Arowyn Drawing Master Yoda

Arowyn wanted to make a present to give to Teagan tomorrow. It's funny how when he goes to bed or is otherwise out of her hair she misses him and wants to do nice things for him. If only that love and kindness would carry on into our daily life when their together would be awesome. So after Teagan went to bed she borrowed his master Yoda and Giraffe from his room. She then posed them together on the couch and began to draw. Her drawing skills have came so far. I love that most of the time now I can actually tell what her drawings are of and not have to resort to random guessing that usually earns me a scowl when I guess wrong.

 Arowyn drawing Yoda

Arowyn's finished work

The Baby Bobble Head Bad Guy Consortium: The Stolen Missile

I don't think any explanation I could give of his video would quite do it justice so here it is.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of The Baby Bobble Head Bad Guy Consortium: The Stolen Missile

After Arowyn got to make her puppy movie the other day Teagan started begging to get to do one himself. It had taken so long to get Arowyn's done though that I told him he'd have to wait until tomorrow to do it. So first thing this morning he had gathered together his babies and announced that he was ready so I let him have at it. His took even longer because he had quite the artistic vision that he wanted to accomplish and he kept asking me to write word bubbles for his video which also took some time. Unfortunately the writing on the word bubbles was not thick enough to be seen in the video so I had to digital redo them in post production so they are readable. His video was pretty demanding so at times he needed both Arowyn's and my help to move things around while he directed and took the pictures.

Teagan shooting a frame

Puppies at Play

We open on a dog with her two puppies out in a field on a sunny day.  After the mommy dog says goodbye to her babies the two puppies discuss with each other what they want to do today. Then some flowers grow out of the ground and the puppies blow all their petals away. Then the flowers stems shrink back into the ground and as the sun starts to set their mommy returns.  Then the little puppy runs over to her and gives her a puppy hug.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of Puppies at Play

Arowyn wanted to have another go at making another stop motion video today.  She wanted to use her puppies that she had made with the magnatiles in her video. This required a different camera set up though as they are not self supporting structures. So she used the photos of her puppies I had taken for her the other night and rebuilt them and modified them while I got the camera set up for her. This kind of set up for stop motion does lend to some more creative things you can do without having to worry about the effects of gravity on your subjects. Which Arowyn got to explore and had some fun with in her new video.

Arowyn setting up the older brother puppy

Arowyn deciding what to add next

Arowyn laying out the mother dog

Arowyn eyeballing me for 

taking pictures of her while she works

Magnatile Puppy Dogs

Our magnatiles are the most loved and used toy in our entire house. We've had them for years and there's just a never ending amount of things you can do with them. Rather than building with them today Arowyn laid them out and made a family of dogs out of them. One of them she made with a larger body than the rest so she could use it as a flat surface for doing a puzzle on. She was sad when it was time to go to bed and had to clean them up because she said there was more that she wanted to do with them. So I took a picture of each of them so she can remember how to reconstruct them when she wants to build them again.

The Puppy

 The Puppy's Mom

 The Wolf

The Wolf Baby

Squirrelly Visits Wolfie

Here's the synopsis in case you have a hard time following the plot here. We open on Arowyn taking a nap. Then Squirrelly and the beagle come in and the beagle wakes Arowyn up with a "Woof". After this Arowyn asks Squirrelly "What do you want to do today?" to this Squirrelly answers "We're going to Wolfie's house today." Arowyn says "Goodbye Squirrely have a good time." And Squirrelly says "Goodbye" and leaves. Next we see Squirrelly and the beagle in front of Wolfies house where it is night time which you can tell by the moon and the stars in the sky and I was told that this is because it is always nighttime at Wolfie's house.   Next we see Squirrelly and the beagle go into Wolfie's house where we see them with Wolfie, baby stormtrooper and baby Chewbacca. Baby Chewy greets them with a "hi" and baby Stormtrooper says "Hi Squirrelly" Then Wolfie asks them if they want to see his fish tank. There's no explanation for this in the video but Wolfie has a under the sea fish tank which can easily house large sea creatures.  Next we see all of them swimming on their back in the fish tank where they meet a Killer Whale. After this we see squirrelly back at home with Arowyn hugging her saying I love you Squirrelly.

Behind The Scenes: The Making of Squirrelly Visits Wolfie

After their parting of ways during the making of Teagan's video yesterday Arowyn decided the only way to wield the creative control that she wanted to was to direct her own stop motion movie. So this afternoon I got her set up and helped her to get started with the opening scene where she is in it, but after that she took over and did the rest.  In fact after a little bit she even managed to rope in her brother to shot the photos while she drew the backdrop and moved the characters. Although when they got to the part about going into the under the sea fish tank Teagan cried plagiarism. He claims that he had told her that the next movie that he was going to make was going to be an under the sea movie and that he had told her about his idea and that she had stole it. Fortunately even though he was mildly perturbed he kept working as her cameraman for her until she was finished. Making these stop motion movies have been a great learning experience for both of them in more ways than one.

