Easter with some of my favorite Peeps...

The typical start to an Easter Egg Hunt, right?  Yes, the shotgun to start it is typical, but something is missing...

Being a farmer, TC has Egg-sperience with a variety of eggs.  This one is of the egg-stra large golden (???) variety.  Don't worry, I don't let him pick your paint colors.  Neither does his wife, Carol, keeper of the list of hiding spots.  They are serious about this egg hunt thing.

Ahh, now that's more like it.  Here's the rest of the kids lined up for the egg hunt.  Oh, no, wait, we're missing Kate and Jesse.  Yes, they really hide eggs for the grown up kids, too...including me, this year (thanks Easter Bunnies).

Hmmm, how to caption this one?  "Bartender, there's a chick in my drink"..."Real men drink pink"...It only looks like Jeremy is drowning his sorrows in an Easter-tini.  This is actually his Sister-in-law Kate's annual strategy to sway the odds in her favor.  A yummy cocktail with a wicked kick served beforehand beats a hip check at the starting line any day.  Jeremy never seems to catch onto the trick.

There are lots of blessings to count this time of year.  Being included in the Fogarty family celebration is a big one for me.  Thanks, Dearhearts.  You're the best.

Now, back at Belle Ami...

Being the day after Easter, Midwestern schools are closed. As a special treat, Faithie let her younger sister Ava tag along to art class. It's tricky teaching siblings, as the younger tends to compare herself to the older, playing an impossible game of catch-up. I put them at opposite ends of the table, so they drew the same thing, but from different angles.

Faith is pretty accomplished at drawing what she sees, and even did a second drawing, pulling out the individual elements in a really cool graphic style piece, while Ava finished hers.

Ava, who is six, was pretty impressive at noticing details, like the fact that she could see her sister's hand through the windows of the fairy's punkin camper.  How to draw a big hand in a tiny window, especially a hand that kept moving, proved to be too frustrating for a first lesson.  She got lots of other details, though.



Faithie signs her masterpiece, impatient to get to today's project, paper puppets (which I forgot to get pictures of).

Ava finishing up hers.  If she reminds you a bit of Hilary Knight's drawings of Kay Thompson's "Eloise", you've got it about right. 

Now, I don't know if you noticed in the above photos, but the art room is getting pretty crowded, what with all the swell stuff it takes to make anything one wants, at any given moment.  Lots of materials, including china for mosaics, pounds and pounds of glitter, and a small selection of salvaged furniture, is arranged neatly in my semi-finished basement.  Fabric, paper, and the paints we use all the time need to stay on the main floor though, and there's more than fits in the room that was designated for studio space, seven years ago.  Life changes, and houses must change with us, so it's time to fully embrace the studio expansion into the dining room.  Work is underway...

Good thing I was invited up to my carpenter's house for Easter dinner, because this is what I had going on in my own dining room.  TC, in his big beautiful heated-floored work shop,  builds the big stuff for my clients, but he leaves the salvage furniture re-purposing to me.  My woodworking space is in the basement, but it's small,and it's usually easier to bring tools up, than it is to carry wood down, the old stairs.  What's coming on Thursday's blog post? ...notice the table on the left?...

Pop back Thursday to see what gets accomplished on the studio annex project, and pop over to theartofthehome.com, if you would like to see what I do when I'm not just goofing off.

Leave comments below, or email me, if you like at dawnmariedelara@gmail.com.