Painting Rocks and Books that inspires us to draw

We love books that simplify and teach us how to draw easily with techniques that anyone with any artistic skills can grasp and become good at. The Ten-Step Drawing Series are fabulous books we highly recommend, as these books are fun and have an approachable way of teaching how to draw for aspiring illustrators, doodlers, and art hobbyists. 

Novels for teenagers and adults

We can't believe how quickly August is coming to an end. This summer, we got a chance to read a lot more novels. Here are a few of the titles we recommend...
10 Things I Hate About Pinky - Young Adult/ Adult
Destination Wedding - Adults
The Black Kids - Young Adult
The Last Dragon Rider An Adventure in Presadia - Children

End of Summer Wellness Prize Pack giveaway

We love the warm weather and we always try our best to hold on to summer as long as possible, but it feels like its rapidly coming to an end! During the past few weeks, we have been using a few products from OXY, Deep Relief, and Softlips that have been useful for us. We have partnered with these brands to bring this end of summer wellness prize pack giveaway with functional products that will benefit you as well.   

Welcoming Kobo Nia

With more time spent at home these days, reading on the Kobo has a been a source of comfort for us. Everyone in our family loves reading regularly on the Kobo - and we are happy to welcome the newly released Kobo Nia into our family! Kobo Nia is an affordable, compact, easy to use device with lots of cool features for our reading comfort! 

Nature inspired Plaster of Paris platter and giveaway

Long summer days are perfect for outdoor crafts. We did a fun project inspired by nature using Plaster of Paris from Craft Project Ideas. Since mediums like Plaster of Paris require time to dry, we find this process is a little faster when we dry it outdoors in the summer heat. 

Attracting bees to the garden with these DIY bee hotels

Over the years, we have made our garden pollinator friendly by adding a variety of features! It is exciting to watch these homes and places being utilized by benefiting creatures. We have also seen the benefits of these features as they have encouraged different types of bees to come into the garden and help pollinate flowers - especially in our vegetable garden. 

The bee hotels we placed in our garden were made in a post or block style, and painted with acrylic paint for aesthetics. We leave these homes all year round in the garden. 

Learning the history of inventions and giveaway

Summer learning continues with these awesome titles from DK publishers; Smithsonian History!, 1000 Inventions and Discoveries, and Inventors. It is fun to read educational books accompanied with illustrations, as it makes the content interesting and inspiring.

National Geographic STEM kits and Giveaway

We have always chosen to entertain our children with STEAM toys that not only provide fun entertainment, but also teach a variety of different skills such as creativity and logical thinking. These toys related to the fields of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics help children grow in educational and productive ways.

For the love of animals and Giveaway

We love watching different types of birds come to our garden. Over the years, we invested in adding features to attract birds and other pollinators from bird feeders, pond, water features, bee hotels, bird houses, and more. We find it exciting to observe the birds, and have been reading books such as DK Canada's fully updated 2nd edition Pocket Birds of Canada to identify the types of birds that visit our garden.

Watercolour Technique for Backgrounds

This watercolour technique inspired by the paint lab book is a fun way to create beautiful backgrounds on watercolour paper. Once the paper dries we can add drawings or calligraphy that will stand out.