Day 1: First day back to painting #EveryDayInMay!  Inspiration for the Fairy lass is to left and upper right of the sketchbook. Will finish her petal hair, and scan tonight.

Tomorrow starts a new month - and a new goal. It's time to paint every day in May, people.

I have been doing this on and off every year since 2006, I believe. You can draw, paint, sing, write, just basically pledge to create something every day in the next 31 days. Create 31 different paintings. Work on one for 31 days. Here's the thing.

THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO DO THIS. 

I promise.

Here are places you can join and share your work:

• Our Flickr group: https://www.flickr.com/groups/everydayinmay/
• Post your images to twitter with #EveryDayInMay
• Share on Instagram and tag me (I'm on at https://instagram.com/_french_toast_girl_/ - note the underlines), and throw that #EveryDayInMay tag on there.
• Post your images to my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/frenchtoastgirl

The t-shirt we made her for today, which matches the cardboard doodles we still have hanging in the kitchen. The Sophster is a sloth fan from waaaay back (remember the sloth Christmas painting?) so we knew she'd love it. Happy birthday, you awesome kid.

Now with TEN YEARS OF VALENTINE PHOTOS! (and then Sophie walks over and says, no, actually, it's our 11th. She's right, but whatever.) Go check out these adorable kids and have a happy Valentine's Day!


















And now let's have a trip in the wayback machine!



(2014)





(2013)





(2012)






(2011)





(2010)





(2009)





(2008)





(2007)





(2006)





(2005)

You know those funny pictures where someone posts a photo of some amazing craft from Pinterest, and then posts their not-so-perfect attempt underneath it, and then writes, "Nailed it!"

I used to laugh at those, because my efforts pretty much always looked like the before pictures. One, because I'm a perfectionist, and two, because I am a darn perfectionist, didn't you hear me the first time?

So I had this absolutely brilliant idea for Christmas that we were going to make a pretzel log cabin as a family. It was going to be freaking adorable and way better than gingerbread, which none of us likes very much anyway, but we do all like pretzels. And chocolate. And pretzels with chocolate attached.

I found perfectly adorable houses on Pinterest. Namely, this one: incredibly squee-worthy and something I thought would be both charming and tasty. So what if the person who made it used hot glue to hold all of the pieces together? I could use chocolate and we could eat it afterwards. Martha Stewart even had one (for Lincoln's birthday) that was much smaller and was glued by frosting to cardboard to hold it together. But clearly, I knew more than Martha, because I decided we didn't need to do any of those silly things. I was going to use chocolate!

Can you see where this is going yet?

I drew plans.
I photocopied the plans.
I did math.
I put the plans under waxed paper on cookie sheets.
I melted chocolate.
I spent tons of time sawing away at pretzel logs to get them all the perfect sizes for windows, doors, and the right pitch of the roof.
I made the cutest four walls of a log cabin you ever did see, while my kids went through leftover Halloween candy (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing) to decorate it with.
I put all of our work into the freezer so that we could easily frost all of it together with some vanilla frosting, which would not only harden but would look like snow too.

My other fabulous nephews got portraits too! All the photos of final paintings still have to come off the other camera, so they'll be another post. But still... these were totally fun to do.

Happy Advent! The first week began yesterday, with the lighting of the first candle, which stands for hope. Lord knows everyone can use more of that.