I'd posted a teeny sneak peek at Sophie's sloth painting in progress in the days before Christmas. I wasn't going to do my usual holiday paintings this year, but when it's the only thing your kid asks for, and she's such an undemanding kid anyway, you break out the paints.



So here's the painting of a sloth and baby (her choice!) snuggling, in an old frame I hot-glued branches to. If I'd had more time/in a perfect world/blah blah blah I would have gotten a nice chunky wooden frame, and cut a nice mat for it too. You know what? Sophie adores it just the way it is, glue drips and all. And we even figured out that the tiny model-magic sloth tree ornament she made fits perfectly on that bottom branch. So I should just stop over thinking this stuff and let it be.



Sophie's extremely thorough knowledge of sloths came in handy when it came down to details - I knew why the fur grew that way (to help keep them dry) and that adding green accents to the mama sloths was perfectly okay, as sometimes those slow-moving cuties actually collect algae to help camouflage them in the rainforest's upper canopy.

And for some reason now, I think painting a wookiee would be a piece of cake. I am convinced sloths and wookiees are related in some galaxy somewhere. Do you see the resemblance too?

Over on my Facebook page I posted a link to what I thought was an awesome idea: get a free calendar and turn it into a small doodle-y journal. I can commit to that! And so could the kids. Luckily for us, our church was handing out free calendars. But oh no! What's this?



I am a Very Nice Catholic Girl, but I absolutely could not resist adding Kitten Kong to that top photo. And we're slightly giddy at the idea that I have 11 more pictures to add him to throughout the year.



Here you can see a few doodles and comments on the start of the month... and a giant kitten paw terrorizing the congregation.

My kids of course had to do it too. I swear I want this to be our holiday card next year, courtesy of Angela:



Sophie has a completely different take on it: she wants to write a story each month, and every day she will write a little more on each calendar square. By the end of the year, she'll have 12 stories!

Which may or may not contain giant adorable animals terrorizing the countryside.You never know with my kids.