Littletree’s Big Tree

Littletree’s been working on an art project for a while. One day, she decided she wanted to paint a mural of a tree in her room, so the awesome goddessmother Lady Demelza took her out to get some appropriate supplies, and helped her get set up.

Littletree stood a while, staring at the blank wall, pondering

Lady Demelza had assumed that Littletree would direct, and Lady Demelza would end up doing a lot of the painting, but that wasn’t to be. Littletree just wanted someone to keep her company, and to take a lot of photos of the process (with her phone).

So off she went…

There were many trips to the opposite wall to stand back and get perspective

And careful attention to detail

She had to climb on her bunk to get the higher branches

Always checking the form and shape

And like any tree… slowly, it grew

She mixed her colours

And the tree grew and grew

At some point, she decided to get a step-stool for height, Littletree was of the opinion that hanging off the bunk bed wasn’t stable enough.

And the tree grew

And grew

Leaves were added, and then it was time to take a break.

So the tree sat… seasons changed, winter turned into spring… and then, one day, Littletree announced that her tree was finished.

And she loves it!

Artist Connection

I’ve recently come to know an amazing soul, Marc Wynter, through my best friend Bella. Since Bella has been staying at my house the past week, and she talks with Marc online most every day twice, we’ve become quite well acquainted.

Anyway, he just shared with me images of some of his amazing artworks, with the offer of gifting me a large print!

I’m absolutely in love with this first one, called Mother, which has the text “Mothering makes me feel like a pre-historic creature roaring in the dark”

Anyway, Marc is very keen to get feedback on his work, so please give your comments, insights, creative criticisms and reflections in the comments!

Beautiful Woman

Juggling

Last Night I Saw Venus

Joy of Motherhood

Frog Goddess

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.

Altered Reality

Lady Demelza, being the artistic goddess that she is, makes Altered Books. Her current main project is an awesome 1960s Margaret Fulton cookbook that she’s transforming into a thing of beauty.

Some pages get removed, some get improved, new things are added in.

It’s really quite inspiring art, and being created by Lady Demelza, quite impressive

So impressive, in fact, that Littletree started working on a few pages with her

Littletree got so involved in it, the ever-gorgeous Lady Demelza decided to indulge in her passion for Op-Shopping and take Litteltree in search of her own vintage cookbook to alter. Didn’t take them long to find a Gretta Anna cookbook, circa 1987.

The two of them have been avidly working at their respective books, Littletree is quite enthused with her newest project!

I’ll post updates for sure!

Blue Room

When we arrived home from our recent trip, Littletree went into her room and announced “My room is a total disaster MESS!” I pointed out that her room was relatively tidy, just that she has an awful lot of stuff. Most of which she’s grown out of.

So she set to work, filling up 2 massive bags of junk stuff that was still perfectly good, but that she didn’t want or need any more. Clothes she’d grown out of, toys she doesn’t play with any more, and about a billion pink dresses (she absolutely will not, under any circumstances, wear anything pink or a dress, which is odd, because many wise people assured me that if I allow her to don a pink dress, she will surely grow up to be a brainless airhead hooker, completely oppressed by the dominant male patriarchy.)

She took all this stuff to sell at the village market on the weekend, and being the lazy industrious girl that she is, decided to not actually man her stall, but just leave all her wares lying out with an “honour box”. No one stole anything and she made $15.35 :)

Littletree announced that she doesn’t get to spend enough time with Purple, so she proposed a “daddy-daughter-day”. The premise being that the two of them would spend the whole day together doing fun, cool things.

They played card games, went for a walk together, had lunch at the cafe… and then Littletree decided to do something with her now totally bare room.

I came home to see this

Purple and Littletree making great use of the left over paint from our bathroom.

Littletree wants to re-create something like the kitchen we had when we lived in Tel Aviv – I painted it with a blue sky and sunflower scene

(Littletree aged 2)

And the finished product, a tidy, clean, fresh room!

Now I just have to paint the sunflowers!

X Marks the Spot

Littletree is making a treasure map. I’m not entirely sure what the treasure is, but apparently the map will lead the way. And apparently the map will be rolled up and stuck in an old bottle which will be thrown out to sea. Or maybe just left somewhere one of her friends is bound to find it.

I’m not even sure where she got the idea, but the recipe was pretty clear.

Brew a cup of tea

Use the tea bag to colour a sheet of paper so it looks old while mama enjoys drinking the tea (this works best if mama has some cookies to go with the tea)

Leave the paper to dry in the sun. Once it’s completely dry, paint a map onto it. Add details to taste, such as islands, water, trees, paths represented by dotted lines, etc.

Let it sit a few hours while mama goes out to buy a lighter for the next step. Use the lighter to carefully singe the edges of the paper.