 Arowyn erasing Wolfie's house

Arowyn drawing her killer whale 

for the underwater scene

The Baby Bobble Heads Go To School

Here's how the story goes for anyone who has a hard time following Teagan's video. We open on Teagan and his babies sleeping. Then Teagan wakes up and the thought bubble you see appear says "Time to wake up" (Unfortunately due to me not calibrating the color on my camera properly part of the white board is blown out and unreadable, at the time I didn't realize that this was going to become the whole days project for the kids so I didn't really care at the time but the professional photographer in me is now kicking myself because I should have). When they are all up Teagan asks his babies what they want to do today. Their answer is Go to school! Then the baby bobble heads leave to go to the bus stop and Teagan says "Goodbye" and Chewbacca runs back in to say "Goodbye" and then leaves. Next you see them at the bus stop and they all get on the bus. Then they get off the bus and then they are in front of the school with teacher Wolfie who then walks them down the hallway to the classroom.  Then teacher Wolfie falls ill and is replaced by teacher Squirrelly. They then leave teacher Squirrelly's class and go to another class where teacher Wolfie is teaching (in Teagan's original storyline it was supposed to be teacher Squirrely teaching this class but this is when the cinematographer went on strike and she took her Squirrel with her). After this class is over you see the babies get back off the bus at home where Teagan is waiting for them. And then the babies say "Daddy We're home!" and Teagan says "Babies!" and he hugs them and says "I love you!"

Behind The Scenes: The Making of The Baby Bobble Heads Go To School

Today on Yahoo! news I saw a cool stop motion video called The Joy of Books and I showed it to Arowyn & Teagan. Teagan wanted to know how the books did that and I explained that they didn't use a video camera to do that but that it was a string of photographs put together to make a video. He thought it was very cool so I asked him if he wanted to see how it was done. He said "yes" so I jumped right in. We laid one of our blankets on the ground, set up our white board as a backdrop, grabbed some books to act as a tripod for my camera and plugged the remote switch into my camera and we started making his movie. I've never made a stop motion video before but we just figured it out as we went along and after showing him how it worked I let him and Arowyn lose with it and they ran with it. So for the first part of the video with Teagan in it is when I'm explaining to them how it works so I shot that part and the very ending where Teagan was in it again. But after I showed them the ropes the kids took over with Teagan drawing and moving the babies and Arowyn taking the photos. Although after his cinematographer went on strike due to him being "a big meanie" he had to take over shooting for his video as well. This turned out to not only be lesson in photography and making movies but Teagan also learned a valuable lesson in crew resource management.

 Teagan arranging his babies

Arowyn shooting the photo

Cooking With Mema: Blackberry Cobbler

Arowyn's cooking video starring Mema.

Arowyn the Cameraman

We are down in Alton Missouri spending some quality time with my grandparents while Chamberlin is in West Plains for his yearly recurrency training with Air-Evac. Arowyn has been Grandma's little shadow ever since we showed up last night especially when she's in the kitchen so when Grandma started making a blackberry cobbler for tonight's dinner Arowyn just couldn't help herself any longer and she whipped out my iPhone's video camera on her and told her she was going to star in her own cooking show. So here's Arowyn's video of Mema making blackberry cobbler.

Mema making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn videotaping Mema 

making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn reviewing her video

Arowyn & Teagan's Photography

Today was such a beautiful balmy day. Arowyn asked if she could go outside to go take pictures with her camera. After awhile Teagan joined her and I could tell they were both having a great time getting to get outside and taking turns with Arowyn's camera. When they came inside they begged me to upload their photos so I could see what they had done. Here are a couple of their fun ones.

Arowyn's Picture of our neighbors tree 

Arowyn's picture Teagan jumping

I poked my head out when they were trying to get 

this shot and i heard a lot of "again Teagan jump again" 

and after many tries she got her shot

Arowyn's picture of Teagan swinging 

 Teagan's picture of Arowyn on the gymset

Teagan's picture of Arowyn 

hanging upside down 

Teagan's picture of the house

Both Cham and I thought this was a pretty cool picture because the perspective is so high. Our awe quickly turned to concern as we tried to puzzle out how he took this shot because there is nothing tall enough in our backyard to get this high if a shot from other than a really skinny tree. After inquiring we were told it was took by swinging as high as he could on the swing set and snapping this photo just at the right second. I don't think I would have the guts to take a photo while swinging that high so I'm impressed that both he and the camera walked away from this in one piece.

