Gift box ukelele

Here's a version of the shoebox guitar activity from Sunny. We used a sturdy little giftbox and some paper straws. Auggie had some trouble with the elastic bands so I did that for him, and I cut out the hole with an exacto knife. I think within a year he could tackle this project on his own with safety scissors, but not today. He really loves colouring on black paper so lucky for us we had a black gift box in the closet.

De jas & artypa

These are some pretty wooden toys from Czechoslovakia in the late 1980s. My mother had them in her basement, brought back from a trip to Prague, and brought them out for Auggie last week, still in their packages. I love the peg wheels on the wagon. (The lace-up shoe reminded me of the great shoe cake that cococake custom made for Auggie, when his favourite thing was a shoe.)

Small animals

The Augs is having a baby-animals-and-their-mamas craze these days, so I've been collecting mama and baby animal pictures for him, (David Grubbs/Billings Gazette via pinterest).

Me with my own little animal when he was very new. Oh, the cheeks!

Now he's old enough to choose mother's day cards. I wasn't expecting a fancy store-bought card from my son, but here it is (he picked it himself and is very proud of it):

I love it. Happy Mother's Day.

In the city

We just found a re-release of the fantastic book, Book of Cities by Piero Ventura (with the very great art director Grace Clarke).

I love the little details in the drawings, like these sausage dogs (which reminded me of one of our Sunny outtakes).

привет!

Cheburashka lives! via pinterest.

Penguin

Penguin turned three today so we held a party (and simultaneously a sand party on the bed, which involved digging in the bed covers and going to the "meta" place with a jeep — I still don't know what we were talking about, but it might have been really deep, heh). For some reason Penguin inspires a lot of hats, which I find funny because I think he looks quite put upon. Above is his "rainbow hat".

This is a boat hat (made from Windy's boat pattern) — which looks like a sombrero from the front.

Auggie requested a boat hat which was a surprise to me. He's not really a dresser-upper. I used two pieces of construction paper taped together, but it still wasn't big enough, so we had to use an elastic to hold it on, so I thought for sure it would get pulled off right away. He kept it on for about 15 minutes. You just never really know what they're going to be into on a given day, I guess.

Maurice Sendak

I'd been planning to do quite a different post on Maurice Sendak, on some of his lesser known books, but I'll do that another time. Where the Wild Things are is such a rare achievement, timeless, it's incredible. I imagine all the homes it is in.

(The endpapers — perfect.)

In the Night Kitchen, completely captured me. The idea of being wrapped up in warm dough (then the dough dries) and diving into cold milk and swimming free; the beautiful colours, the type:

It captures that feeling of waking up too early and falling back asleep. Also, look at the curtains!

Elephant paper punch

Dressew has loads of paper punches with different shapes for 99¢. They each have a little box on the bottom to catch the punched paper, so you can make confetti! This has caused a mild amount of excitement and many small elephant-shaped holes all over  the house.

Play on Words

A thrift store book from 1972 by Alice & Martin Provenson (they illustrated the well-known Colour Kittens). It's pretty interesting to see illustrators who could illustrate perfectly in that fluid 50s/60s style (like this or this) take on the 70s. It's a bit awkward, but also appealing.

Happy day

It's cinco de mayo tomorrow...

You could make a fruit balloon garland, oh happy day via pinterest

Make a pull piñata garland, love + cupcakes via pinterest

My favourite piñata by lieschenmueller flickr, via pinterest

Ozma

Ozma of Oz (free online edition at Project Gutenberg). 

I still remember reading this for the first time — I was fascinated with the princess in this book who wore a simple white dress everyday and instead had a wardrobe of thirty beautiful heads that she would choose from. Each head came with a different personality and was stored in a velvet-lined cabinet, locked with a key carved out of a ruby that the princess wore around her neck on 'a slender chain'. A bit gruesome, but also very glamourous.

There was also a lunch-pail tree with grew lunch boxes containing different lunches — each sandwich was wrapped in white paper and came with a pickle and lemonade.

Ozma was my favourite of all the Oz books. I especially love the way L. Frank Baum draws clouds and suns throughout the book. Maybe it is because he was from Kansas? You can listen to an hour-long interview with Baum's biographer Evan Schwartz here.

Spring walk

Last sakura post this year.

Heart sequin found outside a nearby high school.

Emperor's new clothes

Emperor's new clothes printed linen by Kokka.

Pom pom collages

Pom poms everywhere:

scraps of felt, too

Easy clean up!