Where Have I Been? Along with some exciting news!

Hi everyone! To all of my wonderful blog readers, you have probably been wondering why I  have been missing in action for a while. First of all, we had a wonderful, busy, fabulous summer. This summer I really tried to take a break from life, I focused on spending time with my family, working on projects I have wanted to work on for a while, and I received some exciting news!!!

 

So, to catch up on what we have been up to these last couple of months, and to find out my exciting news, read on and enjoy the pictures. Just a little warning, I went a little picture happy with this post.

This summer we did a lot of fun learning time together and we learned all about the world around us. We are still continuing our "It's a Small World" unit and I can't wait to share our educational and artistic activities with you. This is a camera art project my 7 and 6 year old daughters made.

We enjoyed taking care of our flower gardens and our vegetable gardens this summer. Our flowers were so beautiful and we enjoyed the color it added to our yard. However, our vegetables did not do so hot this year. This was our first year planting a garden in our current home, and we quickly found out that the soil was not so wonderful compared to what we were used.

 We enjoyed a really fun family camping trip, dogs included! Yes, we are still old school and camp in our tent.

Here is one of our sweet 10 year old dogs whom we have had since they were 3 weeks old. My dogs love being in the outdoors and they are the best dogs ever!

Here is a picture of my girls going on a nature scavenger hunt. It was a lot of fun and they found some really neat treasures.

 So beautiful!

The girls and I had some fun sketching sessions while we camped. This is me sketching a beautiful pine tree.

Over the course of the summer we did a lot of art projects. I had my nieces and nephews in town and I gave each of them a blank canvas and let them paint whatever they wanted. I can't tell you how much fun they had and it was so fun to see how creative they got when the sky was the limit!

We live on opposite coasts as our family and it had been four years since we had been home. Four years way too long since we both have close relationships with our families. So, this summer we jumped on a plane and spent 3 wonderful weeks with both my family and my husbands family. Can I tell you how wonderful it was? It was simply perfect. We even got to hit the beach, which my girls absolutely loved. My oldest daughter loved being in the water the best, my youngest daughter preferred scouring the beach for seashell treasures.

We enjoyed showing our patriotism and celebrating the Fourth of July. Of course, this included attending a local parade.

1

We enjoyed some VERY tasty meals thanks to my husband who is an amazing chef. I am serious, he can cook, and we all know that Dad is the better cook in the family. This is a tasty Salmon he cooked on a Cedar Plank crusted with fresh Parmesan Cheese and brown sugar. Can I just say HEAVEN! What makes it even more amazing is this is some of the Salmon that my husband caught himself. He is quiet the fisherman as well. Yes, I have literally a freezer full of fresh caught Salmon that is depleting quicker than I would like. Yummy!

 I enjoyed making a lot of new educational items over the summer, like "My Summer Activity Book" featured in this picture.

 We were able to spend a lot of quality time at the pool while my daughters took swimming lessons.

 My daughters had a lot of fun playing with their dolls and stuffed animals. On this day they dressed up some of their favorite dolls and stuffed animals and did a photo shoot with them. So darling!

We were able to go to a few amazing museums this summer. Anyone that knows me well knows I adore anything old, so you can imagine how excited I was to be able take pictures of these wonderful antique dolls and adorable old tea set.

We spent a day at a fun amusement park and found out my oldest daughter LOVES roller coasters. I am talking the steep dropping, upside down, twist and turn kind. So brave. We all had a lot of fun!

I designed my first set of recipe cards using my own original owl illustration and I added them to my Etsy shop, artisticallyshauna.etsy.com.

Do your kids love Perler beads? Mine sure do. Here are a few of my girls creations. Sleeping Beauty was created from a template, the rest were all created from my daughters own imaginations.

 I was able to teach a cute neighbor girl private art lessons this summer. It was so much fun and she is so talented. This is a picture of her working on a mixed media painting. It turned out so great!

We also played a lot of learning games and board games together. Such fun family time.

And if you have made it this far, well then you can hear my exciting news. I am now the lower grades Elementary School Art Teacher at the Elementary School my daughter's attend. I have been teaching for three weeks now and I am absolutely loving it. The great thing is I only teach half days, 3rd grade and younger (the other art teacher I team teach with teaches 4th-6th grade). My girls are so excited to say that their Mom is their art teacher and I am loving the time I get to spend with them at school, as well as getting to know all of the other sweet children. I am SO excited to start sharing all of the great art projects we are doing in school, along with all of the other great things I usually share on this blog.

 

So, here is to a great new year, full of new adventures, and happy times. Let me know you have stopped by my blog, and I will be more than happy to visit yours. Have a great weekend.