Today I’m interviewing last year’s Best Artistic Content winner, Breezy Tulip @ A Bowl Of Moss & Pebbles. Since the awards, I’ve personally had the pleasure of meeting Miss Breezy and getting to know what a sweet, kind, artistic young lady she is! I hope you will stay awhile to get to know her and then check out her fabulous blog!

Tell us a little bit about your family. Share a photo of your family.

We started homeschooling eleven years ago, after my mom and dad pulled me out of the first grade. Neither of my parents were raised in Christian families, but when God saved both of them there were some big changes in their lives, including being called to homeschool Emily (my younger sister) and I. My Dad is a carpenter and my Mom is a passionate homemaker. We attend a small family-integrated Reformed Baptist church and like to have large cookouts in our back yard.

You have only one sister… tell us about your relationship with her.

Emily and I are best friends. Since we are only 22 mo apart, much of our school subjects are done together. We enjoy hand sewing, decoupaging, embroidery, and many other things. She’s also a great graphic designer, knows all about the computer and html, etc. And I’m into art, drawing, and painting, so there’s a lot we can collaborate on together outside of “school.”

Tell us about your homestead. Where is your favourite place to relax?

We own five acres of land, right outside the city limits. We have the convenience of being close to everything, but also have the country feeling, being surrounded by fields and fields of corn and soybeans. In our back yard there’s an enormous pin oak that we all like to sit under. Sitting on the swings under the oak while facing the vast fields with the wind on my face is the most delightfully relaxing place on our homestead.

You won Best Artistic Content Blog for your artistic drawing skills. How long have you been drawing? Were you always good at it? Did you ever take art lessons?

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing. For a while (when I was about 7 to 10 years old) I was sure I was going to be a cartoonist. I lacked many skills, and when I decided on illustrating books, I realized how miserably I fell short.

I have taken some drawing lessons and watercolor lessons. The librarians at our local library know me as the girl who is always checking out art books.

Can you share your favourite drawing?

I don’t know if I have one! Well, there was one I drew last winter while I was trying to come up with a story about a little boy who goes on an adventure. He meets a creature, an old forest-dweller named Grunimy Sneed. I ended up liking the picture more than the story.

Has being homeschooled allowed you to spend more time drawing?

When I was in the first grade (in public school) my teacher was concerned about the fact that I was constantly doodling. Now I can doodle all the time - while Mom is reading out loud, if I want to embellish History notes, etc. It also comes in handy when I can’t figure out or memorize a concept in science. I’ll draw it out over and over until I get it. And no one looks at me weird! My teacher sees it as very healthy.

What do you want to do with your talents and do you feel God is leading you in any certain directions with them?

I strongly feel God calling me to illustrate children’s books. It’s been a passion of mine for quite some time, and He’s been opening doors for me. It’s a job most people do from home, so I would be able to be a homemaker and illustrator.

What does a typical day look like in your home? Is there a routine you follow daily?

Emily and I get up before Dad leaves for work so he can pray with us at the beginning of our day. Showers, quiet time and breakfast follow, and when we’re “in school,” various subjects fall before lunch and after lunch, including History, geometry, science, and English. And Art. Plenty of time for that. And then blogging. Then in the evenings after dinner we have family worship.

Do you have a separate room where you draw or where you keep your supplies? Care to share a photo?
Most of my drawing supplies are in the dining room, along with two computers, two china cabinets, lots of book cases, and a huge table. My drawing table faces the east window where I can get lots of natural light.

How long have you been blogging?

It’s been a year and a half now. The first six months Emily and I shared a Blogspot blog. Last July Mom and Dad let us get our own HSB accounts.

What are your favourite topics to blog about?

I enjoy blogging about what I’ve learned lately. I don’t do that often enough, but it’s easiest to squeeze my humor into it. And then if I’ve drawn something nice, I like to share it.

How much time would you guess you spend on blogging during a typical week?

That varies. In a typical week, perhaps 2-5 hours.

What are some good things that blogging has brought into your life?

I have met many like-minded people that I wasn’t sure were out there. I’ve been able to record some of the going-ons in my life, as well as display some of my work. Actually, that’s how I “met” Mrs. Novak. When she saw some of my work she asked me to do a two-page for her magazine. Those are only a few of the blessings that I’ve discovered.

Have there been pitfalls?

Oh, yes! Too many times I’ll find myself reading blogs and blog-hopping for hours on end, wasting time that I was supposed to spend on studying. And I’m very bad at returning comments. But it’s been an overall good experience.

Do you have a place on the web where people can find your drawings or learn how to draw themselves?

