LATELY

Things have been pretty busy round here lately. Seems like all I've been doing is working and neglecting poor Stanley. My deadline is up though and yesterday I took a trip to the big smoke and handed in my artwork for my new children's book to Bloomsbury.
All went well and now I have just the cover to complete....

As I can't give away more details until later in the year, I have included snippets of my spreads as a teaser for you. It's due to be published in Spring 2013 yes it does really take this long! 

 

Hopefully it'll do well at the Bologna Book Fair this March - it is always nice to see my work published in other languages.
Right. Back to being a mama for a while now. Drawing on hold and stacking bricks awaits!

Have good weekends. xxx

Thanks to bleubird for letting us share...

STANLEY STYLE

his & HERS

mama: grated apple, porridge oaks soaked overnight in apple juice. natural yogurt and honey to top. 
stanley: same
on trying this for the first time stanley reached into his mouth and scraped the whole lot out and off his tongue. so not everything i try is a success - but hey i liked it! he looked at me with this expression of "what the hell was that?"

mama: eggy bread. topped with a sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon.
stanley: same but plain....no sugar or cinnamon.
he LOVES eggy bread.

ON TUESDAY WE READ...

......"Envelopes" by Harriet Russell
I'm continuing my series with another one of MY books rather than Stanley's. He's a bit poorly and didn't want to participate this week. This book is a collection of decorated envelopes all of which have been sent through the UK royal mail system.
Harriet has a lovely take on communicating an address - mazes, join the dots, anagrams, illustrations, puns, puzzles, and literary word play.

 

 

Amazingly the majority of the envelopes arrived at their intended destinations, postmarks to prove it! I love the fact that the postal employees obviously rose to the challenge to work out and deliver these envelopes!

Fun little book. Her blog is pretty darn lovely too...

LATELY

I haven't done a bits & pieces post for a while, but bleubird inspired me to get going again...so here is a round up of my week.

STANLEY STYLE

i find boys clothes so much harder to buy than girls...there seems to be some great second hand and vintage girls dresses etc, but very little for boys either in charity shops or ebay. my mum seems to think that this is because boys wear out their clothes?! she swears she has nothing left of my brother's stuff but a few cherished bits of mine. i don't like to go mad buying things i know he'll grow out of in seconds, it's a waste of money so it would be nice to find things that are great but won't break the bank!

anyway these posts are going to show some of the things i like to put stanley in. as you'll see from up coming posts...hardly any blue! why oh why is there SO much blue stuff for boys? and baby blue at that....urh!

if you have any good places to buy more interesting boys stuff i'd love to hear from you.

his & HERS

well hello. this will be a new (hopefully) regular post about what Stanley and i eat. i get in a bit of a rut with him sometimes...but now he is a year old and attempting to use his precious 4 and a half teeth he is getting braver about eating so i hope to have more joint meals together. i am sooooooo over pureeing everything!

i am constantly inspired by other mama blogs (particularly this one) and recipe websites for new ideas. we are a mainly veggie family (my husband is a vegetarian) and although neither stanley or myself are, we eat veggie more often than not. i think it gives more variety and makes me more adventouous. if we do eat meat is on a strictly local organic basis. so anyway stay tuned for our meal time posts. any tips on what you feed your little ones would be most welcome!

chicken and vegetable soup mashed a bit for stanley to handle the meat. olive oil and pepper to top mine off.

ON TUESDAY WE {WELL I} READ...

...The Iron Man by Ted Hughes and illustrated by Laura Carlin.

i thought today i'd do a post on what i was reading. i don't get the chance to read very much a the minute. It seems it's all baby books or cook books. which is fine but it's quite nice to read something for myself....even though it is a children's book!
this book is beautifully illustrated. laura carlin is an illustrator i really admire - her work is truly stunning. you should look at more of her work here. and i'm hoping to buy something from her 2012 ceramic sale soon. her 2011 sale completely sold out...and you can see why! amazing stuff.


the story is a beautiful and poignant one. Faber & Faber first published it in 1968. ted hughes originally wrote the story to comfort his children after Sylvia Plath's suicide. It's a much loved children's classic, known as a story to be told in five nights, the prose lending itself to be read aloud. However it also provides a narrative that has continued to resonate with adults - a criticism of human conflict.
The villagers do not greet the unexpected arrival of the Iron Man warmly. Only the little boy Hogath helps the giant 'metal man' leading him to the scrap yard where he can feast on the mountains of old stoves, fridges trucks and railway engines. The rest of humanity do their best to destroy him. Then one day an even more frightening creature arrives - the fierce and terrible space-bat-angel-dragon, who can only be stopped by the Iron Man...

