Goodbye and Welcome

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Goodbye and Welcome

Okay, I'm doing this.  First off, this is not really good-bye at all, it's just the end of the first act. For the past 3 years I have been burning my fingers with hot glue, camera hanging around my neck, cobbling together what is now an archive of over 450 posts, many of which capture my children in sweet, well-lit moments, growing older before my eyes. Poppy Haus was the project I created to help stay engaged with the outside world while getting them through their early years at home, a period of time for me to consider my next professional step. What began as Make-Do, a little blogspot journal, quickly grew into the Poppy Haus before you today. It's become so much more than I imagined it could ever be, and I've become more of a blogger than I ever originally intended, going to conferences, leveraging social media, working with brands. In the end, it's the writing, photography and working on composition, color, styling that are the true joys of my day. I will continue to do them, but this little spot on the interwebs is moving forward.  

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Sketching Skills

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Sketching Skills

My two favorite tools are a sharp pencil and a pad of gridded/graphing paper. Whenever I set out to make anything, be it a tiny clay deer sculpture or a floor plan, I make a sketch. It helps me work out my ideas and get down to details. I'm a visual thinker, and both of my kids seem to be as well, so I supply them with their own pads of graph paper to plot out their ideas.  The grids have helped Wylie with scale and consistency while he learns to write his name, and Jasper has used it to make comic books, and has recently started drawing pictures in perspective. Armed with with these simple tools it's pretty amazing to see what they come up with... 

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Design For Small

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Design For Small

I got another package in the mail from Princeton Architectural Press.  Enclosed were two books and a hand written note letting me know they are publishing their first architecture series for children. The "Who Built That?" books look at famous examples of important houses and buildings and their famous architects, from Frank Lloyd Wright and his amazing Fallingwater to Mies Van Der Rohe with a little shout out to Bauhaus and utilitarian design, to the wacky, sculptural work of Frank Gehry. I dare say I learned a few things about some of my favorite buildings, and it seems the perfect way to kick off a little mini-series about teaching applied art/design to children. Here's a peek into the book about modern homes. 

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No. 5

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No. 5

We did it.  The house is dark as night, the yard is landscaped, and the deck is up. I thought I'd share some pictures of the new and improved front of the house.  It's like a dream driving up to it now.  We settled on Benjamin Moore "Gravel Grey", which actually had a little less blue in it than some of the other colors I had in mind. In some lights it looks pure grey, in others it looks a bit navy. The trim is "White Dove" and for the door we thought it might be fun to do a pop of color in "Yellow Finch", which has a bit of a green undertone, and picks up on a lot of what we are growing in the front garden.

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