Girl’s Life

Sophia loves to draw. And by draw, I mean she loves to use anything that makes color (crayons, makeup, spaghetti sauce) on anything that will take color (her pants, our couch, the kitchen table — you get the idea). Needless to say, I was seriously thrilled when I came across Stubby Pencil Studio on Cool Mom Picks.

Stubby Pencil Studio is designer mom Kate Rosenthal’s creative solution to two parental dilemmas I’ve been facing these days: what to do for art projects with the kiddo and how to conquer the daunting task of creating the thank you/birthday/note cards that we’ve had to send in hordes once we had a kid.

Kate calls her stationery products “interactive,” which in my house means “put the kid to work!” Her Color ‘n Kids cards are totally adorable. Their simplicity is what I like most. They’re just black and white drawings of childhood staples — birthday cakes, butterflies, aliens — with traceable greetings just waiting to be colored in.

You might remember when Sophia won her awesome rock star shirt from a Cool Mom Picks giveaway last year. Well, we lucked out on a contest again and a whole wagon-load of art supplies arrived at our door last week full of crayons, paints, markers and tons of empty white cards just waiting to be created into individual masterpieces. (Thanks, Kate!)

In just one week, I’ve already sent out four. Now I’m just trying to come up with more excuses to thank people or just say hi so that Sophia can keep on coloring (outside the lines, of course). Email’s good and a phone call never hurts, but I’d take Sophia’s hand-drawn goofy green alien over both of those any day!