Saturday, March 2, 2013

Sing, Sing a Song Saturday

I started doing what I call Sing, Sing a Song Saturday.  I'm going to post one song on Saturdays that the boys or I like. 

The song may be part of a movie, a kid's video or just a song we like. I'll try and include why we like it and/or the history of the song/singer.

Looping is what this next artist is about. She, and I want to stress she because a lot of people in her comments called her and he, sets up many loops and proceeds to sing to them. The band is called tUne-yArDs.

Do you know what make me mad as hell? When people get bullied online and/or real life. Merrill Garbus from tUne-yArDs had labels fighting over her because of her unique sound. What happened? She gets made fun of because of the way she looks in YouTube comments. I simply love her soulful voice and how she changes her outfit to match what she's singing about.

She Possesses an expansive sound that marries a coarse folk with the bold pop sensibility of an R&B, African influences, and a lot of DIY aesthetic.

This song is called Powa. It contains two loops going on to start the song out.


This is a tiny desk concert put on by by the support of: NPR.


 This song is called Bizness.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

WW: Monster Trucks {Linky}

This last weekend we went to the Lowes Clinic.

The boys made monster trucks.






Can you tell they had fun with their project?

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Monday, February 25, 2013

Spider-Man Has a Heart!

Mica was invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. I was going to take Isaak out on a Mommy and Isaak date. Then the birthday party mom messaged me on Facebook, and said we were more than welcome to come if we wanted.

I left it up to Isaak. He at first wanted to go on a date. Then when he saw that everything was Spider-Man he changed his mind.


They even let Isaak in on the games. Such a nice family!

Isaak got really upset when the birthday boy started getting his gifts. I asked, "Why are you upset Isaak?" It wasn't because Isaak didn't get presents himself. He was upset because he couldn't pass the birthday boy a present.

Isaak won one of the games at the party. Mica was mad that Isaak won. He thought there should be prizes for everyone. I said, "Nope! It doesn't work that way son!" When the boys got home Isaak said, "Mica you can have my prize. I'd much rather have you enjoy it."

On Sunday Isaak was wanting whatever Mica wanted for breakfast. I said, "Isaak if Mica jumped off a bridge, would you do that to?" Isaak said, "Well ya I would! I'd have to go find Mica!"

Isaak is in a Giving stage. Mica's in a Me stage.

Meet Mimi

We made the fastest snow woman ever! It turns out that boys, or maybe it's just my boys have no attention span in the snow. They want to stop and throw snowballs every chance they got.

Meet Mimi:


Mimi has button eyes, a carrot nose and Mica found a handle for a bucket in the snow, that was her mouth and she has a leaf in her hat. Mica named her.


Viking Tees

I decided awhile back that I wanted to make viking tees for the boys.

I saw this shirt awhile back from Tea Collection:

I really badly wanted my boys to have a viking tee. I also thought, That would be so easy to make!

Of course I wanted it to be my viking drawing. I set off to make my boys viking tees.

Here's the drawing:


I tried ways to transfer onto a t-shirt. Charcoal on the back and tracing it didn't work, chalk on the back and tracing didn't work either, neither did carbon paper. I took a longer approach and started stenciling it out.



Until I ended up with this x2 (1 for each child):


Then I began to paint it with fabric paint. This is the first time I've used fabric paint. The tips get so clogged. I'm not impressed with the designs of the bottles at all. They bended pretty easily though! I put a white sheet of paper behind the front of the tee, so when it bled it bled onto the paper and not the back of the shirt.


The one with the orange beard is Mica's. The one with the red beard is Isaak's. I sort of let them pick the colors. I say sort of because at first Isaak wanted a green beard and Mica wanted the eyes to be traced with green. I said, "No." to those things.

I decided to put actual rivets in the straps of the hats. If this was actual leather, no problem, it's a t-shirt material though. I had to put fabric under the t-shirt to get the rivets to work.


Isaak's shirt is a bit big. He'll grow into it.



Sometimes You Need a Little Sunshine!

Do you know what made my day this weekend?

Isaak's picture of a sun! He's really into googly eyes; I could tell the sun had them.


Sometimes life isn't on your side. A really horrible article was written about the school I teach at. It was on the front cover of the newspaper this weekend. The guy that wrote the article hadn't even stepped foot in the school's doors. It was about our federal student loan debt being number 1. One really strong thing, is that it didn't mention private loans. We don't offer many of those since we're a private school; some just are not available to the school. Private loans often times have bad interest rates. Since they are private, the government can't track those. Many schools give out private loans along with federal loans. The writer didn't mention a thing about our mock interviews, the fact that we help the students multiple times to write up a better resume, that we have mandatory job shadows, we have them attend Meet the Pros (where they hang out with pros all day long for 2 days), we hold an in-house portfolio review night, we have 2 portfolio classes, they get consistent emails with job opportunities before and after they graduate. Another strong fact if money is an issue: We do not allow just anyone to come to the art school I work at. We turn people away; people that do not have what it takes to expand in this field. Our employment rate is very high compared to most schools. The school does not have an alumni association, so alumni is not called to beg for money. I was pretty upset over this article. I did not feel the writer did his homework.

What the writer did was equal to me reviewing a product poorly without using the product first. It really upset me.

What was really good to see is students past and current making counter comments on the online article backing up the school.

Seeing Isaak's sun drawing just made me much happier.

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