A Star is Born

Evie has been doing ballet for about 2 years now and was lucky enough to be involved in her ballet school production of Cinderella. To be honest the dances the little ones did had nothing to do with Cinderella but as far as they were concerned they were the introduction to it and Evie loved every minute of it. Especially the costume and the lipstick.

They started learning the dance about 4 months ago and built it up week by week. I was so please with the way she danced and even more so with the way she behaved after. They were allowed to come into the audience to watch and she behaved impeccably, now I just have to figure out how to get her to do that at home!!

They danced at a proper theatre, albeit a smallish one, with proper lights, music and costumes. She's a natural performer so she cant wait to be a bit older and have a bigger role in the next show.

Creative People

I have a good friend, Nickie, who can do the most amazing things with photos and paper. She used to run classes from home but decided earlier this year that she wanted to get back into the workforce as her youngest child is now at school. Evie used to go to her after school classes and has made some amazing things, even though she is only 6 and was 5 for all of the year she did classes. Nickie is brilliant with the kids and Evie learnt so much, the classes weren't just about quick sticking they learnt lots of skills including design layout and what products to best use for sticking different mediums, this along side the normal skills of cutting, sticking, painting etc. This picture shows some of the brilliant things she created through the year. She also made christmas decorations, a suncatcher and mosaiced riverstones amongst other things I cannot recall.

When the classes finished Evie was very upset but Nickie now runs kids holiday classes at Scrapbook Studio where she works. The concept of the class is simple, Nickie creates a design and then the children are open to interpret it in their own way, they are supervised and offered guidance but the finished product is very much up to them, their only contsraints being the products they have available and their imagination. This past school holiday Evie attended one and made this fabulous mixed media canvas which is currently being showcased on my bookcase.

Hard to believe it was made a 6 year old isn't it? Evie also recently expressed an interest in knitting and sewing and can generally be found carrying her bag of paper, pens, glue etc. around with her. I hope she continues along this creative path as she gets older and I hope she continues to have wonderful people like Nickie around to show her the way.