Friday 13 August 2010

French children's books


In France I bought a couple of gorgeous children's books. We went into this bookshop in Dinard, and as far as I could tell, it was just a plain old bookshop, but the kid's section was AMAZING.


This book, 'The Tree House" is a picture book and I think is originally Dutch, but as there are no words, it's not a problem. I have a bit of a soft spot for polar bears, and the illustration in this book is just beautiful, take a look...






Sometimes at bedtime my children ask for a 'tell story' basically one I make up on the spot, usually involving characters named after them and their friends. Looking through this book may give me a useful backdrop to make up a story or 2, usually by bedtime I have had all the imagination sapped out of me by the aforementioned kids.


Another book I bought was 'Premiers printemps' or 'first spring' if my rusty GCSE french is correct. There is a whole series of these books, and it was really hard to choose, I also loved this one.




The illustrations in this book are so reminiscent of some of the Japanese fabrics that I swoon over, and the pages are this beautiful, thick, matt paper. The pictures are simple and innocent and I absolutely love it. It is of course in french, but because it's a children's book, I can almost understand it.


And lastly, I picked up this one in a hypermarket, loving the cute animals and curly wurly font.






Tuesday 10 August 2010

Sewing in minature

Step 1 - measure the big-eyed cute toy of the moment

My daughter was given a gorgeous sewing machine for her birthday and today we took it for a spin. It's surprising how many steps there are to sewing something as simple as a drawstring bag or even using a sewing machine. All the things you do instinctively suddenly seem very complicated through the eyes of a 6 year old. So we did it in steps.

1. Measure the big-eyed cute toy of the moment.
2. Choose fabric
3. Sew
4. Admire


Step 2 - choose fabric

To keep it simple, I did the sewing and she pressed the foot peddle down - that's the fun bit.

All done, straight to step 4.

Step 4 - Admire