Toddler Art :: Painting Canvases & Playing Poker

Its been a little quiet on the blog front here, but we've been busy in our every days.   Doing the every day and dealing with Handsome's odd hours job, making merry, the usual.  Ever since I realized that my baby was now a toddler, and that she might like to make things, we've been adding some creative doings to our shedules (fancy English accent required).

We *try* to only use the paintbrush, but sometimes...
The hands get what the hands want.

I love to get in on the painting, too!
The best part, is that if I don't like it, I can paint over it again with a different color.
The Nester taught me that.
The blue one, I want to put words on, but I don't know precisely how...

 Riley has loved doing the painting, and so long as I pick out colors that won't poorly mix (like green and purple and brown), the end result is generally aesthetically pleasing.  I'm planning on hanging a handful of the canvases together, all of our paintings, to showcase them.  A few 3M Velcro Strips* (They are THE BOMB!) and voila! We'll have another blank wall in our rental covered up with something beautiful! [This whole "no hole making" rule is chaffing, but we're working around it.]

Painting could definitely be done without purchasing canvases.  I was considering painting some pieces of cardboard white and letting them dry, then having RG paint on them.  But the canvases at Hobby Lobby are $6 for 2, sized 11x14.  That just seemed too good to pass up, especially when these might be turning into Christmas presents.  Another thought - I'd like to get them printed as postcards.  C'mon, who doesn't want a postcard that looks like this!?

On an unrelated-to-painting note, I made a toy for Riley.  It is nowhere near as pretty as her paintings, but it has brought a lot of enjoyment to my girl, and a lot of picking up of poker chips for me.  But whatevs.  

 Old oatmeal container, a moment with a knife, and a handful of poker chips: Boom.  New sorter toy.  When she's using it as Mom intended, its awesome.  I like to think that the different orientations of the slits in the top help her understand spacial reasoning, and the hole in the side allows her to follow cause-and-effect with chips in the top = chips out the bottom.  I may be reaching.  Regardless, she likes it.  When she uses it as a shaker toy, that results in chips flying all over the living room, she still loves it, although I love it less.

Although I came up with the idea on my own (mostly born out of desperation and cheapness), I was inspired by this gal here.  She & her son are constantly making cool things out of whats around them!  I love following along with her on Instagram and seeing all of her creations!

<3 M.