Lanterns

This weekend we'll be at attending the annual New Year's parade. And we're making classic lanterns for the house.

There a many good tutorials online to make paper lanterns. It couldn't be easier. We didn't use a template, we just folded and cut. It doesn't matter if the cuts are perfectly straight or even. Ours were very uneven and wonky, but you can't really tell at all when they are folded.

We used some red vellum paper we had left over from making mini kites. We punched some flower-shaped holes along the bottom for decoration. We received our decorative hole punch as a party favour and I'm won over. I never would have considered buying one, but we've had a lot of fun with it and Auggie loves it. Some glitter and stickers came next.

We punched two holes in the top to run thread through (we used silver/gold metallic thread leftover from hanging gingerbread ornaments on the tree).

Auggie was into doing some of the cuts for the lantern, but he was more interested in hanging up the red lanterns than decorating them. However, he came up with his own lantern idea, which I really liked. He took pieces of origami paper (our table had a lot of craft supplies, so he picked out what he liked) and then began making long sticker collages along the middle. He really likes making careful, long strings of stickers right now. Anyway, when he was done, we folded and cut and glued the same way as before and had these train lanterns (with come complementary emergency vehicles). He was quite proud of them and we hung them over the doors.

It might be hard to read, but the top here image is two pieces of origami paper side by side with stickers down the middle. It has been folded and cut and then flattened out to take the picture.

I love red, yellow pink around the house in the winter.

Spring Festival

We have a Snowy and Chinook giveaway coming up and a new scarf pattern. In the meantime, there is now a a spring festival board on my pinterest for recipes and children's activities. Come visit!

Welcome to the Dragon

This beautiful book, What the Rat told Me, tells the story of how each animal came to visit the Great Emperor of Heaven on the Jade Mountain became part of the zodiac.

the school of things

This summer we visited an exhibition of Lee Ufan (Marking Infinity). It was very relaxing. I loved the rocks on cushions (Relatum) and the repetitive paintings and prints. If you are interested in this type of thing, you can find out a bit more about the movement that Lee was a part of, Mono-ha, and see a video about Ufan here. Mono-ha may translate to "the school of things". This is apparently not a very good translation, but I like it. It seems very vague and inclusive. I feel like I belong to the school of things.

Anyway, I came across our tickets from the exhibition while I was tidying my paperwork today and we decided to do some Ufan-inspired paintings at the kitchen table. We used brushes and q tips. Auggie improvised by drawing suns over top and running a toy crane through the paint, wheel painting-style.

It was fun. And then we cut our paper up (it was thick watercolour paper) and used some for birthday cards.

Who Made This Cake?

In honour of a special birthday and a fun party today: Who Made This Cake by Chihiro Nakagawa and illustrated by Junji Koyose. This is the story of a tiny team of cake builders who build a massive birthday cake. Maybe this was the inspiration behind our gingerbread helicopters.

This is a very popular book in our house.

Happy Birthday little T.

2012: the auggie bloggie

One of my resolutions this year (otherwise known as a deadline) is to finish up a new series of books: Auggie in Colourtown, Auggie and the Counting Robot and Auggie's Garage. Every Tuesday I will be posting a new illustration as I work through the books, which are due to be released in September. Here is the Auggie Bloggie.

I will still post Windy-related material here on Saturdays. If we are lucky and find the time, the Little Quick team (Judith and I — we photo-illustrated the Windy books together) will have the chance to photo-illustrate a new series, too. That would be really fun.

Overnight French Toast with Panettone (or without)

Last year, I put in Snowy & Chinook's recipe for pancakes, from Snowy & Chinook.

This year, I'll give you my favourite breakfast recipe. This is my version of Overnight French Toast: French toast you make the night before and then bake in the oven in the morning. This is a very kid-friendly recipe, both preparing and eating.

We love this with panettone, but if you're making this for a big group it might be better to use plain bread. I find every gathering has at least 1 anti-raisin member.

We have this on Christmas morning and sometimes New Year's. It's nice for a big group. You can grill bacon in the oven at the same time: just arrange bacon over a rack or grill (a cooling rack is perfect) which is set on a rimmed cookie sheet. The bacon will be done at the same time as the French toast and then just plate it all and serve. It's the easiest big breakfast and good for extra-sleepy or busy mornings.

This is a pretty flexible recipe, so use or don't use extra ingredients as long as your ratio of eggs to liquid is close to the basic recipe, it will be fine.

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients (panettone-style)

—butter
— 2 to 3 medium panettone or 1 big panettone, sliced to about 3/4 inch thick
— 8 eggs
— 2 cups milk
— 1/8 cup sugar, or more or less to your taste
— 1 tablespoon maple syrup
— 1 teaspoon vanilla
— 1/2 teaspoon salt


Ingredients (any-other-bread-style)

—butter
— 1 loaf challah, french bread, brioche or plain white bread, sliced to about 3/4 inch thick
— 8 eggs
— 1 and 3/4 cups milk
— juice of half an orange, or about 1/4 cup orange juice
— 1/8 cup sugar + 1 Tablespoon sugar, or more or less to your taste
— 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
— 2 teaspoons vanilla
— 1/2 teaspoon salt
— cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
— zest of 1/2 an orange or lemon
— 2 Tablespoons cognac (optional)


Preparation

Very generously spread butter over the bottom of a couple of baking pans with sides.

Arrange bread slices in the pan.

