What I Read: January Book Reviews

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

If you don’t know anything about Mindy Kaling, or you don’t like her character Kelly Kapoor on The Office, or think she is her character Kelly Kapoor on The Office and are therefore expecting this to be a bunch of TMZ gossip/Hollywood garbage, or (like me, tbh) you just don’t watch The Office anymore.. WHO CARES READ THIS ANYWAY! In Kaling’s own words, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is about “romance, female friendships, unfair situations that now seem funny in retrospect, unfair situations that I still don’t think are funny, Hollywood, heartache, and my childhood. Just that really hard-core, masculine stuff men love to read about.” And in my words: this is an absolute feel-good read that I want to hand out to literally every woman I know. It’s funny for sure, but it’s also wonderfully sweet and refreshingly normal. She’s this perfectly friendly combination of chic, clever, successful and grounded and it’s a pleasure to feel like you’re buddying up next to her reading this.

Stand out essays include Kaling’s thoughts on friendship (Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities), marriage (Married People Need to Step it Up), and body image (Chubby for Life).

I remember being in first grade, in Mrs. Gilmore’s class at Fiske Elementary School, and seeing that Ashley Kemp, the most popular girl in our class, weighed only thirty-seven pounds. We knew this because we weighted her on the industrial postal scale they kept in the teacher’s supply closet. I was so envious. I snuck into the supply closet later that same day to weight myself. I was a whopping sixty-eight pounds.

Some of the first math I understood was that i was closer to twice Ashley’s weight than to her weight.

“Don’t be closer to TWICE a friend’s weight than to her actual weight,” I told myself. This little mantra has helped me stave off obesity for more than two decades.

For fans of Bossypants and Bridget Jones’ Diary alike. Even some dudes. And if none of that has got you sold on this book, check out the childhood photo of Kaling on the back cover:

Tell me you don’t want to own that.

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Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

One of the recently announced Newbery Honor books, Inside Out & Back Again deserves all the praise it’s received. A verse novel that reads almost like a diary, it tells the story of a 10 year old girl who feels silenced and lost when she and her family end up in Alabama after fleeing Saigon as refugees during the Vietnam War. Suddenly they’re not only foreigners, but poor and Ha, once the smartest in her class, is bullied and made to feel stupid in school simply because she hasn’t mastered the English language yet. The word count may be small, but the wallop Ha’s stream of consciousness packs is not.

That said, I didn’t fall instep with Inside Out & Back Again immediately. The writing is abrupt and fragmented. It’s choppy. But the more you read, the better you know Ha, how funny and smart and temperamental she is. The deeper you delve into her family’s immigration story, and experience her struggle to speak English and make friends, the easier it is to understand Lai’s very intentional style of poetry. The speech may not be perfect, or it may just not be what the American ear is used to hearing, but it reminds the reader to ask themselves: what about the content? It’s all too easy to quickly misjudge someone because of a language barrier (especially when, as Ha bemoans, English seems designed to make foreign speakers feel stupid with all of it’s unnecessary articles), to label them dumb or inferior simply because their means of expression are basic. It reminds the reader to focus on content, on intention and meaning rather than superficial imperfections.

This book is a lot of things. It’s an immigration and refugee story. It’s an introduction to the Vietnam War. It’s a glimpse into history and offers both beautiful and heartbreaking experiences most readers will never experience for themselves, from the sway of a mango tree in Saigon to the sensation of starving and the stench of human filth aboard a cramped refugee ship. It puts the reader in the position of being a victim of taunting. It shows how it feels to be so outside you don’t look right, speak right, or even believe right. In short, it’s a crash course in being an outsider.

IO&BA does so much so well, but what it does best and most importantly, is encourage empathy. I know, it’s hard to imagine a book conveying so much story and emotion, and in POETRY no less, without being a drippy over-the-top history lesson cum sob fest. But I kid you not. It’s powerful and moving and feisty as hell. An important book that I hope many children will be introduced to and discuss in their schools.

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Cold Cereal by Adam Rex

Adam Rex has the creativity and artistic ability of approximately a bajillion talented people smushed together to form a single human being. He’s hands down one of the most talented and versatile picture book makers working today, and he’s an equally talented writer. Plus he’s funny and his ideas are weird and he’s good at responding to whiney overprotective moms and he’s not even ugly! At all! HOW!? Truly, I find myself baffled by the unfairness of it all, but if it means I get to read books as entertaining as Cold Cereal I guess I can deal.

