Drawing our Dreams

Last night I made something interesting for dinner, sweet and spicy pulled pork burritos with a creamy buttermilk, garlic and cilantro dressing - kind of a knock off of what you may experience at Cafe' Rio. The kids liked it and ate a lot of it, the girls were even licking the dressing off their plates.

What's strange is this morning's breakfast conversation was full of the craziest images from last night's dreams. The kids described scenes of the sky full of bombs and balloons, Octopuses that squirted chocolate, swimming helicoptors, and children dressed up in gorilla suits at a resturant called Old MacDonald's Farm. I immediately thought of a snippet from one of my favoirte L.M. Montgomery books, The Story Girl.

"Peter and the Story Girl, so it appeared, had wooed wild dreams to their pillows by the simple device of eathing rich, indigestible things before they went to bed."

Maybe it was a result of our broken a/c or maybe it was the food. Either way the imagery described at the breakfast table inspired me to pull out some cardstock and colored pencils. I was curious of how they would interprete and illustrate such images from their subconcious and I also thought it would be fun to record their words on the back . To make it more exciting I let them use a box of Prisma color pencils from my art class. They are different from regular pencils in that they are soft and creamy and the colors seem to melt together - they are even vibrant on dark colored paper.

It is sometimes fun to try new mediums and the older boys especially enjoyed the change from regular crayons and markers. The pencils themselves however, are too expensive to be used unsupervised. In the past we have also experimented with acrylic paints, water color pencils, colored sharpees, and oil pastels. I just got the new ASW catalog and thought it might be fun to also try some watercolor crayons, plaster cloth, and a few of their interesting molding materials.

So here's to mixing strong flavors for dinner and experimenting with new art supplies. I'd be happy to post the pulled pork recipe for those who are interested and have their cardstock and colors ready - Enjoy!

p.s. My dream was really weird also. I was going through the high school hot lunch line and served a chocolate covered cinnamon baked baseball. I was enjoying this hot and gooey treat and wondering how I could get a hold of the recipe when I realized all my peers were staring at me because I was leaking milk through my shirt. But I attribute that to real stuff and not last night's dinner.