Holiday story time

Every Wednesday in January we have been hosting a story time at Work. Each week I had a specific theme and two stories were read each week.

First week our theme was animals. I read all set for the big wet - an aussie version of the ants go marching one by one....

2nd book was the very funny "Thank you for looking after our pets". The kids loved this book about some very strange pets - like elephants and penguins and a bonus houseplant, a Venus fly trap.

& my gorgeous story time kids.

2nd weeks theme was "My favourite story". I read "Each Peach Pear PLum", this was my very favourite story to read to my children when they were littlies.

Then Haylee, my daughter, read her favourite book that she reads to her pre school children, The very Hungry Caterpillar. Haylee then retold the story again and used a felt board with little felt piccies of each part of the story. Each child had at least one picture to put on the board. the enjoyed this immensely.

Haylee & I with our story time children.

Week three - beach fun. I read Looking for Crab & Magic Beach. We then had a ball throwing two beach balls around the story time area, trying as hard as we could to keep the beach balls off the floor.

We forgot to have a photo with all the children there, half had left b4 I was reminded.












And lastly this weeks story time theme was Australia. I read "The wheels on the ute" and "Are we there yet". Are we there yet was a very long story and I had to stop a couple of times to bring kids attention back, but we got there.

Only a very small group this week.

Two more work events

On Wednesday 30 November we had local author & illustrator Bruce Whately came and present a special Christmas Story time. Bruce works as Jackie French's illustrator and they have collaborated on many books since their first "Dairy of a wombat". His latest books (yes he has THREE new releases), is "Christmas Wombat" with Jackie, "Tin Toys" with his son Ben and he has illustrated Ahn Do's "The littlest refugee".

He read several of his books including "Wombat's Christmas" and the one that started it all "The ugliest dog in the world" (1992). It was hard to find a complete list of Bruce's books as he is signed up to so many publishers. here is the most up to date list I could find.

He then spent some time drawing for us, singed many many books and happily posed for many photos.

Just last Saturday we had Joy McKean, Slim Dusty's wife, join us for an informal book signing. "Iv'e been there, and back again" was a book many years in the making and is I guess the story behind the songs and the family tours. She was delightful and I was surprised at how spritely she was. we had over 30 people come to meet her. Again I took pics of anyone who wanted one and after Christmas I will email them out.

Life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! part 2 work

Work has kept me very very busy - here's a little of what has happened in the last 4 months.

just last week we had a major event in our lil indy book store. Ray Martin made in in store appearance. we had over 60 people. Just a few had their piccy taken with Ray.

He was so lovey, he spent quite a bit of time talking to every customer, making them all feel very special.

he even had time to have a few photos with staff members. We even got a kiss goodbye.

Remembrance day display. also an entry in a competition.

This month we farewelled one of our long time staff members Sue with a dinner out at Red Raven. we also celebrated her 60Th birthday.

Am still loving my story times.

warm up for Novembers story - we are pretending to be trees growing.

November Story time - one of my favourite. we read "Little mouses big secret".

After our story about the mouse sharing his apples with others, we all wrote our name on our apple cut out and put it on our apple tree.

We then shared a basket of apples. We all sat around for a little while as we chatted and ate our little apples. No one wanted to leave.

October Story time - Possum magic

September story time - If you're happy and you know it - Australian edition

August story time - 5 minutes peace.

Shop Displays

I have done a few fun windows at work recently so I thought I would share them with my friends (that's you!!!!!!!). If you have been following or reading my blog for a while you will know that I do most of the window at shop displays at work, but this Gruffalo display was done on one of my days off. I shared it with you because I have been very involved with the reason for this display and that is The Gruffalo Live is coming to Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre (SEC)tomorrow. We have been working alongside the SEC to help promote it. We had 4 tix to giveaway - anyone who purchased a Gruffalo product went in the draw. The lady who won the tix has a disabled young adult son so he and a few of his friends will get to see it - I am very excited that she won. Also yesterday I helped judge the Gruffalo colouring comp that we had sponsored. We have some very talented up and coming artist in our area.

