Grace with Paint on her hand

Today, Grace asked if she could start her own business.

“What would you do in your business?”

“I’d draw, paint & color pictures,” she announced. “And we could use the money to help the church buy a well for Haiti.”

How can I resist?

“And you can help me grow my business!” she said with a big grin.

OK… I’m all in. So we took a look at her existing GraceAnnJohnson.com website, and discovered it was badly out of date. WordPress hadn’t been upgraded for several years (probably since around the time of the last post). Thankfully the site hasn’t had the visibility to have attracted the hacks that many other older WordPress sites have suffered from.

So… here’s a fresh upgrade of WordPress to the slick new 3.3 “Sonny” release. And we grabbed a delightful new theme from the repository.

So Grace wanted to call the project “Picture Pencil.” And then she began to describe how it would look… so out came Photoshop and within about 15 minutes, the logo was created. A few quick modifications to the theme, and the logo is now installed.

So… we’ll have to figure out a process for selling her pictures — I’m not sure I want to go for a full-fledged shopping cart. Perhaps we’ll just grab some “Buy Now” buttons from PayPal. In any event… we’ll see where this project goes. Hopefully we’ll raise some money for the well in Haiti!

In case it isn’t clear from the pictures… Grace named her new bear “Cinderella.”

And for bedtime tonight, Grace got her Cinderella bear all dressed up in her comfy PJs and cozy slippers… they’re snuggled together in bed trying to sleep so that Santa can come.

“…while I play?”

Boy… they start young with this one, these days!  And so unashamed about it, too.

This one came out of Grace’s mouth tonight while she was pretending to do Mommy’s job.  She is truly cute.

Mommy blogged about this on her Beyond Baby Talk site. You should check it out. Maybe we can get her to start blogging on this site too!  Leave a comment on her blog if you think she should!

“That’ll really blow my hair,” she continued. “And the sunshine tickles my eyes!”

Priceless.

In reality, we’re getting some cold weather tomorrow night, but Mommy and Daddy decided to treat Grace to a fireplace experience tonight anyway. It was her first opportunity to have a fire this season — which means she probably doesn’t remember the last time this happened.

Grace thoroughly enjoyed her visit to Mow-Wow’s house — she got to “balance” on Mow-Wow’s brick pavers and check out the Poinsettia with Mommy and Daddy. Mow-Wow always has great decorations around, including a beautiful wreath that was hanging on the front door. Grace’s pretty Mommy took advantage of a photo-op next to the amazing Poinsettia herself. Did we mention that this Poinsettia was featured in the Bradenton Herald?

So, in the midst of her playing dress-up (more on that in a moment), I busted out the soundtrack from “A Knight’s Tale” and cranked up “We Will Rock You” (original Queen version). After a moment or two of working with her on the two foot stomps and the hand clap, Mommy and I started singing the chorus along with Queen at high volume. Grace thought about it for a moment and said, “No, I’ll rock myself!”

This, of course, drew into sharp focus the question of how a little developing mind such as hers perceives the meaning of various things we talk about. I’m sure she imagined herself in a rocking chair!

“Dress Up”

This has been an important part of her play activity lately. I think it may have cranked up a few serious notches when she came into a large collection of Polly Pockets thanks to some great friends of ours who were relocating with their 13-year-old daughter to Spain. These are a little out of her age range, but she has acquired the skills needed to dress these tiny little figures in short order.

Also, Mommy recently went through a ton of Grace’s baby clothes — this was a nostalgic and emotional process for her — and decided what she was going to keep for posterity and what she would give away. Grace discovered a bunch of her clothes that no longer fit her and started trying to wear them in interesting ways. Today’s photo shows her wearing what appears to be a yellow top but is actually an infant sleeper worn backwards with only one snap fastened in the back (that’s about all we can manage). She also found a set of socks made for someone at least twice her size but which are part of her dress-up pile. Then out came the necklaces of beads, a set of dance shoes that are too small for her, and a headband. She dreamed up this particular ensemble herself (she was already wearing the blue shorts).

All this Daddy can say is… this little girl stuff is a whole new world!