The Art (of Being Single) Project

I remember when my dad sat us kids down in 1991 and asked what we thought about building a lake home. I think we were packing our snorkels before he got the question out of his mouth.

The whole famn damily went to our lake home in northern Wisconsin over the Thanksgiving weekend.

But knowing that it can be a bit wacky having everyone there in the winter, all cooped up in one house, I brought 3 totebags full of art supplies.

We had lots to do.

We did bottle cap art. This is a Klutz kit I bought but lost in the land-of-no-return that is our craft closet. It was a hit, except those d*mn, measly, cheap-*ss kits always come with lots of fluff and very few materials.

We did gaming. There was a video game going on in the basement at all times. That's Jonathan, my husband, and my (single) brother, Matt.

We made cut-origami stars. That was fun!


We hung the Christmas lights outside.
We chopped firewood. The men chopped, the kids hauled, and Brady and I moved the old, dry wood to the front so the new, wet wood could be stacked behind.

And Brady even had to do homework. He took a few breaks to text things like 'my teacher is a rotten cad for assigning a 1000-word paper on Thanksgiving weekend' to his friends. Or maybe that's just what was going through MY head.

But the BIG art activity of the weekend was creating our quilt! I bought a quilt kit from a fundraiser and told the kids we'd all do it together sometime. Participation was required of all parties, though some have been wily enough to get out of it to date. They will be found. They will do a quilt square.

Ana was a quilt square machine. She created about six.

Madelina finished quilt squares faster than I could put them in front of her. She finished about six, too.


Marcelo helped Armando draw the red ski boat on a quilt square.

Jackie did two. Marcel did one. He even sketched his ahead of time, to get it just right. He's a perfectionist like that.

Armando was very fond of blue.

After micro-managing helping everyone else, I finally got a chance to do two.

And mom did one.

Rob even did one but made me pinky-swear I wouldn't show it to anyone. Brady has yet to do his.

And Jonathan finally did his at home. (He was too busy gaming to do one up north!)

Even my little brother made one. That's Matt. He's single. He likes long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and all types of music.

Aren't those quilt squares lovely? I'll post a picture of the final product after it's assembled.

Matt, my single brother who owns his own condo, decorated an 'I' for University of Iowa, his alma mater. He's educated. And single.

Here's Matt cutting firewood with an ax. No hydraulic-powered splitter for this farm boy; he uses raw muscle power. He's very clean, great with kids, and funny. Not that that has anything to do with splitting firewood, I'm just making small talk.

Here are the boyz after a long, hard, sweaty day of manly-man work wood cutting. The two on the ends aren't single. But the one in the middle is. When he's not cutting wood, hauling haybales, marching for world peace, or visiting his mother, he makes a mega-ton good money working for Humana.

Oh, and grrrls? The man does dishes!