I recently started a blog called “The Drawing Blog.” Just about every weekend I post a drawing lesson. I also post my drawings on both “A Bowl of Moss and Pebbles” and “The Drawing Blog.” You can find “The Drawing Blog” here: http://homeschoolblogger.com/thedrawingblog

Thank you Miss Breezy for sharing a little about yourself! I know I enjoyed it and I hope others did too! May God bless you as you follow his leading. I’m sure we’ll be seeing children’s books by Miss BreezyTulips in bookstores soon! You have a wonderful talent!

I just love taking my camera with me and snapping shots of our children. I have a collection of photos that I feel are notalgic, as they do not show their faces, but rather the backside of them during their activities. The reason I like to take shots like this is because it makes me wonder what they are thinking. For example here is my son standing in front of a lake with his bug catcher in hand.

To a mom we would just see this tiny lake, almost small enough to be called a pond, yet in his mind it’s a vast sea of adventure. He was on the hunt for insects and what do you think he was thinking as he paused to look around?

Here is another photo that I love. This one is of Timmy and my nephew Aaron. Aaron had gotten a new Hummer and he wanted to take Timmy for a little ride. We didn’t have an extra helmet, but they were driving on a level patch of grass in my mom’s yard and we had four adults with them. But the shot just brings my mind back to that adventurous afternoon as the tow ‘guys’ got to go for a ride.

In some of these black and white photos you can’t see the border, but in my Paint Shop Pro I added a 4pt white border around these photos and it makes them look like the old time snap shots of yesteryear. I added a drop shadow to this one so you can see what I’m talking about. This shot was of my son as he was walking across a bridge. He was letting his fingers hit each bar as he slowly strolled along. None of us taught him to do this, but I recall doing the same thing when I was a little girl.

I received an Editor’s Pick award on that shot of Timmy on the bridge, at BetterPhoto.com

This next shot was of Timmy and Aaron again at the baseball field. My husband was playing ball and the boys stood at the fence watching the action. As you can see from these images, that there’s something unique about this kind of shot.

Here is the last one I wanted to share with you. This was last year at Upper Bidwell Park in Northern California. Bidwell Park is a historical and famous park. The film, ‘Robinhood‘ with Errol Flynn was filmed there, as well as many other films. It’s park is gorgeous! I know the view from where he stands. He is looking upstream and as far as you can see is water and lush green brush and trees. The birds fly through without noticing that humans are there. Many times you come to a park and the birds and animals flee, but in Bidwell Park it’s as if you’re apart of their world. Knowing this experience myself makes this picture so nostalgic to me. Again, I see the picture and it’s up to my imagination to wonder what he’s thinking and experiencing that moment,

Do you have photos that ‘take you back’ and make your imagination soar? Dawn has one on a path at her PhotoBlog. Dawn also shares how she used her program to create a vintage look to her photos.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

We just returned from a long vacation that seemed like it literally lasted a month. We are Back Home now, but it was sure fun meeting several bloggers (like Sprittibee!) I think part of the reason it seemed so long is that we planned the trip for at least a month before we left. Planning for a long trip or a vacation can be a daunting task, but I can testify that it makes life a whole lot easier if you take the time to do so.

We had several things to look ahead to when we decided to take our trip, so our planning and arranging had to start early. We had animals that needed to be cared for and articles to have written for a couple of magazines. Because we knew we would be getting back late in the month, I made sure the girls had their monthly columns written before we ever left. I searched Mapquest repeatedly for weeks, planning our route. Be sure to check

• Mapquest,
• Google Maps

and any other online service to get the best route.

One thing we bought on the trip is a Trucker’s Route Atlas. It is a huge, laminated atlas with all the info you could want on it. It retailed at $75, but we found it in Texas for $15. It saved us time and money on the way home.

Gas prices. You cannot do one thing about it. Well, you could stay home, I guess, but that is about it. I must have taken 100 pictures of gas station signs all over the country so we could chronicle the prices everywhere. For the most part, it was around $3.85-$3.98. There was one place in the far west side of Texas, along I-10 where it was $4.39/gallon. The main objective is to calculate how many miles you plan to travel, count gas on the high side and the mpg your vehicle will get on the low side, so you will be sure to overplan finances for the trip. We have a 15-passenger van, which gets about 15-18mpg highway on a good click. I figured it at 15mpg, at 5,000 miles, with the gas prices at $5.00/gallon. We were not planning to go 5,000mi, and I certainly hoped the gas would not get up to $5.00. UGH. I was actually surprised to hear that gas here at home, which was at $3.85 when we left, reached $4.20/gal while we were gone. It is “down” to $4.09 now. Sheesh.
Also remember to check gas prices along your route online before you leave. Then, when you are on vacation, you can check again before you leave to come home.

