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Tomas shared this link with me today & I've been smiling ever since. These are the most amazing, and most sweetest stuffed animals I've ever seen. You are going to love them, too. They are perfect.
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Love it!!! This is a huge list of creative, cooking and photography blogs to inspire & I see so many new names in the list that I see some wonderful down-time browsing in my future!
Meet the Sand Man
We went for a walk to the (chilly) beach yesterday with friends visiting from California and happened upon a family setting up their Christmas photo. I was fair to bursting with curiosity to see what they were up to when they piled out of their car & the mom was carrying what looked like a ball, but oh-so-carefully that it had to be something quite wonderful. And it was wonderful! She had sprayed adhesive on a soccer ball & attached raisins, some dried plums, and a carrot to make a cheery face. Once at the beach she sprinkled on a layer of sand for the perfect effect, and added the requisite happy hat and scarf.
Isn't this great? I wish I'd thought of it myself!
Bjørn's comic book creations
Bjørn takes such pride in the fact that his father is an author and illustrator & positively oozes with it when he tells you about Tomas' books; so it's no surprise, really, that he's taken to writing and illustrating his own.
It's fun to see the planning he puts into them, the thought he puts into his story lines and character development (or lack of thought, depending on his frame of mind!). It's also a treat to pick out the influences on his work: the disco floor is lifted directly from his Club Penguin house.
I made a simple word template for Bjørn to use so he doesn't have to draw in the cells each and every time, and so that I'd have a clean margin to bind his books, but Tomas informed me this is unnecessary since the cells should be different heights & widths. You can tell who the real artists are in the family, eh? :-)
Maggie's Christmas Village
Maggie, Tor, my Mom and I went on a little shopping spree to MIchael's yesterday and I was in heaven (except for having to chase Tor around as much as I did). Our local Michael's just had a massive makeover so it was extra incredible to browse the aisles & discover all sorts of pretty things & to let my imagination run free for a bit.
I loaded up on craft-room necessities like bottles for glitter, silver beads, and some shelving to help gain control over our piles of craft paper. But the BEST purchase by far was this lovely Martha Stewart kit to make your own Christmas Village for $12 & change. It comes with a church, four lovely houses, six trees and a happy snow-man. The house here is JUST like ours & even has the door to the kitchen on the side like ours and the one window above it.
Maggie spent a good two hours building and decorating her village as soon as we got home, and this morning has been busy making people to live in it, including our entire family and Loki, our cat.
This set is so special with Maggie's embellishments that I know it will get packed away carefully & treasured at Christmas-time for a long, long time to come.
Yumolicious chocolate covered bananas
When we lived in California, Maggie & Bjørn had a good buddy named Joey who was right between them in age. The three would often have playdates together where they would play a game Joey had invented that resembled a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and a Pokemon quest. Since moving back to New York, my two have shared the "Imagination" game with all their new friends to great success.
Today, Maggie asked if we could make this delicious snack that they used to have at Joey's house. It's incredibly easy to make & the kids are mad for it. We call them "Bananas a la Joey".
Just melt chocolate at a low temp in a heavy bottomed pan or use a double boiler if you have one (we don't). I used a bag of Ghirardelli's and added a bit of milk to help keep it smooth as it melted.
Cut your bananas in half and insert a popsicle stick in the center.
Dip in melted chocolate, and coat completely.
Lay out on a platter & put in the freezer for about half an hour.
CONFESSION: we only held out ten minutes before caving and gobbling ours up.
SECOND CONFESSION: Tomas, we tried to save one for you, but discovered a chocolate covered imp helped himself when we weren't looking.
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