Cold Cereal is the first in a middle grade trilogy about three kids teaming up to take on a huge and evil cereal corporation: The Goodco Cereal Company. Goodco’s slogan — There’s a little bit of magic in every box — aren’t empty words, and through a series of puzzles and strange encounters with real life cereal brand characters and magical beings, Scott figures out something sinister is going on in the neighborhood. An exciting and strange combination of action and adventure, conspiracy theory, secret society, Arthurian legend, mythical monsters, and sugary breakfast food, there’s a lot going on here. Truth be told, the story overextends itself a bit in the end (save a villian or two for the sequel, my man!) and there’s a long-winded “and this is how I fooled you!” speech from a villianess I could have done without… but the journey there is well executed, well written, and extremely fun. Plus there’s this treehouse that Big Foot lives in and it’s really cool, trust me.

As in The True Meaning of Smekday (a definite five star read), Rex’s characters, whether alien, nerdy middle schooler, or movie monsters, are all expertly and uniquely voiced oddballs. Even here, where he’s taken recognizable cereal brand characters like the Trix rabbit and the Lucky Charms leprechaun, he makes them very much his own through his fantastic use of dialect, illustration, and strange behaviors (the rabbit’s a lisping thief, and despite looking like a baby-sized mobster in a track suit, the leprechaun’s a pretty decent fellow). Plus the idea of a cereal conspiracy is just smart. It’s the perfect vehicle for major corporations to manipulate American children and it’s something most kids are pretty passionate about. (I myself was all about Count Chocula)

From his picture book beginnings (Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich) to middle grade fiction (this and Smek Day) and somewhat less successful YA (Fat Vampire), I love Rex’s enthusiasm for sharing monsters and general kookiness with kids. I look forward to seeing all of the completed art when this hits shelves in early February, and will definitely continue the series.

Recommended for fans of The Secret series

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This is a lot like an interior design book. Great style, I’d visit if I could, but nothing very substantial. The love story is that of two equally talented though theoretically opposed magicians who have been pitted to out-perform one another in a luxurious and unexplainably magical traveling circus. Illusionist Cecilia and undercover assistant and seeming straight man Marco have been slated to duel one another since childhood without knowing who they oppose or what’s at stake. When they finally meet and start to piece the game together, Celia and Marco love affair reads stiff and melodramatic. The rest of the novel’s large cast are definitely interesting, but too mysteriously. Intended to be part of their allure, I have no doubt, I found it hard to feel invested in their fates. And maybe I’m very particular in this respect, but when I’m reading fantasy — specifically when I’m reading about ordinary people with magic powers — I want to know what makes it possible. I, ideally, want an almost Tolkien-esque background story. Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a great example of how you make magic lessons seem plausible in a real world setting. Here the magic we’re told Celia and Marco trained for intensively, even painfully, since youth comes too easily. Yeah Marco has a bunch of symbol-covered paperwork and hair clippings littering his desk, but it seems like the mere thought of something fantastic makes it a reality and I wasn’t quite buying it. That’s not to say their fantastic ideas weren’t beautiful, though. Because they made some heavenly scenes.

Many readers will undoubtedly be enchanted by the setting, and that is primarily what Morgenstern has developed here. The circus and it’s many tents are wonderous and richly described. It’s a wholly unique and dazzling setting, to be sure, and I can see being swept up in it’s decadence, the strange beauty of the performers, the very particular fashion, but so much of what’s written felt redundant and I tired of reading about color schemes (Everything is black and white. Everything. There’s no need to keep reminding us.) “I wish i were watching this instead” was a recurring thought I had while reading. There are good ideas here and it has all kinds of potential to make a gorgeous film. And that’s exactly what I hope for this story. To see it instead. But, for now at least, it’s a book, and as a read it’s all context, little content.

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Scones and Sensibility by Lindsay Eland

“Upon turning the last delicate page” of her first Austen novel, and impassioned by her love of Lucy Maud Montgomery, 12 year old Polly Madassa announces that she will “no longer remain a material girl living in a material world, but [will] grasp on to the skirts of those elegant women before [her] and become at once a young lady of impeccable breeding, diction, and manner”. Alongside her fantasy of living a 19th century lifestyle, Polly idealizes the love lives of heroines Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Shirley to such a degree that the relationships she finds in real life don’t measure up. Wanting life to be as romantic as possible she appoints herself town match-maker and sets about finding appropriately storybook-like better halves for her older sister, best (I mean “bosom”) friend’s father, and two elderly neighbors. Using her summer job delivering goods for her family’s idyllic Jersey Shore bakery turns out to be the perfect means for plotting romantic entanglements (and delivering delicious baked goods from anonymous — ie made up — suitors). While their aren’t too many hitches in her scheme to unite one couple, Polly fails miserably in her efforts to break up and find love for the others. The results are disastrously funny and it makes for a pretty charming story for those that finish.

