Day 28: Be Thou My Vision art project, Part 1

Quick catching up... I did this November 18th!

I had an idea for an art project for our piano nook (I know, how cool is it we have a piano nook?!?) a while back, and finally starting putting it together. I feel like it incorporates a lot of me, and I'll be glad to have it in our home.

Song.

Less than a year ago, I was listening to a group Joe likes (I like some of their songs) called Glad. On one of their a cappella albums, they recorded the song "Be Thou My Vision." Here's the first verse (here's the rest with and ugly midi playing the beautiful melody in the background):

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

I had heard it before, but that time it stuck with me. I immediately started to memorize it, and had it down fairly well in a few days (so many rhymes to mix up!). The following Sunday at our church's worship service, we sang it for the first time (that I was there for) - what a happy surprise that was! The song is frequently on my mind and conveys so much of what I feel.

Supplies.

Being the outstanding artist that I am*, I started with a trip to Michael's to see what canvas was cheapest. I ended up with two 9" x 12" canvases that wrap around the sides so that I don't have to frame it and it can blend in with the wall some. I wanted to have some texture to parts of the canvas, so I asked my mom how people add that. She suggested gesso, with the stipulation that the last time she bought it was the year I was born. Near the gesso, I found some lightweight texture stuff that I decided to give a try. For paint and brushes, I'm sticking with what I used on walls in my house. Here were the supplies:


Doodles: the foreground and background.

I have two forms of doodling. Both are relaxing to me, and both will be represented in this art project.

One reveals my obsessive behavior and involves patterns, often of simple geometric shapes. I would guess that this doesn't come as a surprise AT ALL to most of you. I'll explain how this fits in with foreground of the project more later. While it's not one of the shape ones, here's an example from one day at work when I was teaching / helping someone do an experiment (translation: sitting there three hours and answering questions as they came up):


My second form of doodling is the opposite: completely unplanned, unpredictable, and uncontrolled. I start by drawing one random line (swirl / squiggle / swish / whatever). I then look at the page, and feel like a line belongs somewhere else. I look again and see where another one goes. And again, and again. I don't see where more they belong other than just that next line I'm about to draw. If I'm using colors, I usually do one at a time, finishing with one color before moving on to the next. It's really fun, because the end result always surprises me. I've kept some of them, but they're still in boxes - I'll try to post one if I find it. THIS is the form of doodling the background takes one. Here's the first canvas, with my lines molded on (I used the non-scoop end of a plastic spoon) and the background paint (same as the wall it will be on). The picture makes it look a little brighter than it is, but you can mostly make out the textured lines:


I used my second doodling form to decide where the raised lines would go, and where the green paint would go on top of it. I DID have in mind how the song would go on top of it (the obsessive part of the painting), but I think that only effected this part subconsciously. (picture of the green layer of paint soon to come)

Aside.

I read and wrote about a type of dementia a while back, and my doodling styles described above where definitely on my mind, raising my curiousity at the time. The ties between math and pattern-type drawing makes sense to me... what about this other type? How do you all draw or doodle?

to be continued....

*in case you don't actually know me, I'm being very sarcastic - I don't paint. Once my husband (who paints even less than I do - at least my mom and grandma have talent) and I did another painting project for our living room, but that's all!

Day 29: baby gift project

I wasn't going to post this, except that I mentioned it as something I was going to do it when I first wrote about the 30 days of creativity. I didn't actually make this, just embroidered the name onto a Bandabib I thought was cute. The rest of the gift involved sweets (mostly chocolate) in little containers with scriptures I wrote on them. You can see pictures of the beautiful Naomi and her family here.

Day 27: Pumpkin Bread

On to some belated creative day activities... this is from October 16th and 22nd!

In past years, I've used various mixes or the BHG pumpkin bread recipe, but given that Joe LOVES anything pumpkin (remember?), I figured I should have a better recipe. If you have any good recipes, do share them with me! I was also helping with a wedding shower today, and they wanted to do pumpkin bread instead of a cake (for a fall theme). So, it was time to try new recipes.

Two blogs I follow recently posted what they said were excellent recipes for pumpkin bread, so the competition began. I baked both recipes and got 6 people to try some of each. One was the clear winner - 5 to 1. Joe took some of the losing bread to work, and people still loved it (even asking for the recipe), so these are both great (but different) breads. I also tried a cream cheese frosting that was EASY and yummy. (A third blogger - the one who got me trying the 30 days of creativity thing - also shared a recipe, but it was very close to one of the others, so I stuck with just the two.)

The losing bread was a lighter color and much more dense. Still tasty, and you may prefer it's recipe if you like your pumpkin bread to have more of a pound cake consistency!

The winning bread actually rose a decent amount, so keep that in mind as you bake. The first batch I did accidentally had too much shortening, but it was good (maybe even better)! I somehow forgot that 1 cup of shortening is NOT the same as 8 oz. Okay, here's the recipe for the winning bread with my notes in italics.

