Art, Art, Everywhere

Natalie is our little artistic soul. Liam has had some phases where he was big into artwork as well, but he had a different style - lots of train tracks or maps or diagrams of buildings. He could be very detailed, but not as much into drawing people or animals. Natalie loves expressing herself in any kind of artistic way, and what that means for me is that my house is papered in bits and pieces of paper. She not only likes to create it, she likes to display it. And she knows where the Scotch tape is kept. So at any point in time I will find new things taped to my walls, or doors, or headboard. When I'm feeling cluttered it can drive me crazy, but it's so cute that I'm to the point where I hardly notice how much is hanging around. Every once in a while I pull down one or two and dispose of them quietly, or keep them in her "keep" folder if they are special. So far she hasn't complained.

At the beginning of this month I erased my whiteboard calendar that I keep in the kitchen so that everyone knows our daily schedule. Natalie begged for me to let her re-do the calendar. Silly me thought she was going to write in "January" and the numbers on the days. Instead, I looked over to find this picture. I liked it so much that I had to take a picture before I erased it and wrote in January. It is so typical Natalie - with all the little circles. She can fill a page with dots or lines or tiny little things. Or she can cover a page in two solid colors. In any case, she likes to fill the page with either details or color or both.

This particular time she drew a rider on a horse (the first I've seen her draw this, and I loved the way she gave the legs the proper perspective by making 2 of them smaller). She told me the pile of circles was a lot of apples for the horse, and then there is a little mouse hanging down below the ground. Love it. And I do love finding these little surprises whenever I turn around, even if it eventually becomes a roomful of homemade wallpaper.