{pinterest challenge: little houses}

The Pinterest Challenge is back! The idea: to take an idea you've pinned, and make it a reality. Last time, a blurry shot from a room set became a giant canvas. This time, I'm working on a smaller scale...

Inspired by all the miniature clay houses on my Little Houses board, I picked up a few packs of Sculptey on sale, and a jar of enamel paint. How hard can it be to make a pointy square?

Turns out, not hard at all, with the help of a steak knife and a rolling pin. The difficult thing was preventing crumbling. As you can see, lots of my houses have that chalky rubble-sort-of-look of a thousand-year-old Danish church.

Spread out across a map, it was just like looking across the fields in Jutland as we drove across Denmark this summer, seeing spire after spire poking out of the trees. (Just pretend it's not a map of Japan, where, I'm sure, mini skyscrapers would be much more appropriate)

A bit of stamping...

...and we're red-dy to write our own little house messages. I'm playing with the idea of an advent town -- twenty-four houses, stamped with the numbers 1 through to 24, one of which will appear each evening as Christmas grows near.

P.S. Bonus Pinterest Challenge also completed: to use a map, somehow, anyhow. Since Sophie kindly sent in the antique French map, I've bought a hand-drawn map of Bungay in Suffolk, been given the Japanese map above by my Dad, and a map of Bahrain by Justin. Now, to put them to use!

{it ain't me babe... or is it?}

Just to give you a bit of a scare, pre-Halloween, here's a little trip back in dressing-up history. Can you pick celebrity from impostor? 

One pair of perfect sunglasses 

+ 

a million bobby pins

 + 

a bit of pout 

+ 

curly hair and a big nose (thanks, Dad)

 = 

Bob really is Just Like a Woman. 

{confessions of tillyless tuesdays}

I was just going to show you the sweet little baby head with its sweet little baby mullet and the progress on tilly tuesdays: volume II, but then I decided I should tell you the truth. The truth is, I haven't consciously taken a photo of Tilly on a Tuesday for sixteen weeks. There have been plenty of photos, and there have been the usual amount of Tuesdays, but if they've occurred together, it's been purely by chance.

If you remember, tilly tuesdays: volume one was a handmade book of photographs, taken each Tuesday of Tilly's first year. Ah, younger Astrid, and her need for perfection. Once, late on a Tuesday evening, she did the unthinkable -- the most taboo act of motherhood -- she woke a baby just for an authentic Tuesday photo. (Yes, I can hear your collective gasp, echoing around the world... don't worry, I've learnt my lesson.)

But earlier today, wanting to read an email without being asked to see "beh-bee? beh-bee?" (and then screamed at when the email had no baby in it), I pulled down volume one. Fifty-two weeks of beh-bee, in handy sit-on-the-floor format. Peace. And then I realised --  today is Tuesday, and I hadn't yet taken a photo. I didn't take a photo last Tuesday, the Tuesday before, or any of the fourteen great-great-grand-Tuesdays that came before that.

Luckily, present-day Astrid cares very much less about perfection. "Ah, close enough," was my mantra of the afternoon photo sorting, along with "If I tell myself enough that the dates are accurate, I won't know the difference." Sorry, future Astrid, it doesn't sound like I've got much faith in your memory. At least I've labelled the book for you so you'll know which child is in the photos. You're welcome.

Okay, enough words. You're here for the photos, I know.

While the first volume was full of milestones like Tilly smiling or eating food for the first time, this year the firsts are of a rather different nature. Two months ago: the first time she sailed around a miniature version of the world in a Lego boat. A month ago: the first time she picked up a ladybird. A week ago: the first time she really played with a friend, rather than just trying to hit him on the head with toys (sorry, Ewan). 

And that is why I have to keep it up -- so that all these photos don't fade into the jumble of "when she was little," but get to tell their stories and take their place in this weekly history of a person. Well, that, and I love the thought of teenage Tilly going to the photobooth each week to take her picture, twenty-year-old Tilly taking blurry self-portraits on a 'vintage' iPhone, eighty-year-old Tilly sleeping in a room full of filing cabinets (a la Bill Cunningham) filled totally with Tuesday photos... 

...let's see, 80 years x 52 weeks = 4160 photos. Okay, she'd probably just have them on a CD. 

{the anti-ant alliance}

Not everything that is red is good. Fire ants, the little spot of red in our back garden, are most definitely not good. They've had there nasty little teeth (or whatever ants have -- pincers?) in my feet once too often this week.

Armed with a bottle of cheap vinegar, a hose pipe, and Justin's shoes (so as not to get my favourite red ones all anty), I set off in search of the Queen. And no, I wasn't going to offer her cucumber sandwiches.

Of course, no mission is complete without a band of trusty sidekicks. Bella, the scout, Tilly, the designated stamper (wearing thick protective wellies), and our mascot, one lucky Lego sheep, who may or may not have been lost in the grass along the way.  

Success? I don't know. We saw a lot of ants, gave them a good pickling with vinegar, and retreated to wait for the next battle. 

P.S. Wondering why vinegar? I read that vinegar confuses the ants' sense of who are their friends and who are their enemies, so they start to attack each other. Hopefully, they're wiping themselves out right this very second...

{let me eat cake}

One year old seems like ancient history now -- the frantic machining of Ruffle Fest 2011, the last minute erecting of The World's Simplest DIY Photobooth, and the whirlwind of a Cheese themed party. Really, it was only three months ago. Long enough, though, that I swooned with nostalgia when I saw Little Starling's first birthday photo shoot, using a strand of Red Red bunting (from my shop).

What a perfect little red chair! Our good old IKEA high chair is shaking its plastic tray in envy. And, for even more good ideas for birthday photography, you can see more photos from her shoot, including chubby little baby legs covered in cake, here. 

