all yellow

Henry's lunch of wholewheat couscous, egg yolk and steamed broccoli. Banana chunks and blueberries for dessert. Yummy goodness. I've been in a sweet potato-and-grilled-chicken funk lately, but I was inspired to try something new after my conversation yesterday with Lulu Cohen-Farnell, founder of Real Food for Real Kids.

Lulu is the French-born founder of a fantastic little catering outfit that provides pro-organic, pro-healthy, pro-natural foods to enlightened Toronto daycares. Things like Morrocan chicken, quinoa, wholewheat cookies, tilapia filets. Quite a departure from the saucy, meaty, processed fare on the typical daycare menu. I remember picking up Stella from her (otherwise excellent, I should add) daycare one afternoon and seeing Timbits under "snack" on her little menu card.

So I joined the daycare's board of directors at the first opportunity. Fresh fruit everyday (why why why are our kids being served tinned fruit at all but especially at the height of summer?) and getting rid of the croissants, waffles, muffins and trans-fats laden baked goods are my legacy. There are something like 500 daycare centres in TO; Lulu serves 42. Lucky kids. She doesn't cold call centres, she believes change should come from parent pressure. And she's right. Call her. She'll fire you up.

a piece of quiet

It's my birthday. Guess what I wished for?

art therapy

Our very cool, shiny new Specktone iPod speaker was mint for exactly two days. A game of solo hide-and-seek that inexplicably turned rambunctious (I was out of the house, naturally) ended when the Specktone took a 40-inch dive off the shelf, landing with a crushing thud on bare hardwood. It was all re-enacted by both husband and daughter upon my return. I really couldn't say who was more bewildered or upset. Thankfully, the only injuries were sustained by the poor Specktone and the floor.

Stella came home yesterday with this drawing. It's the first time she's drawn tears. E is for empathy.

blinded by the white

After painting my fifth white/cream/pearly white/off-white/cloud white bureau this week I have a serious hankering for some colour. (Full disclosure: Henry's dresser is white. But in my defense, I painted it when I was 35 weeks pregnant and I was in no mood for adventure.) I'm already planning the redesign. And it will be colourful.

Need some real life inspiration? Take a peek at The Nursery: Baby Rooms at Home , Go To Your Room, and Vintage Playrooms on Flickr. So many sweet ideas. Love this, this, and this - that little storage idea is clever.

Yes, white furniture is timeless. It's neutral. It's simple. I understand the appeal of white furniture, really I do. But will anyone take a chance on vermilion? Or jade? Carrot or taxi cab yellow? Imagine what a cheery punctuation mark that would be. Any takers? I'm game if you are.

[photo of teal bureau used with permission from Uma B.]

synchronicity

I love our local library. The children's section is chock-full of original books from the 50s and 60s, so browsing is fun for me too. Last week I spotted a pair of books by Keizaburo Tejima, an author I'd never heard of but, as it turns out, he's a wood cut artist of some repute from Hokkaido, Japan. He wrote and illustrated a handful of children's books about the forests of his home island. The stories are quiet and folky and the pictures beautiful and intricate. They're lovely books. And a nice change of pace from the Buzz Lightyear oeuvre that's required reading around these parts.

So. A week later I'm poking through books at the local thrift shop and gadzooks! There's a Tejima! For .99!




Yesterday, during a rare quiet moment in the afternoon, I linger over this photo in the January MS:



It's Hokkaido, Japan. How strange. I think a new collection has just been born.

decisions decisions

JK registration is here. It's not as straightforward as you'd think. I hope this t-shirt curries favour with the person in charge of the waiting list.

snowed under

How apt for Mother Nature to smother Toronto with snow, ice pellets and a dash of freezing rain just as I'm climbing out from an avalanche of Globe-related email. Folks, I am grateful, thrilled and flattered that you've found my little shop and I will answer every email. Really, I will. I just need a few days to get caught up on the 100+ inquiries that came in over the weekend.

Here's the inventory scoop:
I am fresh sold out of ready-to-go painted dressers. Gone. I have a stash of dressers waiting for a lick of paint, but these won't be ready for a month. Latex paint needs 30-days to cure properly or it won't be a durable finish.

