Simply on the Earth

Yesterday was my mom's birthday (Happy Birthday, Grammie!), and River and Liam painted her a picture for the occasion.

This was River's first experience with paint.

I made a batch of warm cornstarch paint, following the recipe in First Art, because I knew River would want to taste it. The "paint" is made from water, cornstarch, and food coloring, so even though it wasn't exactly tasty, it was edible.

I stripped them down to diaper/undies and then let them go for it.

Liam jumped right in.

River wasn't so sure.

But he got over his initial hesitation and really enjoyed experimenting with the textures and colors.

He snuck a few tastes.

But then he decided it was better on his hands than in his mouth.

Never one to mind a mess, Liam liked it on his hands, too.

They smeared, smooshed, and squiggled the paint mostly on the paper. I took the finished dried painting and framed it along with some pictures of the boys in the painting process to give to my mom for her birthday.

We went to the Olive Garden to celebrate last night, and I brought the gift to give her at the restaurant. We had lots and lots of people stop at our table to tell us how much they liked the painting...what a great idea it was..and so forth. It was fun to start up conversations with complete strangers about kid's art, although Gabriel was mortifed by all of the extra attention...


Painting is a River-approved activity.

Somehow, I can't embed the video through You Tube in the same post... so now it's a separate post.