The main gas stations we found in the South/Southwest are

• Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores,
• Petro Truck Stops Locations by Map - AllStays Guide,
• TravelCenters of America, and
• Valero/Diamond Shamrock.
• Flying J has a Fuel Prices page that gives you prices in select US cities.

Many of these travel plazas also have Wi-Fi, so be sure to make notes of those places on your route, if that is a concern for you. We found out that Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas are very limited on catching a wireless connection very easily on the Interstates we traveled.

Of course, there are things you will come home to, like grass that looks like a jungle, if you live where grass actually grows, so you will want to have someone mow for you if that is a concern. It is not a concern for me, because, now I know we can use the weedeater on it and our goats will have fresh, green grass to eat.

If you are only going to be gone for a few days, then putting a hold on your mail is probably not a big deal, but we left for two weeks, so we did stop it. It came on Saturday as a great big bundle, and I was happy to see it wasn’t *all* junk mail!

We found some friends who took mercy upon us and took care of our goats, chickens and dogs for the past two weeks, and if you are blessed with such friends, be sure to leave them a detailed list. We wrote out all feeding procedures and made enough feed for the two weeks we were gone. We tried to cover all the bases. It is hard for someone, even if they have the animal experience, to care for oyur own quirky animals. We have three younger does who will hog down the older does’ food if we don’t feed them separately. Goats get sick easily if their food is messed with, so we have a particular way of feeding our goats. Be sure to stress the importance of how you feed your animals to the caretakers and get someone you trust to do it exactly as you ask or you may have problems.

Another thing to consider is schooltime. Are you going to include workbook time or field trips or nothing? We homeschool everything. I call them Living Learning Moments. From gas prices to crossing 14 state lines to learning about Uncle Leo and his homemade walking sticks to helping Great-Grandpa when the mower breaks. If your children journal - or even if they don’t - a vacation is a great time for them to record daily things that happen. It will hone their writing skills, give them details to remember, and give you a timeline of the things you did on the trip.

A really easy lesson is to print off a map of the US and using them as coloring pages and noting each time you go through or enter a state. You can let your children track your trip and note special places each time you see a historical marker or stop and take photos. If your children are older, they might enjoy a personal smaller atlas of the States to follow as you travel along.

For heaven’s sake, don’t forget your camera! If you do not own a digital, consider it a vacation expense and buy one. Or borrow one. If you do not own a laptop, buy more memory. We are blessed with two laptops, so we downloaded the pictures as our memory card filled up. I promise you a digital camera will save you in the end. I know. We must have taken over 3000 pictures, but I deleted about 500. I cannot imagine buying all of those rolls of film and printing off all those photos, only to throw away 500 bad shots. Sure, we would have taken less photos, but this is a worthy investment.

I hope you have a wonderful, blessed, safe adventure of your own this summer, on the road or in your own back yard! If you would like to see a list of other items to plan for vacation, like clothing and food, please take a look at my planning post: Planning A Long Vacation Field Trip for A Large Family

CARNIVALS OF INTEREST

From Why Homeschool:Carnival of Homeschooling: The next Carnival of Homeschooling will be hosted at Dewey’s Treehouse. As always, entries are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, WHICH MEANS tonight!

Carnival of Homeschooling

current issue:
Jun 17, 2008
Apollos Academy

next issue:
Jun 24, 2008
Dewey’s Treehouse

current issue:
Jun 10, 2008
Learn Me Good

next issue:
Jun 11, 2008
Learn Me Good

Learning in the Great Outdoors

current issue:
Jun 01, 2008
The Miss Rumphius Effect

next issue:
Jul 01, 2008
Alone on a Limb

Music Education Blog Carnival

next issue:
Jul 01, 2008
So You Want To Teach?

The Charlotte Mason Carnival

current issue:
Jun 10, 2008
Adventures On Beck’s Bounty

next issue:
Jun 24, 2008
Twinkling Stars Family School

CONTESTS AND GIVEAWAYS

Growing in Grace Magazine has something special for designers. They are are looking for a digi-scrap design for the month of September. Their theme that month will be Fall related.

*HOW DO I ENTER? Click on the icon to get all the information. Your kit must be sent to ggmeditor@gmail.com

ENTRIES are due AUGUST 1ST!

***********

Dawn is having a Twisted Silver Giveaway

Go on over to her blog and check out the pictures of the Twisted Silver Jewelry she has.

Twisted Silver is premiering three new products this week: Motif earrings, Chichi bracelet, and Pod bracelet. A lucky winner, selected randomly from comments, will receive a pair of the Motif earrings!

Motif Earrings: An intricate curving paisley motif bracketed by brass hand forged angles. Wear your art! $50

She also has 2 coupon codes for you if you don’t want to wait to win and want to dive right in and buy a set!

