Artistic Tuesday : Kitty Charcoal Drawing

Today I thought I would experiment with my new charcoal pencils and tortillons. I've never used them before so after filling a few pages with scribbles I tried to draw my cat, Grey Kitty. That's its name, yes. Like I said before I have some very creative names. Anyway, he was sitting on our deck in the snow so I attempted to draw him. I started by drawing his shape and then I shaded everything in with my charcoal and blended it with a big tortillon. It was fun and I learned more about using charcoal. Here's my finished piece of art!

Artistic Tuesday : Duct Tape Laptop Case

Today I made this laptop case for myself with duct tape! The design is an origami horse made of neon colors. I put two horse snaps on the flap to keep it closed. This is the firsts case I have made, but I'm hoping to make more on order. I used foam on the inside to cushion the laptop and the bottom is three layers of duct tape to reinforce it. It took me about a roll of black duct tape and 4 hours to finish this case. 

Snow!

Iowa weather update! It snowed Monday. :( It is finally melting!!! It's still freezing cold though, and I just hope it doesn't snow again anytime soon. I'm not ready for winter.

Artistic Tuesday : Bunny Collage

I have two pets bunnies at our farm. Their names are Caramel and Polka-Dot. As you might guess from their names Caramel is caramel colored and Polka-Dot is polka-dotted. We have some very creative names! Our bunnies are sisters mixed between a mini Rex rabbit named Alice and a spotted meat rabbit named Roger. They are big, fluffy, and fat. We've had them for almost two years. They were born on Easter so they are our Easter bunnies! Anyway I was drawing bunnies and I made this collage of different breeds of bunnies. It's pretty cute!

Home Ec: Banana Bread

Today in homeschool home economics class I am baking my amazing chocolate chip banana bread. The recipe I use is from an old 4-H cookbook titled Fayette County 4-H Club Cookbook. I thought since it is so good I would share the recipe with you. Here it is!

 Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Makes 1 large loaf

8 ounce package of cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup margarine

2 eggs

1 cup of mashed banana or about 2 bananas

2 1/4 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips (you could also use nuts)

1. Combine softened cream cheese, sugar, and margarine, mixing until well-blended.
2. Blend in banana and eggs. 
3. Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda together. (Don't mix up the amount of baking soda and baking powder. You're bread will not turn out well. I speak from experience.)
4. Add dry ingredient combination to the banana blend, mixing just until moistened.
5. Fold in chocolate chips (or nuts).
6. Pour into greased bread pan.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Check to make sure it's done on the inside.
8. Cool 10 minutes then remove from pan.
9. Enjoy your delicious banana bread!
   
   Here's a picture of my bread!

Artistic Tuesday : Carving Pumpkins

Hi! Sorry I haven't blogged in a week or two. I've been really busy with birthdays, youth retreats, girl scout meetings, 4-H meetings, farm chores, and school. I haven't had much free time but I'm gonna try to blog more this week. So here's my Artistic Tuesday!

Tonight my family and I carved pumpkins. Each of us kids got our pumpkins ready by cutting off the tops and scraping out the pumpkin guts. Some of my younger siblings won't stick their hands in a pumpkin (and maybe I won't either) so it took a while to scrape them all out. I carved a really detailed vampire on mine. It took me a couple hours to finish while my siblings were done in about an hour. My sisters carved the headless horseman and a scaredy cat on their pumpkins. My younger brothers carved two happy smiley faces and a ghost. When we finished we lined all the pumpkins up on our porch and admired our works of art. Every year I make sure my pumpkin is really cool. Last year I carved a smiling cat face and the year before I carved a witch on her broom flying across the moon. I wish I had a picture but since I don't you'll just have to imagine how amazing our pumpkins looked. Tomorrow my mom and I are going to make pumpkin bars, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pies, pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin pancakes. We'll be eating pumpkin for a while! Happy Halloween everybody!!!

Artistic Tuesday : Horse Zentangle

Hi everyone! I had a busy week, especially in my art classes! This week this is the project I worked on. We were supposed to learn about the art principles and design elements. I tried to use them all in this picture. I sketched lots of random, fun designs in circles. I wanted to use colors from my bedroom like lime green, purple, and pink. I drew some horses in a couple circles because they are my favorite animal. One of my favorite circles is the zebra circles in the middle. I am going to add this to my art collection hanging on my wall.