 

Laura Carlin has depicted the Iron Man with a shadow showing that he is a 'real' being. The pencil drawn villagers only receive a shadow at the end of the story. it's beautifully interpreted by her. she uses stunning details, foldouts and paper cuts to full effect. if you can get hold of the version i think it's really worth having.


footnote: stanley you can see if not yet allowed to look {eat/tear} at this book. and when he can sit still for longer than 5 seconds i will read it to him ;-)

INSTAGRAM

i am obsessed with this! it didn't take long. i thought i'd just follow a few friends and a few people from blogs i follow - this one and this one mainly.
and before i know it i'm updating daily and beginning to follow more and more!
i like it though as a medium. it's like a twitter in photos. it's really nice to see instantly what is happening all over the world at that very moment.
anyway i'm sarahillustrator if you're on it stop and say hello there too.

 

and there are some really nice websites to turn your pictures into other things. posters and magnets being my favourite so far.

PS thanks so much for all your kind comments about the blog, and for voting. you are all so lovely :) you've moved my ranking up from 550 to 365!!!!!! 

PLEASE & THANK YOU

hello.
you may have noticed the 'new' button on the left hand side of my blog. well if you could be sure to press it daily that'd be uh-mazing. you see the thing is i've really enjoyed updating my blog recently - making more effort with what i post so it might be interesting to those that stop by, and i've also been so touched that some of you have, and more than that, that you leave me a comment too to say so. it really is lovely. so it would be nice for me to have even more visitors, especially as i'm about to attempt to put some things into an etsy shop, and you know, now that i'm a stay at home mama it'd be great to earn a wee bit of cash ;-) if that sounds like i'm asking for money, i'm really not. just good old fashioned support!
so i won't bombard you with emails begging you to vote all the time and put it at the bottom of every flipping post. just asking the once pretty please if you could remember to hit that button once in a blue moon i'd be very grateful. thanks for reading, saying hello, and the support.
thanks so much :)
love sarah & stanley xxx

see. look how happy it makes him having you all here!

ON TUESDAY WE READ...

...The Big Book of Words and Pictures by Ole Konnecke published by Gecko Press. It is so wonderful! Stanley got it for Christmas (from me of course!) and it has been a lovely book to pour over. there is so much going on - every page has got loads to look at and discuss. the characters are quirky and fun. i think Stanley will get more and more out of this book as he gets older.

It covers various activities and work, as well as colours, the seasons, animals, the alphabet, numbers and emotions.

Gecko Press publish beautiful books - really unusual and quirky. makes a lovely change to some of the mainstream dross that's out there! check out their website when you get a minute...

A FIRST BIRTHDAY

I'm sorry I'm so late to publish this post. It now seems like an age ago that Stanley was one (although really it's only a week) i can't believe i have a toddler in the house. i guess that is what he is now? well the toddler tantrums have begun so i don't think i can call him a baby anymore?!
what a year. what an amazing, stressful, emotional, scary and loving year i've had. Stanley was indeed planned, i know i have the ideal home to bring him up...husband, check. 3 bed semi (with garage?!) check. cat, check. family living nearby, check...but still. no one can warn you how hard it will be to bring up a child. no one. even with support all around me it sometimes is really hard. but i wouldn't have swapped this year for anything in the world. i love how Stanley is growing up, becoming a person, with a personality. i can start to see perhaps glimses of what he might be in the future, and i love that. i love him. and i love what he's made me.

here are some snaps of his birthday....{sorry there are quite a lot}

here's to another year :)

"Shoes? Where are all the toys?!"

 Marc Boutavant pull along toy = amazing!

Cheers!

 playing blocks with a bigger boy

footnote: we had two birthdays. the first on his actual day with family and my very best friend with her new baby. the second was for other friends and their kids. and no, i did not bake the second amazing cake. it was a chocolate and beetroot cake from treacle.