Family Christmas

The past few years, since Littletree and I went through a major shift in our lives, we've been celebrating Christmas. Just quietly, in our own way. The last two years we went down to spend the holiday with my family in South Australia, but that wasn't possible this year, so we created our own special family here at home.

Littletree got involved with the google+ Secret Santa, which was awesome

We created a geeky Christmas "tree" -a binary tree made of coat hangers in a tree formation hung with manila file folders and decorated with broken tech - old USB cables, wonky gadgets, broken ADSL splitters - our 'Angel' was Andy the Android and of course we added a TARDIS.

Gifts we kept simple - of course a few sneaky treats for Littletree from Doctor Who (because we don't believe in Santa)

 

Naturally, every time Littletree wasn't looking, "The Doctor" popped by with his TARDIS and left another little present

 

We kept it simple with gifts; aside from her much appreciated Secret Santa hoard of Doctor Who merchandise and Art supplies, Littletree got a portable bluetooth speaker from me and Shark Girl

I gave Shark Girl a gift that was more shark wrapping than actual gift, and Littletree gave her a book about sharks with an altered book cover that she'd made herself

 

And Littletree and Shark Girl together got me the most incredible gift - a really nice Android Tablet :) Which is super cool and replaces the old iPad that I won back in 2010 (amazingly the 5 year old iPad still 'works' but thanks to Apple's stupid closed system, the device is completely obsolete and unusable - ironic to turn it on and find that it can't update anything and most apps aren't supported on this "out of date" technology).

I also got a very treasured gift - a friend back in Israel sent me copies of my two favourite picture books that we always travelled with and that I read to Littletree every day when she was small. I lost our original copies under sad circumstances, and I missed them very much. So it feels extra special to get these; even if only for nostalgic reasons. And I'm teaching Littletree to read more in Hebrew.

The three of us all hand-painted little singlets for the fresh baby our new housemates had (he's 6 weeks old now!)

And we had a few good friends around for an awesome barbecue. Simple, delicious. Fun times!

     

Happy words

Lady Demelza has a passion for all things linguistic, which includes a penchant for crosswords puzzles. Littletree was most interested – interested enough to put aside her progress on the altered book she’s renewed interest in since Lady Demelza is about. I’ve introduced her to doing crosswords and sudokus and the like whenever we fly in aeroplanes, because flights are boring and there’s always puzzles in the in-flight magazine.

But this was the first time she sat down and really worked on one in earnest.

It was great to see how much her reading and writing picks up when she’s really motivated to do something interesting and the two of them whiled away much of a morning working out the crossword… only, as Littletree pointed out – they’re not cross, because it’s fun – they should be called happywords.

Experiment wildly. Have fun.

I received in the mail this week *drumroll please* a handwritten letter from the always-fabulous, Lady Demelza. I shall proceed to copy it out word-for-word, so that the world might bask in her words of wisdom. And people interested in the world of Altered Books might benefit.

Lady Demelza’s hints, tips, thoughts, suggestions, ideas for encouraging a child with an Altered Book

(Mostly in general, some are more specifically Littletree-oriented)

• The most basic tools are scissors and a glue stick. Both are small fiddly things likely to be lost in black holes or become damaged. I find it’s best to have lots of extra spares all over the house. Cheapest, good quality glue sticks are to found in bulk packs at Officeworks.
• Whenever there is something happening involving an interesting piece of paper or similar glueable object, suggest it could be stuck in The Book.
• If she’s complaining that she’s bored, or wants ‘something to do’, put the book and/or magazines and/or papers in front of her. Small starting suggestions -
  - find a picture, shape, colour or word you would like in a magazine and cut it out. Can always be saved to continue with At a Later Time…
  - prepare a page by covering it with a blank or patterned piece of paper, or by painting it or colouring it in, for future work.
• Print out photos for her to include in the Book – favourite pictures, photos of friends and family – to really personalise it. Maybe photos of people cooking or in the kitchen to go with the cook-book theme?…
• Encourage writing out favourite household recipes into the book. It doesn’t have to be a ‘recipe’ as such, it could be a description of the cooking process more generally. Include accompanying photos??
• Her science experiments could be documented. Write up the hypothesis or idea, take photos to document her carrying out the experiment, write up the results. Draw a picture of the results.
• How about a record of the weekend market bakery business? Note recipe used, take photos of finished product or process, record profits. Write down costs of ingredients, etc. to work out accurate profits!
• Learn about the structure of books. Maybe you’ll find an old hardcover book with a missing spine and let her see the stitches holding the book together and deconstruct it. Discuss types of paper and covers, styles of bookmaking over time. Discuss what makes a book suitable to become and Altered Book; the strength of the spine/ pages, how likely it is to last a long time or fall apart quickly.
  eg – stick pages together to make a heavier base for heavier stuck-in things. Cut a niche in the pages to allow for 3-D stuck-in objects.
  - different kinds of glue and paint used with different kinds of paper – how does the paper or insert hold up?
• Cut out shapes from scraps of fabric as well as paper. Check how glues hold up with different fabrics. Small bits of fabric usually go well in Altered Books.
• You may want to find a kind of tray-shaped box or basket that the Book can go in, along with a manageable quantity of materials, to travel around to different parts of the house, be used and tidied away.
• If she produces a page that she’s not happy with, there are a few options.
  - Continue altering the page until it becomes something different.
  - Remove the page.
  Stick it to the next page to make a stronger, double-thick page for more sturdy embellishments.
  - Stick a piece of plain or patterned paper or a picture over the whole thing.
  This is meant to make it feel safe to experiment wildly.
• Keep an eye out for second-hand magazines with good colours and visual style in the photography and advertising (if not content!)
  A quick trip to the oppy would quickly provide enough variety to give her something to get going on… you don’t need a big pile of magazines, but a variety of styles is good. New ones coming in now and ten are exciting and inspiring. Throw out the old ones if they’ve been hanging around a while
• Experiment wildly. Have fun.