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)
