Art I Glad my Kids Got Talent!

Recently, the latest catalog from Pottery Barn hurled itself into my mailbox. So, like any normal busy mom, I plopped my little assiduous-self down and leisurely flipped through the pages, oooo-ing and ahhh-ing at all the prettiness that Pottery Barn has to tease me with, while sipping my afternoon coffee. Drooling over page after page, my mind began to wander off, and I dreamed of all the creative and enviable projects I could do, and all the Pottery Barn decor I could accumulate, if I had the time and money, just like Trump, except I don't want anything gold-plated, mmmkay? But of course, a kid quarrel managed to body-slam me back to reality, and I did a total pendulum swing, thinking about the dude who lives in a house the size of my kitchen. My kitchen is small. His house has no frills, or even room for a Pottery Barn magazine, I would imagine.

There is of course a happy medium.

So during this season of our life, we are living in an apartment, and forgoing all the frills and all the accouterments Pottery Barn provides, but, staring at white walls is much like eating dirt, or falling down the stairs. I don't like it.

Enter the local artist.

It probably all started during my mind-numbing daily routine of dish cleaning and laundry folding and vacuum wielding, that my daughter, unable to get my full attention, found the tape and began adhering her drawings to our cheaply painted apartment walls. She used copious amounts of tape, enough to cause me to kiss our deposit goodbye, because removing the tape she used means severe drywall exposure. Before I knew it, nearly every inch of my walls (up to about 3 feet high) was covered in her art, and enough tape to patch up the Titanic. The kitchen, living room, even the stairway was covered in art...and tape...mostly tape. Here's one wall:


So once I finally sat down from my endless cleaning to allow my fatigued body to recover, I realized, my house was decorated.

I have to admit, I wasn't thinking (I blame those smelly dryer sheets) when I started removing the pictures from the walls. Audge looked at me, like I was single-handedly destroying the Brazilian Rain Forest, and she said as tears welled in her big, brown eyes, "you don't like my drawings?"

In case you were expecting the "Worst Mommy in the World" trophy in the mail well, sorry, I already won it.

I mean, how could I? Here I was, lamenting the whiteness of my walls everyday, and how boring they were, and how I yearned to be able to afford color, dimension and utter JOY to be displayed on every vertical surface to help get me through the winters and confides of tiny living spaces!

And that is when genius sprung from my mound of guilt.

Admittedly this is a work in progress, but, I painstakingly peeled allllll the tape from the walls and her drawings, matted them on fancy stuff called construction paper, and started hanging them up in my living room. I think it's beautiful. Here is my favorite:

This is of our family on top of a mountain we climbed back in Alaska. It was a hard day, full of steep stairs, falling rocks, intestinal issues and Audge constantly screaming, "we are gonna diiiiiiiiie!" But, this is how she remembers it. Totally warms my heart.

Soon the whole wall will be covered in some of the rarest and most priceless art in the world, made just for me. I am richer than I know.

PS My son managed to draw a picture for me to display, even though he would rather fall down the stairs than draw...