Artist in residence

My grandmother's painting of the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, with a softly lit Cherwell flowing around the Botanical Gardens in the foreground, hangs on the wall of my sewing room; H's sketches, still lifes and landscapes are framed around the house; and my father once knocked out a mean pencil drawing of our teddy bear David dressed in my blue gingham baby romper on a scrap of spare paper.

With such genetic potential, and a smidgen of Mama's crafty ways thrown in for good measure, no one was surprised that Kitty likes drawing and colouring.  There's only one hitch with such creativity in a house full of artists, well two hitches to be precise.  Firstly, neither Daddy nor Mama try to eat the raw materials (cue chalks and a packet of wax crayons going back into the cupboard), and secondly, well lets just say I haven't yarn bombed the travel cot and H hasn't felt the need to add a touch of colour to the spine of my hardback copy of Great Northern.

Father Christmas came up trumps on the edible art materials front, with a little box of Stockmar beeswax crayons.  They are really lovely crayons, smooth and easy to make a mark with the gentlest of pressure, you don't need to force the colour onto the page, they smell nice, and if she eats them I'm pretty relaxed about a combination of natural colours and beeswax.  Her little box has 8 colours, but I think we may be adding to them in the future.

I think the crayons were her favourite present until Christmas afternoon when we unwrapped a big shiny parcel from Grannie and Grandpa:


Can you tell what it is yet?

When we were little we had magic paper painting pads; you brushed them with water and a picture appeared in a pastel rainbow.  That was then, this is now.  Magic paper, meet your future self, an Aquadoodle.

(please also note the effect of roast potatoes and sticky toffee pudding as hair styling product!)

Kitty loves it, and we've found it curiously addictive - even after she'd gone to bed

San Salute from the Accademia Bridge

Thank you Grannie and Grandpa - we all love it!