this week's library book

Such a jewel this week. I went to the library for something else, and making my way through the J's stumbled upon The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers. A good cover will usually catch my eye, and the hand lettering on this one is lovely.

Henry loves to eat books. First one page at a time, then entire books in one go. And the more he eats, the smarter he gets. 

If he reads a book about rockets, he can remember every detail. Soon he is the smartest kid in his class, and is explaining things to his teacher.

When he starts eating too many books too fast, the contents start to get all mixed up. When he tries to remember something, all that comes out is confused mumbles.

So he has to give up eating books, but he starts reading them instead.. and gets smart the old fashioned way. (Although there is a nice size bite out of the back cover.. he must nibble now and then.)

I'm a lover of paper. Striped, gridded, lined, bright white, old and faded.. I love it all. What really makes me love this book is how Jeffers uses different kinds of paper as the backgrounds for his illustrations. And he leaves it messy, with the 3 ring holes intact or the torn edges showing. It's such a special little treat.

making a dot cake

Many of you have asked, and since it is a cool little trick, I'll tell you the secret to my dot cake. I picked up this tip while working on a polka dot birthday party for Martha Stewart Kids (see the cupcake image above, shot by Gentl and Hyers) It's still one of my favorite stories.. and the inspiration for Bee's party tomorrow.

Instead of piping directly onto the cupcakes, our food editor piped royal icing onto parchment paper and let it harden. After letting it sit overnight, you can pick up the dots and place them wherever you like. Great for people like me who get nervous piping! I've used this for numbers and letters too... in fact we made monogrammed cupcakes for my sister's wedding using this technique.

Make a batch of royal icing and match the colors of your party as well as you can. Mixing colors is kind of an art in itself, and one I certainly have not mastered. My advice is to start slow, it's easy to add more color, but impossible to go backwards. I picked three colors from Bee's invitation: orange, peachy pink, and a brighter salmon pink. Scoop the icing into a piping bag and using a small round tip, pipe dots of different sizes onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

You can see that mine are not perfect circles.. my icing was a bit on the runny side. Next time I'll go a little thicker. Leave them overnight to harden and then carefully pick them up with a thin spatula and place them wherever you like on your cake. I made Bee's white cake with two 6" layers.. I love the proportions of a 6" cake, taller but with thicker layers than a standard layer cake, it's a perfect kid-sized cake. Frost with your favorite frosting and add your dots where you see fit. I try to serve the cake in the next hour or so. (Leave the cake out at room temperature.. I'm not sure, but I think if you put it in the fridge overnight, the color on the dots might run). 

I made a large batch of dots. Half were used on the cake for our family party and the rest will be used for cupcakes at her friend party tomorrow. Speaking of, I better get baking! I've got cupcakes to make and mobiles to hang!

I almost forgot to point out the coolest part of this trick: If you are piping letters or numbers and your piping skills could use a little improvement, print out the letters on a sheet of paper and slide it under the parchment sheet.. it will serve as a guide for you to follow with your piping bag. And if you mess up, just start over again!

bee turns three

My little one turns three today, and that can't possibly be true. She is such an awesome little girl.. so funny, fiercely loving, opinionated, always twirling or jumping or showing us her latest trick. We love her so. We had a family get together last night, with cousins, aunts, uncle, grandparents... it's so nice to live by family. We'll be having a little friend party later this week, with a polka dot theme. She has asked me twelve times this morning if her party is today. 

In honor of Bee's third birthday, I give you this template so you can make fabric balloon birthday tags for your loved ones. Follow the instructions shown here. Enjoy!

lights out

Reading a book or two at bedtime is part of our nighttime ritual. I love cuddling up with my little ones and reading with them. It's the perfect way to end the sometimes not so calm day. But there is something new I've been wanting to try.. a chapter book. (I attempted this last year with Charlotte's Web, but the kids grew tired of it after about a week. It's nice to see how much their patience has grown in a year.) 

