of the gift of color (and the love of mason jars)

When two very special friends got married last month, we knew we wanted to get them a very special and unique gift.  Something that was as creative, low-key, and beautiful as they are.  When we first saw the website 500 pencils, we thought, “hey, that would be a funny gift.”  And then we thought about it some more and we laughed really hard.  And then we stopped laughing and really thought, “actually, that is perfect.”  Each month the happy couple receives a fancy pack of 25 pencils from Japan mailed to their home – each set in its own color scheme – colors with names like Prince Valiant, Little Red Wagon, and Lochness Monster.

I just love the idea of storing colored pencils in glass jars.

Photo thanks to Lillie in the City

…and I know these are two people who understand the joy of the glass jar…

Photo thanks to Baryonic Matter

(They are the founders of the Autumn Preservation Society, preserving autumn leaves in glass jars around town).

So on the day of the wedding we gifted them their first mason jar for their pencils and a little hand-drawn, typewritten note and a “Love Preservation Society” tag, for good measure.

We just heard that the first shipment finally arrived and is beautiful.

Above photos thanks to Baryonic Matter

We are so glad.

hiking the valley: dawson conservation area

Alexandria Dawson Conservation Area – Hadley, MA

Park on a pull-off on the corner of West Street and North Lane and follow the Connecticut River to the left.  The height of the levee offers great views of farms and the river.  It loops around toward Route 9.  Take a left onto the Norwottuck Rail Trail and follow it back to West Street to make a nice loop.

Trail Length: About 3 miles

Trail Difficulty: Easy

Letterboxes: One and more on the bike path if you’re up for it.

View: ♥♥♥  Horizons full of corn fields, mountains, and rushing water.  On nice days you’ll often see hot air balloons or small planes taking in the beautiful view from above.

welcome november

frost

The frost was beautiful on my car this morning.

It looked like feathers.

celebrating art & autumn

To end a gloriously warm and beautiful fall day, we attended The Royal Frog Ballet‘s Stella Arco Surrealist Cabaret and Pumpkin Walk.  As the sun set in radiant oranges and reds behind the mountains, we were led on a journey through the stars, celebrating all things art and autumn – music, theater,  poetry, and giant puppets in the fields of Bramble Hill Farm in Amherst, MA.  Then, in the dark, we walked down the farm road lined with glowing hand-carved pumpkins where a bonfire, hot cider and ginger tea and other pumpkin goodies awaited. Warmed by the fire, we looked up in the dark field to where the constellations were bright overhead, and finally, finally, welcomed fall.

fall at the farm

We only have a few farmshare pick-ups left this season and I will really miss our weekly visits to the farm for fresh produce and hugs from our favorite farmer.  Nothing beats tomatoes off the vine, little kids nagging farmers for lettuce to feed the goats, picking strawberries in the sunshine and just-cut bouquets of wildflowers.  The winter is long and cold in New England, but I am looking forward to the pounds and pounds of potatoes and onions and carrots that will help us get us through.

yarn bombing

Photo via Crisp Green

Yarn Bombing (also known as guerilla knitting) is a colorful and unique (and easily removable) form of graffiti – think: making colorful sweaters for things that don’t normally wear sweaters.  I love the idea of extreme crafting, knitting around anything you can – bus stops, streetlamps, or trees.  It adds some needed extra color to every day life as well as give people something unexpected to shake their days up.  I just heard of a new book that I’m going to have to check out.  Anything that involves tutorials on being “stealthy like a ninja” is allll right.  I imagine this has become quite the underground movement – each knitter with his or her own tag, plotting the next big strike.  How much fun would it be to walk up to the bike rack and see that someone had crocheted your bicycle?

Photo from Molly Goatwax

Photo via Craft Zine

Photo via Crisp Green

Photo by Craig Sinclair via Yarn Bombing

Photo by Art Yarn via Yarn Bombing

Photo via eHow

paper dolls

Do you adore Flight of the Conchords?  Do you wish you had little paper cut-outs of Brett and Jemaine?  Well, my brother-in-law did (okay fine, he didn’t know that he wanted them until I gave them to him) so I created these fabulous paper dolls using the handy-dandy free downloadable template from Morgan Cleave Art & Design. Now you can have all the fun too.

You can print them in color if you have a color printer – you don’t necessarily have to color them in by hand like I did unless you want to.

P.S. I didn’t make the Jemaine’s bass amp because I didn’t think anyone would notice and it was kinda a lot of work.

P.P.S.  My sister noticed.

scrumdiddlyumptious

I found these fabulous videos by electronic artist Pogo on YouTube. He takes many of my favorite childhood movies, splices scenes and sounds from them and then remixes them, to create an entirely new and funky techno-esque music .

This one is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the good, freaky one with Gene Wilder):

This one is from Hook:

This one is from Mary Poppins:

There are others – The Secret Garden and The Sword in the Stone that I adored as a child.  I suggest you watch them all.

fun fiction

It’s always fun to do writing exercises with friends – one person writes a line or a paragraph of a story and then passes it to the next person who then writes something and passes again.  The end result is always crazy and fun because the story is bound to take a bizarre and unexpected turn in multiple people’s hands and it’s wonderful to see myriad writing styles blend together into one piece.

So imagine the collective literary power of the coolest group of talented children’s writers when they get together.  This has become reality with a new round robin-esque serial novel, titled The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.  And free online!  The very fine and funny National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, Jon Scieszka is up first with Episode 1. The amazing Katherine Paterson is next up with a new episode on October 9th.  I can’t wait.