That beautiful woman is called “The Button Lady.” It is one of Lou’s favorite stories and comes from a magazine Grammy got her called Ladybug. Grammy got us 3 magazines: Ladybug, Babybug, and Click. All from Cricket Magazines. The babybug magazine is made with some kind of laminated card stock for babies. It’s wonderful. We [...]

I bought some Japanese tape for me, and some for Lou. I was surprised with how much fun we had with it. It’s soft, like waxed paper. And colorful. It inspired some creative wrapping and jewelry work… On Grammy… We got our tape from Pretty Tape on Etsy.

Reader Kevin asked what a watercolor block was after my last post. So above is Lou’s watercolor block. And here is my watercolor block: It’s called a watercolor block because the pages are glued around the border to form a bit of a block. They have a place to stick a butter knife into them [...]

My daughter Lou is crazy for this old encyclopedia she borrowed from her friend. Montessori is a fan of non-fiction for kids, and after seeing how Lou reacted to the encyclopedia I got her a few more non-fiction books. It also happens that non-fiction is crazy inexpensive for some reason. I also wager these, or [...]

We have a lovely set of simple blocks. I longed to get the kids more blocks so they would have more fun with the blocks. A few months ago we got a huge bag of cube blocks. We added them to the simple blocks in a bigger basket. I noticed they weren’t playing with the [...]

Here are a few artists I’ve been eyeing that would make wonderful presents, in my opinion… Silkscreens: Fideli Sundqvist Robert Ryan Hello Handmade Paperie Ork Posters Letterpress: Green Chair Press Freshly Blended Tom Gauld Digital: Chad Hagen Yasmin Surovec Shira Sela Camilla Engman Time Machine Print by Dinosaur Comics Yap Yap Yap Studio Violet Sophie Blackall LMNOPrint [...]

Here are a bunch of sites I would buy art from if I had unending walls and a bottomless wallet: Mountain Town – Beautiful little landscape Ork Posters – Love these silkscreens, check out the Heart too Missed Connections – Prints about the Craig’s List “Missed Connections” section Nonsensical Infographics – Just beautiful! Lincoln Print [...]

I have always wanted a watercolor set and a little paint tray. Lou gave me an excuse to get matching sets (a gift from Grammy.) The thing about watercolors is that they dry out but you can just add water to use them again. It works great for us, since Lou’s interest jumps from one [...]

When Ero began putting things in his mouth I put all the beads up high with the other chokables. The other day Lou asked for them, so I brought them down and put them on our trusty tray on the kitchen table. We got these beads from Oma. Lou loves to sort them, as you [...]

Lou’s uncle got her some pyrex flasks for her birthday. They came in an awesome package with wonderful stickers on it. There were 5 flasks all together, pairs of the little ones and one big one. They were a hit with Lou’s cousin, too. They played water play with them. He got them from this [...]

These nesting dolls are a hit with Lou. They get really, really small. The biggest one is a bit hard to open for us though, but the rest Lou can do.