Polly’s over-the-top voice is one of the best and worst things about Scones and Sensibility. Her best linguistic efforts to sound Victorian and lovely on each of the novel’s 305 pages will either delight or deter readers from the get-go. Chuck full of adjectives, many of which are unnecessary and overused (she is only 12, after all), Polly’s sentences sometimes feel redundant, but more often the effect is pretty funny. Between her feeble attempts at poetic language, her inability to keep her nose out of other people’s business, and her rather prejudiced view of what makes a passable suitor, Polly’s flaws are obvious. Fortunately her older sister is usually around to tell her when to “can it”. One thing that can more universally be appreciated is the spectacularly breezy descriptions of the story’s Shore setting. And who wouldn’t want to eat at the Madassa Bakery?

Scones and Sensibility treads a pretty cute path but it’s not for everyone. A nice Valentine’s read for tweens with a penchant for the classics, or fans of The Mother Daughter Book Club will find it undeniably silly and fun. Not a bad one to read with mom either. And a plate of pastries.

Gone Tumbling

I’ve made efforts to keep an online sketchbook several times over the years, but it always seems to fall by the wayside. It’s too much effort to scan, color correct, upload images, and update my site or blog just to show you something in an idea format, though I always enjoy seeing other artists’ sketches. Then it occurred to me that Tumblr exists. And that Tumblr is the simplest solution possible. So while I promise to update, for me, the point is to show you new, hopefully fun stuff, not to waste time laboring over it, so they may just be iPhone photos, and I hope that’s okay.

Check out my sketchbook at shecanliftahorse.tumblr.com. I’ve uploaded a handful of sketches from each of my personal sketchbooks dating back to 2002. Of course, you can also find the link on my website, shecanliftahorse.com

Book Review: Delirium

You know there’s something special about a book when after turning the last page, your brain immediately begins generating a list of all the people you can’t wait to buy it for (a friend), loan it to (my sister), and recommend it for (you!). If, like roughly half the human population, you recently finished The Hunger Games trilogy and are asking yourself “what next?”… add this to your reading list. It’s exciting, it’s thought-provoking, and yes, it’s a love story. I hope high school teachers will add this to their syllabi because it’s a great discussion book and it may just end up being that one book that survives being read in school (for me it was Lord of the Flies).

Delirium is set in a future United States, but not a futuristic one. Suburbs, high school, and kids are entirely familiar; you won’t find anyone wearing fluorescent spandex jumpsuits or antennae, but the government and laws seem like that of a foreign country, if not another planet. And it’s all because of love. Amor Deliria Nervosa. A so-called “disease” that the government has brainwashed it’s citizens to blame for any and all bad things, from sadness to war. Too much passion leads to unhappiness, instability, and danger. And so marriages, careers, entire lives are completely arranged by the government. Girls and boys don’t interact and premarital sex isn’t just taboo, it’s enough to get you killed.

Lena, your average 17 year old high school student, is mere months away from receiving The Cure — a mandatory procedure that all 18 year olds undergo to rid themselves of the possibility of infection. And for her it can’t come soon enough. What we understand to be a lobotomy, Lena sees as a solution. No more pain. No more feeling. With Lean’s sordid family history (and all those darn feelings of hers), she can’t wait to have her slate wiped clean. That is, until she meets Alex. Oooer.

Like The Hunger Games, or Farenheit 451, Delirium is at once social commentary, dystopian horror story/cautionary tale, and yes, love story, too. What’s so great about Delirium, what makes it singularly worthwhile, is it’s excellent pacing and exhilarating and compelling experience of first love. The relationship between Lena and Alex is, surprisingly, one of the aspects I think adult readers will most enjoy, if reluctantly. Whether you’re a teen waiting to feel the rush of a first relationship or not, the stomach-churning, heart-racing, sweaty-palmed glory of first love is honest and truly told. That this is Lena’s first time even hanging out with a boy and breaking the law only adds excitement.

