Growing up I spent nearly as much time doing arts and crafts at our kitchen table as I did eating at it.
For approximately fifteen years our family heirloom dining room table had written across it in Sharpie, "cracks me up" from a brochure and t-shirt I made about the Liberty Bell in the third grade.
I would sit and sort through buttons while my mother would sew, and later I would work on my own (somewhat pitifully constructed) sewing projects.
Every time we went to Craft Etc. I asked to get a new cross stitch kit. My parents reaped the benefit of a quiet project for me to work on while my grandparents carefully hung my masterpieces on their walls after receiving them for Christmas.
I learned to sew on a button pretty much as soon as I was old enough to thread a needle.
When I was in college my grandfather saw me sewing a button and after saying, "what the hell are you doing it that way for?" (classic Ed the Red), he taught me to sew a button as he'd learned in the navy. I bet the button I sewed on that pair of capri pants will still be on them at the end of time.
I learned that it is impossible to hot glue something without burning your fingers before I learned long division.
I remember evenings with my mother sitting at the dining room table working on art for a local store's newspaper ads while I stood in awe of the magic of her using tracing paper to combine all of the best of her drawings.
My grandfather had an entire room of his house completely turned into an art studio. And by "art studio" I mean room that an artist sees as an art studio and everyone without a creative eye sees as a hell hole of paint, brushes, half finished paintings, and piles and piles of binder clips. Well, perhaps it was both.
Yep, I guess you could say creativity is in those Svendsen genes.
Yesterday Carolena sat at our kitchen table and colored for a while and then spent nearly an hour sorting through my button jar while I worked on an embroidery project. And the beat goes on...
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