More Sweet Treats

Not all of my sweet treats this weekend were edible. Early Friday evening browsing these beautiful book covers, all of them found at one of London's finest second hand bookshops. Pay a visit to Oxfam at 34 Strutton Ground.

New addition to my book collection #10

Spot It! Find the Hidden Creatures is the English translated version of Delphine Chedru's Cherche la petite bête!

A fun book for little ones to play with and full of wonderful patterns for big ones to look at!

Museum of Childhood

Deerylou and I recently went to see the Snozzcumbers and Frobscottle exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood. It's an exhibition celebrating the wonderful union between the storyteller Roald Dahl and illustrator Quentin Blake.

Everyone has their favourite Roald Dahl book... mine is James and the Giant Peach. What's yours?

Japanese books

Receiving new books is always a pleasure, even if they are gifts to yourself. My newest Japanese treasures...

Olle Eksell Swedish graphic designer. Fabulous illstrations, which bring to mind this this flickr group link via Orange You Lucky, one of my favourite visual blogs.

Children's Rooms "Copenhagen" by Paumes, which I got from the Yvestown shop.

My Handmade Bag pattern book from Etsy.

Toy-A-Day

On Tuesday 20 May, Joe started a year long project called Toy-A-Day, and he will be making and posting a paper toy every day for a year... I think it's a brilliant idea and can't wait to see the final toy in May 2009!

Some of my very favourite illustrated characters have already made an appearance... Astro Boy and his sister Astro Girl, Moomintroll, TinTin, Hello Kitty and Charlie Brown...

Some suggestions for Joe, should he be interested, are Olive The Other Reindeer, Snoopy (who I am sure will be seen soon) and a traditional red heel sock monkey... to name just a few.

Found via Yeah, Yeah, Whatever... thanks Kate!

New addition to my book collection #5

Up In The Tree by Margaret Atwood, and published by Bloomsbury is such an adorable children's book which was first published in 1978.

Atwood wrote and illustrated the story and used only two colours for the printing as three would have been too expensive. She opted for blue and red... which together meant that she was able to include some brown, to really satisfying effect.

Fukuro bag

I have been trying not to accept carrier bags in shops for some time and carry two Reisenthel mini maxi shoppers in my handbag at all times.

I'll now also carry the eco-friendly Fukuro bag, which the wonderful husband and wife design team Eley Kishimoto have produced in association with British charity, Cancer Research UK.

I love the quirky owl design... Thanks for picking this up for me Mum! X

New addition to my book collection #3

This weekend I also treated myself to a book which has been on my Amazon wish list since before it was published... 'Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf' written by Judy Sierra and illustrated by one of my absolute favourites, Jotto Seibold. Take a look at his website... much fun to be had!

It's a cute story, Big Bad Wolf has grown up and is no longer the mean young wolf he used to be.

I have to be honest, my attraction to this book is the illustrations. I adore Seibold's take on the world... and can't deny that my favourite books are the ones he has collaborated on with his wife, Vivian Walsh.

This is the Seibold chunk of my children's book collection... my new addition prompted me to dig them out and have an enjoyable flick through them all today.

Seibold's pop-up 'Alice in Wonderland'...

and the wonderful pop-up grand finale from the 10th anniversary deluxe edition of 'Olive, The Other Reindeer'...

New addition to my book collection #2

This weekend I have finally added the 1951 Little Golden Book children's classic, 'I Can Fly' to my collection. The reason I wanted a copy of this book is because it's illustrated by Mary Blair.

Mary Blair is well known for her conceptual work for Walt Disney, on films such as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, which were, unfortunately, somewhat diluted for the final films.

This little book is a wonderful way to be able to view at first hand her whimsical and vibrant illustrations.

I have added The Art and Flair of Mary Blair to my Amazon wish list...

New addition to my book collection #1

While we were in Amsterdam, P picked up this little book for me at the Boekenmarkt, which is located at The Spui each Friday.

It's a book of lullabies in Dutch and is accompanied by drawings by Scapa, (Ted Scapa, a Dutch illustrator?) and is dated 1964. The simple pencil drawings are absolutely delightful...

A lovely trip...

We're home... we had a wonderful break in Amsterdam and were thrilled with the Cook suite at The Flying Pancake. It was a great place to stay and the proprietor, Claudia Veldkamp, donates a small portion of the room charge to charity. How great is that!

Lunch at De Kas on Friday afternoon was AMAZING. They serve a four course set menu at lunchtime -- actually you have three starters at the same time followed by the main course (we had grey mullet with a white bean cassoulet and blood orange). The restaurant, which is housed in a greenhouse dated 1926, harvest much of it's own produce on site, and also on it's own land in the north of Holland. The food was so good we couldn't resists ordering one dessert to share as well...

It was great to spend time with our friends, and on Saturday we enjoyed a lovely afternoon visiting the Dick Bruna Huis together in Utrecht, something I have wanted to do for quite some time. Despite having sold more than 85 million books worldwide, Dick Bruna continues to live in the same house in Utrecht he always has, and follows the same routine, cycling to his studio, every day.

We couldn't resist, this little fella had to come home with us from the museum shop... meet little black bear.