I'm reading The Daring Female's Guide to Ecstatic Living. There's an entry in there about spending 10 minutes each day doing something you feel estatic about. So this was my 10 minutes for yesterday (which of course turned into more than 10 minutes!)

I painted this yesterday during a painting session with Sophie - it's leaf rubbings (2 oak leaves and an ivy leaf from our yard), crayon, children's Crayola pan watercolors, on regular Staples copy paper. The wax in the crayon resists the watercolor, so it takes a little planning, but it's fun. No pencils, no erasing, no drawing, just lots of paint.

Then, to make it more interesting, I threw on some salt, and then squirted it with Windex. The salt and ammonia leach the color out of the paper in splatters that I think help make it look more organic. Not sure what would happen if I did this with good watercolors and real watercolor paper, but that's next on my list of experiments. :)

(I should note that while I was doing this, across the table, Sophie was busy painting her entire arm and part of her face black. She had already done 5 paintings and decided it was time to move on to something else. Yes, I took pictures.)