BACK TO BARCELONA

Well, I finally forced myself to make time for art, and this was the result -- a long delayed spread about Barcelona in my travel journal, utilizing my stash of hand-painted-by-me papers.

Normally, when I use these papers in collage, I go to great extremes to avoid having any of those little white edges left on the pieces I tear off. This time, however, I made a conscious effort to keep them.

Turns out they're pretty good at imitating the grout between mosaic shards. I'm really looking forward to doing more of these spreads in the near future.

 
After all, if there's one thing Barcelona has in abundance, it's fabulously funky mosaics!

I AM THE WALRUS

Can you believe this little squeedunk is ten months old today?

Not only is he going to town on solid foods, he's also cruising the furniture at warp speed, and has even taken a few lurching steps from one parent to the other. Before you know it, we'll be celebrating his first birthday! Which I am pretty excited about, since it brings him that much closer to being ready for imaginative adventure play, and the time when I can present him with his own special adventure buddy, which I ordered as soon as he was born.

Later I went back and ordered a couple of fun adventure packs that each include something for both the boy and the doll. Unfortunately, they got held up in customs and just finally showed up last week. However, to make up for the delay, they threw in a third pack for free. Woohoo!

It's fixin' to get fun around here, don't ya think? You can read about how this doll came into being here. The good news is that it's creator is now in partnership with a toy distributor, and one of the dolls is now available in most Target and Toys R Us stores, and maybe a few others. If it does well enough, they will probably branch out and carry more of the dolls, as well as some of the adventure packs.

That's pretty much the only toys I have bought for him so far, since we had so much wonderful stuff passed down to us from our friends Paula and Tim. We also haven't bought much in the way of clothes, since Lex inherited so many from all of her friends. But, when I saw this for half-off at Penney's the other day, I just could not resist, even though he probably won't fit them for another year!

 Any idea where I might find an eye patch and pirate hat to fit his adventure buddy?