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Tag: book reviews

easter and the next

easter and the next

we had a beautiful day here yesterday. our sweet made a basket for us giving up some of her candy and some of her things she thought we'd enjoy. love her so much!

her favorite gift she found in her basket was her "young naturalist's notebook" from hearth song. this is out of print but is really a wonderful tool to encourage exploration and participation with nature.

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we were invited out for two easter dinners. it's so great to drive with the windows open again!

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we had some leftover asparagus, unbelievable but true. so this morning i made a poached egg and warmed up the asparagus in a little melted butter and fresh lemon juice. it was so delicious that we had it again for dinner with a glass of vegetable juice. we ate out on the new porch. lovely evening before a week of rain expected.

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molly moon's new adventure and our latest reading adventures

molly moon's new adventure and our latest reading adventures

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our girl has always loved to read in the photo she is about 18 months old.

a few years back we found the molly moon book series and we loved it. we just received a note from amazon that there is a new molly moon book coming in may from georgia byng! it is called molly moon and the morphing mystery. we are very excited, it seems like forever since we finished her last book.

molly moon is a girl who is left at an orphanage when she was a baby and she has the most interesting adventures. pick up her first book and you will have a fun journey. we did and we did not stop until we finished the last book that georgia byng wrote. we are looking forward to may.

hope that you can begin the series so that you are ready in may when the next book arrives.

molly moon's incredible book of hypnotism

molly moon stops the world

molly moon's hypnotic time travel adventure


molly moon, micky minus, & the mind machine

thursday night we finished the last harry potter book with our girl. so sad to be all done. we started j.r.r. tolkien's the hobbit tonight.

happy reading!

books to inspire creativity

we spend so much time at the library and on-line looking for new books. as i have mentioned before we love to read. lately we have been looking at books to help us find new things to create and some of our favorite books from the past. here are a few.

joseph had a little overcoat by simms tabak

our dear friends gave this book to helen for her 2nd or 3rd birthday. it has beautiful, colorful illustrations that make you want to find all the colored pencils and print intensive magazines and collage all day. the story also reminds to continue to reuse...one of my favorite lessons to share.

the quiltmaker's gift by jeff brumbeau and gail de marcken

also a christmas gift when she was very small. this book has beautiful illustrations a great story of a woman who makes the most beautiful quilts for those in need and how a king in his desire for the one possession that he cannot acquire learns where true happiness comes from.

the paper princess by elisa kleven

we found this book at the library it was our first introduction to elisa kleven. we have given this book for countless gifts. we love the illustrations and collage. the story is very sweet to. a girl creates a doll out of paper and it flies away and the paper princess tries through her adventures to return to the girl who created her.

the apple doll also by elisa kleven

story about a little girl who makes a doll out of an apple to come with her on her first day of school. the kids at school make fun of her, but in the end they all learn how to make the doll. very sweet story. directions to make the doll included.

the wheat doll by alison l. randall ; illustrated by bill farnsworth

we found this book at the library. sweet story about a pioneer girl that loses her best friend, a doll made from wheat in a storm. the mud near where she lost the doll begins to sprout wheat, she cares for the wheat and makes another doll. we read this over the summer and plan to use some of the cedar chip stash that we have from the addition to make a doll. we have also been wanting to make some sachets for valentine's day (given that the moth's think my sweaters are the tastiest in the house) the cedar just smells so yummy and looks so pretty most of it was from the plainer so it is shaved post to follow soon.

plaidypus lost by janet stevens and susan stevens crummel

this is one of those books that we read endlessly when helen was very small and i did not mind. the cadence still continues in my head whenever i hear platypus. this story was one of the reasons that i really wanted to take the create a character class from marisa haedike creator of creative thursday last year at the squam art workshop. we have wanted to create a sweet "plaidpus" from a few of the many plaid shirts that belonged to my father-in-law who helen sadly never had the chance to meet, but shares a birthday with.

mirabelle by astrid lindgren and pija lindenbaum

i feel so redundant but here is another great book about doll, this one grows from a seed (scary that the seed came to the little girl from a stranger when her parents were not home, i have always altered this while reading the book).

quick crochet huge hooks by sally harding - i have been taking this book out of the library every few months for over a year; i really want to make the rag rug out of fulled (the word used for repurposed wool sweaters that have been "felted" per my class at squam last year with the amazing betz white). i have been putting off the rug because i wanted to make it round and i was having trouble finding a book with good instructions on how to crochet in the round...i think that i finally found a few...details in another post. i decided to try to just crochet a rectangle or square rug for the first try.

a few cooking books too.

sweet pea loves her historic american girl dolls...i try not to do things that are typically so commercially driven, but i have found these dolls have much to offer in peaking greater interest in handmade and history. we now have molly from 1944 and kirsten from 1854, she is also fond of felicity from 1774. we have been getting many books from the library and the bookstore on these three characters. the most fun i think are the cookbooks, they offer recipes and history of how these girls would have cooked, what they would have cooked and how the family would share in the meal together.

last week we made a recipe from felicity's cookbook: a peek at dining in the past with meals you can cook today (american girls pastimes) we made almond tarts. it was fun to make, we both think that the recipe would be better with almond paste instead of the chopped almonds. also overload on the butter and i am typically with julia child when it comes to butter.

for christmas helen received molly's cooking studio. i think that we are going to try the applesauce cupcakes, the victory garden soup and the nut and raisin bread which seems similar to a recipe that my mother made at christmas time when i was a kid. she backed them in coffee cans then wrapped them in colored cellophane. i just always remembered how tasty they were and how pretty they looked.

she also received salad people by mollie katzen for her birthday and we did not have a kitchen at the time and now we do so we need to start some recipes from there. we have tried the recipe for chewy energy circles a few years ago when she took a food science course. they are quite yummy.

sun bread another book by elisa kleven i think that santa brought this book a year ago, but we did not have an oven, there were many gray days last winter when i thought a little sunshine bread would brighten up our day...we will be trying this on the next gray day. recipe for bread included.

one last book for today is everything on a waffle by polly horvath.

this is about a girl named primrose whose parents are lost at sea and everyone thinks that they have perished but primrose is certain they are trying to return to her. she befriends a women who owns the local restaurant called the girl in the swing (is that the greatest name for a restaurant) and she serves all of her meals on a waffle. very fun story with recipes interspersed in the story.

soulemama had a great post a few days ago about books her family loves to read in the winter, i am going to be spending some time looking them up tonight and i am sure having some that i cannot find at my library transferred over.

summer reading program/book review

summer reading program/book review

Reading in a basket one of my favorite reading pictures-this is what i think of when i think of her love for books.

sweet pea is so excited about her reading program at our local library. i think if she continues at the rate she is at now she will be finishing harry potter's 4th book on her own by the end of the summer. i believe that this is her goal.

we are going to be starting our book reviews. when sweet pea was smaller we tried to have a book list with her playgroup friends. it was a not as straight forward because we were trying to share emails. this should work much easier.


she read the biggest fish by sheila keenan last night and it has some measuring projects for us to do in the back we are very excited to work on those today.