{matilda}

While back in England last month, I came face to face with twenty-something years of my stored stuff. A little trip down Sentimental Lane, yes, but knowing that whatever I saved, I'd have to carry in my suitcase and drag half way around the world, I was ruthless. Goodbye, ugly Beanie Babies (yes, you, Millennium bear, you purple monster). So long, high-school yearbooks, and all your teenage stress. Farewell, and sorry, plastic animals that I chewed legs off of.

But one thing that definitely made the suitcase, packed safely beneath two hundred Duplo blocks and three dozen slightly mangy Sylvanian Families, was a book. My favourite book. A book I've read at least twenty times, often in a single sitting. A book I was given just before my seventh birthday, (ta, Jenni) and which has proved to be rather important in our lives...

Matilda. This is what our Matilda, our fifteen-month-old Tilly-Bear, is named after. I loved the idea of infusing her with a bit of magic. Yes, we might have long afternoons of sitting on the bed trying to move pencils with our eyes, but who knows, perhaps she'll be able to.

And can you believe, it wasn't until two years ago, when I was telling my grandma about my favourite names for girls, that she mentioned her mother, my great-grandmother, was also called Matilda? Cha-ching, bonus family connection! It was meant to be.

Reading the book again, I'm finding lines that are full of the brilliance of Matilda. Wouldn't that be a lovely reminder of her namesake -- a quote from the book, displayed somehow in her room. It's not all boastful parenty if Roald Dahl said it, right? And, perhaps, a bonus photo of her great-great grandmother on the wall too, just for total Matildination.

{a little pot of happiness}

Inside this pot is the secret to happiness.

Well, lots of different ingredients to happiness, really. From making up a batch of Nigella's chocolate mousse to slipping on my threadbare red flannel pajamas, these are the things that have the power to turn any rough day into a smooth, rich and creamy day (yes, I've got my mind set on that mousse now...)

Of course, it works best if you can build up a stock of happy little slips when you're having a good day already. Whenever you bake a delicious new cupcake, discover a favourite new place to sit and read, hear a quote that speaks to you or a great song, add it to the pot, ready to be pulled out when you need to recreate that feeling. (Congratulations to Mumford & Sons, who made it into the pot less than a week after I'd heard of them!)

And it doesn't just have to be ideas. Along with the slips of paper, I keep a couple of stones in the pot. The chalky one, I found on the beach at Mariendal in Denmark, where we stayed this summer; it carries the taste of ice cream and Fransk hotdogs and the feeling of adventure. The striped stone is from Southwold, the nearest beach to my parent's home in England, and reminds me of long, peaceful walks along the shore, with the sea to one side and the bright beach huts to the other. Like tickets to another place -- and another state of mind -- just rolling them around in my palm is like an instant holiday.

So, all you need is a pot, a jar, a tub, and you're ready to start your own...

{red red Texas reds}

The annual Texas Reds Festival took place just up the road from us this weekend. Some go for the steak, some go for the wine. I go for the red.

Well, that and the free samples. Spicy shrimp-and-bacon meatballs took first place in free grub this year, followed closely by sausage-on-a-pretzel dipped in barbeque-and-cream-cheese sauce.

Our littlest food critic was thoroughly impressed, and received everything with a "nunga-nunga-nunga" (Tilly language for "give me more of what you've got"). We firmly believe that our visit to the Festival last year in June, while I was a full nine months pregnant, was what finally encouraged Tilly to join us in the real world. Either she wanted a grilled corn on the cob for herself, or she wanted a free hug from the shaggy barefoot Texan who has roamed the streets both years.

{where words once were}

While giving our Mormor tree a much needed drink of water today, I saw that the fabric hearts I hung had changed colour in the sun. The papers on which we wrote messages to Mormor were still safe in their pockets, but, magically, the ink had vanished.

Surely, when words disappear from our world, they appear in the next.

I like to imagine that as each letter I wrote faded over the summer, bleached by the Texas sun, the message grew clearer and darker and more defined somewhere else, somewhere Mormor is able to read it.

(Read about the meaning of our hearts here, and see how to make your own hearts here)

{the leaning tower of cupcakes}

Step back in time two weeks. Take one ninetieth birthday party, two days to get it all sorted, three tons of moving supplies from my parents' garage, and a glimpse of this Lakeland cardboard beauty. It could only be a job for the butcher, the baker, and the cupcake stand maker.

It all centred around sliding artist's palette-shaped cardboard pieces onto an old kitchen roll. Now, if Kate Spade or Paul Smith made kitchen roll, this is what it'd look like: brightly striped. Unfortunately, neither of them has had that idea yet, so I used coloured tape (that matched our cupcake flags) to cheery the whole thing up a bit. Because, let's face it, bare cardboard hardly says "Get your party on." 

What does say "Get your party on" is a dozen Bakewell cupcakes (again, from our recipe, inspired by Britain's second best amateur baker, Holly). As do the Union Jack cake cups. But what most definitely does not help the party mood is when adding the cupcakes to your cupcake stand makes the whole thing topple over. Ever think you're going to be the least popular person in the room? Well, drop twelve Bakewells on the floor fifteen minutes before a hoard of hungry pensioners arrive, and you will be. Guaranteed.

Kitchen weights to the rescue. Of course, meticulous Holly might throw a razor-edged meringue at me if she were to see her prized cakes being served on such a precarious pile of old cardboard and rusting metal. But she'd have to throw it rather hard to reach me in Texas, so I feel relatively safe showing you the photos now.

So, there you have it -- cardboard box to cupcake monstrosity in twenty-five moderately difficult steps. What can I say, at least it didn't overshadow the cakes. Which were, as always, scrummy.