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Watercolor Wednesday: Hamilton

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Last week, I discussed Let’s Make Art.  I wanted to tell you about my recent visit to them.

While we were traversing our beautiful state a couple weeks ago, we found ourselves in a part of Missouri we rarely venture to- the Northwest.  We visited Hamilton, Missouri- self-proclaimed Quilt Town, USA, but also universally known as the Disneyland of Quilting and the Quilting Capital of the World!  It is also home to Let’s Make Art, the art company I mentioned in last week’s Watercolor Wednesday post.  

Hamilton is a delightful small town with a population under 2,000 but with many, many quilt shops.  It’s the home of Missouri Star Quilt Company, which is a HUGE quilting empire.  There are tons of YouTube quilting tutorials from them as well.  Let’s Make Art is a sister company of theirs, as I understand it. Anyway, speaking of tutorials, that’s how I got turned on to Let’s Make Art!  And that’s how we ended up in Hamilton!

Hamilton greeted us with a large, cheery mural- one of several in town- and the phrase “find your happy” was everywhere. 

We immediately visited Let’s Make Art, where we were greeted warmly.  I got to “tour” the “studio” where they film the YouTube tutorials, and they proudly showed me their YouTube award- it was super cool! 

The shop was a beautiful space as well, and we browsed for a long time.  I did get a cool acrylic kit that I am looking forward to doing this weekend, and we just had a great time talking to the Let’s Make Art people (new Insta friend!) and browsing.  Kareem is so cute- he’s like, buy everything!  Get whatever you want!  🙂  

After our Let’s Make Art time, we strolled the town and stopped and had a soda at the sweet shop.  At this point, we were kind of shutting the town down- most of the shops close at 5 pm.  The boyhood home of JC Penney is in Hamilton as well, and it is not far from Kansas City.  So if you are looking for other things to do or to add Hamilton in to another trip, it is easy to do.  

On our way back to the car, we stopped at a table a family had set up to sell their sweets, jams, honeys, and produce.  I got some cherry jam (my absolute FAVORITE!) and some hand pies, and Kareem got some goodies too.  Then we drove about half an hour/forty minutes east to Macon where we dined with a good friend’s daughter who lives in Kirksville.  

So I will leave you with this on a fine watercolor Wednesday.  This is the Let’s Make Art watercolor artist’s oath, and she starts every tutorial with it: I promise to be kind to myself.  I promise not to compare my work.  I promise to have fun.

Pretty wise advice for both watercolor and life. 

Check out their tutorials here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzzCo7lZGJ-sTCgpI7BJKEg

Watercolor Wednesday: Rainbow Parrot

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Last week for watercolor Wednesday, I let Rami choose a project.  He chose the Rainbow Parrot project by Let’s Make Art.  Let’s Make Art is an ah-mazing company that offers subscription boxes of art supplies and projects.  They have a YouTube channel with tons of FREE tutorials for watercolor, art journaling, lettering, and kids’ art!  They have all different levels of ability, and I highly recommend them.

Anyway.  More about them next week though.  

So the best thing about these rainbow parrots is that we get to use the straw blowing technique- I’m pretty sure that’s the technical name, ha ha.  I have used this on a few projects with the kids, and it is something they always really enjoy.  I mean, who doesn’t?  Word of warning- if you have a very concrete thinking child, they might not enjoy the unpredictability of the paint blowing.  Just frontload for them, telling them about the process and that it is very loose and it is fun to see where the colors may blow and how they may mix!  Keep it positive, and they will really enjoy it.

We were unable to trace the outline, so we free handed it.  I actually think the kids really enjoyed this aspect of it.  You will notice that Nick doesn’t always participate.  He was really excited about this project for some reason and got super into it.  That was fun!  Lucy, who is usually very amped about Watercolor Wednesday chose not to participate in this project, but she did hang out with us.  She wanted to learn how to draw a ferret.  She had a very, very hard time with it and got really frustrated.  I was so proud of her because she was able to say her feelings, and even though she said she was going to quit multiple times, she never actually did.  She ended up with a ferret she was very proud of!  

Jimmy painted along with us too, though he didn’t quite grasp the straw part despite many attempts at helping him.  🙂

Fun project!  Thanks, Let’s Make Art!

Find the Rainbow Parrot Tutorial on Let’s Make Art’s YouTube channel!

Grand Ole Opry

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We were supposed to go to a music festival on our recent Carolinas trip.  It ended up not happening (dang it, COVID), so I found a different musical experience for the kids.  On the way home, we spent a night in Nashville.  In the morning, we toured the Grand Ole Opry!  

You are familiar with hearing this from me at this point, but I wasn’t sure if the kids would be interested in this or like it.  I wasn’t sure how engaging a tour of a theater would be, especially to young people who don’t have a historical context for it.  However, Nick is the self-proclaimed biggest Dolly Parton fan ever and Lucy dreams of being a singer, and I know a guy who could help us out, so on a wish and a prayer, we went to the Grand Ole Opry for our early tour.

