shenanigans

Me: Bee, can you go to the loo before bed, please.
Bee: Mummy, I'm not Bee, I'm Princess Leia! 
Me: Alright. Princess Leia, please go to the loo.
Bee: I can't! There are Stormtroopers in there!
Me: Just use your lightsaber, it'll be fine.
Bee: But I don't have a lightsaber!
Me: Ok, use your gun, then.
Bee: I don't have a gun either!
Me: Fine, use mine *hands over imaginary gun*
Bee: But it isn't loaded!
Me: Will you PLEASE just go to the loo?!
Bee: Fine!
    *slams bathroom door*
    *opens bathroom door* 
Bee: You nerfherder!!!
    *slams bathroom door*

hurrah for love

 

I am really quite proud of the February Love Project. More than 800 people joined the event/group on Facebook, and many of them posted photos of their rocks/crochet/other creations. Lots of my friends and family have joined in, and I ran a nice little workshop too. We had people participating all over the world... members on the page have been posting photos from Germany, France, USA, South Africa... as well as all over the UK.

So we did something amazing. Hurrah for lovely love!

first photo from my new phone

Today I got my new toy... the Samsung Galaxy S3... and my, what a sexy wee devil it is. I'm in lurrrrve.

And so is Bee, though that's mainly about Angry Birds Star Wars.

I'm not a Jedi

I tried really hard to convince Bee that I'm a Jedi, today. She didn't believe me for a moment.

She does, however, accept that fairies come through her fairy door at night and use the potions she makes in the garden for all their magic spells, so I'm taking it as a slur on my capabilities rather than an intellectual objection to fantastic/unproven ideas in general.

free books, yo

I got an exciting email tonight.

I've been selected as a giver for World Book Night 2013.

So I will have in my possession 30 copies of "Girl With A Pearl Earring" to distribute, free of charge. How awesome is that? Verily, it is mighty awesome indeed.

World Book Night giving is important to me, and I'll tell you why.

My grandfather died about a year and a half ago. He was very sick, and I stayed up all night with him, and all of the following day until he finally passed, holding his hand. The nurses were very kind, and let me use a vacant room to sleep in, but I very much wanted to be with him when he passed over, particularly as I knew he was afraid of dying.

He was drifting in and out of consciousness, and at time he was also experiencing a different reality to me. I think partly because of the morphine, and partly because he was straddling the parallel worlds of life and death for quite some time.

There was a small 'library' (book shelf) at the nursing home, which was largely filled with trashy romances and detective novels. One title stood out to me, though - "One Day".

Inside the jacket, there was a "World Book Night" label. This was an event I'd heard about before, and was excited by, so I decided to take the book to my grandfather's room and read it. I read almost the whole book that night and morning, and it is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read - and believe me, I've read a LOT of books. And this one will always be precious to me, because I spent the last few hours of my grandfather's long and dignified life holding his hand, and being comforted by the lives of two flawed, wonderful, complex characters in paper and print.

So this year, I'm going to distribute thirty copies of Girl With A Pearl Earring, in memory of my grandfather, in nursing homes, hospitals, clinics and waiting rooms. Because the right book at the right moment can make all the difference in the world.

paint and sparkle

I discovered nail art pens.

Bee discovered the make-up counter in Boots.

love, lego, music, creatures

 

 

 

  

  

 

Hat by Scrapunzel.

 

bestests

recent moments

 

^ My most recent exciting charity shop find - 10p each!!

 

Han and Leia on Valentine's Day

 

 Bee got this awesome poster for 1p in WH Smith!

 

^ As delicious as these sound... I think I'll pass.

lego, lego, and some lego

This is the freeform Lego castle Bee and I made on Friday. She wanted to build a castle for the twin unicorns I got her for Valentine's Day, and we had a few random castley bits in our Immense Bucket of Lego Joy, so we spent the afternoon building. Features include a jail with a barred cell, a grand patio type area with decorative tiles (actually tarot cards from our fortune-teller minifig) and lots of little arches and windows. Oh, and a special pet entrance for the Royal Cat, with a red roof.

 

Today, Bee and I started on our Lego ghost train. As we were tipping the pieces onto the floor to begin, she enthused "Wow, Mama - this is going to be WAY epic!"

 

february love project

 

This makes me happy: So It Goes.

February Love Project

Love Rocks

valentine

 I don't always make Valentine's Day biscuits... 

but when I do, they have Darth Vader on them.

 

Recipe:

    150g butter, at room temperature
    75g caster sugar
    225g plain flour
    Icing sugar and cocoa powder
    Coloured icing and shape cutters

1. Preheat the oven to 170C

2. Dump butter, flour and sugar into the ball and add a wee pinch of salt. Rub it all together until you have a big dough ball.

3. Dust your work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Roll to about ½ cm thick. Cut out heart shapes with a biscuit cutter and gently lay out onto a lined baking sheet. Bake for 15-25 minutes, until golden. Leave to cool on a rack.

4. Now dust your work surface with icing sugar, and roll out your coloured icing. Cut out the shapes (I used awesome Star Wars ones from ebay, and little stars) and lay them out on a baking tray until you need them.