As reluctant as I was to put my copy down, I also found myself starting thoughts with “but…” a lot. I struggled to accept the culture of the novel. Not only is love equated with illness and not only are lobotomies as common as flu shots but, most difficult to imagine, the Bible has been eradicated (if only to be edited and repackaged). Now that’s an America I just can’t imagine. It wasn’t because Oliver hadn’t developed the space of the novel adequately, though. And I came to see it not as a flaw of the novel, but as mirror onto my own reading sensibilities. What I’m willing and unwilling to accept ideologically, regardless of how well or poorly an idea is written. I can’t see the plot of this novel happening. Ever. But I can’t imagine the plot of The Magician King or Neverwhere, both books I read this past year, happening either, yet I didn’t bat and eye at those stories. So what’s the difference? I think it’s the Delirium is otherwise real and recognizable. There aren’t any magic doors or secret passageways. …or rat armies (ahem). Is it not sci-fi enough for me to take everything with a grain of salt? Or is it that it’s too impossible to imagine a life without love? I have trouble imaging how a world like that of The Book Thief or The Diary of Anne Frank could exist as well, and yet… In the end, the believability (or imaginability?) of Delirium might actually be what’s most interesting about it.

The Q&A with Lauren Oliver at the back of the book is particularly welcome for her ideas, if vague, about how the America of her novel could have come to resemble something out of The Village. She suggests that this America is a result of a war torn country, where fear and desperation has lead to a complete government overhaul. And hey, this is only part one in a trilogy. There’s, hopefully, much to be revealed. Point is, should you find yourself similarly challenged to accept the world of Delirium, I predict you will also find yourself similarly wrapped up in it and looking forward to book two, which hits shelves (real and otherwise) February 28th.

SITE LAUNCH!

I’m happy to announce my new portfolio site is live! Killmargot.com is officially dead and buried, so please update your links to my new e-home: shecanliftahorse.com.

I’ve paired content down quite a bit and the new cleaner design allows me to share larger images than before. A shop and “sketches” page are still in the works.

I hope you’ll check it out!

The Tale of Alfred & Alma

Last month I blogged about the butterfly domes my sister Michelle made for our wedding in October. Since then I’ve created an image for some Insect Shoppe promotional materials and I asked Michelle to retell me the story of Alfred & Alma’s namesakes so that I could share that with you today as well. Plus I just love hearing it myself. It’s a beetle love (and death) story and it makes my heart gooey.

As told to me by Michelle Johnston…

As long as I had worked at Evolution, I had wanted a rhinocerous beetle. A living one. So one Christmas a few years back my fiancé Kevin got sneaky and purchased one from my then-employer. We named our rhino beetle Alfred after Kevin’s favorite director, Alfred Hitchock. Alfred was a kindly gentleman and could be kept in a tank with other insects, to no one’s detriment. Before getting Alfred, I had a few darkling beetles, but only one living at that time, a female. I hadn’t named her, which is uncommon for me, but nothing seemed to strike me. I believe that by not naming a beetle they feel unloved and, as a result, die sooner. It’s true too; other people that have owned beetles are shocked at the lifespan of my pets. I say it’s because I love them.

I put the nameless darkling beetle in the tank, so that Alfred would have a friend, and decided that though they were very different, they should marry. So we named her Alma after Hitchock’s wife. Alfred spent his first 3 months mostly under the dirt sleeping but I would dig him out daily and hold him. Finally, when the weather turned warmer he emerged from the earth and we found he loved crawling up branches and hanging from the top of the terrarium to stare at our cat. At the same time Alma was beginning to lose some of her limbs — this is common for beetles — she lost several tarsi and eventually a leg, but she still managed to roam around with Alfred and kept him company. That May Alfred passed away and Alma followed in his death just a few days later. I named the shop Alfred & Alma’s Insect Shoppe because they were my favorite insects. I was pretty devastated when Alfred died. They were so sweet and happy together and they were a tribute to my love, Kevin, and to his love for film. Hitchock and his own Alma were seriously in love and did everything together. She was the backbone of everything he did (so Kevin tells me). Alfred & Alma — director and wife, beetle and wife — is both a tribute and symbol of our own relationship, in bug form.

Details. Click to view larger. This is the scale I actually worked at.

This was my first time “painting” in Photoshop and I loved it. I’m a pretty impatient paint mixer, so the ease of this has probably ruined me for good.

