World Book Day – dressing up

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World Book Day

There’s a rather curmudgeonly story by Dominic Casciani,  on the BBC’s website, where he  takes a dim view of the costume wearing side of World Book Day. He’s of the opinion that WBD has ceased to be about reading, and is now all about the dressing up.

I couldn’t disagree with him more.

Although the local schools have non-school uniform today, they also have authors visiting, and illustrators, and the day is all about BOOKS. Granted, children love dressing up, but I don’t think that’s all they take from the experience. Across the country, schools are holding special events and activities – book based activities. If dressing up adds to the excitement, then so much the better. Costumes can be home-made, or shop bought, and since lots of characters in contemporary books wear ‘normal’ clothes, they can come straight out of your child’s wardrobe.

But looking back, and ignoring the years when they were Rainbow Fairies or Disney Princesses, my girls made some really interesting costume choices. They have been:

  • Araminta Spook, a spooky little girl who lives with weird relatives, bats and ghosts, by wonderful children’s author Angie Sage.
  • Harry Potter. Yes, that’s right. Not Hermione. Harry.
  • Stephanie from Skulduggery Pleasant, a real kickass heroine, with a nice line in sarcasm.
  • And my favourite of all, complete with big red beard and an angry fairy with a frying pan – Mr Gum. I really, really loved that costume.

This year, being a lot older, the girls opted for Bella from Twilight, and Grace from the Shiver trilogy – both contemporary outfits. Not a lot of planning was involved, and this seemed to be the trend for the older children. Walking the dog, I saw several Katnisses, dressed in jeans and hoodies, indistinguishable from normal weekend clothes, not a bow and arrow in sight.

But I had to smile when I passed a Wally, of Where’s Wally fame.  Such a simple outfit. Sheer genius. And it featured hilariously in episodes of Miranda.

I’m all for dressing up for WBD. It’s fun. It’s book related. And it’s memorable, for the parents and the children.

Who knows…..maybe one day, kids might dress up as a character from one of my books…..

 

Grandma’s Camper Van

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Grandma parked her camper van beside a sprawling oak, leaving eight year old Lotta roadside, collecting payment. As a steady trickle of townsfolk appeared, Lotta watched Grandma delve amongst her treasures, dispensing potions for all manner of mumbled ailments.

It was sundown before the last customer skulked away.
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Homemade Christmas Decorations

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All our best Christmas decorations are home made. They’re special because we put our time and creative energy into making them, often with scraps left over from other projects.

Here are a few of my favourites –

Christmas decoration, 8 maids milking

Eight maids-a-milking from The Twelve Days of Christmas carol.

The maids are peg dollies, their skirts made from paper and doilies. The cow has his own little bell, rescued from a Lindt reindeer that was consumed a previous year 🙂

Rudolph.

He has a nodding head, and his body is made of a plastic milk bottle. Poor thing, his legs are a bit wobbly with old age, but Rudolph’s been coming out to play every Christmas for the last 7 years, which is pretty good for something we cobbled together with papier mache and a milk bottle!

The Gingerbread House.

Shiny cardboard overload on this one! We’ve got glitter, jewels, metallic card, cotton wool, and cardboard tubes all dressed up like candy canes. So over the top – I love it!

We don’t make all our decorations, but those are the ones we ooh and aahh over every year, the ones that come with memories

We also let the girls choose a new tree decoration each year, one for each of them, and I put a little label on each one saying which year we bought it. It’s part of our lead up to Christmas ritual.

I think a lot of people do this now, and there was a lot of thought and deliberation going into the choices being made at the Garden Centre last night. The girls took nearly an hour making their decision!

What about you? Do you have any special decorations, or rituals for this time of year?

 

 

Nano towel throw

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It’s official. I’m throwing in the towel.

pink towel on black floor
It’s November 30th tomorrow, the final day of Nanowrimo, and my word count stands at a little over 30,000 words.
That’s a Nano fail.
I feel kind of bad about it.
I was so sure I could make it happen – I even wrote a rather boastful (in retrospect ) post about how I could handle everything family life threw at me and still make that word count.
How little did I know.
My Nano novel started out like this….

20121129-174934.jpg
See that lovely clear path.
Straight as an arrow.
But, oh yes – up on the horizon there – see that? That’s right. A great big, tangled, old wood – all dark and forbidding.
And that’s what my nice, clear cut little Nano novel did to me – turned all dark and nasty and tangled.
I couldn’t make sense of it. Characters were rushing here and there with no clue what was going on, and speaking atrocious dialogue while they were doing it. My healthy 1,700 words a day habit was under attack. The manuscript was all CAPS LOCK, which is my way of adding a note mid- write.
Yikes. There was no write. It was all NOTE MID-WRITE.
But I ploughed on. Just slower.
I guess that’s ok.
It feels like a fail, but there are 30,000 words of a new novel sitting on my hard drive that didn’t exist a month ago.
I’m not giving up on it. I’ll probably finish by Christmas. And then I’ll hide it in a drawer until I can bear to look at it again.
Kristen Lamb has a great and inspiring post called Nanowhat now where she talks about exercising self discipline. Basically – small steps and build on it. Nanowrimo by its very nature flies in the face of that good advice. You need big steps, and lots of them, to make 50,000 words in a month.
If I learnt anything in November, it’s that I’m not ready for big steps yet. But little steps, five days a week?
That I can manage.
How about you?
Are you a Nano winner? What does that feel like? And are you happy with what you’ve written?
🙂

🙂

🙂

Making Mondays – Easy hamburger cupcakes

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As I’m trying to catch up on my Nanowrimo wordcount this weekend – an easy post for me – how to make hamburger cupcakes with the children.

These cupcakes are the quick and easy relation of those found online here at Bakerella. I once made the Bakerella version for a party, complete with fries in a little personalised holder, but for everyday……..

how to make hamburger cupcake

…..these little cakes are SO easy.

The ingredients:

  • Cupcakes, home made or store bought,
  • Green butter icing,
  • Yellow butter icing,
  • Seedless jam,
  • Jaffa cakes, or similar chocolate cookies.

how to make hamburger cupcakes

Remove your cupcakes from their cases, and slice in half. Spread icing on the base of the cake.

easy hamburger cakes

Place the Jaffa cake or cookie on the icing, and then top with more green icing (lettuce), yellow icing (mustard) and jam (ketchup).

easy hamburger cakesThen put the top of the burger on. SO EASY.

I don’t think they’re any healthier than the real thing, but children love sweet food masquerading as something else – especially if they can make it themselves!

Have fun with it!

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