We gave the kids a copy of Stuart Little for Christmas, so we've been trying to read a chapter a night. And we've made a few changes to our nighttime ritual. We're gathering in mom and dad's bed, where we all get to sit under great grandma's big quilt. And the best part.. we've been reading by flashlight. (Thanks to Jennifer and her lovely blog for the great idea) After we finish the chapter, we play a game of flashlight tag on the ceiling before shuffling the kids off to their beds. 

Stuart Little is a wonderful little book, I may have liked it as much as the kids. Each chapter is a complete little story, so it's perfect to read in little chunks. We would talk about Stuart's adventures throughout the next day, and I would try to help the kids remember what had happened the night before.  When we finished the last chapter a few days ago, both Bee and C were sad to see Stuart's adventures end. And so am I.

We'll go back to picture books for a bit before starting our next chapter book.. any suggestions? (My kids are 2 and 4, so it needs to be short and not too involved.. and a few illustrations along the way really helps my littlest one stay interested.) What should we read next?

Want to know more about Stuart Little and how the book was written? I almost forgot to mention this article I read last summer in The New Yorker. 

UPDATE: Guys! Wow, thank you all for taking the time to let me know your favorite books. I just finished reading through all of your recommendations and I think we will have plenty of great books to read for the next few months.. maybe years! Thank you!

baby #4

My dear friend Emily is having a baby, her fourth, so we got to have a little shower to celebrate. I find it really hard to take photos during a party (there's so much running around right before and the light is never very good) but I managed a few shots.

I wanted to hang some hearts over the table but once I cut/punched all 50 or so, the thought of punching holes and tying them all to string seemed a bit ridiculous. Saved again by my sewing machine... much faster.

I put together a little quiz (thanks to Emily's mother) about Emily when she was younger. The best question was about her getting sent to the principal's office in second grade for throwing spitballs at the ceiling in the girl's bathroom. Heart toothpicks for some of the food (two hearts stuck together with a bit of double stick tape).

It's nice to not have to deal with cups and ice at parties, so I'm a fan of water bottles. And they always look cuter with new labels. Emily's favorite drink is IZZE (her favorite is actually the raspberry flavor, but she likes the pomegranate too and well, it matched the color palette better). I'm not above choosing drinks solely on their color.

Light blue and white sugar cookies, with a few red ones thrown in. These heart cookie cutters are from an old kit from Martha by Mail, I wish I had bought one of everything they sold while they were still in business. So well designed and so well made.

Emily's sister was kind enough to pick up some Sprinkles cupcakes, and the red and blue candies on top were perfect. Although my cupcake love is reserved for Magnolia Bakery, these are pretty good too.

My sweet sister in law ran all over town trying to find some red heart candies. I used my new favorite trick for the tags, punching out the heart shape and putting fabric behind it. I think we'll be trying something similar for Valentines day... stay tuned.

color story #5

I have always been a fan of light and bright teals paired with red. The teals can even be more on the bluer side, like the bottom right swatch, but you have to stay clear of bright blues or it starts to feel a little Fourth of July. I love this pairing so much I once did an entire identity in it for photographer Lisa Hubbard. (she's wonderful, by the way)

 

More to come on what I've been using this stack for...

this week's library book

Forgive me for not posting more of our finds at the library. I got a little distracted with the holidays, but we are now settling back into our normal routine. Have you met Dinosaur Bob? If not, let me introduce you.

Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo is a lovely little book written and illustrated by William Joyce. The Lazardo family find Bob during safari in Africa (they are quite the globetrotters). When little Scotty asks dad if they can keep him, he replies "I don't see why not." 

So Dinosaur Bob comes home to live with the Lazardos in Pimlico Hills. He makes a lovely pet.. he can play the trumpet and even scare away burglars. But his biggest love is baseball, and he's got one heck of a swing.

After a bit of trouble, he earns a spot on the local baseball team, the Pimlico Pirates. And in due time Bob wins the whole town over, even the mayor's cranky wife.

