My kids are quite possibly too old for this lovely board book but I don't think I'm going to let that stop me from putting it on the christmas list this year.
The beautiful illustrations are by illustrator and designer Alison Oliver who has also done several other classic titles including "Alice in Wonderland", "Jane Ayre", and "A Christmas Carol".
Recommendations for you on this cloudy Monday
1) Puzzling: Marc Boutavant is one of my very favourite illustrators. We have both these (above) fabulous, big ( 38'' x 11.5'') Djeco Marc Boutavant jigsaw puzzles... they are perfect for a 6 year old to do quickly and busily on their own. The second ice-skating one is hard to find but it seems the lovely pink tree puzzle is still available.
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2) Gazing at pretty things: Out my window is a heavy grey sky. I don't mind in the least, but I am craving colour - and lots of it. I can't get over the colour in this incredible 1751 Franklin County, Massachusetts house. It belongs to Kristin and Mark Nicholas who unsurprisingly run a knit, crochet and stitch business. Now I am gazing at our very staid wedgwood blue bathroom walls with a plan to make it a little less depressing.
A bazillion more photos can be found here.
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3) Reading: I have just finished two great, easy-going books about quirky, dysfunctional families covering themes of creativity & parenthood and if you like books about quirky, dysfunctional families (which I really, really do) then I highly recommend both.
The first is Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel
The Family Fang: A Novel
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4) Kitchen dance party this week - Michael Jackson's Thriller & Beat It and there has been dishwashing and table setting to this one by the Kopecky Family Band - Their album, Kids Raising Kids, is out tomorrow.
I've been working on something pretty special these last few months and today a courier brought my very own advance copies to my door. What a great day!
Truly Tan by the amazing Jen Storer is due out in stores (in Australia) in November - right in time for Christmas!
Overseas folks may have to order them from Readings.com.au or some such, until further notice.
The project has been one of those dream projects with a publisher, editor, author, designer and illustrator (that's me!) who all seem to be on the same page. We're all very proud of it and now I need to get started on book two. xx
Have you read Nurse Matilda?
Have you read it out loud? Because if you haven't you really should get along to the library or favourite book store and nab yourself a copy and then make yourself a cup of tea (or even some of that insane butterbeer I linked to the other day, which I am still yet to make and actually feel a little dubious about that ever happening) and then open it up and clear your throat a little and get right into it.
Read it to your children, your friend's children, your nephews and neices or your partner, cat, parent or friend... Here is a book with lots of scope for wonderful expression - funny voices, raising (and waggling) of eyebrows and suspense filled pauses... but then watch as their eyes light up around about page 19 or 20 when whoever you are reading it to gasps and then says "It's Nanny McPhee!" and it is! But it isn't - because Nurse Matilda is just that much different that you can read and it enjoy it as something completely new but with a lovely familiar feel. She still has an enormous protruding tooth and a big stick - and you can still do your best Nanny McPhee voice to read all her dialogue... but there are big differences so please don't buy it expecting it to be the story of the movie.
Mrs Brown is alive and well, so while we have only completed chapter two, I am imagining that there will be no central love story between Mr Brown and Evangaline, and there are so many children that they seem to only get mentioned once or twice (and we have counted 15 of them so far) so perhaps we won't get the chance to get attached to any of them and watch them blossom under the care of Nurse Matilda... but so far both my girls are well entertained and were begging for just one more chapter at lights out.
Written by Christinana Brand and illustrated by one of my favourites (her cousin!) Edward Ardizzone.
We have made this delicious chicken recipe from Jamie Oliver twice now on our BBQ - I am sure the deliciousness depends entirely on the quality of the bbq sauce... but it's very easy and very yum. I am trying to think of some kind of adaptation of this for Thanksgiving (What hey? That's right! We will have a house full of family for Thanksgiving come October 11 so it's time to get up to speed).
