tiny pink & gold lanterns

A few days ago I found some thin flourescent pink paper at the Daiso in Richmond. I bought it on impulse, and added it to my big box of scraps that I use to make collages. The next evening, I sat down to do some illustrations, but I ended up taking a break to play with it. Sometimes, when your work is creative, you can forget how fun it is to make things with no real goal.

I used a few little squares of it to make some tiny lanterns, using the same method as the big ones from a few weeks ago. Anything pretty that costs 50¢ and takes 1 minute to make is really satisfying. The next day Henry spotted one from across the room right away.

One is now living in a corner of Auggie's room, balanced on an old chopstick. The gold is from a scrap of gold tissue from a birthday present. It makes me feel cheerful when I raise the blinds on a gloomy morning.

sandwiches

These are some recipes from the "fun to cook cookbook". The checkerboard sandwiches and radish roses are nostalgic for me. I remember being taught to make those in cookery, too.

This comes from a comment on pinterest with Celina Bailey of petit à petit and family.

Mukluks

Wool mukluks, much beloved by Augs. Made by a lady in Minnesota (ebay).

Playground

Not really a proper post. I just found these snapshots from our trip to New York in the summer when I was pulling out the Brooklyn Children's Museum photos. Early morning playground, hot on the slide, 4th of July

and sunset in Central Park. This monarch butterfly landed on each child in the playground at least once, it was magic. After the sun set there were fireflies everywhere.

Auggie asked me to take this picture and said, "I climbed the mountain!" as I did.

It was a cold and rainy summer at home, so it was great to have a few real summer days. Here's hoping for a relaxing, happy summer with sun and breezes this year.

Textile crafts from the Brooklyn Children's Museum

Kente cloth, Adire and Adinkra are different types of patterned textiles from Africa. Kente is woven. The colours of Kente cloth have different meanings (image Kaylor Jones via pinterest).

Adinkra (left), from Ghana and the Cote d'Ivoire, is patterned with symbols. Adire is resist-dyed with Indigo in Nigeria (Adire cloth, c. 1950, Joss Graham).

The Brooklyn Children's Museum has Kente colouring pages, an Adire tutorial, Adinkra symbols, and other textile activities (colouring pages are on page 20).

Auggie trying out the Adinkra stamps at the Brooklyn Children's Museum.

The child-scale grocery store they had there was fun, too.

The boy in the hat was so cute and so nice.

Imperfect hearts and stars

I was remembering a spread in Mirabella about Valentines made by various artists and designers. One was a painting of hearts, all wonky, and underneath it said, "it is for you that I try to perfect my heart." It made an impression on me as a teenager, I thought it was beautiful.

Anyway, I was noodling around with some scraps of paper that evening, and made an impromptu set of Valentines bookmarks for my booky husband.

The heart bookmark, a last-minute valentine (from pinterest). I used some fluorescent paper from a dollar store and some Mr. French Steel Blue Construction paper.

Then, because this valentine is often reading several books at once, I made two more. I punched out a loose pair of constellations, one for each of our signs. Then used scraps of gold, silver and pink to colour in the holes by gluing scraps of paper to the back.

I like the way the backs look — little collages.

Harumi

Harumi Kurihara writes Japanese cookbooks with simple, homey recipes.

Here is a recipe adapted from her book, Harumi's Home Cooking, that is easy and surprising and we love it: it is soy sauce + balsamic vinegar + basil. It's a nice winter/spring sort of dish.

Valentines pins

I have the Valentines pinterest board up now. Come visit.

Class Valentines (printable)

For you, some small valentines cards to print for your child's class. If you like to put your valentines in envelopes, these will fit into a standard 2.5 x 4.25 inch coin envelope.

There are two sets here. One is a Windy set and one is an Auggie set (with some drawings from Windy in the mix).

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.

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.

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.

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.