Never fails to make me smile

Some of you I am sure have seen/heard him
The coolest Peter Nalitch

Travellers

A mysterious procession solemnly passes my kitchen (looking reproachfully at the dirty dishes)
made these guys the other day, and the post card was sent to me by a special student of mine from Massachusetts

Doll House 2

I brought a light with me this time, and I took much better pictures:)
Now you can actually see what I was talking about in the previous post

Isn't it amazing? and for those of you who are not into toys, please forgive me. Toys are my weakness, especially hand made ones.

The most wonderful doll house I've seen!

I love Fridays. I do.
Somehow even though I do not work outside of the house Friday means an end of the week and has a closing, concluding something feeling .
Now Andrei takes chess classes on Friday too. He waits for it all week, and I always sharing his anticipations and fears also wait for Friday:) . I am more connected emotionally to this boy than I could ever imagine being..but this post is not about me. It is about the house we go to. And the doll house that is in it.

Chess classes are now taking place at the house of another homeschooling family. Robyn(Mom) Lucy(10) and Finn(12) are there to tolerate us. Andrei and Anna love coming there. Andrei has discovered Lego Star war toys that Finn has in great abundance (now we also have joined the cult of Star Wars). And Anna and myself fell in love with the doll house. It is truly magical! It has a feeling of a real home, and it is filled with personality. The carpets are made of knitted patches, Japaneses fabric and paper. The dishes are handmade out of clay by Lucy and Finn. There is even a clay fire in the fire place. And oh, there is a drawn map in the living room. I did not take a picture of that. There are some sort of god hand puppets guarding the house, and there is something that looks like a totem inside. This doll house is bursting with creativity and artistic energy!

Robyn is a fellow Etsian, and has a shop called Wee Ball Yarns . You can see I placed an ad of hers on the left column. And I have never seen how yarn is spun, and find it extremely beautiful.

So without further adieu, I have some photos that I took today. I will have more, since I want to do a story about Lucy's doll house. And I want to take better pictures. Today's did not turn out so well.

2 Tresuries by Schooling at Home Etsians!

Yay to the the multitalanted homeschoolers of Etsy! I am impressed how many artisans are choosing to homeschool. And thank you to the ones who curated these ( SpiceofLifeDesigns.etsy.com and mompotter )

Those are B*E*A*U*T*I*F*U*L! (click the image to visit)

A Tuesday in my House

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my work days. And unlike some of creatures shown above I am usually quite busy:)
The kids go to Grandma and Grandpa for some hours, and I get to work on my custom portraits, do the catching up on the correspondence and do whatever else needs to be done.

I am happily finishing 2 custom portraits, working on 3(!) more...and waiting for some new images to appear in my head.

The give away at Soulemama produced unprecedented results, I've been having 6-15 sales every day for the past 3 days. Which is a lot for me. I am not used to this kind of speed. But it feels very good to be so busy!

Kids are annoying the heck out of me these days. It must be the air, like Dr. Seuss would say.
And speaking of Dr. Seuss, a friend of mine recently introduced me to this book
And you know, the genius of the author never seizes to amaze me.
t crosser and i dotter. what a job! :)

Imaginary Friend

Do you have one? Did you have one? Does your child have one?

I would love to hear some stories...
There was a treasury on Etsy some time ago called "Imaginary Friends", and that got me thinking. I was always fascinated by this subject. Back where I was growing up, there was no such term "imaginary friend". Yet my little brother had 2. And that was my first encounter with this concept. My brother had an imaginary cat friend, who was white and was called Vladimir (just like my absent-from-my-life-father). And the other one I think was a cat too...Petrovas'ka...but somehow I always imagined him as a little dwarf. And my brother would talk about them, and make stories, and I could never quite grasp what was happening. I was much older, and the border between fantasy and reality was already much stronger, but the imaginary world still was quite interesting.
Now that I think about it the Swedish Karlsson-on-the-Roof was an imaginary friend.

Totoro is sure also one of them.
And if I could pick one myself I would want someone like this (click to see more works by this wonderful artist)

Art should be wearable, buttons are cool!

Just found a link to this cool site Lollypins

I will upload some of my designs there later. I can see some of my characters as buttons for sure! Plus the cool thing is , if you blog about this site you get some free buttons. And I am super excited to get some of those! I found some super cool images there, and my kids already picked the onces THEY like best.

Homeschooling Week 2

I do not think that I am crazy YET:) As a matter of fact, I am getting used to the idea and finding new benefits as I go.
It helps tremendously to meet other people and other kids!
Today we had our first play date with another homeschooling family. Two boys --8 and 5 years old came over and they played for almost 2.5 hours. And it was great! No fighting, no screaming, and surprisingly the house is still in tact:) I loved meeting the Mom as well, and we had a lovely chat over a cup of tea. This family just came to US after living for several years in Holland, and both of the parents are scientists. The boys were very friendly and even our cat loved their company. Usually he is a bit cautious around new kids (he has his reasons) The first meeting is always a bit more difficult than the others, but I am glad that Andrei will be able to make friends and build relationships with kids his own age without having to spent all day in the classroom.

I am also looking forward to meeting another family next Tuesday. There are 3 boys there, and the Mom speaks Russian. So if all of us get together, it makes 6 boys and my 2.5 year old girl. That will teach her to be less sassy:)

Fridays are reserved for chess playing, and almost every other day of the week we have some kind of sport in the afternoon. So Andrei is busy, and so am I.