I bought a sewing machine -- The first ever time I have bought a machine as I inherited my last three from my Grandmothers. These I had to leave behind in Melbourne due to the merry wattage dance, so I seized this opportunity (and my Australian credit card) and bought a beauty. I got it seriously reduced but it still caused me to have a dizzying spell of buyer's remorse in the sewing centre's parking lot. I am about to open the box and break out the manual and learn to love it through the guilt.
<3 Happy Anniversary to my Phil. We've been married for 9 years today, and it just keeps on getting better.
Yesterday two parcels arrived from Etsy sellers in Finland. I finally found a copy of Tove Jansson's The Dangerous Journey for a very reasonable price - in Swedish, yes - but clearly I am turning into an obsessive collector because it doesn't seem to bother me.
Fabric from Tillukka (via My Paper Crane) and the book plus the beautiful stamps on the package are from Hapsitukka.
It's time again for this week's What Hot + What's Not. It comes around quickly - take part if you feel compelled and leave your url link in the little widget at the end of my post so we can come and see you hots and nots.
What's Hot
Around the World with Mouk
Pimm's: We went to Byron Bay with a UK lad who introduced us to the joys of Pimm's and lemonade. I gained several kilos from sipping on these. So our new celebratory cocktail is Pimm's on ice, with a top up with lemonade, with slices of orange, lemon, thin slivers of cucumber and a sprig of mint. So pretty and so delicious.
Holztiger wooden animals: I bought a shark and a dolfin back from Byron for my girls - because not only are they absolutely gorgeous but can go in the bath! Lily's shark has become a bathtime terror. "Holztiger toys are all handmade using maple, oak, beech and birch and make use of water-based acrylic paints." We got ours from the beautiful My Toy Shop in Byron Bay. The fox is sitting on my bedside table.
Trop Jr: "The Worlds Largest Short Film Festival for Kids! By Kids! A recent addition to the Tropfest program is a short filmmaking competition open to kids aged 15 years and younger. 2008 was the first ever Trop Jr, 8 Finalists premiered their films to a live audience at the Crescent Precinct, across from Sydney’s Domain, before big Tropfest." -- this year's signature item (a theme or something that needs to be included somehow) is "DOT". It's time to put all those video cameras.
Also: Teddy's new nose, blue playdough, our new avocado and lemon trees, Flash Forward and Hydralyte Liquid.
What's Not
Gastro! First Lily, then my parents, now me... who will be next?
Coming home from our holiday to an exhausted and sick family - and all the associated stress and guilt. Not hot at all.
My Mum looking after Lily as I vomited etc. on her birthday - NOT HOT! Happy birthday Mum. :(
Blergh. Hopefully next week's not hot will not be about vomit.
Too exciting - I'm loving doing all the voices. I do a very good Ron, and a passable Hagrid. Off to watch multiple episodes of 30 Rock. Did I mention we are having a great holiday?
Welcome to September! My second favourite month of the year (March being the first because it's Autumnal AND my birthday month). This month I am going to try and blog every day with the purpose of falling back in love with blogging. There so much good about blogging but I've been a bit bogged down in the bad and I want to get beyond all that.
One of the very good things about blogging is having had the opportunity to discover Amanda Blake Soule and her beautiful space at Soulemama.com. I can't imagine anyone *not* knowing about Soulemama, but if you don't it would be worth hurrying over there right now to disappear into a perfect world for a time. A world full of cool sea breezes and woodland smells, of a cosy family home full of love and humour and creativity. Anyway, like almost everyone else I know, I would like to be Amanda in a parallel life. Her world and her words have inspired me in my work and my living for years now and I was so excited to get hold of her beautiful second book yesterday Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures
Anyway, thank you Amanda for being one of the best bits about blogging.
And, see you lot tomorrow!