I do have several cute farmhouse chairs looking for a new home. And I have some non-furniture items too:

Tin panels (from the ceiling of an old, old hotel in Brantford) that would be fab hung in a row.
1930s-ish glass ceiling fixtures: clear/cut glass, blue and a nice minty green.
1950s ceramic animal planters: a favourite. I use them to hold cotton swabs and baby things. I have a couple of lambs, a doe-eyed deer and a bunny
Reclaimed frame mirrors: these are old frames that have been painted (lilac, pink, white) and fitted with new mirror.
Some pretty embroidered pillow cases
Window panes: old casement windows fitted with a mix of vintage and new fabrics behind the glass. A cool alternative headboard hung horizontally, or a neat-o decorative piece. I like to add hooks along the bottom to make them extra functional.

That's about it right now, I'm afraid. The dead of winter is not prime vintage season; I'll have lots more come spring.

I'm also working on a mini sale of samples, discontinued items and a few odds and ends. I'm not sure how best to conduct the sale,since the quantities are limited, so it'll likely be through the blog so stay tuned!

pretty little things

Some of my own photos of Stella's room this morning, just before the photographer arrived. I found out Monday night at 10:30 pm that The Globe wanted to take some pictures of Stella's room to accompany Rebecca Eckler's Mommy Blogger column (Honeybunch is featured this weekend!). I rallied the troops (my mother and sister-in-law to the rescue) and yesterday was spent fluffing, editing and propping. Her room never, ever looks like this in real life, as everyone at Saturday's party will attest to. And if you open the closet door the hockey stick, Barbies, puppets and books, books, books will rain down on you like a Three Stooges skit. So a few peaceful, pretty pictures to capture a (fleeting) moment.

mini shop update

I just added two lovely new children's books and a tiny, perfect baby journal that's some kind of gorgeous. I love Nikki McClure's style. Her paper cut illustrations are done in black paper with an exacto knife which gives them a graphic simplicity I really like these days.

I also like that the journal isn't the fill-in-the-blank kind (Your first bath! Your first car ride!) that send me into a panic because, frankly, I can't recall those details with any accuracy and I don't need the guilt, you know what I mean? I'd rather jot a note about my girl as I tuck her in and discover she's sleeping in elbow and knee pads for the third night in a row. Or how Henry crawls like an inchworm and it's seriously hard work but he just won't use his knees. It's a great journal. I hope you like it too.

good times, good times

Perhaps 12 kids was a bit ambitious. After all, I don't have 12 dining chairs. I have 6 (if you count the two that kind of match the 4). But thankfully I do have just enough cute farmhouse chairs happy to be called upon for a festive occasion. The blue and aqua tablecloth is a thrift store favourite, and inspired the colour theme.

Vintage-y fabric pennants decorated the doorways. They're so sweet I haven't taken them down yet. (I'll be carrying these in my new shop, by the way, so don't even think about using one of those mylar banners!)



I enlarged the decorative alphabet I made for the cupcake liner decoration (an idea I saw at shimandsons) cut them out and glued them to paper plates. I love those 3M removable hanger things that don't damage walls. And painter's tape for affixing balloons. If you're interested in the alphabet template for your own party, send me a note and I'll email it to you.



I took portraits of kids as they arrived against a scrim I fashioned from a groovy piece of fabric and a rolling rack. Don't you adore little girls in party dresses and patent shoes? Sigh. So cute.

We played "Pass the Present", an easy party game with less chance for hurt feelings and bruised shins than musical chairs. Pre-schoolers are tough characters, after all. Do you remember how to play? Wrap prizes in multiple layers of paper, have the kids sit in a circle and pass the present while the music plays. When the music stops whoever is holding the present unwraps one layer, and so on until the kid who unwraps the final layer keeps the prize. Simple fun. We also had a pinata - not the swinging broomstick kind - and that went over quite well while the hotly anticipated magic show was set-up.

Our magical wizard arrived on schedule at 3:00 with a flourish of purple velvet robes. He quickly surveyed the corner of the room we had sectioned off for the show, pronounced it satisfactory and set up his worn but impressive looking steamer trunks. Our gathering of children and parents assembled on the floor, bags of popcorn in hand.

