valentine's day here

L O V I N G

our red sparkling heart

on a big white canvas.

Hope you are feeling some   L O V E   today.

X X X

sparkles and lights

That's how our house has felt this Christmas.  Our first Christmas in our new US home.  Lights all around outside, 2 trees sparkling, candles, sparkling twigs with tiny little lights on, fairy lights in the kiddos bedrooms.  I don't think I'll ever want to take all the decorations down come the new year.

A sprinkling of snow just before Christmas.

 Candy canes - a Christmas necessity in our house!

And a beautiful display at a local deli.

My very favourite Christmas decoration. 

A big sparkling reindeer head on canvas over our fireplace.

(Made by the Huzz)

Sparkles and lights.

Boxing Day table setting for lunch with friends.

Annual trip to the Zoo Lights at Oregon Zoo. 

Love this tree at the entrance.

A little holiday crafting.  So many cardboard boxes in the house

we decided to make some little sparkly roof houses for Ruby to play with.

New hat taking a trip to the Zoo Ligths.

Gingerbread house and lollipops in lights.

Our Christmas wreath.  An oldie but I still love it.

Hope you've been enjoying the Christmas holidays and relaxing as much as we have.

multi-coloured recycled crayons

I had an hour spare this afternoon, after a busy morning that included my usual Tuesday two hours at Luca's school library and then a dash to the post-office and library, and onto Ruby's school for a 'Thanksgiving Lunch'.  It was nice to get home and have a cup of tea and sit still for a while.

I spotted on Instagram someone had melted all their old little pieces of broken crayons and made nice chunky ones from all the bits.  And as we have soooo many little bitty pieces of crayons that never get used, this was a perfect little project for Ruby and I.  She peeled off the remaining paper from the crayons and sorted them into the muffin tin.  Fifteen minutes in the oven at 275 F (135 C) and our old crayons were liquified.  Once out of the oven, I left them in the tin for about 45 minutes to cool and then popped them in the freezer just to make sure they were solid.  They fell out the tin with just a couple of taps, and now we have lovely multi coloured chunky crayons that look great as well.  Job well done!

iPhone artwork

I spied the book New York - Finger Paintings last week whilst shopping in my very favourite food store New Seasons.

These brilliant 'digital finger paintings' of New York life were created by Jorge Colombo using an iPhone!  Yes, really an iPhone and the application called 'Brushes' (do you know/use it?).  Well, I'm just about getting around the basics on my iPhone, so these pictures impressed me so much.  And as you can see, some of his work has graced the cover of The New Yorker too.

Can't wait for my copy of the book to arrive now.