Oh how I love the library! I took the girls there on Saturday morning and while Amelia read a story to Lil in the childrens' section, I went and found the "writing and publishing" section and couldn't stop myself snatching large wads of books off the shelves (because it's all free!), including two books on writing romance and two books on writing Young Adult fiction because you never know what might suddenly become a good idea. I felt a little embarrassed staggering back to the girls with my enormous stash. I sort of slunk past the serious browsers hoping they wouldn't notice my "Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies". Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm ashamed to be dabbling in romance writing, it's just that the universally familiar, big black and yellow cover and well-known font loudly flashes "Look, she's a dummy! AND she's a dummy, wannabe romance writer! What a dummy!". I want to carry the title around called "Writing Romance Novels for Very Serious, Intelligent People who like to try New Things and Don't Mind a Little Escapist Fiction from Time to Time.". Where's that book when you need it?
Day nine: Managed a 5.30 am start. Wrote happily for an hour before kids realised I was up and about. Changed major sub-plot and got rid of a very annoying love-interest and associated useless threads, and felt kind of excited at the slightly new direction.
Day ten: Mother's day. Sat up in bed with my breakfast and wrote at least a thousand words. New sub-plot took good shape.
Day eleven: Heater broken. SO COLD. Sitting on the couch with the laptop warming my knees while Phil takes Lily for a walk. I've already written 580 words and they're still not back so I'll keep going. Love my new sub-plot characters so much. They might (or might not) be based on a couple of my parents' friends. But I won't tell anyone that (except you).
Oh so cruel! In our year of "must not spend on anything frivolous" I have found more Paumes books without which my collection will not be complete. Ages ago I spotted the Paumes title "London Gardens" and thought - "there is nothing sweeter than an English garden except for a Japanese book about English gardens" and our garden needs all the help it can get. So that one is on my list. And then, of course, they released San Francisco Kitchens (with Lisa on the cover!) so that suddenly became a MUST have and to make it even less indulgent, I thought, I can get the two shipped together. And now? Now I see they have released Apparetements de filles à Paris and it looks mighty cute, and considering I spend most of my time imagining I am a Parisian fille in a pretty appartement how can that not be anything but a necessity? But three fluffy Paumes books? In a year of no spend? Pardon moi, but that is totalement ridicule.
Le sigh.
** updated to say that The Lark is now stocking some Paumes titles in Australia! **
I am having trouble (already, so early in the year) coming up with lunch box goodies for a child who seems to eat very little of whatever we put in. Phil packs her a lunch, she goes to school, she comes home and I open her lunch box and empty most of the original contents into the compost. Why? Because she doesn't have enough time to eat, apparently, as there are other good things to do such as play. Argh. Also each day she says "oh mum, can you leave out the ... (insert delicious and nutritious snack which was all the rage last week) because I don't like that any more." and I say "Ok, sure, so now that leaves you with butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off... that's your entire lunch." and she says "Well, actually I don't like brown bread mum." and I say "You don't say."
So I have been stumped.
When I was at the library last week I went through the recipe book section and pulled out a couple of gems including this one about boxable lunches called "Healthy Lunchboxes for Kids" by Amanda Grant. While the children on the front cover look luminous and eerily like something out of an era where you were taught to duck and roll under your desk incase of a nuclear attack, the book is actually pretty modern and quite inspiring. It's a bit of a luxury really, to have a book full of ideas like "tomato soup" and "sausage rolls" and so on, but having a whole bunch of kid-friendly *and* lunch box friendly recipes all in one place and with such pretty pictures gave my brain the jolt it needed in this department. And you know? It's nice to read a simple (obvious to anyone else, probably) recipe like "Tuna with mayonnaise & sweetcorn" and have one of those little lightbulb moments and think, of course! Sweetcorn in a tuna sandwich would be pretty nice! and so on.
On the list for making are: Mini pear cakes, fresh fruit jellies, cheese and seed biscuits, scones, puff pin wheels, afore mentioned sausage rolls, coleslaw, one or all of the four cous cous salads, wraps rather than sandwiches, etc etc.
I am also going to keep my eye out for a suitable thermos flask so we can pack some wintery pastas, soups and left-overs.
Not that she'll eat any of it.
