Bjørn takes such pride in the fact that his father is an author and illustrator & positively oozes with it when he tells you about Tomas' books; so it's no surprise, really, that he's taken to writing and illustrating his own.
It's fun to see the planning he puts into them, the thought he puts into his story lines and character development (or lack of thought, depending on his frame of mind!). It's also a treat to pick out the influences on his work: the disco floor is lifted directly from his Club Penguin house.
I made a simple word template for Bjørn to use so he doesn't have to draw in the cells each and every time, and so that I'd have a clean margin to bind his books, but Tomas informed me this is unnecessary since the cells should be different heights & widths. You can tell who the real artists are in the family, eh? :-)
Maggie, Tor, my Mom and I went on a little shopping spree to MIchael's yesterday and I was in heaven (except for having to chase Tor around as much as I did). Our local Michael's just had a massive makeover so it was extra incredible to browse the aisles & discover all sorts of pretty things & to let my imagination run free for a bit.
I loaded up on craft-room necessities like bottles for glitter, silver beads, and some shelving to help gain control over our piles of craft paper. But the BEST purchase by far was this lovely Martha Stewart kit to make your own Christmas Village for $12 & change. It comes with a church, four lovely houses, six trees and a happy snow-man. The house here is JUST like ours & even has the door to the kitchen on the side like ours and the one window above it.
Maggie spent a good two hours building and decorating her village as soon as we got home, and this morning has been busy making people to live in it, including our entire family and Loki, our cat.
This set is so special with Maggie's embellishments that I know it will get packed away carefully & treasured at Christmas-time for a long, long time to come.
When we lived in California, Maggie & Bjørn had a good buddy named Joey who was right between them in age. The three would often have playdates together where they would play a game Joey had invented that resembled a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and a Pokemon quest. Since moving back to New York, my two have shared the "Imagination" game with all their new friends to great success.
Today, Maggie asked if we could make this delicious snack that they used to have at Joey's house. It's incredibly easy to make & the kids are mad for it. We call them "Bananas a la Joey".
Just melt chocolate at a low temp in a heavy bottomed pan or use a double boiler if you have one (we don't). I used a bag of Ghirardelli's and added a bit of milk to help keep it smooth as it melted.
Cut your bananas in half and insert a popsicle stick in the center.
Dip in melted chocolate, and coat completely.
Lay out on a platter & put in the freezer for about half an hour.
CONFESSION: we only held out ten minutes before caving and gobbling ours up.
SECOND CONFESSION: Tomas, we tried to save one for you, but discovered a chocolate covered imp helped himself when we weren't looking.
This year I'm a bit sad on Diwali because we usually celebrate the Indian festival of lights with our friends Rishi & Meredith, and their two beautiful daughters. Since we're now 3000 miles away, it's not so practical to pop over for a delicious Indian meal & share in this lovely tradition.
Instead, I'll be lighting candles, perhaps doing a craft or two with the kids from years past, and listening to some rocking Bollywood tunes. Oh, and I think I'm also going to have to break out our Indian gear.
Tonight will be SPARKLY in my house.
PS: if you live out on Long Island & know of a good place to grab some Indian food, please let me know! We miss our butter chicken, naan & papadam!!
(great, now I'm maudlin AND hungry!)
In '89-'90 Tomas and I lived in Paris for a short while. We rented my brother's apartment in the 2eme & lived off of odd jobs and our savings. We drank cheap red wine, ate baguette & rotisserie chicken, read the Herald Tribune, and explored the city on foot. It was lovely, but we found that all the friends we made were foreigners, not Parisians, so after a while when our cash ran out decided to settle back in NYC.
While we were in Paris we went to see Batman the weekend it premiered there. I remember how excited we were to be going to see an American movie (funny, since we hadn't been in France all that terribly long). We bought our 'billets' & a snack and settled in to watch in the darkened theater. It took a nano-second for us to realize the expensive-for-us mistake we'd made. It was in VF -- Version Française! What was supposed to be a dark movie turned into a bit of a screwball comedy for us as we giggled through the silly translations & even more absurd voice overs. "I am Batman" became "Je suis Batman" -- just say it out loud with gravitas and you'll fall into the giggles, too.
All this is a long way to segue to Tor's latest obsession (aside from that t-shirt he's been wearing for a few weeks now): Super Heros!
He's finally at the age where he can articulate his desires very clearly (and loudly), and this year has pronounced that he wants to be Batman for Halloween.
After a bit of wrestling with & cussing at my sewing machine (really a matter of me remembering how to fill & insert the bobbin correctly), I was able to construct a basic hat for the costume out of two sheets of black felt that had been intended for a Halloween craft. I used Maggie as my head model as Tor was napping.
Once he woke up I forced him to put the hat on so I could pin it in place, then take it of so I could sew, then try it on again ... repeated many times over. The cape is stolen from Bjørn's Darth Vader costume that he wore a few years back.
The last part of the costume should be arriving in the mail mid-week from Amazon
The added bonus here, aside from having super-cute 100% cotton PJs added to his wardrobe, is that it's a two-for-one deal -- Tomas and I made a Superman costume for Bjørn when he was two, and all we have left is the cape with the emblem Tomas appliquéd.
Now all I need to do is teach Tor to yell "Je suis Batman!" instead of "I Batman, ROAR!" :-)
