Art is Good for the Soul.

The little girl had a rough week. Sometimes, as a mom, you just have to break the cycle of bad with a little good. I knew she was in need of some TLC. She LOVES (huge understatement) art, so we spend Saturday doing her favorite activity.

I made sure the night before to tidy up and have things in as much order as possible because I wanted to be able to focus all my attention on her. Sometimes, that’s hard for me to do when I see this or that out of place or remember that X needs to be done. So I did my prep work and then did my very best to ignore the large pile of dishes in the sink the rest.

To get the day started we needed supplies. Lots and lots and lots of supplies! So much for tidying up. 🙂

First up was collages. I can’t tell you why but my little one can’t get enough of cutting things into T-Niney pieces and then gluing them. This is her rose bush. From the start of the day, I was in love with this activity. Doing art actually made me feel good too. Imagine that.

Next we moved on to bracelets. Sneaky mom also worked in a little patterning exercise. We made all sorts of patterns before narrowing down our final selections. I loved my bracelet so much that I’ve been wearing it all week. Just a little reminder of our time together.

We did a little coloring and then I broke out the big guns…. PAINT! First we painted with brushes and then I dripped 4 colors all over the paper and let her paint with her feet. That one definitely earned me a Mother of the Year Day award. Just for kicks, I painted with my feet too. And because we already had paint on our feet, we might as well paint with our hands. So we did!

We also did stickers and stamping and a repeat of all of the above things. Many times she would say “Do you want me to do this?”, “Should I use this color?” or “What about this, mom?” I reminded her over and over again to “do what your heart tells you to do.” We did that all day long and we made some really creative things.

We did art for a solid 4 hours and then off and on for the rest of the day. It was such a sweet time and I really did feel like I accomplished my mission. However, along the way, I felt better too! In theory, I knew what the day would hold but it was so interesting to start a project and think something would turn out a certain way, but it just takes a turn and looks totally different than you imagined but totally beautiful still. I suppose life is a lot like that most of the time.