Things that have worked this year : Inari (picked up the day before from the sushi bar, though I am sure it would be dead easy to make your own) Watermelon cubes with grapes and blueberries A tablespoon or so of expensive, nice yoghurt Koo's muffins (though my last lot may have contained toxic frozen, thawed then frozen fruit and caused household gastrointestinal issues)
What works for your kids?
I'm hopping over to Vegan Lunch Box now for a refresher course in inspired lunchboxing.
If you're interested in Healthy lunchboxes for Kids by Amanda Grant, it is available at libraries with the call number: 641.534 GRA. The ISBN is 184597705X. It's also available at Amazon
This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.
Lots of cut paper in this one!
"A film for 4th Estate Publishers' 25th Anniversary. Produced by Apt Studio and Asylum Films. The film was produced in stop-motion over 3 weeks in Autumn 2008. Each scene was shot on a home-made dolly by an insane bunch of animators; you can see time-lapse films of each sequence being prepared and shot in our other films. "
I worked on Little Letters almost four years ago now. WOW! Where did that time go? I feel massively prolific realising that fact (not). Oh well.
It's always nice to hear from people who have stumbled across the book and realised it was illustrated by me. Yesterday one of my old, old web mates MCB sent me a photo of a book sighting in her new home town of Frankfurt. Kleine Briefe! Even I can read that with my year 10 German skillz. The top photo was sent to me some years ago now by Lizette who found it in Buenos Aires.
You can still get the book on Amazon
It's time to get another book out there I think!
(Motivational post for my sake mostly, thank you for indulging me)
I am sure you have well and truly read by now that Pip's lovely book "Meet Me at Mikes - 26 Crafty Projects and Things to Make" is now out and on the shelves in local bookstores. I got my copy last week and it is so packed full of goodness. I went to the launch on Monday night and had front row seats to watch Pip and writer/broadcaster Clem Bastow and Jo Walker from Frankie chat about crafting and managed to take one snap which makes crafting look like a very serious business:
I think it is possible this is the one time all evening Pip & Jo were not smiling, but none-the-less, it is photographic evidence of my brilliant positioning, Pip's gorgeous dress and fancy shoes and also those pretty, frilly paper hanging things on the ceiling at Metropolis books. I was going to take other snaps but I got distracted chatting and collecting the autographs from a bunch of my favourite Australian crafters, some who I know and love and some who I had never met before and had only admired from afar... so I got home feeling exhausted from all the fan-girl excitement.
The book is truly lovely and chatty and has all the best bits of why I like crafting in it. The projects are inspiring and the instructions so clear and fun. On page 35 you will find my instructions for making a wheat bag which could end up looking like this:
Just in time for winter chills. It's super easy to make, and I can tell you they become amazingly essential and I get quite grumpy if it's bed time and I can't find my current favourite.
Pip is making IN-STORE APPEARANCES tomorrow where she will do book signings. Find her at Readings in Carlton at 10am and then she'll be busting it to Brunswick Street Books for further signings at 11am, so go and say hello, and tell her I sent you.
*** Updated to say that Pip's signings are being rescheduled as bookstores are out of stock! Check out her blog for future updates. ***
A little while ago I had an Amazon gift certificate to use, and I decided that I would buy something that would be a useful resource, something I might go back and refer to time and again.
I am a bit of a writing-book addict - I love Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird
I am having trouble with my plot. I love my characters, I love my protagonist especially. She's totally awesome - well, she is in my head anyway - and looks like Susie Porter. I love the fictitious place it's set, and I kind of like my voice. But the plot! Argh. I know basically what's going to happen; I have a beginning, middle, a black moment (when everything falls apart) and end, but it's such a tangle. 100,000 words is a lot of words to get lost in. So, I thought, what I really need is a book on plot (because two is not nearly enough... but I know that my real motivation is procrastination) and found the one
After all that I was convinced that I would surely finish my first draft and if that is the case what I will really need is "Revision and Self-editing".
As you can see, I have quite a lot of reading to do before this novel gets written. Hmm.
