Do you have any idea how many photographs and videos you’ve taken of your kid(s) this year? Lots of us use our cameras + phones to document our children’s lives but how often do we go back and make something special with all those captured moments?

My holiday creative family challenge for you is to pick a few of your favorite photos and/or videos and create an End-of-the-Year Visual Postcard that you can share with your family and friends. To get you started, I’m giving away a brand new song called, “Oh, How You’ve Grown” that I wrote specifically for this creative challenge (there are no catches I promise). I’m just hoping that the song might inspire you to do something fun with all those photos and videos to celebrate this year in the life of your family.

Here’s the one I did as an example. I used iMovie to make this and took most of the video with my phone. If you don’t have iMovie on your computer, there are lots of free slideshow programs you can download from the Internet.

Here’s the free download of the song.

To download it, right-click over the above link (or control-click if you don’t have 2-button mouse) and select “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” to save it to your computer. This song will be here till the end of the year & is for non-commercial use only (please).

Ok, now go make something beautiful with all those photos of your kids!

xox frances xox p.s. If you want to share your Year-End Family Postcards with me, you can post them to my Facebook page – but no pressure — I really want this to be for your family more than anything.

I’m so excited to share this show that I created for XM Radio on the making of Mind of My Own. I tried my best to channel Mr. Rogers and Ira Glass, two of my favorite storytellers in the world. Over the course of an hour, I take the listeners onto the streets of San Francisco, to Haight Ashbury to interview some interesting musicians who played on the cd, and down to Ocean Beach to listen to the waves and pay homage to the great Jacques Cousteau.

I also talk about the song I sang with the Mates of State, “Place in Your Heart”, and interview a bunch of kids about toys they hold dear to their hearts– the things they say are precious and often hysterical. And last, but not least, for the song, “To Be,” I talk to parents and grandparents about lessons they have learned from their kids – the observations they make are beautiful and profound (I have a hard time listening to this with dry eyes).

The entire show is free to listen to and available for streaming anytime on your computer and iPhone/smartphones. Hope you and your kids enjoy listening to it on your next road trip or lazy Sunday afternoon!

Wishing you a Happy Fall,
xo frances xo

Click the Play button below to listen:

Like a lot of people, I take a ton of pictures using my phone. I have a pretty nice SLR camera but I definitely use my phone camera much more often. When I think about it, I realize that my phone camera is my most useful tool in truly capturing THE EVERYDAY because I have it with me all the time.

I’ve come to think of these phone photos as MY FAMILY’S VISUAL JOURNAL and recently wanted to print some out and put them up somewhere in our house. So my boys and I came up with the idea of making a FRIDGE COLLAGE. I saw the “Life is Huge” quote in a Lotta Jansdotter book I recently bought and love the idea behind it.

Do you have any fun or creative ways you like to display your phone photos? I’d love to know!

(p.s. I took most of these pictures using the Hipstamatic app and/or Polaroidizer apps).

Last week, my friend Bill Childs forwarded me this letter he received from someone who has been working in Haiti and is a fan of the Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti cd that Bill and Dean Jones produced last year. It’s a huge honor for me to be part of this compilation and I was so touched to hear of the impact this record is having on so many amazing individuals. Here’s the letter:

Hello,

Timothy Falconer
Waveplace Foundation

If you don’t have this cd yet, please check it out – it’s available on amazon and on i Tunes.

Happy Mother’s Day….

Here it is – Creative Family Challenge #2!  Your “assignment instructions” are included in the short video clip above.  If you feel inspired, you can leave a photo of you and your kids completing the challenge or maybe a picture of what your table looks like after a Family Draw session or a photo of someone in your family drawing.

You can attach a digital photo in the gallery below (click “Add Photo”) or you can email it to me from your phone and I’ll add it for you — info@francesengland.com. If you leave a picture and want to be included in the giveaway contest, please leave your name in the comments section so I can get in touch if you are the lucky winner.

If that all sounds like too much, you can also just leave a comment telling me what creative projects you and your kids like to do together.