It was incredible. I cried multiple times.  All the kids freaking loved it.  My girl realized her dream of being on stage at the Grand Ole Opry!  

We stood outside the theater for a little while because we were early and on the first tour of the day.  The tour guide greeted us.  She was very enthusiastic and friendly, very knowledgeable, and I was very impressed with her.  Our children were the only children on the tour lol.  

The tour began with a video which Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood “host.”  It was an immersive experience, and the set up of the room made it feel very intimate.  This is when the tears began for the day- hah!  This was a great orientation video and helped the kids understand more about the history and significance of the Grand Ole Opry.  

We got to tour the stage where they filmed Hee Haw, all the beautiful dressing rooms and the “living room,” and backstage… everywhere we went, the tour guide shared really great stories.  At one point she asked if anybody had any questions, and Nick raised his hand.  She goes, you have a question?  He said, no I have a statement.  I was thinking, oh man… Then he says, I just want to say that Dolly Parton is the most magnificent singer of all time.  And of course, everybody in the place started clapping and cheering in agreement!  Hah!  So after that, everybody loved Nick of course.  

The last place we went was backstage which ultimately led to the stage.  They really set this up nicely, so you felt deep reverence for the stage itself.  Each person had a chance to stand on stage and visit the “circle.”  They have a circle of wood from the original stage of the original theater where the Grand Ole Opry was live on air that is laid into the floor of the current theater where they have performed since 1974.  This was the best part of the tour for sure.

Lucy was very excited to visit- she had been talking about it for a while.  She went first, all by herself.  She held the microphone, but she did not sing.  🙂  They took a wonderful photo of her.  Then we all went out.  Nick took a chance and did it by himself as well.  It was a beautiful moment!

We then walked up to the back of the theater for another lovely view of the stage, then exited through the gift shop of course where I snuck a couple of gift purchases for the kids.  

All in all, once again, another experience I wasn’t sure about, but that the kids (and we) loved!!

Family Service Project: Confetti Foundation

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If you are looking for a simple, socially distant, safe family service project that literally any age child can do, here is a fun idea!

We made birthday cards for the Confetti Foundation, an organization that supplies birthday parties to children spending their birthdays hospitalized, in pediatric oncology units, or hospice care. This organization’s impact is nation-wide, including in some of our own local hospitals.

Click here for information from the foundation about making birthday cards, including some instructions and where to send them. If you have very young children, you can even download and print out color-in birthday cards from their site!

Nick and Lucy really enjoyed this project. Nick, who sometimes does not want to participate in watercolor Wednesday, was very excited about spreading birthday cheer. I also loved hearing them discuss ideas and laugh and create together.

I know the power and impact that doing service together as a family can have on the family as a whole and on the individuals, so we make it a point to do service projects every week we are together. I am trying to share more ideas here! And I welcome your ideas please!

Congaree National Park with Kids

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Congaree National Park was an absolute treat.  I am always looking for National Parks to visit on our trips, and I came across this one about halfway between Charlotte, NC and Charleston, SC.  Perfect!  As I started researching, I found that it is regarded by many as one of the most underrated national parks in the system.  It really offers a lot more than you might expect from a national park with virtually no roads through it! 

The park is located near Columbia, SC.  It is some of the tallest deciduous forest on Earth and the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States, according to the NPS.  

We opted for hiking as our choice activity, as we only had a few hours for our stop.  But you can canoe, kayak, and camp here as well.  There are even canoe trails!  They offer frequent ranger-led activities too, and a great junior ranger program, which we did while we were there.  

We started with a picnic at the picnic area outside the visitor center which was as fun as it looks here- hah!

Attitudes improved once they had some food and got amped about the cool hike! It’s amazing what a little food, rest, play, and water will do for a person.

We did the Boardwalk Loop Trail which had a really cool “tour” pamphlet associated with it.  You can also get this digitally if you prefer.  It was super informative!  Between that and our Junior Ranger activities, we learned a ton!  🙂  While planning this trip, I read that the boardwalk floods from time to time, so check before you go.  We also spurred off on another trail- I think it was the Bluff Trail.  Gorgeous!

The park is swamp and forest.  On the Boardwalk Trail, you will see the river floodplain, an oxbow lake, swampland, and hardwood forest.  It is incredibly diverse landscape over a few short miles.  The loblolly pines were our favorite thing to say on the hike, and we loved seeing and hearing lots and lots of birds and animals.  

We had visited Jean Lafitte National Park and Preserve in March, and it had swampland too.  The kids noticed similarities and differences to that one, and it was really fun to hear their observations.  Lucy said it looked like a fairy forest, and I quite agree. 

The kids all earned their Junior Ranger badges! They take this pretty seriously, and the activities were really great for discovering plants and wildlife on our hike.

It was a great way to spend the Sunday afternoon.  We followed it with pizza at a classic dine in Pizza Hut and then drove straight to the ocean- more about that here.  

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