And the pipe cleaner in the foreground? That was a photographic accident. The house is awash in pipe cleaners at the moment. It's Lily's latest thing.
I'm playing along with kootoyoo again this week with a photograph of my creative space. When you combine the heat with the end of the school holidays, the first week back of school and the fact that Phil has been in California for 7 days, you can imagine my creative life has been a little stymied this week. I did manage to make some muffins from a new recipe. That was quite creative. And I have started writing again after a 10 day slump, thanks to rediscovering Anne Lamott's wonderful book Bird by Bird
The other things you can see in my creative space are my notebook which contains some gems (gems I tells ya!) which will or won't make it into this shitty first draft. There's also a pile of books which a friend lent me so that I can research funny sex scenes, because I am having trouble with sex scenes (that's in my book, thanks) and am "fading to black" rather than facing it. I can't even read this research material let alone contemplate writing it. Call me a prude. And you can also see some Japanese craft books. I have got out all my Francophile Paumes titles because I have watched "Priceless
It's going to be a hot few days.
Just before I get to the enormous task of digging a house into the ground under the floorboards, Coober Pedy style, so that we can survive Melbourne's hottest week for 100 years (4 days above 40ºc / 105ºf), I thought I would post a few links.
The first is one I found via one of my favourite blogs Dancing with Frogs. It's especially for bloggers and it's nicely said.
Keri reminds us to embrace the season - while the quote from Rick Bass is all about Winter in Montana, it made me stop and think about how much I whinge about Summer and instead perhaps I should try loving it. Hmm, not likely, but I am going to stock up on the watermelon and the icy-poles and try not to be quite so grumpy. Maybe it's even siesta season if only Lily would agree.
1000 Novels Everyone Must Read - at the Guardian. You know, there are tonnes of these kinds of lists but I quite like how this one is broken up into categories; War & travel (interesting combo), Science Fiction and Fantasy, State of the Nation, Family and Self, Comedy, Crime and Love. Reader's recommendations are going to be published next month.
February's a-coming. Shutter Sisters One Word project. (via Pip) I am not a photographer. Frankly, the idea of taking nice photo freaks me out a bit but I like the idea of this project. It might force me to think about photographing things in a different way.
Cute cover!
Pip's book is available for pre-order now at Readings - ready for the very exciting date of March 25th. I have a little project buried within the pages - something super easy for beginnery types (or lazy - I mean - casual - crafty types like me!) and there are loads of other good things inside, from some of my favourite Australian craftsters. I can't wait to see it for real - it's sure to be lovely.
The back cover says:
"From Melbourne’s best loved crafty store comes Meet Me at Mike’s, a cornucopia of crafty fun and inspiration. Queen of Crafters Pip Lincolne has gathered 25 of the best projects from the country’s most creative cleverbods -everything from baby yoga pants and clutch purses to hankies and softies. You can sew, knit, crochet, collage and screenprint yourself into a frenzy! Each cute and quirky project comes with easy-to-follow instructions and full-size fold out patterns. With such a fabulous range of ideas, you’ll find something to make for all your favourite pals. If you’re looking for fun and creative things to brighten up everyone’s day, have a peek inside and get crafty!"
Woah! Where did that whole week go? I know I have been busy and energy levels are on the up and up which is nothing but good at this time of year. I have been sewing and organising gifts and baking and spending ridiculous amounts of time in the local Post Office and having windows put into our dark kitchen which has made a HUGE difference to my general mood. There's so much light I don't know what to do with myself. The tree is up, the carols are on repeat, the kids are counting down to the end of school and then to the big day itself... I am starting to think "maybe I should start planning what I am going to feed everyone on Christmas day."
I have also been reading "The Dud Avocado
But I am all about the christmas biscuits this year (cookies if you prefer). Have you seen this? Gourmet's Favourite Cookies from 1941-2008. Mostly when I browsed through the photos I thought about the production team having to whip up batch after batch of vintage goodness. What a job.
