pancake breakfast for lovers

So I went home to BC for the weekend. It was so great to see my family and friends and have a chance to get away from the pace of the big city. I took Mack and Maddie with me and Nate decided at the last minute to come along as well so my little car was pretty full! I did take a ton of photos while I was there and I will get them posted shortly but I just had to share this series of photos that I took of Mack and Maddie while we were making Easter brunch. I had gotten up a bit early to get all the prep done; I cooked sausage and made pancake batter and Byron and I scrambled a ton of eggs.When the rest of the household woke, I decided to leave them to take care of making the rest of the pancakes while I ran off to get ready before my Dad arrived. 

I came back in the room to take this series of photos and realized that this is what its like making pancakes when you're in love... 

So the trick here is to make the pancakes heart shaped! And to think all these years I've just made damn circles. No wonder....

Anyhow, I just think these two are adorable. Mack can't stand to be more than ten feet from this girl, and she's absolutely perfect for him. I truly wish them all the love in the world...It is such joy to see your children finding happiness.

The SheArt Class

I was so excited to be included in the guest list for this class at Selena's house last week, and I couldn't wait to get my hands dirty learning all of Carolyn's secrets! I was so disappointing when I missed the class the first time it ran but it just happened to be right smack in the middle of my move, and if you remember, I had the FLU during that move so doing anything extra was out of the question. 

So it was my first attempt at this popular new SheArt style that's been popping up everywhere and I was super stoked to realize that its a lot easier to pick up than I expected. Carolyn did such an amazing job of really simplifying the steps and showing us how to customize our canvases to our personal taste. She gave us the tools to be able to create totally unique images and how to customize our backgrounds to suit the design. As a result all of our final projects were totally different from one another but each was absolutely beautiful!! 

FYI: My first stop the next morning was at Scrapbooker's Paradise to buy another half dozen of these canvases and a big ole jar of ModPodge and I can't wait to have a bit of time to get my hands totally dirty making more and more of these. I think I may decorate an entire room in my house with SheArt!! 

A quick run down on what we did: 

First, we primed the burlap panels with Gesso, then covered them with random scraps of patterned paper. Then we mooshed paint all over the top of that, thinned down to almost a wash. there was lots of layering of colors and dabbing, smearing and spreading with paper towels. When that dried we used random household items like pill bottle lids (which there seemed to be ironically few of available...) and bubble wrap to stamp with. Then a bit of stamping with black Staz On, and I added quite a bit of doodling with my trusty black Copic Multiliner. Then we made our dresses out of patterned paper, lined them up with the body parts that we had cut out of magazines. You can kind of see the process through the photos I took as I was working. This is a great technique to help remember the perspective and shapes as you remove more and more of the image from the original page. First I cut off all of her body parts from one another and removed them from her clothes. Then I drew my own outfit for her using her body parts as a guide for both the configuration and pose. 

Then it was embellish embellish embellish. I added lace to her skirt, and a few pearls around her neck. I stuck on some rubons, some tiles and then painted her some hair. 

And this was my final result: 

I absolutely love it and I can't wait to make more. Here are the other projects from the girls in the class: 

Dianne's canvas.. she had brought her own paint, it was super thick and gooey and I loved it. I have to get my hands on some of it! 

Nola's canvas. You can see that Nola's thinking is very linear and precise. We give her a hard time about it, but I think there is something to be said for that kind of thought process, and I loved her end result so it certainly works for her! 

Nishiki's Canvas. A lot of ModPodge was used here today. At the end of the class I mentioned how I couldn't wait to see the final result and Carolyn remarked that I don't really have a choice! LOL I'm still waiting to see the final result, but I can already tell its going to be amazing.. I mean.. just look at those shoes!! 

Of course, Holly's SheArt is pregnant, since she's got grandbaby on the brain. I thought she did an amazing job of translating her woman onto canvas, and the whole effect was rather stunning. What a fantastic gift this will be.  

Selena's canvas. Clearly this girl is still in Jamaica, Mon. I so love how she did the flippy hair and especially love the vine up the side. Welcome home Selena! 

For reference: this was Carolyn's original canvas that we fell in love with and from which we were all working. You can see which elements each of us decided to keep and what we customized along the way. I so love the creative process!  

Thanks so much girls for such a great evening. I really enjoyed every minute of it!
A