The following windows I am responsible for - please forgive me for the shocking photos we have the most reflective window and no matter how hard I try I cant take a pic without seeing all that is going on in the street.

This window as you can probably tell is a children's window - we had a great cut out for Mem Fox's new book "A Giraffe in the Bath" and some great new kids books that we decided it would make a great window.

The toys in the window are usually scattered around our children's section.

This little bean bag that the cow is sitting on is simply a bag of packaging beans wrapped in a piece of children's fabric. I was very surprised when I was told that customers have come in the shop to look at the bean bags we are selling. In fact as I was pulling this window apart I had a customer very upset that all the big cushions from the window had sold.

This is our current window - went up on Monday - a cooking window. I picked up this fabric from Spotty for $8m, its not that easy to see but it has cooking utensils and pots & pans on it. Looks really cool.

Our Local Mitre 10 loaned us the cookware for the window.

A close up to help you see the fabric better - click on image for a larger view

More weekend - Sunday

On Sunday morning I went to work for a few hours to decorate the shop for Christmas. I was able to get so much more done int he two hours I was there with no shoppers around.

Firstly I put together this window. It was quite a hard window to balance right but in the end with the addition of the "where the wild things are " bag and puppets it worked. Sorry bout the pic, we have a very glarey window.

The main decoration for the shop was this giant swag that goes right over the entrance like an arch.

I am standing on the outside looking in (insert Jimmy Barnes voice here).

And from the inside. Not the best pic, sorry.

And a close up of the centre piece. We are extremely happy with how this looks. Gives a real festive look to the shop.

Kids Top 50

Yesterday - Saturday 3 October 2009 - was the launch of the New Kids' Top 50. This is the 3rd top 5o A&R has done. In April kids all over Australia were asked to vote for their favourite book. After a few months of compiling and putting POS together it was ready to be unveiled. Last week I had put together a window leading up to the launch, on Friday I put this window together. I am so happy with how it looks even if it is almost impossible to take a decent photo of our window because of the glare.

We had balloons to giveaway to the kids so I spent quite a bit of time out side the shop handing these out to passing by kids.

We (Laurel & I) dressed up in colours of the posters and had fun taking a few photos in front of the display with balloons of course.

Check out my sneakers - picked these up on the way to work on Saturday at K-mart - how cool are they.

Before Laurel arrived I had a bit of fun taking pics of myself - have never been able to quite master the taking pics of self without looking a bit silly.

Tablerunners and bookmarks.

Today was the opening day for the Spring table runner swap from the craft forum.

Glynys made me this lovely runner. She had never made a runner b4. I think she did a fabulous job. The colours work perfectly with my dining room theme. Will even go great in the lounge room if I decide to use it on the large coffee table in there form time to time.

This is the runner I made for Judy. Judy's colour choice was green, brown, apricot and yellows. These are not colours I work with very often so I did struggle a little to choose the right ones, I had an artist friend cast her eye over my choices to give me a hand. This pattern was one of the freeby patterns from The Moda Bake shop Blog. I was very happy with how it turned out.

I have also been busy making more bookmarks for work. I have to add ribbons and tassels to some of these. I still have 10 of the black velvet ones to finish the edges of.

ATC swap

You may remember this pic of the ATC's (artist trading cards) that I made for a swap in my craft forum. I sent four of these off to NZ and these below are the four I received back. How gorgeous are they.

I especially love the green goddess and the pearls sewn around the outside of the floral one.

You may also remember that I made some bookmarks to take to work WELL 5 of them have sold - yAYYYYYYYYYY , so if am hoping to find time this week to make some more.

Artist Trading Cards

I have made these ATC's for a swap (well four of them) on my craft forum and had so much fun making them. 8 of them - not including the very top left hand one was made in one batch I just change the top fabric an put large a pink flower at one end and ended up with very different cards. I will chose 4 of these and send off to NZ to then be mixed up and I will receive 4 different ones back.

With the left over I made the bottom right bookmark, I thought it looked great so I took it to work to show the girls & the boss - they all liked them so now I have made heaps more to put in the shop and hopefully sell. We are always looking for new & different bookmarks.