I’ll randomly pick a winner on Wednesday, November 24 and that person will receive a signed copy of my new cd, Mind of My Own, PLUS a surprise – one of my favorite art supplies.

Happy Drawing!
xo frances xo
“A drawing is simply a line going for a walk”   —  Paul Klee

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Atticus, Candler and Betty Family Art Nara at work in her studio :) teching Ollie to draw spirals and he is pretty good at 2 years old! Claire drawing with chalk on paper bags Prior Kids drawing Thanksgiving Tablecloth drawing table BEFORE soft boiled eggs Drawing with Catherine, Lizzy and Heather Rory's Family Draw - Castle Theme Jodi's Kids Ji Xia's Drawing Table Cousins Makin' Art Liam and Rowan

The winner of the first Creative Family Challenge Series cd giveaway is Dayna! I chose the winner at random (filled a SF Giants baseball cap with the names of all the contributors and pulled Dayna’s name out). Dayna, I’ll be in touch to send you the cd!

Dayna wrote, “My daughter brought home a classroom book that detailed how each child was given their name. My husband thought it would be fun for her to guess how he and I got our names. She took a guess and then we had her call each set of grandparents to find out the story of how they named us. Imagine my husbands surprise when his mom announced over speaker phone that he was named after her third grade crush!! All this time my husband had no idea. Thanks for this fun challenge!”

Thank you so much to Dayna and everyone else who contributed to the very first Creative Family Challenge. You know starting something new can feel a little scary. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this new blog (what if no reads or watches or cares or comments!) and you all were so generous with your stories about your grandparents and families. Thank you for sharing them – they made me laugh and wonder and want to spend a lot more time asking questions. Because there’s so much to know about all of our grandparents…

Ok, are you ready for Challenge #2? We’ll post it tomorrow afternoon.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
My son Liam has his last soccer game of the season tomorrow.
Lazy Saturday mornings, get ready, we’re coming back to you soon!

xo frances xo

I wanted to share a little clip from the radio show I did for XM last week. This is the intro to the song “Place In Your Heart,” featuring the Mates of State. I interviewed a bunch of fantastic kids about old toys they still have & love. If you are listening with your kids, ask them to listen for the bit where the little girl stops our interview mid-sentence to say, “Sophie, quit biting my pants!” It’s classic! A huge thank you to all the kids who helped make this – your voices were the highlight of the show, for sure!

Hi there! I’m starting something brand new today that I’m calling Creative Family Challenges. Basically, these are going to be a range of “assignments” that will hopefully inspire your family to take 10-30 minutes a week to do something creative together.

Everyone I know who has young children is BUSY.  That’s just how it goes at this stage in our lives. But I find over and over again, when I take the time to sit with my kids and draw or paint or sing or imagine, we connect in a way that’s not possible when we are going about the rush of our day-to-day lives.

There are so many creative things I want to do with my boys that never happen because we run out of time, so this idea is as much for us as it is for everyone else.  I have a few family challenges in mind that you’ll see over the next few weeks, but beyond that I’m not sure where this will go (which is part of the fun, I suppose!).  I hope you’ll join in and share what you create with us.

Ok, let’s get creative and inspire each other!

So as you’ll see in the video, this week’s challenge is to find out something you didn’t know about your grandparents. If you’d like to share something you learned in the comments below, I’ll randomly pick someone to receive a signed copy of my new cd, Mind of My Own on Friday, November 12.

Hey there! As some of you may know, I like to cut up paper and make collages. I do all the artwork on my cds and website and I’ve just started a new print series based on some of my songs.

Here are two that will be available on my website’s SHOP page starting November 9. The first print is a papercut collage based the title track of my new cd, Mind of My Own, and it can be PERSONALIZED for the little one in your life with a mind of his/her own.

The second print featured here is based on the song “Tugboat” which is on my Family Tree cd. I made this print with assorted papers, including cut up grocery bags from Trader Joe’s.

Both prints measure 8.5″ x 8.5″ and fit nicely into a 9×9 square frame. Please check out my SHOP page on or after November 9 for more details. thanks!