Mommy Maven: Masterpiece in the Making

Living in New York City I often find there are many times of the year it isn’t exactly ideal to go outside with my wee ones.  In the winter it can be brutally cold and in the summer ridiculously hot.  However, my apartment isn’t exactly palatial and so it means I have to be extra creative when it comes to entertaining my boys on one of these either really cold or really hot (or sometimes really rainy) days!

I have often thought all this wild weather has made me a better mom because it makes me get creative, although I am beginning to think this is just my way of justifying living in a very small space in crazy weather conditions!

Now that you know about my small apartment and the wacky weather conditions let me also add that I have to do a lot of designing for my Rosie Pope Maternity line and often find my bedroom the best place to do it.  It is full of light, I am not hounded by the usual daily calls and meetings at the office and I can put on some really fun music (think a compilation of Salt n’ Pepper, Zac Brown and of course Madonna…did I just give away my age!), and get creative.

For as long as I can remember my older son has wanted to design with me and so I started dedicating one of my large design boards to him and letting him go crazy with paints, pens, stencils, glitter (even cookie sprinkles), whatever he could get his hands on and then let him work on the masterpiece over a period of months while I designed (or while the weather is bad).

Not only was this a really special way for us to be together, a great thing to do when going outside wasn’t’ ideal but also a brilliant way to create in my opinion some fantastic art work for our home…MOMA watch out!  Here are two pictures of his latest two masterpieces.  They were named “Untitled 1 and 2” until recently he announced they should be called “Grandma Red” and “Grandma Blue” and who am I to argue any different!

If you are feeling particularly adventurous you can take the same concept (large art board) and allow your toddler to paint using plastic toys as stamps to make different dinosaur and monster tracks across the page using the bottom of the toy.  I promise you people when people see the art work framed they will actually make comments like “What a wonderful piece of classic modernism, which gallery is that from”!!

Untitled 1 Grandma Red

Untitled 2 Grandma Blue

Tags: arts & crafts, projects, toddlers