Innovative Gingerbread Houses!

Claire and Benjamin made the most awesome "gingerbread houses" this year. I just buy the kit from Michaels, as I have for years, and they turn it into some crazy! 

Here's Benjamin's creation. He had to saw through several of the pre-cut gingerbread pieces to made his three-story tower. 

Several years ago I began using hot glue to actually hold the pieces together rather than waiting for the icing to harden. That's the best tip ever for making the project fun.

Claire used the left over pieces from Benjamin's house to add wings to her creation.

So wacky! Flying, Christmas, monster house? With the licorice tongue? I'm delighted to have it on my mantal!

Christmas certainly does change as the kids get older, right?

Christmas DIY

It's so fun to have our house decorated for Christmas! I did just a few very very simple DIY projects over the last couple of weeks.

First, I wanted a wreath for the front door with a bit more pizzazz than just greenery. Some of the embellished wreaths in the stores are super spendy. So I bought this $5 box of ornaments and pulled out an artificial wreath from when I used to put a wreath on all the outside windows.

Ta Da! I cut pipe cleaners in half to wire the balls and snowflakes to the wreath. Much more festive and colorful! (And inexpensive!)

I saw an ornament just like this on Pinterest several months ago. I thought it was a fun way to remember and embrace our many moves!

It was no trouble to find a variety of moving tags in different colors scattered here and there. Some of them never get peeled off. I bought a plastic ornament and used gel medium to collage the tags onto the ball. Then I painted it with two coats of gloss varnish. We've got a variety of wacky ornaments on our tree, so this fits right in!

Let Me Tell You About John Green

Biggest discovery I made this year? John Green.

I am deep deep deep in the rabbit hole that is John Green and I've taken Claire, Benjamin and Jeff with me! How did I find myself in this vortex?

First, after seeing it pop up in Amazon searches and on various bookstore shelves, I checked out The Fault in Our Stars from the local library. I think I knew that my sister and read it and enjoyed it. It was great. (One of my three favorite books of 2013.) But, this post isn't just about TFIOS.

As I usually do, I read the acknowledgements at the end of TFIOS where John thanks "the nerd fighters." Hmmm. I had to find out more about nerd fighters.

It gets kind of hazy here... I'm not sure what I discovered when or which bit of Nerdfighteria led to which part of the John Green world.

I discovered that John and his brother Hank started a YouTube project in 2007 where they recorded (under four minute) videos talking to each other every day for an entire year. They talked about current events, family, favorite things, crazy lists, personal news, etc. Tons of people subscribed to their YouTube channel and watched the daily videos. These people eventually became known as Nerd Fighters. Claire is watching all the videos. I think she's somewhere in June.

John and Hank continued their video blogs beyond 2007 with more videos under the Vlog Brothers name. Theirs was one of the first YouTube channels to reach one million subscribers. That's a lot of Nerd Fighters. Currently, they upload two videos a week. Hank's video this week was about The Hunger Games and the reality of inequality.

They coined and popularized the phrase "Don't Forget To Be Awesome." It's not just a catchy slogan. It really is a way to live and think and treat each other. They support other creative YouTube channels and creative types with their DFTBA website.

But wait, there's more!
John and Hank also created Crash Course an incredibly comprehensive and entertaining educational You Tube channel covering six different subjects: American History, World History, Chemistry, Ecology, Biology and Literature. There are nearly 200 videos on Crash Course! Each video is five to fifteen minutes of brilliantly written, informative, creatively produced content.

Jeff and Benjamin are working their way through World History and it really is amazing how much knowledge Benjamin has gained -- and retained. Sometimes I watch with them... like this.

Still more...
John also regularly records awesome list videos for Mental Floss's YouTube channel. Some of my favorites are 30 Life Hacks Debunked, 48 Names for Things That You Didn't Know Had Names and 107 Regional Slang Words.

More still...
Hank and John created lots of ways for Nerdfighters to give back. In fact, they actually created a non-profit organization called The Foundation to Decrease World Suck. In fact, every year they run a project call "Project for Awesome" where anyone (nerd fighters, mostly) can create videos about their favorite charities. Last year the Project for Awesome raised over $400,000. They also regularly promote Kiva.

A bit more in bullet form...

• You know artists are always talking about copyright? Here's what John has to say.
• John says that collaboration is the greatest quality in humanity. Hank says it's curiosity. What do you think?
• John's very candid video about anxiety, depression and perspective is important.
• Hank's video about the size of the universe is epic. It has "NO EDGE!" He goes on to suggest that our ability *understand* the concept of an infinite universe is actually even more incredible than the universe itself.
• TFIOS movie will be released next year. Yeah!
• John has written several other books. Claire read TFIOS and she just finished Paper Towns.
• You may have seen John's video about the Affordable Care Act. Sometimes his videos go truly viral. This one popped up on Facebook quite a bit.