Ouch!

Well it's the new year and time to learn new things. So yesterday as I was putting Arowyn to bed I found out that she was secretly teaching herself how to sew. I only found out because she was not so careful about returning two of the sewing needles back into their case and they somehow got caught up in the giant tail of her stuffed squirrel toy and when she was carrying it to bed one of the needles got her and she yelped. After tending to her she told me what she'd been doing and so Squirrely got a serious pat down which reveled another needle buried into her tail. After asking her why she decided to hide this from me she said it was because she was afraid if she asked that I would of said no. She has always been headstrong since the day she was born and after talking to her about everything we agreed that the next day I would give her sewing lessons and I would help her finish her pillow she had started. Of course first thing this morning when she woke up she went and grabbed her secret sewing project and brought it to me to hold me to my promise. What she brought to me was what to me looks like a miniature body pillow. It was a piece of yellow felt that she had found downstairs in one of the craft drawers that she had already sewn doing a whip stitch all but one side up. Which she then had proceeded to "stuff" with cotton balls all I really had to do for her was help her tie the ends of in the end and that was it. And yeah tomorrow I need to go buy more cotton balls.

Arowyn's pillow

Maxfield Parrish Picture Study, Week 4

Today we studied Land of Make-Believe by Maxfield Parrish. The kids thought this was a very pretty picture. Arowyn especially loved the ladies in the picture that she imagined to be princesses and all of the flowers in the picture.

Land of Make-Believe

illustrated by Maxfield Parrish

Why Won't You Hold Still..Perfect!

My dear little artist has decided that she is ready to move on from drawing and painting things she sees in her head and making renderings of photos. She has decided that she is ready to sketch a live model. It was quite the selection process though in finding just the right model. Serenity wants attention so bad that the minute you look at her she wiggles and shakes which is not a good quality in a live model when your just starting out at this. Buster our cat would jump and run off at the slightest sound and after chasing him down a couple of times she gave up on him. Bella didn't want to sit or lay the way Arowyn wanted her to sit so she was nixed from the running. But fortunately Grammy and Grandpy happen to be visiting us this week so she found that Frodo made the perfect model.

 Arowyn and her willing model Frodo

On the Job at The Christmas Rehersal

This coming year will be Arowyn's second year working as an intern for our company. But she's not our youngest intern anymore because Teagan's now joined our crew as well. They've actually both been our "littlest interns" for years now but when they went on the job with us they didn't serve a function it was just because I wasn't able to find babysitting for them so they had to come along. Although I guess you could say they worked PR because they were always chatting people up and pointing out the fact that it was their mommy holding the camera taking pictures. During last year's dance season we decided to let Arowyn try her hand at taking some pictures during the rehearsal for the dance performance. She had been using my camera at home taking nature pictures and knew how to handle it with care and how it worked so during the rehearsal she was allowed to stand in the wings and shoot some pictures of the girls dancing onstage. Tomorrow we have a church play that we will be videotaping but today was the rehearsal so I set them both lose to get some shots of the kids during their practice. They had a lot of fun and were very proud to be working side by side with daddy & mommy.

 Our little intern Arowyn circa 2009

 Our little intern Teagan circa 2009

 Arowyn taking pictures today

Teagan helping Daddy man the video camera 

 Arowyn taking more pictures

Teagan and Daddy working side by side

Teagan's Art

Teagan has been dying for chance to try painting on a canvas with the acrylics like Arowyn does so today I got him set up and let him loose. I had my fingers crossed because I was just a little afraid that this would turn into a really big mess really quick. Amazingly though he actually did a really great job of keeping himself and his surroundings clean through the entire project without any of my assistance. When he was done he told me that the painting is about a robot who comes to the moon once every year to dig holes until he finds something for his birthday. In the painting the robot is standing on the moon with holes where the robot has dug and he is standing in front of a starry sky and you can see the red diamond he found in his digging on the middle right hand side. He had a lot of fun creating his painting and was extremely pleased with himself and his creation when he was finished.

 Teagan blotting his paint brush

 Teagan painting the dark sky in

 Teagan painting arms on his robot

 Teagan signing his painting

The Robot Mystery

painted by Teagan Meek

Arowyn’s Art

Arowyn decided today that she wanted to try painting a picture off of a photo she found online. In her rendering of the orca he does look like an orca albeit a slightly overweight version of his photographic self.

The Big Orca
painted by Arowyn Meek

The photo that Arowyn found online
that was the inspiration for her painting