Beat all remaining ingredients in a large bowl and pour over top of bread. How much liquid you need depends on the bread, so don't pour it all on at once. Keep adding until there is enough to generously moisten the bread all over, but the bread shouldn't be swimming in the mixture. After a minute, turn over the bread to make sure it is all coated and soaked through. If there is any leftover liquid, pour it down the sink.

Cover with saran wrap and place in fridge. The next morning (or at least an hour later) place into an oven heated to 400 F. Bake 15-20 minutes per side, until each side is golden brown.

Serve with warm maple syrup or whatever topping you like.

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Gingerbread helicopters

We used the recipe from my America's Test Kitchen cookbook (which was given to me by a friend who is a chef, and it turns out to be really good) for plain gingerbread and this recipe for royal icing. Then we did all sorts: fruits stars, big circles and helicopters for the tree.

Family Santa

Snuggled on the couch this dark Winter morning, preparing to write a little entry on one of the best Christmas books ever (Brian Wildsmith's 12 Days of Christmas) ...

Hi Bloesem Kids!

We're excited to be a part of a giveaway on the great Bloesem Kids.

For those of you that are new to our blog, we welcome you here to a few of our most popular posts:

How to make a mini-kite
How to draw an owl
Bunny origami
Making Leo Lionni rock frog & toads
Making pompom characters

If you like paper crafts, you might like to make our robot paper dolls (which could be great for the Christmas tree, too).

If you like to knit, you might like to make our Windy scarf (free pattern) or our finger-knitting tutorial.

If you like free things to download, you might like our colouring pages, our templates for shoelace sewing kits or our block puzzles.

If you are a fan of beautiful children's books, then here is a summary of children's books we like.

If you like making or listening to music, we have activities and songs to download here.

If you would like to follow our blog on pinterest, we have a board here.

Thanks for visiting!

Early Christmas trees

We don't yet have the tree. But, as some of us are quite excited about decorating already we painted some trees onto construction paper with washable poster paint for the little ones to decorate.

Then, for ornaments, we cut shapes out of scrap origami,

Our December winner

The December winner, for our greeting cards at buyolympia, by random draw, is: Krista Smith. Congratulations, Krista! Thanks to everyone else who enetered and again for everyone's kind comments. We'll be giving away something new in January, so try again next time!

One of our entrants, micia, has a cute blog which features this week how to make an origami Santa Claus (Babbo Natale), which you can see here. Great!

Thanks again to buyolympia for their product photograph.

Munari's Briefest + a Sack of Snow and Stars for Santa Claus

You might know Bruno Munari from some of his more famous children's books, like his Bruno Munari's ABC or Bruno Munari's Zoo. We talked about his book Drawing the Sun a few months ago.

Bruno Munari was an Italian artist, poet, writer and designer. He originally began making children's books for his son, Alberto. Find out more about his work here at munart.org.

To blog for the fewest of minutes, here’s Bruno Munari’s "Chair For the Briefest of Visits”. It is petite and sloped downwards, for an immediate slip off.

And here is

a Sack
of Stars
and Snow
for
Santa Claus
(from Bruno Munari's ABC)

December giveaway: cards

We are having our December giveaway early, because the prize will be more useful before the winter holidays (although these are useful all year round): a set of our greeting cards. We've just gotten caught up and restocked our cards at buyolympia.

To win a set of our cards, please leave a comment below this post. Please be sure to leave an address so that we can contact you. Let us know in the commments below. Contest ends midnight December 9. This is open to anyone worldwide and there is no fee to enter.

Our cards are 4.75 inches x 4.75 inches and are blank inside. They are offset printed on glossy cardstock and come packaged with a white square envelope. There are 4 cards in our set, Windy, Sunny with his guitar, Snowy and Chinook jumping on the bed and Chinook with a snowball. Each one has a little drawing on the back. (Thank-you to buyolympia for the product photographs.)

Ideas for the winter holidays

If you didn't manage to work on our advent calendar, we've started a board on pinterest for Christmas and winter holiday ideas. (There are even a couple of nice very-very-last minute advent calendars on there.)

Our November giveaway winner

Thank-you to everyone who entered our November giveaway (and thank-you for your kind commments, too). We're delighted to announce that our last copy of Windy has been won by Royce. Congratulations, we will contact you to arrange shipping soon.

One of our entries was from a real life Windy. Windy, we will send you one of our Windy greeting cards. Thanks so much for entering our giveaway.

We have a giveaway coming up very soon (December 1st). See you soon.

Match Box Advent Calendar

As there's less than a week before the start of Advent, we thought we'd quickly offer a classic project that your kids can enjoy all the way until Christmas.
Here are our directions for an advent calendar made of matchboxes.

November: Watch something fun

Well, finally, the end of our November week: a lazy post for a lazy activity. Sometimes it's time to curl up somewhere warm and watch something fun: Barbapapa.

November: Winter birds (Birdseed part 2)

November is the time when birds' nests begin to show themselves, as the trees lose their leaves. You can read all about our homemade birdhouse and our birdseed here. We also bought a birdhouse that would attach to the outside of a window (as we don't have an easy way to attach a hanging birdhouse). It's become popular with many little birds in our neighbourhood and we have a steady stream of visitors outside our window.

November: Windy days and early presents

Here's another nice thing about November: we are giving away a copy of Windy. If you find it a little too cold to make a real kite, make a mini-one and fly it in your living room.

November: Leaves

From Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins. All the leaves are printed at life size in this great book we found at the library after trying to identify a leaf on our way home.

This doesn't deserve its own post, but we've had a lot of fun making chestnut hedgehogs this week, too.