Do you know what I love most about this book? I love the Lazardo family. They are always singing and dancing and going on adventures and just having so much fun as a family.. even if it's just eating dinner on the porch or doing a quick hokey pokey. I'd like my little family to be a bit more like them. 

anna and mason

They've been going through their archives over at Martha Stewart Weddings and have added so many beautiful weddings to the site. A recent addition is the wedding of Anna Williams and Mason Adams. Anna is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, and an amazing photographer, and I had the pleasure of working with her countless times while I worked at Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Kids. (She is also the photographer of both of Joelle's books).

I was completely thrilled when she asked me to help with her wedding invitations. Anna had assembled a gorgeous color story.. bright oranges, magentas, peaches, and soft pinks. We letterpressed the invite in three colors, with each letter a different color (which proved to be a bit of a nightmare for our printer, but the results were really beautiful!). We also letterpressed a gingham liner for the envelope. The colors in the magazine printed a bit dark, but you can see the actual colors of the invite below.

It's always a fun process to create a new wedding invitation, something unique that represents the personalities (and sometimes the quirks) of the couple getting married. I find it easier to design invitations for people I know, when I have a pretty good sense of who they are and exactly what they are hoping to see for their wedding. For Anna, I wanted her wedding to be as lovely as she is.. and I think we came close.

(photographs from the Winter 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings)

fabric scrap memory game

I promised a few more ideas using the technique from Jen + Ray's escort cards. One of our favorite games is Memory, we play it all the time. So why not make your own memory game using scraps of your favorite fabrics.

You'll need to dig through your scrap bin and find fabrics with a nice small repeat. I threw in a few solids as well. Try not to choose two fabrics that are very similar (you wouldn't want to pick a blue dot and a teal dot that could be mistaken for each other during the game). Print this template (each page will make 10 cards or 5 pairs) and follow the directions here to make your cards. 

The version I made has 30 cards (or 15 pairs) which is about perfect for my 4 year old (but a little challenging for Bee, who is almost 3). You can make the game harder or easier by adding or taking away pairs. I hope your little ones love it as much as mine do. When Bee plays, she says "Oooh!" when she flips over each square.

Disclaimer: I debated about laminating my cards to make them a little more durable, but then you lose the fabric texture which is really half the fun. If you pay careful attention when you are making them to spread your glue to all the edges and really press them together, I think your cards will last for quite a while. (Unless you leave them unsupervised with your 2 year old.. then all bets are off!)

jen + ray

Remember this color story? It's still one of my favorites.

Now that the Winter 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings is out, I can finally share what this color story was for... the wedding of my friend Jen Hoverson (Jen and her sister Joelle own Purlsoho). Jen's colors were orange and spring green, with a mix of prints and patterns thrown in.

The stationery was designed using green and orange dots with the couple's initials. Everything was letterpressed by Bryce Knudsen over at Bjorn Press (A fantastic letterpress studio if you are ever in the need for one..) The dotted paper was printed on a thin Japanese rice paper and used to wrap the invitations. The RSVP card had guests circle Y for Yes or N for No. We made the J and R coasters for the cocktail hour.

Menus were letterpressed and tucked into fabric napkins. Jen wanted to incorporate fabrics into her wedding (no surprise as the owner of a fabric store) and made napkins for each guest, with the help of her friends and family. Each table featured a different print in the orange and green spectrum. Each place setting also included a glass magnet with the guest's first initial. After the wedding, Jen took the napkins and made an amazing quilt from her sister Joelle's book "Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts".

For the escort cards, we included a swatch of the fabric for that table. The Martha Stewart Weddings website has more information on how to make these cards, and a template you can download. I love these cards since they are a great way to use up leftover fabric scraps — I've already made them into Christmas tags. I have a few other ideas coming later this week!

See more photos of the beautiful couple here taken by the lovely Meg Smith. I was lucky enough to get to art direct the photo shoot of this wedding as well, and though it was a bit crazy running a shoot while an actual wedding was going on, working with Meg made it all the more enjoyable... she's lovely, as are her photographs.