Paint me a Picture

I deal in words.
That's my hobby, my interest, my business.
But I love art in all its forms.
I love paintings and drawings (maybe because my talent ends at stick figures and one kind of flower that I am kind of good at. But honestly- only one)
Since a picture can say a thousand words, and because I've been up to my neck researching art for my next novel... (you can tell when I'm starting a book- my blog suffers. You can tell when I've got writer's block on my book- my blog thrives!)

These are about 1/3 of the books I'm using right now!

...my girls have had a renewed interest in all things art. For our family activity this week I raided Hobby Lobby and bought real brushes (fan, angled, straight...you name it) and grown up watercolors from a tube (the girls were ecstatic) and we all watched Bob Ross make happy little trees. 
And then we sat down as a family and tried it out- different brushes, different techniques, different strokes. (I just said Different Strokes and you just started singing the song, didn't you?)

After an hour of hard work we had a handful of fun memories, a few tears when our "happy little trees" didn't look as "happy" as Bob Ross's, and a couple pictures.

Pictures don't really need to say a thousand words. This one only says twelve:

I am little. and I got to paint. Therefore I am happy.

No children were harmed in the making of this blog...

We had a really big week over here. It was all about the baby of the family.
She had a full team of rowdy cheerleaders as she learned to do this:

And then this happened!

I am very relieved to report that the two pictures are in no way related except they star the same little cutie. But don't think cute equals small and helpless.

She is now strong enough to escape punishment if she causes mischief. There's no way to reach her once she starts climbing. If anyone is looking for a girl to camp out in a tree as a protest- I might have your gal.