crooked house

A Baby Bird and Names from Children's Literature

This Christmas ornament can be personalized with names and dates -- found at This Fine Day.

Elizabeth Bird over at A Fuse #8 Production has just announced she is brooding... I mean, pregnant. With a baby Bird. Congratulations, Betsy! Betsy is a children's librarian at the New York Public Library and a published author herself in addition to being a master (mistress?) of the blogging universe so her child is unlikely ever to run out of great reading material. No backs of cereal boxes or tubes of toothpaste for him or her. (That is, I am sure he or she will eat cereal now and then, and certainly he or she will learn to brush the teeth he or she will one day have, but he or she won't have to rely on the text on household objects for diversion when all the books are finished.) (Wow, my fingers just cramped. I'd really like to know the sex of this baby.)

Elizabeth has dropped a few hints in the comments section of her announcement about possible names. While she says her chosen name for a girl is not really a literary one, specifically, I am intrigued by her remark on the name for a boy: "One is perhaps the most iconic male name in children’s literary history."

Hmm. Whatever can it be? Max for Max of Where the Wild Things Are? Charlie for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Jack for Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack Be Nimble and Little Jack Horner? Prince for all those Prince Charmings? I can't wait to find out. Perhaps we should start a betting pool.

(By the way, if you haven't one already, Betsy, I am going to send you the cloth version of Are You My Mother? It's always been a big hit around here.)

Pinecone Christmas Trees

This is a fun and easy Christmas craft to do with little kids -- Luke, who is five years old, painted his pinecone with green tempera paint, let it dry, then decorated it with glitter glue. Sylvie, who is 18 months old, dabbed away at hers with glitter glue. (I'd let her paint one of those little ceramic houses in the background earlier in the day and couldn't face another bath -- she didn't seem to mind.)

God, the house is a wreck. And I don't mean the little ceramic one the kids painted. That one's quite lovely although I am, perhaps, biased.

Meg Rosoff: How I Write

Meg Rosoff, author of How I Live Now, an arresting book for young adults -- although why exactly it was marketed solely to teens I do not know -- has some interesting things to say about how she writes. If you want to know how writing is like riding a horse, go read it. Her blog is terrific, too.

Modern House Lamps, House Ornaments, and House Storage Boxes

All available from my house party. There's something appealingly  Christmassy about them but you could use them all year round, too.

TED: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

"Everyone should watch this." Apparently, those are the most common words used in blog posts about this video featuring Ken Robinson, which has been around since 2006. I'm one of the few who somehow missed it and am posting it here in case you are, too. I've just downloaded the first chapters of Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative and The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.

Keep Calm and Merry On

I have one of those now ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On posters on the wall in my living room -- here's a fun Christmas twist on it:

You can get the full-size printable version from Jessica at Craftily Ever After.

 

Snowstorm in a Bottle

As always, click on any photo for a larger view.

I don't know, it's a sort of giant low-rent snowglobe. Luke and I made it out of a one-gallon glass jar (that's the one, exactly, on Amazon) that we've used in the past for a terrarium. We stuck clear and silvery white snowflake stickers back to back on transparent beading thread and then, using another sticker, affixed the threads to the top on the jar. Then we tossed in some cotton batting, a few bottle brush Christmas trees, a pond made out of a small mirror, and a tiny deer (this one would do). If you don't already have stuff like that kicking around -- we have oodles of it -- this village landscape would work well and it isn't too terribly expensive. (I am coveting these lighted trees.) But really some cotton batting and any small toys would do -- I'm sure our scene will change almost daily and that Spiderman and Batman and assorted Fisher-Price Little People will soon make their appearances.

Pop-Up Holiday Cards

Paper village pop up holiday cards.

Sweet shop pop up holiday cards.

They also have pop up Christmas trees, snowmen, skaters, stained glass ornaments, doves and more, most of them by paper artist Robert Sabuda, who incidentally offers instructions for making a variety of pop up cards on his site. The Christmas tree is supposed to be good for beginners.

Thanks for An Awesome Book of Thanks!

We got this book in the mail today -- appropriately enough, as it's Thanksgiving in the U.S. It is An Awesome Book of Thanks! by Dallas Clayton, who self-published the first book in this series, An Awesome Book!, because he couldn't seem to find a traditional publisher. He finally decided to go the DIY route instead and the book quickly became a phenomenon.

Both books are endearingly quirky, visually appealing, and have great messages about dreaming big and being thankful. But don't take my word for it -- you can read both books for free here. Additionally, Clayton gives away one book for every book that is sold. This is a clever gesture, as well as a kind one.

This time,  An Awesome Book of Thanks! is being published by Amazon Encore. Apparently Amazon Encore targets indie and small press books that have generated a real buzz and good sales on their own and then republishes the books with a little more fanfare. It's a very interesting model, one to watch closely. An Awesome Book of Thanks! is their first picture book.

My favourite spread:

Yes, thank you! (And Happy Thanksgiving, American friends. We're eating turkey tonight, too, in solidarity and thankfulness.)

Paper-Bag Town (and Tampon-Box Town, Too)

One of the magazines Luke got in the mail today was Highlights High Five. It provides instructions and pictures of windows, doors, signs and so on to cut out and glue on stuffed paper bags to make Paper-Bag Town. This, of course, is right up our alley.

I've been saving the little white boxes that come inside Tampax Multipax with the idea of using them to make a paper town and wishing you could buy stickers in the shapes of windows, doors, etc. Those tampon boxes happen to be exactly the right size for the High Five graphics -- but I realize that you could just as easily print off images of doors and windows from the internet, onto sticker paper if you wanted, or you could just cut them out of catalogues and magazines the old-fashioned way. Duh. However we will not call it Tampon-Box Town, which begs the question: what should we call it?