I still have 2012 round-up posts to write, but in the interest of maintaining this blog while I take ages and ages to get those posts together, here’s one that’s about, you know, normal things.
At Got Craft? last month, I had two nights of Hanukkah to shop for, and I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw Draw Me a Lion‘s table. Illustrator Lisa Cinar launched her shop last year, and I’m fully in love with her work. I bought Owen a poster-sized paper of cat illustrations, which we taped to the dining-room table as soon as he unwrapped it.
For the next week or so, we’d colour the meows, as he called them, whenever we wanted to, and usually together. It was loads of fun, and we especially enjoyed asking Owen what the cats were saying, since Lisa gave several of them speech bubbles. Usually he replied, “Meow,” but once he said, “Bagel,” which is obviously my favourite.
Greg and I were both surprised by how much we enjoyed just colouring. Not something we adults do very much, even when our kids colour all the time. It was relaxing and fun, and I found myself sneaking in five minutes after doing the dishes after dinner. Makes me want to take up doodling as a serious hobby.
Though I loved buying Owen books and trains and the like for Hanukkah this year, it’s the meows that are already the most salient of the year’s gifts. I wrote the month and year in some whitespace, and we put the poster in a cheap IKEA frame in his room (photo to come; he’s napping as I write this!), and we talk about the meows all the time.
Loads of family funtimes, and a lasting reminder of said family funtimes. That’s the best kind of present, I think, and I’ll be keeping it in mind for future gift-giving occasions, for sure.
Here’s a video about Lisa and her work: