I love a pretty cookie. I really do. But I come up against a very confusing battle of the senses...a stand-off between my eyes and my stomach.
I want to eat this, says my tummy.
I want to admire this, say my eyes.
Tummy wins. Sorry, sense of sight. You'd win at the museum.
Check out these amazing cookies over on my other blog, Everyday Fun on Parents.com.
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It's been almost 2 years in the making, but my book, Project Kid, is ALMOST here! After months of crafting, then months of copy editing, my first kids' craft book is at the printer, on its way to being a real, 3-dimensional object. While it looks like it actually exists by the look of the photo, this is actually a digital rendition that Artisan made for the publicity materials.
To my patient blog readers who have dealt with my comings (having a baby) and goings (having another one just 18 months later) and my very erratic posts, I promise there is much to look forward to!
Please LIKE my page on Facebook, and you can go to the Artisan Books website to read more!
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Ok, so I often read about new toys or products being developed, and I think, wow, that's a smart person. I want to be that person, or at the very least, know her. I read about this great new product Toy Mail this weekend on The New York Times and not only did I read the article from beginning to end, but I actually gave money to their Kickstarter campaign.
Here's how it works. You download an app to your iPhone and record a message. You hit send and it delivers that message to one of these cute little critters (adorably named and ironically shaped like a streetside mailbox). Your kid, at least one old enough to push a button, gets an alert and then can push the button to hear the message, and even press another button to record one back.
And then, there's the story of the co-founders and best friends, Gauri Nanda and Audry Hill. Nanda created Clocky and then pulled in her BFF, registered nurse, and mother of 3 Audry (no background in product design) to work on this with her. Love that!
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I was driving to Michael's the other day, and heard a fascinating report on NPR. The author of a new book called Drunk Tank Pink, Adam Alter, was discussing with Ira Foster how hidden currents, from reactions to color to our attraction to certain letters of the alphabet, affect our behavior and thoughts in significant ways.
The term "drunk tank pink", I just learned from this website Color Matters, is the name that was given to the color that was used in jail cells to calm violent prisoners. It was discovered that this hue (R:255, G:145, B:175) had a calming influence, even affecting a person's heart rate, but could then create adverse effects after about 15 minutes of being subjected to it.
Then there's the story about the head football coach at the University of Iowa who painted the opposing team's locker room pink to weaken their performance on the field. Rumor has it that the visitors would cover everything with newspaper as best they could before entering the locker room to derail this bubblegum assault.
So naturally I began to think about pink in a new way...little girls clothed in pink, sleeping inside pink walls, chewing on pink plastic giraffes. Do we push this pacifying color onto them or is it a biological attraction?
A few years ago I blogged about this project by South Korean artist JeongMee Yoon on Parents magazine's Goodyblog. Starting with her 5-year old daughter Yoon
conducted a documentary-esque study of children and their possessions.
She orderly arranged their belongings, from clothing to pencils to
books, in their bedrooms. The resulting photographs are astounding. The diptych is of a set of twins that both started out in the pink world, and then went their separate ways to pink and purple.
I am usually not drawn to pink for my 1-year-old daughter Sommer and much of what she wears is hand-me-downs from her brother (she survived the winter being mistaken for a boy in a navy-blue coat). I'm curious to see how it all shakes out; if one day, she'll be fighting to paint her half of the room blush or bashful.
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I'm so attracted to maps, both for the actual use (navigation) and for their design and craft aesthetic. Obviously I'm not alone in this, as maps have been decoupaged on everything from coasters to lampshades. But these crafts, like this amazing map dress by Elisabeth Lecourt, are taking maps to new destinations...sorry, it had to be said!
This looks crazy hard I know, but I think the artist just covered this cardboard deer head in maps. Love. Found via Babble.
This could be a very cool abstract embroidered design, but it's actually the Paris Metro system. By Needle & Compass on Etsy.
I love the link between transportation and navigation with this folded paper map boat by d. Sharp Journal.
A travel scrapbook made with map pages? Yes. Found via Scrapbook.com.
Ok, so I'm ending with the decoupaged map chair found via Pins for Your Home because I just love it.
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I just realized that as I'm uploading the above photo collage to this post, I'm smiling. It's been a crazy morning: husband and 2-year-old son make pancakces for 1-year-old daughters first birthday (picture it: egg yolk running down face of kitchen cabinets), son throws tantrum over wanting to be with work-at-home mommy and not scootering with nanny, and then just the on-going stress of crafting my 100-craft, insane (but awesome) book. Serious first-world problems here, but still, I've been a slight ball of tension for the last 2 hours.
And then I spot this photo on Flavor Wire. Romania-based photographer Alexandra Sandu’s technique in The Daydreamers Project is to place subjects against a colorful pastel background and
ask them to close their eyes and think of something cheerful. She snaps a photo, and ahhh...images of Zen. She began the project in
September 2009, and her goal is to document 1,000 daydreamers. This boy makes me particularly happy...adults seem to look forward or to turn their faces downward, but he turns it up...a true expression of joy!
Maybe this is a good exercise for us all to do...think of what brings you the most happiness and have someone take your photo with your eyes closed. When your problems start to plague you, first-world or other, glance at the photo for a reminder of your happy place.
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What? I know. Sounds impossible. But look how gorgeous these eggs by Inna Forostyuk are. This is the last of my Easter egg posts this year, so I thought I'd end with a doozy. You can learn how to make a simpler, but still magnificent, version of them on Design*Sponge.
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Writers, photographers, reporters, and documentarians travel the world to search for differences and similarities in all aspects of countries and cultures—food, politics, landscape, architecture, and the list goes on. The general consensus is there is very little that is universal except perhaps the basic need for necessities like food, shelter, and clothing.
Photographer Gabriele Galimberti travelled the world, examining a very unique relationship— the connection of children to their toys. After 18 months of shooting these gorgeous photographs of children with their toys, he discovered that “at their age, they are pretty all much the same. They just want to play.” This piece by Ben Machell from The Times Magazine reveals some interesting insight into how the affluence of the kids affected how they allowed Galimberti to interact with their toys and how their homeland and parents influenced what they chose to play with.
Of course this all made me think about my kids, Oliver and Sommer, and their relationship to their most prized toys. At almost a year, Sommer, for the most part, wants whatever her 2 and a half year old brother has, but Oliver's proclivities are a little more telling. He loves his toy New York City Subway trains, since he knows that Mommy and Daddy ride the train to work. He loves his paints, markers, and crayons; Mommy seemingly "plays" with those materials all day. And I guess for Sommer, I can say that she grabs her one babydoll (we named her Automn), enthusiastically hugging and kissing her; she is probably modeling my desperate attempts to hug and cuddle my baby girl, fearing that she is growing up too fast.
Do your kids' toys reflect where you live, who you are, or what you, as parents, do for a living? Do their toys bring you back to your childhood?
There is so much emotion, symbolism, and narrative to decode in Galimberti's exquisite photographs. I want to know so much more about each child, her family, and what his toys mean to him. Visit Galimberti's site to see the rest of the series, each one more captivating than the last.
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I never had an egg cup growing up (I think that constitutes neglect), and now as an adult, I'm a little unnaturally obsessed with them. From vintage to the handmade to the hipster (yes, there are hipster egg cups), I want all 10 11 of these egg cups!
1. My Egg and Soldiers by Takae Mizutani, found via Dot Coms for Moms.
2. Oak Bunny Ears Egg Cup, for sale on Hop & Peck.
3. Egg Nests, found via HGTV's Design Happens.
4. Vintage egg cups from Three Potato Four.
5. These are made with cups cut from an egg carton. By Zakka Life.
6. Bad boy egg cups, via Fitzsu. Beyond.
7. Perfectly Scandinavian egg cups, via Finnish Design Shop.
8. Do you have a habit of serving under-cooked eggs? Never again. Via Trend Hunter.
9. Rocket egg cup, found via Fab.
10. Origami egg cup. Via Breakfast Lover.
11. (I couldn't resist adding this one!) Hold On Egg Cup (it's magnetic and will hold a spoon!). Via Moco Loco.
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My daughter Sommer's birthday falls in early April, and here in New York, there is no guarantee of gorgeous, spring weather. So for her first birthday, I'm just going to do it up at home. We have a pretty big living/dining/kitchen "open-concept" room and I've been trying to figure out what broad-stroke decorations I can create to really give the room a transformation. I took this photo last weekend at Erica Tanov (best store!) and decided on pink and yellow, with a splash of navy, for the color world. The store has a Parcel pop-up shop in the back which is where these sweet garlands came from. Depending on how you make and then use garlands, they can do the trick to really take over a room.
My criteria for this project are... (1) Bold & Impactful (2) Quick & Easy (3) Inexpensive & Accessible.
Oh crepe paper, how I love you so! These big fringe garlands are so easy to make and can seriously take over the most blah of spaces. By Oh Happy Day.
I'm a little tired of the circle garland, but the half circle? I'm okay with it. But really, it's how they used this garland that really works. You can use it to take up a whole wall with this elegant swag. Via Pinterest, by Fellow Fellow on Etsy.
I love the watery, washy quality of these painted book pages from Lilla A. What if they are strung up around a room, sort of like the traditional Tibetan prayer flags? Hmmm....
Don't rule out paper chains as a totally viable throw-back DIY garland. They are super simple to make and you can craft a lot of them to really fill a space. Via Pinterest, via Parcel Post.
I think adding a little glitter twinkle into the mix is a good idea. I love how these strips of fabric looked dipped in glitter. And the idea of my guests leaving with a little glitter in their hair is just plain nice. Via Pinterest, by Michelle Edgemont.
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