We're growing and moving...our last post here

The last year has been an exciting whirlwind. We're growing and moving....

First things first: we have a beautiful new web site and blog — come visit! We're sad to say goodbye to our old blogger blog here, but we needed more room. Thank-you to everyone who has visited, commented and written to us here.

We're moving in other ways, too: you can also see us moving — animated with traditional stop-motion here ....

We started as a series of postcards in clothing stores, became a popular book series and now we are jumping into stop-motion animation with our new interactive stories which we are developing with the award-winning team at Loud Crow — the team behind Peanuts' A Charlie Brown Christmas, Richard Scarry's Busytown and Beatrix Potter. We're so happy and excited to join their family.

For us, this has meant an amazing learning curve, especially learning to work with a larger team when we're so used to just working together — as two friends. Also: learning how to make stop-motion-ready art; learning how to direct ; learning how interactive storybook apps work; learning how to balance our family life in whole new ways and, possibly most challenging, understanding twitter.

The results have been rewarding and amazing. Our first storybook will be available on iTunes this fall. It's better than we could have dreamed. You can see how proud we are, above. Those are dolls of us! We had a cameo in one of our new stories.

On top of all these things we have brand new pinterest, twitter and instagram accounts — we'd love to see some friendly faces!

We'll have lots of new crafts, updates and more, starting in September. It's going to be an exciting time, please join us!

Photo credit, bottom photo: Lori Kiessling

good news

This week we got some great news. We've been awarded a grant from BC Film + Media to develop an app for Windy. We're working with some lovely people, but I think we have to wait to reveal more details.

The other thing that happened this week was that I gave a little talk at my son's school about early literacy and I made a list of some of my favourite authors and illustrators as a reference, as well as a list of some of our favourite vehicle books. Judith gave a talk at the same school a few years ago, it's nice to participate.

Next week we'll have a real activity up, I promise. In the meantime, don't forget about Windy Valentines if you need some little cards for class.

february calendar

Here are the February calendars formatted for computer desktop, iPhone 5, iPhone 4 and iPad and iPad 2.

If you would like any help downloading the images, or saving them to your device, see the original post for details.

2013 desktop calendar for you

(update: there was an error in the calendar I uploaded yesterday evening — this one is fixed, sorry for the mix up). This year there's a Windy calendar for your desktop or phone and January's is ready! We have these formats (choose largest option available at link):

· computer desktop (1600 x 1000 — be sure to choose "large 1600" rather than "large 1024")
· iPad & iPad 2
· iPhone **
· iPhone 5

Happy New Year! Subscribers at our web site will automatically be notified when a new calendar is ready. Image © Judith & Robin from Snowy & Chinook.

**If, like me, you are not super skilled with your iPhone, you pull the wallpaper onto your phone from the flickr link like this:

1. Click on the iPhone link above. This will take you to flickr.

2. Click on the largest available size for download. This will open up the calendar image in your browser (like safari).

3. Tap the middle of the picture and leave your finger tapped down for a long moment, then release. This should offer you the prompt "save image".

4. After clicking "save image" you will find the photo in your photostream, and you will be able to access it from your settings menu as either your home or lock wallpaper. The calendar is always viewable from the "search" area of your phone.

new windy web site

Our new web site is up. It's a good place to find out more about our books, crafts and music from the books. We also have a section of free printables from the books that we'll add to over the next year.

See you on Saturday!

Launched

windyandfriends{dot}com

Ah, so...in our books you will find the url windyandfriends{dot}com. Here, for nostalgia, is an old page from our web site (Duthie Books, we miss you).

What happened to our web site? A few years ago our host closed, our files were transferred and somewhere along the way we temporarily lost the site. The good news is that we have emerged from the wilderness, and our new provider is stable and helpful.

For the time being, we are going to make this blog our home. Someday, we will put up a proper web site, but in the meantime, you may bookmark this blog. When we have a new site up, we will let you know.

We will be posting activities and colouring pages from the old site and also we are working on a list of places to find the books.

Facebook

We have started a facebook page. In the true spirit of Windy, we really ought to dispatch updates about our books and projects by semaphore code or messages in bottles, but this is a bit simpler.