If you like lookin’ at bugs, follow Alfred & Alma’s Insect Shoppe on Facebook and Twitter.

2011: Year in Review

2011 deserves a slap on the back. It was a banner year, a year we’ll celebrate for the rest of our lives… hopefully with cake. In the heart of fall, arguably the loveliest time of year, I married my best friend, danced like a fool with far away friends whom I love, and had the pleasure of seeing months of wedding preparation and worry pay off in the most satisfying way. I was overwhelmed by the support of so many good and generous people all coming together to celebrate our marriage and future. Hands down, it was the best day I’ve ever known.

People ask if it’s weird to suddenly start referring to someone as “my husband” or note how “crazy” it is that I’m married now, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. To me it just feels right. For one, after a year and a half of referring to someone as your fiancé you can’t wait to get the words “husband and wife” out of your mouth, and for two… well, when I think back to the 9th grade version of myself and remember my achingly huge crush on Ben, the same one I silently harbored all through college, it does seem a bit crazy. Like marrying a rat-tailed New Kid on the Block after kissing the poster image of them hung over your bed every night… if I may make a horribly gross analogy. It’s the definition of a dream come true.

Photos by This is a Love

2011 was also the year I moved back to my home state of Michigan. It was about a decade ago that I moved to New York City for college and I honestly didn’t think I’d ever be back. I don’t always love it — the strip malls still get me down and I’m seriously mourning the lack of independent book stores and art centers — but getting to see our families, especially for holidays and our nieces birthdays, is something I don’t take for granted. Living here, we also have a much bigger and better apartment than in Chicago, which made having a second kitty finally reasonable, and Ben adopted one for me for my birthday. Hedwig. She is serious trouble, destroying plants and ornaments and shoelaces, but she is also THE GREATEST THING EVER. Speaking of my birthday, as of this year, I now share it with my beautiful niece Heidi, born September 14 at 10 am. She is a pink dream and seeing Ben & his brother Andy, and really the whole family, interact with her is pretty heart-melting stuff. In December, our niece Scarlett turned 2, learned to say “Ben” and had an inflatable bounce house birthday party that was easily as much fun for the adults as it was the kids. And in other exciting family news, my sister Michelle became engaged to Kevin, which I think was an incredibly good idea. I revisited Manhattan and Jersey City for the first time since moving in 2009, ate cake with some of my best girlfriends in front of St. Marks Cathedral while dodging a hurricane, visited my old stomping grounds, and was majorly relieved to eat a decent bagel for the first time in years.

In terms of “achievements”, I learned how to use liquid eyeliner, drove a car (in a parking lot), had oysters for the first time, cooked and baked more than ever before, revitalized my blog (!), am learning how to take decent photos, overcame my fear of asking for help in Sephora, and won an award for doing something dumb and terrifying — fake dying in front of a large group of strangers. Oh, and I finally saw the end (and alternate end) of Felicity. Oh, Ben! Oh, Noel!

In years past, I’ve made a list of favorite releases from the year — books, albums, that sort of thing — but I guess my media intake just wasn’t very hip this year because I’m struggling to pick real standouts. So instead, here’s a most memorable list…