This contest is open to non-bloggers, just use a valid email address when posting your comment.

Contest is from June 24-28th, so get on over there and leave your comment!!!

***********

HSB Front Porch: Salem Ridge Press Good Summer Reading Contest!
Our hope is that once families have the opportunity to see and read one of our books, they will come back for more. In our current contest, twenty-five families will each receive the softcover book of their choice from the eighteen titles we have republished so far.* Then, we would like to bless one special family with a grand prize of a full set of all eighteen of our titles - that is approximately a $250 retail value! We are excited to be sponsoring this contest and thrilled to share our books with you. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

There will 26 winners for this contest!

Winners are chosen randomly.

Contest ends July 6th!

***********

Freebie From Robin Sampson:

I want to share with you a special book by Wayne Jacobson titled ” He Loves Me”. Its available free on my blog in ebook format. Go to my post, Daisy Petal Christianity. I hope it touches you as much as it has me.

***********

Enter here IntelligentFirstAid “talking” kit valued at $129.99. To enter visit sponsor and tell why you’d like to win. The giveaway will end on June 30th 2008.

***********

Enter here to win a (as grand prize winner) an entire Olive Kids room valued at $750 from OliveKids. To enter just fill out their form. There are also five runner up winners who receive $50 worth of product. The giveaway will end at 11:59 PST on June 30th 2008.

If you would like to keep up on other events, be sure to check out Jocelyn’s The Weekly.

The NBA is preparing to hold their Draft Pick on June 26th in New York City. Many teen guys and their dads, even some girls and their mothers, place the Draft date on their calendars in the excitement of seeing who their favorite team will be choosing. The Coaches need to select players that can help meet the needs of the entire team. In Basketball they may need to draft a ’shooter’ like Sasha Vujacic for their offensive team so they can score points. On the other hand, the coaches may decide to strategically select a defensive player like Ronny Turiaf, who can prevent the other team from scoring points.

As parents, we have the responsibility of drafting in key players in our teens lives in order to help train them to be a balanced individual with skill, character, and academic excellence. These players are designed to support the morals and high standards that God would want our children to have. Each person in the lives of our children help to form them into the adult they will some day be. Our teens thoughts, opinions, and philosophies are formed in their minds and souls by the people they are around, the books and blogs that they read, and even the music they listen to.

If Sasha Vujacic choses to fill his body with unhealthy foods, never exercise, and spend time in the bars, he isn’t going to be much good to his team members. However, if he eats right, works out each day, and spends his time wisely studying the play book, he will be more equipped when it comes to game day. We can view the moves our opponent makes, but spending too much time studying their moves and not enough time studying our own plan, we can easily become distracted from the main objective. We can learn how not to play the game, but if we invested more time in the fundamentals of the game and work hard at improving our skills and memorizing that play book, then we’ll all end up being the best player we can be.

If I tried to be a Sprittibee or a Jacque Dixon, I’ll never be any better than second best. But I can be the best Sisterlisa I can be as I spend time in my own play book. Each homeschool family has a different set of needs, goals, and desires, so some of the strategies won’t be the same. Yet, as we use the same play book, we can learn the basic fundamentals needed to insure that each of our team members gets the best guidance in making decisions for their game day.

Here are the top 5 plays our family makes in our game.

1. Pray. In order to have an open relationship with the Lord, we need to talk to Him everyday. Schedule time to pray as individuals and as a family.

2. We read the Bible. Even children as young as 3 can read the Bible. Even if they can’t pronounce words yet, they can identify letters. Each child should have a Bible reading

schedule suited to their abilities.

3. Meet with other believers. It’s important to meet regularly with other believers who will support your values and your relationship with the Lord. Some people have good solid churches they can be a member of, while others may have a small country home church. Wherever you meet with fellow believers, be faithful and help to meet the needs of the entire team.

4. Share your faith. If you don’t have a church, you can still reach souls for Christ. Many Christian book stores have Gospel tracts that you can invest in and are very affordable. Hand them out to people you come in contact with each day. The cashier at the store, the bank teller, even mailing them in when you pay bills helps to reach a lost soul.

5. Apply what we know. It’s one thing to just become knowledgeable in a subject, but it’s a whole other ball of wax to be able to apply it. We know that we should read our Bible, so be sure to read it. We know that we should go to church, so be sure to go. We need to reach the lost, so reach out. Be sure that you spend time in communication with God, and He will give you His power to live each day as a vessel that will bring Glory the Most High God.

These are the basic fundamentals that each game player should not only know how to do, but is in practice using these fundamentals each and every day. Be wise when you seek players that help you to meet these needs in the lives of your team. Be sure you’re selecting the best in the draft!