And since this post is already completely not Art related, I might as well put the rest of the information I've been meaning to share with you. A few find in the world of games and a few books that I am using now.
First games--we as a family love playing board games in the evenings. A quiet pass time, that does not bother our neighbours, and lets us all do something together. A recent favorite is
Carcassonne (click to see more info on wiki)

And as far as schooling goes, I love these Brain Quest cards. I baught a couple of workbooks by Brain Quest and got the cards as a gift, and they are great! Easy to carry, easy to use. And the best part is, they are seen not as "studying" but rather as a game. I will keep them in my bag for subway rides, lines and some other waiting times.

Happy New Year!

I want to wish a Happy New Year to all of you who visit me here. I want to thank you for reading and commenting. I absolutely love to read your comments and they mean the world to me.
May your wishes come true and this year bring you lots of pleasant surprises, changes that you want to see and all kinds of happy moments.

I have Enjoyed...

Some of the things that I have enjoyed in the past week of "pre" and "post" holiday flurry of things

We had a beautiful snow (for 2 days, ha ha)My son made me smile over and over again when he blew the candles out 5 times, because he is 5 and only seems fair that that should be done. I wonder what he will say when he is 37?

I got some AMAING gifts from Santa this year. Almost all of them handmade:)

Can you spy a cup by Stepanka and a cup by JDWolfePottery in this photo?:)The earings by Jorgensen Studio that Santa chose have already gotten me a million compliments, and I am simply in love with them
I also got a great set of blank watercolor postcards that I wil be sure to fill out with some images that are about to be born in my head.And then I got to see a fog. And it was a very nice quiet sort of fog,that makes you want to go out and wonder around the city dreaming of tree spirits.

What are you enjoying most during this season?

I've been Tagged!

twice...

Thank you justine and Cat Mallard for remembering me!

the rules are tell 7 little known things about yourself then tag 7 others (be sure and link everyone!)

Now off to a rather difficult task to think of 7 things about me that might be interesting enough :)(brain wheels turning and squeaking in faint attempts to produce some quality content)

1. I used to pick and plant acorns in our family garden. My parents were very surprised and rather unhappy when all those trees started to sprout in most unappropriated places. Below I am caught in the act (2 years old)

2. I met my husband on the Internet, while writing a paper in college during my senior year. I was very tired and frustrated and decided to do something different to relax the brain:) This is the first picture of me, he saw:)))) I did loose lots of weight since than:))) And yes, I painted those huge oil pieces that you see in the background. My style has changed as well . A lot.:)

3. My son is named after Andrei Rublev.

4. I burn everything I cook. I have a very special relationship with Fire, and even though we love each other dearly, it does make cooking rather difficult.

5. I am a Godmother to a 28 year old young man who lives in Austria, and a 7 year old girl that lives in Brooklyn.

6. I wanted to be a tiger tamer when I was little, as well as a veterinarian, teacher and artist.

7. I always make the same cake for New Years. It does not envolve baking and I learned to make it when I was 14. Everyone loves it:) The picture shows me making it back in Ukraine, I am 16, my best friend who lives in Poland took it. I am wearing a T shirt that was donated to our local church by american missionaries--and I thought I looked really cool in it LOL

And I am tagging

Rima

yulechka

KittyD

paintandink

Natalya

Distressing Delilah

Kim

Tessa

I found my perfect companion for the winter

I've got hatty birds, hatty cats, Mad Hatters...and now I've completed it with a hat for me:)

It seems to have been just waiting there for me, the last 3 days I was passing it by and thinking that I need to stop and try it on. But I am always running, to school, from school, to the pool, to jujitsu, arr...Most of the time I have to run, not to walk.

Finally I slowed down, stopped,and walked into the fancy boutique (feeling slightly uneasy about myself, I was not wearing my best clothes at the moment, and the lady owner probably does not get too many customers wearing different colored socks.What?:) I was late, again.)

To make the long story short--I bought it. I love it. I think I look like one of my paintings :) I hope I do not look too funny, but even if I do--oh well!

Let the winter come--I am ready, ready for some Mad Tea parties.

What do you think? Isn't it just perfect?:) Now I am the Hatty Artist!

Slava's SNOW SHOW is back in NYC

We went for the first time 4 years ago. I fell in love at the first sight, the music, the lights, the pantomime alltogether grabbed me somewhere deep inside and would not let go. I bought the soundtrack (which never happens ), I listened to it time after time..and painted like crazy. After a long break in making Art--the Snow Show opened some door inside of me and I could not stop the flow of images. The music brought those images to life and I had to put them on paper.

It has been 4 years since than. The door that was opened is still open:) And I am very grateful to the creator of this magical show for that. I am taking my son to see it this time.

This is taken from the Snow Shows original webpage , the words of the author Slava Polunin

What Is My Kind of Theatre?or The Theatre I Love
- It is a kind of wedding cavalcade,where I try to marry everyone to everyone;
- It is a theatre of ritual magicand festive pageantry,constructed on the basis of images and movements,games and fantasies,that are the common creation of the audience and the people of the theatre;
- It is a theatre which inexorably growsfrom dreams and tales;
- It is a theatre of hopes and dreams,full of longing and loneliness,losses and disillusionment;
- It is a theatre which always changes,which breaths spontaneous improvisationand cares scrupulously for tradition;
- It is in the vein of contemporarymulti-layered synthesis,on the boundary of life and art;
- It is a theatre that works in an epic-intimate alloyof tragedy and comedy,of absurdity and naivity,of cruelty and gentleness;
- It is a theatre which escapesdefinition and the unequivocalunderstanding of its actions,as from attemptsto usurp its freedom.
Slava Polunin

Somebody else is into Teapots (teacups, and tea parties for that matter)

A beautiful treasury by ImagineStudio, that I am in . And a few of my all time favorite artists as well, like natalyasots( Hi Natasha!!!!)

I love to be in treasuries, and I love teapots (some day I will show off my collection and invite all of you for a virtual tea party)
Please smile and wave if you like it:)))))