One authentic pirate’s treasure map!

Arrrrrrr!

Maybe the map will lead us home – we’re leaving Phuket tomorrow; who knows where we’ll end up!

Hand Made Presents

Being that we live in Australia now, and I’m all for participating in the local culture, customs and traditions of wherever we happen to be, I decided to give a few of our friends and neighbours Christmas presents this year.

Of course, I’m still me, so rather than going to buy random stuff to wrap up, I made special batches of my organic chocolate truffles in various flavours – the new favourite is Chilli-Citrus.

I folded some origami gift boxes - little-known fact about me: I did four years of Japanese in school, but I can’t remember more than a few words and phrases. I do, however, remember how to make origami gift boxes.

The end result was fantastic; a cheap and easy way to create beautiful, effective gifts… and the best part; even better than being home-made, nourishing, organic treats… they’re DELICIOUS!

Mmmmmmmm!

Making Decisions in Seven Easy Steps – Nuffnang Blogger Challenge

Regular readers might have noticed the new ads I have on my blog the past couple of months – they’re hosted by Nuffnang and so far I’m super in love with them; it’s a great blogging community and they have great support.

As it turns out this month they are holding The Nuffnang Christmas Blogger Challenge, which is:

Pick out the best blog post you wrote in 2010, and write a blog post which links to that post and explains why it’s your favourite.

The prize for this is an Apple iPad, which would be SUPER AWESOME to win. My first computer was an Apple: an Apple IIe to be precise. It was possibly the best computer ever made. But now there’s an iPad out there and I would so dearly LOVE to win one, not only because it’s really cool, but because early next year we’ll be going on a round-the-world trip to Argentina for the next World Rainbow Gathering, then to Israel for Littletree’s 8th birthday, then to India, because it’s Litteltree’s big dream to go to India, and if I had an iPad it would be so much easier to keep up with blogging along the way.

But the challenge… to pick out the best blog post from 2010. Whoa. I have 110 blog posts so far this year – it took a couple of hours to read through them all and select the contenders for best post. Another few hours were spent in whittling it down to a short list of 10 posts. I ummed and ahhhed for ages.

Should it be Of Rainbows and Sunsets, which has awesome pictures and encapsulates my life and my blog quite well, or should it be Surprise Flower, which is short and sweet? Should I go for something funny, like When Life Gives you Bananas or what about something that showcases Littetree’s cuteness and intellect, like The Question of Invention? And don’t forget midwifery-related posts like Beautiful Birthing.

Stuck in a conundrum, I decided to go about this in a rational, scientific way. Obviously the solution would be to build a Decide-A-Tron like the computer they made in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to find the golden ticket.

So I got out all my tools and set to work to build the ultimate machine! Unfortunately, just like the computer in the movie, it failed to yield the correct answer.

Perhaps I wasn’t being scientific enough. I tried to concoct a super elixir that would give me infinite wisdom

Still undecided, it seemed I needed to be more methodical, so I went for the Tibetan Deduction Technique demonstrated by Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks

It turns out (as would have been evident to anyone who knows me), I never managed to hit the bottle at all.

I realised that since this is about my favourite post, I would have to delve into how I really feel about it, tuning in to the heart rather than the head, so I had a sitting with a Tarot-reader…

I now know that there is a tall, dark stranger and an Apple iPad in my future, but as to which blog post is best, I was still in the fog. Clearly, I needed to connect with my own inner being. I sat in deep meditation and asked a pendulum…

The final answer still not coming to me, I went to my Guru and Master… Littletree. She just laughed at me, and finally we went with my best blog post for 2010: Faerie Shoes.

I love this post because it’s a little humorous, it has nice pictures, and in one brief snip gives a neat look into my life and what my blog is about. And it’s the post that’s gonna win me the competition, which will be the best Christmas present ever! Best of all, we’ve decided to celebrate Christmas this year, so it will be extra excellent to have a cool present under the tree.

So, everyone, tell me what you think; how do you go about making tough decisions?

Little Christmas Tree

Littletree had a few friends staying over for a little slumber party last week and the kids found an old box of tinsel and baubles that we had stashed in a closet.

For the record, I would like to point out that these decorations were bought by Littletree in late February last year because she thinks they’re pretty. Which makes them just decorations, not Christmas decorations.

Anyway, the kids found the decorations and decided to make a Christmas tree. They went outside and found a suitable bamboo cutting and then set about decorating it.

Then they got all the old baubles and threaded new strings on them

and made stars and new decorations out of paper and colours and glue

Finally, the finished product standing all sparkly in our fireplace

Not really my cup of tea, but the kids had a great time doing it :)