Category: Fun Things I’ve Done

I love adventures, being outside, and going anywhere where fun is sure to be. In this category, I will share some of those things with you. So adventure away!

My Improvements in Art

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Welcome to another post! I was thinking of my last post this morning, which led me to think about the other forms of art I’ve made. I wanted to share something I wrote on my About Me page, which is one of my new hobbies: painting. Starting last summer, I tried painting on canvases, hoping to fill my time with something interesting. My first painting was a success, although I have improved greatly from that point. Below, I will show each one and go into a little bit of detail on it.

This is the first canvas painting I ever did, which was in May of last year. It is supposed to show a late evening sky with trees in the front. The style of trees has changed for me, as you will see later on. The paint also stops at the edge of the canvas instead of going all the way around the sides of it, which is not very visible in this photo. I think I have improved upon this painting very much.

The second painting I made was around September or October of last year. It was inspired by a painting by Serena Art, which I watched on YouTube one day. This one is my favorite because it feels more creative and artistic to me. In order to create the girl that points upward, I drew a stencil in thick paper and cut it out, then traced over that with a pencil onto the canvas. I filled it in with black paint and made a small patch of sky to go with it, and voilà!

This one was an interesting attempt at a Bob Ross tutorial of a cabin. It was meant to be a gift to my mom for Christmas, but I messed up halfway through and decided to give her the next painting instead. I made the ground of the original tutorial look too blue, so I decided to make it an icy lake instead. I’d never tried painting water before, so I smeared some grey on the canvas and called it a reflection. I’d say it’s alright for a first try at making water.

My family and I decided to call this Cotton Candy Mountain for a reason. As my most recent and most chaotic creation, it hangs in our pantry proudly. It was inspired by another YouTube video by Grace J Art. I went a bit overboard with the snow on the mountain, but we still love this painting dearly at my house.

If you think painting sounds like a fun thing to do, I strongly suggest trying it. It’s been really cool to see what I end up creating, especially when I have a guide and veer from the instructions. I hope to show you more of these as I improve my skills later on!

*All photos in this post were taken by me

An Artful Snow Day☃️

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This morning, I had planned to make a snowman, which is one of my favorite snow day activities. I went outside later, ready to build one, only to find that the temperature was too low for the snow to stick together and form snowballs. To combat this problem, I decided to try something new and make “snow art”.

I gathered containers of water and dropped food coloring into each one. I took them outside, creating my abstract masterpiece by spraying and pouring the water over the snow. I ran into some issues with the size of my bottles and food coloring that was not strong enough to see in the snow. As a solution, I exchanged spray bottles back and forth between my house and outside. I let my dad fill the bottles up, then I took them back outside to spray so I would not get snow inside the house. When the food coloring in my bottles was not adequate enough to see, I simply asked my dad to put more color in them.

Therefore, when the problem of powdery snow arose, I decided to try snow art. When my bottles of water ran into challenges, I asked my dad to help me and solved my second issue. I was glad to get outside and try something different today!

 

*The image in this post was taken by me

A Fun Day Trip to the Hocking Hills

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Welcome to another post about the fun adventures I’ve been on! Last Saturday, my mom had to work and my dad is a teacher, so he gets every Saturday off. I was very bored at home. To fix this problem, I decided to drag my dad into taking me to a place called the Hocking Hills.

The Hocking Hills is a group of natural sites and parks with everything from waterfalls and lakes to cliffs and caves. The most popular attractions are Old Man’s Cave, Cedar Falls, and Ash Cave. Now, since I live within half an hour from the Hocking Hills, I have taken multiple hiking trips to those places before. I wanted a new experience, so I went to two parks that sounded interesting: Cantwell Cliffs and Rock House.

This image was taken at Cantwell Cliffs. The first part of the hike was pretty easy, but early on at “the squeeze”, stairs made of rocks got covered in leaves and were quite slippery! You had to be careful of your step to make sure that you didn’t slip and fall on hard rocks. Then the trail broke off into two sections, the Gorge Trail and the Rim Trail.

My dad and I took the Rim Trail, which took you around the side of a couple of cliffs. It sounds intimidating, but it was very safe and kind of easy. After roaming around the bottom of one of the cliffs, the trail led us up the side of the cliff with more rock stairs and then went around to the rim of the cliffs. We got some awesome views from up high on this trail, so I am glad we chose it.

This image was taken at the Rock House, which was actually an unplanned stop. I told my dad on the way home that it sounded interesting, so he took me there to find out. This park’s main point of interest is the house-like formation created by rocks. There were multiple tight squeezes to get into the house. But with Covid and the many people visiting the park that day, I decided not to see what it was like inside.

We continued along the trail to see the little shelf, which the picture above shows. To get up there, I had to climb over and under a few logs (and a few families), but it was worth it! I loved how it felt like I was breaking the rules, even though there were no signs saying you couldn’t go up there.

I loved both of these places, but the Cantwell Cliffs were my favorite. The hike was longer and the sights were prettier. I would love to see both of them again and bring my sister along with me! For more photos and information on all the Hocking Hills parks, click here.

Stonewall Resort

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This is an image I edited using Canva. I love to travel and go on vacation, and last summer I took a trip to Stonewall Resort in West Virginia with my family. We joined two other families there, which we do every summer (except this one), and stayed for about three days. This picture was taken by my sister while we were kayaking. It is hard to determine whether we were on a lake or a river because other people at the resort were telling us that it was twenty-six miles long!

Other things we did here were paddleboarding, sitting on the dock and sleeping, swimming in the pool, and eating at the largest buffet ever. Seriously, the sausages there were an inch and a half wide! I would definitely say that kayaking was the best thing we did there because there was a little tunnel that leads to a very pretty view of the surrounding area. Overall, it was really fun.

This resort has a website where you can take a look. If you would like to see more of it, click here.