Sculpting with Dada

Some of you have already seen these photos because I think Josh emailed them out to some family, but I wanted to post them as well. Aloka is really blossoming as an artist, and I love that she gets so much art time with Josh. They both love it and it's so good for both of them.

So the last art day they had was with Sculpey. They made lots of sculptures which I'll post, complete with Josh's commentary once again:

Aloka's Sculptures
Aloka has been playing a lot with clay lately.
Here are some photos from our latest sculpture session.

The first few are completely her own creations, the second set are some where we each made our own of the same thing.

She creates these crazy men with huge hands, she cuts the fingers off of a block one at a time.
I think these men look very modern and cool.

Here is another of her men with a different stye body, but a similar face:

This creature was amazing, it has 4 legs, a tail, eyes, mouth, several nostrils, and a large hole in its side:

Here are our frogmen, the first one is hers, the second one is mine:

Here are our Wedding Cakes, the one on the left is hers, mine is on the right. I include a nickel in the first photo, so you can get an idea of the scale and size. These are very small and detailed, impressive for such young hands. She wanted to do these because she has seen so many cake photos lately, from Anna and Melissa:

Some great photos

Josh has been giving me lots of good blog material now that he is using our old digital camera. He takes the best photos, I swear. I don't know how he does it, but he does it.
We had a really nice time tonight. I invited him over for dinner and a movie tonight and we all had a great time. I made some sort of Macaroni casserole type thingie and the three of us made a little picnic on the bed and watched a movie called "Nanny McPhee" with Emma Thompson (kind of a modern day Mary Poppins). Is was stellar and Aloka loved it. It was also really special being together, the three of us, and just having some relaxing fun.

Beach weather is fast approaching us, and we're starting to spend more and more time outdoors. Nelson is spectacular in the spring and summer and I'm eagerly awaiting festival season. I've been really excited to get my truffle business going again, because it's something with very little overhead that I can start right now and be successful with. I'm working on packaging right now, and hopefully will be selling these delectables within a months time. I'll post a photo of my packaging once I get it going. Josh is so kindly helping me design my logo and stickers for us on the ballotin boxes. Can't wait!

In the meantime, here are some great photos of Aloka that Josh took over the weekend!
The captions are the ones Josh added. This last picture is one I'm definitely getting framed. Grandparents: you can expect one in the mail too!
It's proves challenging sometimes to get a genuine and relaxed smile from her like this one at the bottom. Her typical 'camera' smile is the "show me your teeth" smile she does. She is a girl of so many goofy expressions, and Josh has really captured her essence here in these.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh......


Wild Child.....Grrrrrrrrrrr.....


Beautiful Smile

My amazing child

This is yet another post from Josh, and I'm completely floored at Aloka's art work! I'm kvelling; is that the right spelling? I'll have to look it up in my yiddish dictionary..... (a minute later, after a visit in 'google land') Ok, it's "kveln" or to "beam with pride", or "be delighted in" or "revel in" Yes, this is how I'm feeling!
Anyway, here's Josh's post:


Hello Friends & Family,

Another Aloka Art Session

Adult Paint

Aloka and I paint quite often with her paints, but she has been very curious about my paints and asking if she can paint with "adult paint".
I told her we could soon, and I guess tonight was the night, she even used a long handled brush.
Aloka painted every stroke of these painting without my help or prompting, the subjects and colors were her choice completely, hence the strong use of metallics.

At one point she said: "I have a recipe written down at home for painting ladybugs, first you paint a circle then you paint the head and dots and then the wings and then legs, and then you put the antenna on, and that is how you do it, theeeeee end!"

She is a natural! Here are her works with her description of contents.

When she was done she said: "Perfect, now I can sell them in the market!".
Too cute.

"Momma and baby deer eating berries on a starry night"



"Ladybug eating berries"


While I was busy keeping her and the floor paint free I somehow managed to make
"Frog"

Sidewalk art

This post is from Josh too. Aloka and Josh had some fun sidewalk art the other day, and Josh drew a couple funny ones too!

From Josh:

Hello Friends & Family,

Chalk Art

This morning Aloka and I spent some time in the sun making chalk art.
She is quite the little artist and we always enjoy our time together.

I love impermanent media like sidewalk chalk...all the neighbors were smiling and waving when they saw us.
If we'd been using something else, say spray painting the sidewalk, their reaction might have been different.
Nice to appreciate the quality of impermanence for a change since we struggle against it so much in life.

This is Aloka's "child" climbing a ladder, by Aloka


Aloka's children on the playground.


Aloka teaching me how to draw rainbows....that is us in the center :-)



Above and below: 2 "creatures" I did at Aloka's request.


