Creative Blogger Award

Thank you to the lovely Alecat for your award.

Okay, the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave this to you ~

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link the person who nominated you.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.

5. Nominate 7 other bloggers & let them know they are nominated.

Hmm, it is always hard to come up with these things-
so am going to take inspiration from the lovely and talented Alecat :-)

1. I am an eldest child.
My poor younger brother
had to put up with a very dominant big sister.

2. Mum worked 12 hours a day
and we were a single parent family.

3. The school I attended for high school
was a total waste of time,
and I decided in year 8
that if I ever had children of my own
I would homeschool them.

4. I would love to do a Bachelor of Arts
but don't know if I could manage a degree,
my family and the kids homeschooling.

5. I am going to get a nice young male doberman
one day in the next few years
and train him in obedience and trial him and show him.
I would love to breed them
if I can find some as nice as my beloved old dog- Ari-

6. I am passionate about food and cooking
delicious healthy meals for my family and friends.

7. I feel so lucky and blessed
to be living my life, living in my home with my family
and living with the freedom to live our lives the way we want to.

I'd like to pass this award on to some amazing creative blogs
I have been gathering inspiration from in the wonderful world of blog
that lets me roam the globe at will.
I urge you all to go and have a look at what they are up to:

- Moon Bindery
- Sukipoet at paint, poems and ponderings
- Elisa at dreams between the worlds
- Dianne at Intuitive Painting
- Windbag and Thunder
- Jessica I have been living on your blog of late
gleaning lots of wonderful ideas
for the art history unit
the boys and I are doing at the moment
- Art Smarts 4 kids
- And one of my favourite places to visit,
I can't help but give another award to
the wonderful 5 Orange Potatoes

Ancient Roman Art

Mr10 is a history nut

and simply does not want to move
through these ancient periods too quickly,
so we visited Ancient Rome today and had a try of mosaics.
We used coloured paper cut into small squaresand impasto gel with some paint added for grout.
It was a lot more involved than the boys thought it would be,
and took a good while to get throughbut they were very proud of the finished resultand they look great.
I do my own works beside themso I am not tempted to 'help' them too much,
it also smooths out any ruffles that might happen
and inspires them to stay focused and work well.
And I don't want to miss out on all the fun.

Give Away at Peace of Pi

I have just discovered a new blogging friend and she is having a giveaway of beautiful handmade cards at Peace of Pi. If you pop over and visit her you can enter to win a pack of 6 different cards and they are truly lovely.

Jacaranda Festival

It is almost Jacaranda Festival

On the 29th October 1935, Grafton's first Jacaranda Festival made its debut before 4000 enthusiastic fans in brightly illuminated Jacaranda Avenue

(in Pound Street).

Children by the hundred danced and presented a floral pageant before

Myrtle Gentle's name was drawn from a golden casket

as first Jacaranda Princess by the Festival King, Jim Orr.

Jacaranda Queen was Mavis Schwinghammer

and they were attended by 20 maids of honour,

11 pages, flower girls, jesters and princesses.

The next night a floral dance, adopted from The Cornish Floral Dance and played in one step time, encouraged adults to dance down Jacaranda Avenue.

Since the first Festival a queen crowning ceremony is held on the last Saturday in October each year, heralding the start of the major festival week. The final weekend features a spectacular street parade.

The festival is now into its 75th year and is still strong in commitment, participation and celebration from the Clarence Valley residents. The Jacaranda Festival attracts many tourists during this late springtime event.

Purple Haze

Our beautiful city

is getting ready for the annual Jacaranda FestivalThere are hundreds and hundreds of spectacular jacarandasplanted in and all around GraftonMr10 or is that a monkey swinging in a tree?
Mr6 found a 'snake' hole,
he is finding lots and lots of 'snake' holes everywhere we go at the moment.

The purple carpet is as pretty as the purple canopyThe streets are lined with purple

The town is looking wonderful

with trees of all sizes in their party frocks
There are jacaranda trees everywhere, all over the district
in the city, on the river, and out in the paddocks.

Ancient Art

This week we have been looking at ancient art forms.

Mr10 is making a mini book for his lapbook.We visited Ancient Egypt and looked at the ancient Egyptian decorations
decorated a sarcophagus

We also played with heiroglyphs, and looked at the murals done so long ago on the walls of the tombs.We drew them first using charcoal on good quality thick paper.
Then we filled them in with acrylic paint,
leaving the edges and some gaps to give an aged lookOnce they were dry we painted over the top with artists inks.
They were left to dry for a few hours and then rinsed off under the hot tapWe then dried them flat on some newspaper and finally glued them into our art journals.
Our next stop was Ancient Greece
we looked at all of the periods of pottery, and the distinctive shapes.Had a quick lesson on symetry
and folded some 'terracotta' coloured paper in half.traced our pots on the back and cut them out,
all ready to decorate with a black sharpie marker.

Venus of Willendorf

We popped over to stoneage Austria today to spend the day with Venus of Willendorf.

We sat outside and carved hebelstone using stone age tools.

Sticks and stones, teeth and bones
were gathered from the paddocks.

The boys had to find the sculpture inside the rocks

and the discussion was about big breasts and belly and the symbolism of fertility.

We moved inside and used some air drying white clay to model a Venus figure

The clay was stiff and hard to work with

and instead of chipping and carving away

we had to shape and model

To finish of our day with Venus

we drew her into our art journals