The reason why all this stuff is really important to me? John makes us think. He doesn't bother discussing whether it's cool to be informed, smart and curious... he just acts informed, smart and curious and assumes everyone else will do the same. And sometimes silly. And generous.

I'm a little sad I discovered John only recently. It's always been cool to be smart, curious, and creative in our house -- but we didn't have a super hero to lead us. Now we do. Wanna join us in the rabbit hole? Start by reading The Fault In Our Stars and watching some Crash Course videos. And make a Kiva loan.

And Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

Yoga Banner Commission

Recently after my yoga class, my delightful instructor Amy was talking with another student about creating a banner for her yoga business using her embroidery machine. My embroiderer friend wasn't sure she could create something as large as Amy had in mind. I overheard their conversation and suggested I could make a fabric banner. Embroiderer friend graciously agreed that my style and techniques fits the project perfectly. 

So a commission began. Amy came to my studio with her logos and fonts and colors and inspiration! She really wanted to re-use an old banner as the foundation. She's all about recycling and I was happy to oblige.

On some of her flyers, there is a faint paisley pattern in the background. Guess what I purchased in Houston?! A paisley hand carved wooded stamp! Here are some of my supplies and reference materials.

Here is the subtle paisley background!

I started by figuring the proper size for this warrior two figure, tracing the pattern and cutting her out.

She's very flexible.

Next I chose a light, medium and dark blue fabric for the abstract swirly, petals that suggest energy and calm.

Looking at the blue design from Amy's logo, I cut several petals.

I played around with the arrangement of the blue pieces quilt a bit. I settled on the final arrangement and fused it down. Amy loves that this energy seems to be radiating from the figure's core.

Next I sized, traced and cut a freezer paper stencil of the name of Amy's business.

And painted the stencil. Here I've pulled away the stencil a bit and you can see the letters painted on the fabric.

Next I added lots of quilting through the top layer and an additional layer of felt to give it body and dimension. I even left the thread tails long so I could carefully bury each one. (I don't usually do this with my work, but this project called for it.)

I love the way this stitching over the figure turned out. It follows the lines of the blue petal shapes. Plus a few swirls!

Here's the finished piece!

Here's beautiful Amy with her new banner. She was thrilled! I was thrilled.

Art in Dallas and Fort Worth...

I saw a bunch of art recently!

When my parents were visiting my dad had a meeting in Fort Worth, so we decided to stop by the Modern Art Museum. The current special exhibit is Mexico Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990. My favorite piece was by Abraham Cruzvillegas which was created with several pieces of paper -- throw away stuff, receipts, notes, tags, bits of newspaper. Each piece was painted yellow and mounted on the wall in a corner of the gallery. The artist statement noted that sometimes the corner of a gallery is overlooked or ignored... as are these small bits of paper.

I couldn't find a picture of the piece we saw, but here is a similar work by Cruzvillegas.

I also really like Thomas Glassford's installation made entirely of used broom sticks gathered from dumps in Mexico City. This is just half the installation. There are hundreds more arranged broomsticks off to the right... and some on the floor like a rug that you can just see at the bottom of this picture.

Here's a link to video interview with Glassford.

The exhibit includes a huge variety of media, installations, video, audio, interactive pieces, etc. Some I liked, some I didn't.

Also at the Modern, there was a small collection of works by Terry Haggerty. So, when we went to Claire's high school playoff football game at Cowboys Stadium, we recognized his work above one of the concession stands.

We saw lots of other art at the stadium. It's actually a large and important collection of contemporary art chosen specifically by the Jones family to "enhance the fans experience at the stadium." In fact, there was even a free iPhone app including a map of all the works and audio and video downloads with info about the art and artists. Very cool! We didn't have access to the whole stadium, so we didn't everything, but I especially liked Coin Toss by Annette Lawrence.

It's a wire installation above one of the entries. You can totally imagine how it was inspired by the coin toss that begins every football game.

We also visited the George W. Bush Presidential Center with my parents. As a museum, it's very well designed with lots of info and interactive exhibits. We're a nerdy family and we like history, so it was a good place to visit. But, mostly it made me sad and overwhelmed. There are so many problems and struggles in our world and few of them are solved easily. 

I got over my sadness when I saw a stunning painting in the museum cafe by Mary Vernon titled Sculpture with Birds.

A waitress told me that Vernon is a professor of art at SMU. The museum is on the SMU campus. I looked her up when I came home and loved looking through her website gallery. In the image above, you can't really see the detail or get a sense of the energy of the brush strokes. (Probably not even made with brushes.) I couldn't find another image of the painting, but there are several that are similar  on her website.

Really good stuff. I love looking at art and I love thinking about and further studying of the pieces I find inspiring. And sharing them with you!