• Kitty Photo: There were many, but this one both horrifies and delights Ben & I the most.
• Meals: Aside from our wedding dinner (we will never forget your pecan-encrusted salmon, Wendy Weller), my birthday dinner with Ben and his parents at Tom’s Oyster Bar in Royal Oak stands out. The food was fantastic (especially clam chowder), the atmosphere was nice, our server was top notch, and I felt tremendously loved. Of course, Friendsgiving 2011 at our pals Anthony & Ariels was fantastic as well…. Okay, we ate a lot of good things with a lot of good people. Next topic.
• Bit of Cleverness: The Legend of Alexandra & Rose, a one page illustrated story by Jon Klassen, who was certainly one of my favorite artist discoveries this year.
• Use of the Internet: 1) Comics. I’ve come across several artists using webpages for comics that scroll and take full advantage of your monitor. They’re great because, as with a book, the timing of visuals is key, and you don’t see everything at once. I was super impressed by Emily Carroll‘s work. This page from her comic The Prince & the Sea is a great example. 2) Printables. Designer and printer Amanda Jane Jones has great style and the fact that she’s a Michigan resident gives me a bit of artistic hope. She’s also a great example of how sharing some of your work by making it internet-accessible and printable is, basically, making the internet a more creative and better place to be. Her printable advent calendar is one such example and these Design*Sponge bookplates are another.
• Music: I feel like all I’ve listened to this year is Hank Williams Senior, Best Coast and Time to Pretend by MGMT on repeat, though I know that can’t be true. I guess it’s just that my most memorable music listening this year revolved a lot around wedding planning, and there was virtually no new stuff to be heard there (except for when the DJ went off list and played us some Adele. Worse wedding music blunders have happened, though.) Our wedding party walked down the aisle to Sweet Jane by the Velvet Underground and I walked to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun, our pre-ceremony music was all boppy girl group and doo wop — Lollipop, Be My Baby, Chapel of Love — dinner was classic country — mostly Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and Hank — and our party jams included The Monster Mash, Ramones, Otis Redding, and Supremes. I put together an Rdio playlist of some of our weddin’ tunes should that sound appealing to you.
• Movie Moments: 1) In Hugo, during the opening credits, the moment 3D snow started falling over Paris I was awed. 2) Anytime Ellen Page laughed her embarrassingly unattractive evil cackle in Super, especially after smashing a man into a brick wall and then, only half dressed, got out of her car to scream “AND NOW YOUR LEGS ARE GONE“. Every so often, for no particular reason, I will think of this and smile. But if my mom is reading this, you definitely don’t want to click that link… 3) More appropriately, though still mean-spiritedly, in The Help, when Allison Janney’s character shouts “Get your raggedy ass off my porch! Go on! Get off my property now! Before we all get one of those disgusting things on our lips!” at a bitchy-assed coldsore-lipped Hilly Hollbrook. My pal Jenny and I struggled to stopped laughing/crying over the unexpected lip line in the theater and were still holding our sides as we walked through the parking lot.
• Addition to our Regular Homecooking Repertoire : Homemade pizza. I just chop the vegetables and put the toppings on, but it’s always tasty and fun to make them together and try different concoctions. Ben’s perfected his dough making with a baking stone and peel.
• Kitchen Discoveries: 1) The pleasure of fresh herbs. My mother and sister-in-law have much greener thumbs than me, and bestowed several plants upon on this year (basil, rosemary, mint, lemon thyme). Sadly they have all died as of this week… but we kept ‘em going for a long time! And they really do elevate simple meals. 2) A garlic press. How and WHY did I live without one?
• Favorite Purchase: My Kate Spade double bow black stud earrings. I bought them in Soho (which is a lot more fun than buying them in Sterling Heights), and wore them on our wedding, so I have fond memories every time I wear them. Simple. Cute. I love them.
• Sweetest Moment: During our wedding reception, when our niece Scarlett took to the dance floor in her footie pajamas, dragging along her blanket with her.
• Dangerous but Funny Moment: While moving from Chicago to Ferndale I was feeling sorry for our cat Emilio, who was moaning in his carrier, so I decided to hold him. He hates to be held though, so he decided to hide on the UHaul breaks, which made Ben, our driver, shout quite a bit.
• Worst Excuse: Clyde Christopher Wellons for having “trapped gas” to get out of work. Which he didn’t have. As far as I know. The best part was that he didn’t even need an excuse because as he was telling me his genius sick day scheme I could barely understand him for the awful head cold he was already suffering.
• Adjustment: New names. For me and my website. I changed my middle name from Ann to my maiden name of Johnston and took Ben’s last name. Nicole J. Wroblewski, that’s-a-me! Killmargot.com is being phased out in favor of the more triumphant shecanliftahorse.com :)
• Taste: Cherry wine. I hope it always reminds me of our honeymoon in Traverse City, MI.

And then there are books. A subject unto themselves…

I figured the number of books I’d be able to read in a year would plummet dramatically after leaving my bookstore job, where the only real perk was that I was able to borrow books (and nooks), and leaving our Chicago apartment and it’s proximity to the public library. Fortunately, our new apartment is still within walking distance to the local library and my Kindle makes the adult new release titles I want to read affordable (and lightweight), so my reading habit hasn’t suffered much at all. I set a 50 book goal for myself, finished 54, and am currently working my way through 2 others. See everything I read and reviewed in 2011 on my goodreads page.

And now it’s on to 2012, “The Year of Ben”, as Ben calls it. He’s supposed to perfect his mojito-making and I’m hoping Illy espresso is going to be the key to me finally making the perfect at-home latté. Here’s to new recipes, new experiences, and new pals; to more art, more photos, and more making! Happy New Year!