I really did think the wizard was going to put on a shirt underneath the deep, deep, deep V-neck robe before the show began. The gold medallion around his neck was a bit distracting against all that bare skin. From my vantage point on the floor I could see he was also sockless in his un-wizardly loafers, so I suppose he was a fellow not fussed with underpinnings.

It started off promising enough with some good sleight of hand and rope tricks. The kids were loving it, so I overlooked the magic wand held together with electrical tape and the yellowed and peeling flash cards he kept inside a rumpled paper bag. The soggy donut he procured from god knows where and made Stella bite into before setting it aflame an inch from her hair was more of a concern.

We all laughed at the first pee joke. Sort of giggled and scratched our heads at the second one. I think it was at the first dumb blonde joke - directed at a brunette mom - that I felt 24 pairs of parental eyes pivot in my direction. Oh dear. The salty schtick continued as I watched the digital clock on the TV mete out the next 45 minutes, hoping no one was going to storm out. Because who knows what the wizard might have done to them?

Fortunately no one left in a huff. And neither the bunny nor the dove pooped on the carpet or bit any little fingers. And the balloon animals at the end of the show were a big hit, though no one could say exactly what animal was what. Lobsters? Mice? Later there were reports that one kid's balloon sword came unravelled and the wizard told him "Sorry kid, I don't do repairs." With that he left as he arrived, in a flourish of velvet robes.

It all brought to mind one of my favourite kid's songs:

Godfrey
by Robbie Fulks

Who's the feller by the jungle gym?
All the children in town love him.
He can pull a pigeon or a root beer float
Out from his camel's hair overcoat.
He's kinda cranky and he coughs real loud,
But that's no matter to the pint-sized crowd.
He's their hero because they know
He just loves to do his magic show!

(And what's his name?)
Godfrey, the sickly unemployed amateur children's magician,
He's got wonders up his sleeve.
Godfrey, the sickly unemployed amateur children's magician,
If you'll only make-believe....


It was a memorable day.

a good thing

On another note, the Kim Family Benefit Auction started today and runs through Sunday.So many lovely things. I'll definitely be bidding on the scrumptious girl's outfits from BlueBird. I have my eye on Dana Robson's lovely thread on paper drawing too. Everything on the auction block was donated by crafters and artisans from around the world, with all of the money raised going to a memorial fund for the very brave James Kim. Take a peek.

Today is Stella's birthday. My funny, sweet, and 100% original girl is four years old. The aqua/lime/Lightning McQueen-red theme is coming along. I made this to hang on the front door for Saturday's soiree. You can't have a party without a fancy-pants front door, I always say. Cupcake liners, some ribbon and a piece of flannel wrapped around a cork board, if you're curious. As you know I'm a big fan of the homemade decorations.

Happy Birthday Stella-Bella. We love you.

a fine year

I can think of no better way to ring in the new year than in the company of good friends. It was a cozy night at home. Babes asleep (almost on schedule), comfy clothes, delicious food (a bit chilly to be manning the barbeque, but what the heck) and the perfect opportunity to open the bottle of Brunello we brought back from Italy years ago and forgot about until recently. If you're a porterhouse fan, I highly recommend this tasty accompaniment which I got from Amy Sedaris' very funny new cookbook:

Red Wine Steak Butter
Rub a frying pan with a garlic clove or two, discard (the garlic part is my idea)
Saute 4 minced scallions in 2 tbls of butter until soft and almost golden
Add 1/2 cup dry red wine, simmer until reduced to 1/4 cup
Put in refrigerator for 10 minutes or so to cool off slightly
Stir in a stick of room temperature butter
Spoon over grilled steaks

A wonderful night. A wonderful year. I feel grateful.

2006 was the year I was finally able to say I'm self-employed. 100%. My little shop, thanks to you, dear friends, became a real business. It's thrilling to be able to do something I love, love, love and be able to work on my own terms, even or maybe especially, when that means staying up until 2 am every night for a week to ship 400 pairs of BabyLegs. So thank you very much indeed for your encouragement, your positive feedback and for shopping with me. Good things coming in 2007. Happy New Year!