Pumpkin Bread
originally from Michele Smith

3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1 cup shortening (or 8 oz for a crunchier top)
3 eggs
1 can pumpkin
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon (heaping)
1 tsp. cloves (heaping)
1 tsp. nutmeg (heaping)
1/4 tsp. salt
(note from kathryn: I thought it was a little heavy on the spices the first time, so I recommend what I did the second time - cloves BARELY more than 1 tsp, and cinnamon and nutmeg about halfway between a flat tsp and a full heaping tsp.)

Mix shortening, eggs and pumpkin in large bowl.
(I used a beater for a couple of minutes until it looked like this - no white lumps)In another bowl, mix all dry ingredients. (Really use another bowl - no one wants a clump of nutmeg in a bite!) Then add a little at a time to the liquid ingredients until all is mixed well. Put in loaf pan and bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. (I used cooking spray, but it only semi-worked on the mini-muffins and bundt cake. No problem with the mini-loaves. Makes 2 normal loaves, 6 mini-loaves, 48 mini-muffins, or 1 bundt cake - remember to leave room for it to rise. The top looks done way before the inside is actually cooked, so use a toothpick to be sure.)

it looked better than this in person, and tasted very good
bundt cake is a great option for this recipe - it bakes over an hour

I got the idea for the cream cheese frosting from a few different websites... here's my make-shift recipe.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese frosting
5 Tbsp butter (unsalted)
vanilla
powdered sugar (3ish cups?)

Melt the butter almost completely in the microwave. Thoroughly mix in the cream cheese (I just used a fork). I use Mexican real vanilla that is much stronger, so it was probably less than 1/4 tsp that I added, but it would be more than that with vanilla extract. I go by how it smells - you want to still smell plenty of cream cheese. Add powdered sugar about 1 cup at a time. I didn't dirty up a measuring cup, and I don't have a sifter - the lumps broke up on their own. I added powdered sugar until the frosting stuck to the sides on the bowl and was almost stringy. I also taste a little to see if it is sweet enough. :)


I tried going old-school with the frosting and put an extra large tip in the cut corner of a plastic bag. I'll admit it was HEB-brand, but it failed miserably. I broke two bags before I switched to a disposable decorating bag from Wilton via Wal-Mart. Ah, so much easier and worth the extra cost for sure! The tip costs less than a dollar (or did when I bought it). I didn't even dirty up a coupler. I highly recommend giving this a try - I got lots of compliments and it was faster and less messy (okay, it would have been less messy had I not tried to use plastic baggies) than trying to ice them like cupcakes.

the two broken zip-lock type bags and the successful Wilton bag

Day 26 - A Safe Place

Tonight was another night with the kids. I can take no credit for the actual creativity - I just helped. The youngest (9) enlisted my help decorating her "safe place." She had a whole vision worked out for what it would look like. She explained that when she got angry (as someone with 3 older brothers is bound to do sometimes), she could go to her room and close the door. She can sit in front of the closed door and use that time to calm down. And she calls it her "safe place." She wants to decorate it with things that will help her calm down. She also had a special notebook she plans to write out why she is angry. She has another notebook that will be for images that help her calm down - like happy pictures of herself. There is an area of the door for games. She explained that the game she wanted was one they did at school to practice their drills for calming down. You turn over a card that says "go forward one space" and one that space would be instructions like "Take a deep, slow breath." She said that by the time you reach the end of the board, you're calm. It seems like a neat tool. Hopefully I can continue to be a part of creating her vision.

Day 23 - Pumpkin Tortellini

(I'm almost caught up with writing about what I've done as a part of the creative challenge.)

Joe LOVES pumpkin. He'll like pumpkin-anything, as long as people didn't overdo the spices (especially cinnamon). When we saw pumpkin tortellini in the frozen section at HEB, we knew we had to try it. But what type of sauce goes on it? On Halloween we tried a yummy sauce that is similar to a few recipes Joe found online. We just boiled some chicken, cut it into small pieces and let the sauce coat it along with the tortellini. Here's what we did, and I highly recommend it - even if it's just on some other pasta!

Butter Sage Sauce
2.5 Tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
18ish oz shredded parmesan reggiano
pasta (pumpkin tortellini!)

Start boiling the pasta. Melt the butter in a pan large enough to hold all of the cooked pasta. Add the rubbed sage and let it soak in the butter. Almost a minute before the pasta is done, remove almost a cup of the water it boiled in (save it) and then drain the pasta. Add the reserved (almost a cup) water to the butter / sage. Add the pasta and mix well. Allow the pasta to soak up some of the water and finish cooking. Add the cheese to the pasta, mix well. The cheese melts and seems to disappear. Enjoy!