Being Creative

Lately, we’ve been having a lot of fun exploring creativity.  Nora made her first painting towards the end of January and she loved it. It didn’t turn out too badly, either.Or maybe I just think that because I’m her mother…

But since then, we’ve been coloring with crayons or markers nearly every single day.  I read online about making homemade paint when I started to wonder what was in the finger paints at the ECC, and we tried that too.Equal parts flour and leftover beet cooking water = edible pink finger paint!I tried to make green with artichoke water, but it was too pale so I ended up using green food coloring, which is arguably unhealthy, but can’t possibly be as bad as bottled paint.It worked pretty well.  I think I could have used a little more flour and a little less liquid because it did make the paper wrinkle, but for a toddler art project it’s perfect and it’s cheap!

I’m going to try making some salt dough next.

I’ve also been having fun planning some creative things for that homemade giveaway I did.  It worked out that I only received 5 comments, so everybody won and nobody will be disappointed.  I have some great ideas, I just need to turn them into reality.  But first, I had to do something for myself.  Chris and I took advantage for his father’s visit and went on a baby-less date Wednesday!  We fed Nora and put her to bed and then tip-toed out of the house for a European (8:00) dinner at the Sea Grille ($15 entrees on Wednesdays…so good).It was super fun and a little bit decadent (we bought a bottle of champagne – yay, tax return), but the last time we went on a real date was in August!  Of course I wanted something new to wear to celebrate the specialness of it, which was just the push I needed to finally hem a dress I bought over the summer.  It was a yardsale find that I almost passed over because it looked like a mom dress.  I may be a mom, but I’m not the kind of mom who wears ankle length sweater dresses:But I took a second look and realized it was a Betsy Johnson (I.e. worth a couple of hundred dollars) with real potential for someone with a sewing machine…and it was marked $5!  It’s been hiding in my sewing closet waiting for me to take 20 minutes to make it wearable, and Wednesday, I did just that.Not bad, huh?

I have a great plan for the 30 inches or so that I cut off the bottom, which I think someone will really like.  Stay tuned.