5. When cooled completely, mix together few tablespoons of icing sugar with cocoa powder and enough water to make a paste. Spread the over the biscuits with a knife. You can then use this as glue to attach your icing shapes.

Our cards

 

This was Bee's Valentine's gift

cooking with Vader

heads held high, touch the sky, you mean everything to me...

"Can I have some chocolate, please, Mummy? By the way, you smell bad."
That girl needs to work on her diplomacy.

 

Bee took this hilarious and terrifying self-portrait, today.

  Look what came in the post today!!! My bestest is the very bestest who ever lived. 

And he deposited some rocks for me today, for the February Love Project.

 

smiley manicure

february love project

For those who don't know...
THE FEBRUARY LOVE PROJECT:
1. Collect rocks.
2. Paint hearts on them.
3. Put them back outside for people to find.

Today was phase 1 of stage 3!
We've got a lots of stones to place during the next couple of weeks :)

hair-dresser day

Our hairdresser is awesome. She lets Bee help comb, brush and dry my hair 'just like a real hairdresser'. Which means it must take twice as long (or more!) but she never charges any extra for her time.

I like to tie the length of my hair up in a bun, and do "boy hair". From the front you'd never know the length reaches down to my bum. It's secret-like-ninjas hair. I'm easily pleased.

it's that lady on my knickers

"Mummy! Look! It's that lady on your knickers!"
(she means WonderWoman. I have WonderWoman pants.)
Yesterday was a Dungeons and Dragons/ Lego day. I built a Lego spacecraft of some kind, we built a Megabloks Moshi Monster thing (Mega Bloks are pretty crappy compared to Lego, but it's a cute kit, and was on special offer) and we put together Bee's new Lego Darth Vader watch. She's been periodically announcing that it's "Darth Vader one o'clock" or "Darth Vader past three" all day.

I also made my little mini At-At (I have resigned myself to the fact that I'll probably never own THE Lego At-At) and I am actually mega excited right now, because my wonderful lovely Bestest has bought me the Lego VW Camper I've been mooning over for the last 18 months! Eeeek!!! I'm a very lucky girl indeed.

And today, we've been finishing off our rocks for the February Love Project, and I released my first one into the wild, tonight. Wonder if it'll still be there in the morning?

Bee: Mummy, will you get me a Valentine's card for Love Day?

Me: Yes, of course. I always do, because I love you.

Bee: Great. So I'd like a Darth Maul one please. But it has to be a Love Day card which says Valentines on it, and a picture of Darth Maul, OK?

    This random cat totally photobombed my origami swan photo.

Getting drunk on rum and attempting to follow complicated YouTube origami tutorials at 2am is not recommended. You know, just for the record. I used this tutorial for the awesome heart-bat. It probably would have turned out better without the rum, but the attempt may have been less amusing.

additional characters

Bee decided Archery Lady has to always ride on the Batmobile, to protect Batman.

 Beautiful suncatcher made for me by a friend. And their pet reindeer, Bruce.

 Megan G-Piggle, and Polly the formerly-talking parrot, who is about 20 years old.

making snakes, starting projects, and spending a fortune in the oxfam bookshop

GIANT CONNECT 4!!! And the discs look like massive fruit polos!! We were quite excited by this.

.

Today, we were making snakes at home-ed group, in honour of the new Chinese year of the snake. We did paper spiral snakes, and cuddly toy snakes made from old socks. Bee's creation was epic! She even did most of the sewing herself (I started her off and tied the knots).

We then missed our bus home - as we do nearly every week - so we had a mooch around the local charity shops and I accidentally bought about a million books in Oxfam. So many books, in fact, that we had to buy a cheap overnight-bag-trolley thingummy from another charity shop because I realised we couldn't actually carry them all home!

I also visited a (very overpriced) craft shop to buy supplies for my new project. I think I'm going to start with my favourite character: Han Solo. I am slightly intimidated by the scale of the project (14 characters to make!!) but if I don't make a start, then I'm guaranteed to fail!

And we had lunch in the cafe we often stop in (where a very sweet young man always flirts with me, which I enjoy because it reminds me that I'm young!) and read some of the new books together. Bee's reading has improved considerably since last week, despite not having done any at all... not even Reading Eggs!




We've been so busy being sociable, lately, that we've only really had time for bedtime stories, which are usually "big books" that I read *to* her, rather than "little books" she practices reading with me.

I was reminded of an important part of the learning process, which my Bestest refers to as "percolation". Whenever Bee learns something new - or goes through an intense period of focus on learning a new skill - she'll suddenly back off from it completely (and sometimes claims she doesn't know how to do whatever it is at all) and turn her attention to something else. During this period, all the new ideas and skills gently settle-in and fall into place, in the background of her mind.

Then, after a certain period of time, she'll surprise me by having it all worked out! Whatever skill or idea it was has settled down, put out roots, and found some context. It's germinated.

Minds are mysterious and awesome treasure-troves, aren't they? Though admittedly mine is mostly full of Lego, unicorns, and boobies.