Colors of Community

About a month ago I shared a post about Artprize, which is a huge, city wide art show in Grand Rapids.  It's very popular and has encouraged some smaller art shows in surrounding towns.  A church in our little town has started it's own little art competition, called Colors of Community.  It's  been happening annually for 4 years now.  The artists are all from near our town.  They have divided the art into groups - professional, photographs, 3D - dimensional art, paintings and drawings and then there are children's divisions; 4-8, 9-14, 15-20.  Visitors get a ballot and choose a favorite in each category.  There are also judges choices.
The premise of this art show is this:

"Creativity is a God-given ability to take something ordinary and make it into something special. It is an openess to doing old things, new ways... the creative spirit is part of our heritage as children of the One who created all things.  And nurturing our creativity is part of our responsibility as stewards of God's good gifts."  

Emilie Barnes.

We went to look at all the art this weekend.  It's amazing how creative some people are!  Here's some of the entries.

 This is a pencil sketch.  It's so good - looks like a black and white photo!

This is a painting of a blueberry field near our town.

 This photo was taken 2 years ago - a crazy snowstorm on Halloween.

I like the lighting in this painting.

 This is one of the professional paintings, and it was also entered into Artprize.

This one was done by a 7 year old.  It was inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.

This is a quilted wall hanging!

A carving - so lifelike!

I really like this one - it's a set of 12 pictures.  The collection is titled 'The 12 Days of Christmas', and each day has a whimsical idea for the day.   These pictures were each drawn during a period when she doing a drawing a day challenge.

Here's one of the pictures from the 12 days.  This one is 4 calling birds!

 This is another one that I really liked.  This is a set of 3 pictures, and each picture is filled with words - in this case John 3:16, 17 and 18.

 Here's all 3.  The first one is  For God, the second  is So Loved, the third - The World.

Here's a closeup of an eye in the second shot!

Here's my favorite!  Bob entered this carving - a Spartan warrior demonstrating the spiritual armour we wear, taken from Ephesians 6: 11-17.
The art is being shown until November 14.  If you live in the area, make sure you stop and check it out.  There is so much more art to be seen than what I shared here.

Happy, Happy Birthday!

We celebrated Alaina and Ruby's birthdays tonight.  It was Alaina's 5th birthday this past week, and Ruby will be 2 on Saturday.

 Here's the Dining Room, waiting for the guests of honor to arrive.

 And here's our girlies!  Since we were seeing them tonight, and they have a busy day tomorrow, they came in their trick or treat costumes (and birthday shirts!)  This is Super Alaina and Super Ruby!

These are their Super Capes...

 Reading cards

 Checking out a gift

 Opening presents is so much fun!

So is playing with them.

 Ruby is enjoying her cake and ice cream.

 Alaina has a blue tongue from the frosting.

They both enjoyed playing with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Heather.

We are so thankful for the blessing of another year with these two blessings!

Pumpkin Walk

Every Fall, a church in our town hosts a "Pumpkin Walk".   They have wooded property behind their church and they set up hundreds of carved pumpkins along it.  They have other fun things set up as well, and give out cider, coffee and cookies at the end.  It goes for three nights and on the second night when we were there, they had already had 5500 people go through!
It's most fun to go when it's dark out so you can see them all lit up, but we were taking Alaina and Ruby so were there at Twilight and enjoyed it, even though it wasn't dark.

They had several spots set up to take pictures.

A friend from work was behind us and said we needed to have our picture taken too.

The girls were quite excited to see a fire truck there,

and even more excited when they got to sit in it!

 They really got into the picture taking and laid on the ground near the welcome pumpkins for this one!

Here we are at the start of the actual walk.

Bert and Ernie!

Olaf, Mickey, Minnie and Scrooge McDuck

A fancy carved snake out in the woods

A whole bunch of fun pumpkins!

I thought this was really cute - a little train!

 I agree with this one!

 Continuing down the path.

 Ruby likes this one!

 A pirate...

 They even had pumpkins hanging in the trees!

We had to do one last fun photo at the end.  What a fun night!