlest Miller looked at the collage and decided it need something more, so she grabbed some markers and added a tree, or piece of grass with a spider, or something; she explained it once, but I don't remember what it was.

Vol. 3, No. 221, August 9, 2018

3221 - Saying Goodbye.

Tonight I said goodbye to a house that has been in my family for approximately 50 years and that I was able to call my home for the last three years. I will admit that some tears were shed, as memories came flooding in as I made my last walks through the house, but it is time for a new chapter. My parents will close on the house tomorrow morning, so as my last work of art on the property, I pulled out my sidewalk chalk and wrote the new owners a note on the driveway. It reads, “From our family to yours...Welcome Home.” Fingers crossed, it doesn’t rain tonight.

Vol. 3, No. 220, August 8, 2018

3220 - Magnetic Attraction.

Last year at Twine Ball Day, I sold picture magnets. They were a pretty big hit, so this year I decided to make more. I cut the pictures out of old Thirty-One catalogs. Then I used Mod Podge to attach the picture to a glass stone. I finished each piece by using the Mod Podge to attach a magnet to the back.

If I have time, I will go and make more magnets, possibly trying out a different size stone.

Vol. 3, No. 219, August 7, 2018

3219 - Forgotten Peaches.

We didn't have enough time last night to make our peach jam, so I headed back to my parents house this afternoon to finish it with my mom.

We prepped the peaches yesterday so today's task was pretty easy. Littlest Miller joined us today. She had a great time stirring the jam and writing the letters of her name with the spoon as she did so.

I was back home before I realized I had forgotten to take a picture of the jam, so I called my mom to ask her to do it.

Vol. 3, No. 218, August 6, 2018

3218 - Peaches.

My mom bought two large boxes of peaches, around 30 lbs, they were ripe, which means today was canning day. With the county fair on the brain, we made a variety of peach products including peach pie filling, canned peaches, and peach butter. The butter was still cooking when I left, so I didn't get a picture.

Vol. 3, No. 217, August 5, 2018

3217 - The Good Kind Of Fat.

My sister Becca came home for a visit this past week and she brought the ingredients to make Avacado Ice Cream. She brought enough for multiple batches. We mixed up o e right away and the rest of the ingredients just sat in the fridge. Since the avacado was already over rule, I decided t ok make a second batch of ice cream today.

The recipe I used has avacado, coconut milk, maple syrup, and lime juice. Because it freezes solid (more than regular ice cream) I decided to pour the finished "batter" I to popsicle molds. After letting g it sit in the freezer for a couple hours, I pulled one out to try, it was really good! I think I will be making this again.

Vol. 3, No. 216, August 4, 2018

3216 - Pretty Box.

I decided to get a jump start on my projects for next year's Meeker County Fair.  One catagory that I registered for this year was Pretty Boxes and Bags. I had intended to make this box in time for this year's fair, but that didn't happen. I had all of the supplies out and ready, so rather than just putting them away, I made the box. It is an old check box covered with magazine cutouts. The pieces were attached with Modge Podge.

Vol. 3, No. 215, August 3, 2018

3215 - Living Edge Forest.

Tonight I celebrated my Birthday with my Cousin B, who took me to my first painting class at The Paint Factory in Hutchinson. We had lots of fun. Our class was the first Living Wood class and we learned, step by step, how to paint a forest. One of the hardest parts of the night was choosing the perfect piece of wood.

At the end of class, I worn a certificate for a free class so I will be back again soon!

Vol. 3, No. 214, August 2, 2018

3214 - Color Collaboration.

Today we celebrate National Coloring Book Day.  I was going to spend some time coloring in coloring books with the Miller Littles this afternoon, but I decided to take it a step further. I created my own coloring book with help from Oldest Miller and Littlest Miller. Oldest Miller gave me a suggestion for the first picture, a portrait of her; she even struck a pose for me to work from. Next it was Littlest Miller’s turn to pose. She then suggested the name heart and the flowers, which she actually helped draw. Other suggestions that they gave were the planet and an anchor. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to color the pictures, but it will make for a great travel coloring book as it is small.

Vol. 3, No. 213, August 1, 2018

3213 - Vegimal.

Today was entry day for the Meeker County Fair. I entered 49 projects in Open Class. I had a variety of plants, food, arts and crafts, and photography. This year I entered in one new catagory, that was ‘Vegimal Group’. In this catagory, you create a animal or person using 3 or more vegetables. I went to the garden and found a cucumber, a green bean, tomatoes that were still green, and carrots that I had weeded to make room for other carrots to grow larger.

I started by cutting the cucumber diagonally and hollowing it out. Then I cut an opening for the mouth and carved out the teeth. Next I made the eyes by carving a hole, inserting the tomatoes and lifting the skin flap for an eyelid. I used skin from the other half of the cucumber to create fins. Finished the shark by I poking holes along the top the of cucumber, inserting carrots to create a Mohawk like design. I decided to make it more creative by adding a smaller fish in the sharks mouth. This fish was made with a green bean body, cucumber skin fins and cucumber seed eyes. I placed the completed sculpture on a blue plate.

This project is scored on Creativity (30), Workmanship (20), and Appearance (50). I will have to wait until tomorrow to see how it scored, but regardless of how well I do, it was fun to make.

Vol. 3, No. 212, July 31, 2018

3212 - Beet It.

This year's One Community, One Vegetable chose to focus on beets. To incorporate OCOV, the Meeker County Fair included special categories for beets. Tomorrow is entry day, so today I was preparing my projects tonight. Two of my projects included baking with beets. I made Chocolate Beet Cake and Fudgy Vhocolate Beet Brownies. I hate beets, but when baked with chocolate, beets aren't too bad.