Momiji Me

I’ve always been a dork for Hello Kitty and Co. (especially Chococat) and have a newfound love (and mini collection) of Momiji message dolls (inside each one there’s a tiny folded slip of paper for a message or wish), but kawaii (as wikipedia defines it: “the quality of cuteness, especially in the context of Japanese culture”) has never been a part of my own personal drawing style. It just seems gross when I do it, not cute. Like a lot of things, what appears simple isn’t always easy to achieve. But when I noticed that this week’s Illustration Friday theme was “messenger”, I immediately thought of the three “Book Club” momiji message dolls I recieved for Christmas and decided to give “adorable” a try. The results kind of make me cringe, I must admit, but it’s good to try new things, right? So, here’s a momiji me and my book of choice is a Moleskine sketchbook. My message is top secret.

nicole
I like children’s adventure stories and drawing in my little black sketchbook.
Turning the pages to happy times, our story of friendship forever.
♥

Bookplate Gifts

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Christmas with our families was excellent, and something that, between living out of state and working a retail schedule, I hadn’t been able to enjoy properly for moons and moons and moons. Good company, good food, and a truly ludicrous amount of gifts. AND SPEAKING OF GIFTS… here’s a crafty one I’mma share with you…

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say I’m the aunt who only gives books — if there’s a pair of bow patterned tights with a bear on the butt, hypothetically, I’m going to go ahead and assume you need those — but I do mostly give books. So it seemed fitting that this Christmas my nieces be the ones to benefit from my first go at making bookplates.

The two endpapers pictured here are from the books A Girl and Her Gator and A Boy and His Bear, both excellent and silly rhyming picture books by Sean Bryan & illustrated by Tom Murphy.

I used scrapbook paper to make my own envelopes, then glued a bookplate to the front. I also used used the scrapbook paper to cover the Elmer’s label on two gluesticks to tie everything together. The envelopes comfortably hold 15 book plates and 1 glue stick each. I decided to leave blank lines instead of writing in Scarlett & Heidi’s names. One of the best things about looking through your old books is seeing your own messy scrawl, and how it changes over time. Of course you could print this on sticker paper, but I opted for sturdy semi-gloss inkjet paper instead (I already had it on hand) and gluesticks so that the girls can (eventually) glue them in themselves.

My sister-in-law Alison loves rabbits, so I chose those for Heidi’s theme — at 15 weeks Heidi doesn’t have too many interests of her own, that I know of anyway — and for Scarlett, a shoe queen, footwear was an obvious theme. I’d love to design more, but it’s nice that I can just send the files along for easy home printing and envelop re-stuffing.

Holiday Eats

Instagrammin’ all of our holiday eats! From L-R: Bakery sugar cookies and cupcakes at an ornament exchange, Almond Crisp cookies, See’s Old Fashioned Candies of which I ate entirely too many, Panne Siciliano (entirely by Ben and it was a masterpiece of breadmaking), more See’s chocolates, Cinnamon Buttermilk Muffins, Mississippi Mud Pie (with Heath bar pieces and coffee ice cream!), pear guts, and Pear Frangipane Tart in the making. The tart is baking AT THIS VERY MOMENT and smelling wonderful :) Happy holidays, internet! Hope you’re eating half as well as us!

In the Sink, the Sink

I’ve participated in many an Illustration Friday theme. It’s a great way to get out of your head, at least for me. Maybe the same thing would happen if I randomly selected a word for myself, but I don’t, so who knows. For whatever reason though, Illustration Friday always helps loosen me up by encouraging me to make quick associations, not question them, and then just… draw. Without any sort of pressure. It’s fun and it usually brings out some pretty worthwhile results. In fact, one of my favorite silhouettes came out of a theme. You can see all of my previous theme posts by clickin’ here.

This weeks theme is “sink”. Looking at my illustration probbbably won’t bring that word to mind, unless one of your favorite bands in high school was also Plumtree and you had a habit of singing “In the Sink” in the shower because it served as a warm reminder of your girlhood days, collecting worms with your best pal. Which I doubt. Anyway, drowning imagery certainly popped into my head, but that seemed too straight forward, so I thought about the sink as an object, which immediately forced this Plumtree lyric, one of my favorites, into my head: But my worms are perfectly clean. I wash them twice a day in the sink, the sink, the sink. Listen for yourself and make the connection.