Family Crafting - How to paint like Kandinsky

This is a great family activity as the idea is such a simple one and anyone of any age can produce a lovely piece of art.  

First of all we looked at some images of Kandinsky's piece Concentric Circles online and talked about the shapes and colours.

Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky

Next we took some paper and folded it in half, then half, then half again to get eight equal sized rectangles. If I had had bigger sheets of paper I would have cut the paper into a square shape first so that each section was a square like Kandinsky's but we only had A4 paper so we worked with rectangles.

 For younger children it works better if the rectangles or squares are bigger so for Miss E's second attempt I just folded her paper into quarters.

We then used watercolours and appropriately sized brushes to build up circles in each section starting from the centre and working outwards.  Again I tend to give younger children larger brushes as it produces better end results and they get to finish before they get bored!

And here is how they turned out, I love how cheerful they look.  We are off to get some frames as they are destined to be birthday presents.

 Miss E's first attempt

Mr T's picture

 My attempt!

 Miss E's second attempt with larger rectangles

Little Grey Easter Rabbit

A collection of gorgeous photographs from Gail at Lemonjelly Photography featuring my silver grey Easter bunny hat.  If you are near Coatbridge and need a photographer please pay her a visit.

A New Book and a Delicious Curry

Recently I was gifted this brilliant book.  I have been a fan of the Girl Called Jack website for a while now.  Many of her recipes have become family favourites and my lovely Mum treated me to the book a few weeks ago.  The timing was great as the maintenance payments we have been receiving since my split have been cut again without any warning so I have been looking at ways I can make our already tight food budget go a bit further.

The first meal I cooked were the falafels which were great.  I love falafels and these work really well, just wish I had had pittas and some chilli sauce and salad to accompany them.  Our second recipe was the peach and chickpea curry.  It was really delicious, seconds and thirds were enjoyed and I even managed to squirrel a little bit to have for my lunch the next day.

I didn't use any chilli as the small people aren't keen on anything too spicy and instead of the cumin I substituted curry powder.  I always kill of coriander if I try and grow it so I missed that out too, along with the stock cube as I figured with the curry powder it would have enough flavour and I was right.

Has anyone else got the book?  Which recipes have you tried?  How did they work out?