And below, me:

A post from Josh

Aloka was over at Josh's tonight, and he just emailed me and others these photos. I'm including his captions. "Old Flint Gnome" is a character from a story he made up (a great story actually, I'll have to post it sometime!) His post is below:

Friends & Family,

Aloka has been curious about death and what happens to our bodies lately.
Tonight she was asking about our bones, so I was explaining to her and decided to turn it into a project.
We made a mostly correct gnome skeleton out of Sculpey and baked the "bones" in the oven.
When they were done, we strung it up with wire and talked about the parts and how they work and move.
She is so smart and fun, so curious to learn...




Finally, an X-Ray of our little buddy...guess old flint gnome shouldn't have been such a grump!

Wahoo! My camera lives!

Now I can finally put my photos and movies back online, yay!








I'm slowly but surely getting more unpacked, and Aloka is loving this house! There is a really great yard (front, side and back) with a rope swing. Also, the yard is more conducive to playing in. She didn't really play much in the yard at our old house, but at this one she just loves to run out and play all the time.
She was pretending to be a fairy of some kind, of course.

We also attended the May Day celebration at her Waldorf preschool last weekend. Josh and I were both there and we all had so much fun. Aloka (and all the other children) made all the Mama's beautiful hand dyed silk scarves. You can see mine in this photo, she picked pink, yellow and orange for the colors on mine. They dyed them with tissue paper, and they all turned out so pretty!




We made flower crowns, and the children also played many games. They all pretended they were caterpillars, soon to be butterflies dancing around. Here they are metamorphisizing (is that a word?) next to the may pole! The children had so much fun, there was lots of yummy potluck food, and then at the end we all had fresh strawberry shortcake. The children served the mama's first in honor of Mother's Day. It was a beautiful and awesome day!


Here's Aloka and her classmate and friend Estelle making the whipped cream for the strawberry shortcake.

Here is the class photo! Dena's two children are on the far right and far left.

And I couldn't resist this last photo. Aloka got her first ever (and hopefully last) Dairy Queen ice cream cone, complete with sprinkles! She devoured the whole thing. Later that day we went to the beach.

Still no pictures

I love my new computer. It's the best computer I've had yet. What took me so long to switch to a Mac?? I still haven't gotten the camera thing figured out yet, or shall I say, I don't know where my cable is to hook my camera up to my computer. But once I find that thingy, I'm in business. I have many more photos to post!
Aloka and I have moved into the most beautiful house! It's in uphill, with beautiful views, wood floors, tile in the kitchen with radiant heat, and wonderful gardens and yard. It has a great kitchen and I am in paradise! It's 3 blocks to Aloka's preschool, 2 blocks to a playground (they're installing a water spray park there this summer!) and 5 blocks to my friend Melissa's house. It's a beautiful, sunny house and I have an extra room that I'm going to rent out to help with my rent.

I'm making salads for a popular cafe, and soon I'm going to launch my truffle business. There are so many places I can sell them here. I made some samples and have gotten lots of really great feedback. I'm also going to hit the festivals this summer. There're also outdoor markets twice a week that I can do also.

Aloka is doing really well, and growing SO fast! I can't believe she's going to be 4 this summer. She's chunking out now, which is great to see. She usually does this right before she's sprouts up again. I'm hopefully going to have some pictures of her soon. She's been playing outdoors a ton, now that we're in the full throws of spring. It's so beautiful here, with a nice blend of spring rain, and flowers and green everywhere. Today was so warm and sunny! We can't wait for the beach weather!!

Since I've moved into this new house, Josh and I are now able to go through all our stuff from storage (which we've been storing in his basement). It's really weird. It's quite shocking to see how much "stuff" we had, and how it's such a burden really. I thought my things would make me so happy to have again, and in some ways it's nice to have the familiar belongings back, but in other ways it's a huge burden. We are going to have the hugest most spectacular garage sale i think! There are just so many things I couldn't care less about now. The life we lived in the States was so much more excessive than here. It's so easy to buy 'things' in the US compared to Nelson. Even when I go down to Spokane it's a bit of culture shock seeing how many stores there are, and how each store is just filled with tons and tons of 'stuff' to buy, and places to spend money.
That isn't to say Nelson isn't without it's 'stores full of stuff' either, but it's less consuming somehow. Well, and there's not as many stores. And it's prettier. And Canadian's are wonderful.
Can you tell I like it here?
Speaking of Canadians, my Dad is on his way to becoming one. He just got his "landed immigrant" status, which is incredibly good news and very exciting for all of us. His status helps Josh and I get in a little bit easier too. We get more points now, 72 and you need 67 to get in, woo hoo! It will still be about 1 1/2 years before we get in, but it's still good news nonetheless.

Hopefully I'll be posting soon with pictures!