The fairies give thanks

The Fairies Give Thanks

To all kind folk who make delightful gardens
Where we may live,
Enjoying days and nights of busy leisure
Amid devices fashioned for our pleasure,
Our thanks we give.

For dancing-lawns and gravelled jousting-places,
For guardian trees,
For ferny thickets strewn with moss-grown mountains
And lily-pools and waterfalls and fountains -
For all of these.

Charged are we also by our little comrades
The gentle birds,
That we their messages of thanks should bring you,
Since they from grateful hearts can only sing you
Songs without words.

From The Rose Fyleman Fairy Book

A mini elephant & a giant duck

If my Facebook is anything to go by, 'tis the season to get engaged!

So in that spirit, here's an old Vine I did - it's a very fast love story between a mini elephant and a giant duck - because why not?! :-)

Words of the Week: Week 14

22/12/14 to 28/12/14

Monday: resilient - 1. (Of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed: e.g. 'a shoe with resilient cushioning'; 2. (Of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions: e.g. 'babies are generally far more resilient than new parents realize'

Tuesday: predicament - A difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation: e.g. 'the club’s financial predicament'

Wednesday: gourmand - A person who enjoys eating and often eats too much: e.g. 'I realise I'm doing what gourmands never do - reveal their favourite restaurants for fear of overpopulising, however…'

Thursday: Noel - Christmas, especially as a refrain in carols and on Christmas cards

Friday: snarf - Eat or drink quickly or greedily: e.g. 'they snarfed up frozen yogurt'

Saturday: odium - General or widespread hatred or disgust incurred by someone as a result of their actions: e.g. 'he incurred widespread odium for military failures and government corruption'

Sunday: reciprocity - The practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit, especially privileges granted by one country or organization to another: e.g. 'the Community intends to start discussions on reciprocity with third countries'

Words and definitions from Oxford Dictionaries Online's Word of the Day.

Playing with this week's words!

• Gourmands often snarf their food
• A common predicament of gourmands is causing odium by snarfing in public :-)

Look out, Jack Frost is about!

Jack Frost

Look out! Look out!
Jack Frost is about!
He's after our fingers and toes;
And, all through the night,
The gay little sprite
Is working when nobody knows.

He'll climb each tree,
So nimble is he,
His silvery powder he'll shake:
To windows he'll creep,
And while we're asleep,
Such wonderful pictures he'll make.

Across the grass
He'll merrily pass,
And change all its greenness to white;
The home he will go,
And laugh, "Ho! ho! ho!
What fun I have had in the night!"

By Cecily E. Pike, taken from Harry Golding's book Verses For Children

He certainly had fun here last night!

Christmas Night

Christmas Night

When it's Christmas night,
And the fire's alight,
And I'm lying awake in bed,
I feel quite sure there are fairies
Like the ones in tales I've read.
It's specially on Christmas night,
When nothing feels the same,
That I keep thinking to myself,
"Suppose a fairy came!"

I think there must be fairies
Who hang the stars all out,
And fairies who make the bells ring,
And carry the snow about.
And some of them paint the shadows
That dance up and down the wall -
So nobody need be frikened
Of shadows like that at all!
And one little special fairy
Looks after the ugly things,
And things that are old and broken,
And covers them with her wings.
That's why I've put my dolly -
The one that has lost an eye -
On the mantelshelf, so her fairy
Will see her as she goes by....

When it's Christmas night,
And the fire's alight,
And I'm lying in bed awake,
I keep quite still, and I listen
For the sounds the fairies make.
I've never seen nor heard them yet,
But I believe I might,
If only I could keep awake
All through one Christmas night.

From Marion St John Webb's book The Little One In Between

The Box of Smiles

If I Knew

If I knew the box where the smiles were kept,
No matter how large the key
Or strong the bolt, I would try so hard,
'Twould open, I know, for me;
Then over the land and sea broadcast
I'd scatter the smiles to play,
That the children's faces might hold them fast
For many and many a day.

If I knew a box that was large enough
To hold all the frowns I meet,
I would gather them, every one,
From nursery, school, and street;
Then, folding and holding, I'd pack them in
And turn the monster key,
And hire a giant to drop the box
To the depths of the deep, deep sea.

Taken from Harry Golding's book Verses For Children

The box of smiles would make a wonderful worldwide Christmas present :-)

If only I knew where it was kept!

Words of the Week: Week 13

15/12/14 to 21/12/14

Monday: bourgeoisie - The middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes: e.g. 'the rise of the bourgeoisie at the end of the eighteenth century'

Tuesday: Childe - A youth of noble birth

Wednesday: orthoepy - The correct or accepted pronunciation of words: e.g. 'Some letters and combinations of letters depend in their orthoepy upon the etymology of the word'

Thursday: terpsichorean - Relating to dancing: e.g. ''the twist' was a revolutionary terpsichorean innovation'

Friday: cumbersome - Large or heavy and therefore difficult to carry or use; unwieldy

Saturday: emulous - Seeking to emulate someone or something

Sunday: tenebrous - Dark; shadowy or obscure: e.g. 'the tenebrous spiral staircase of the self'

Words and definitions from Oxford Dictionaries Online's Word of the Day.

Playing with this week's words!

• A Childe looks down on the bourgeoisie, and doesn't care about orthoepy!

Lego hat switcheroo!

Lego people having a style remix! :-)

The value of good milk-chocolate

According to the 1915 book The Mistress of the Little House, milk chocolate can help you avoid colds!

"A cold or a chill can often be avoided if a little sustenance is taken when one is out in the wet. For instance, few things are more beneficial than milk-chocolate or raisins under such circumstances, and when anyone is bound to be out in the fog or the wet, it is wise to eat a little to keep the system from getting below par. The value of good milk-chocolate as a sustaining food is not sufficiently known." (page 112)

Any excuse to indulge - it's medicinal!

Words of the Week: Week 12

08/12/14 to 14/12/14

Monday: vaunt - (usually as adjective vaunted) Boast about or praise (something), especially excessively: e.g. 'the much vaunted information superhighway'

Tuesday: salutary - (Especially with reference to something unwelcome or unpleasant) producing good effects; beneficial: e.g. 'it failed to draw salutary lessons from Britain’s loss of its colonies'

Wednesday: Braille - A form of written language for blind people, in which characters are represented by patterns of raised dots that are felt with the fingertips

Thursday: coolth - Pleasantly low temperature: e.g. 'the coolth of the evening'

Friday: reticent - Not revealing one’s thoughts or feelings readily: e.g. 'she was extremely reticent about her personal affairs'

Saturday: timorous - Showing or suffering from nervousness or a lack of confidence: e.g. 'a timorous voice'

Sunday: toboggan - (noun) A long, light, narrow vehicle, typically on runners, used for sliding downhill over snow or ice; (verb) Ride on a toboggan

Words and definitions from Oxford Dictionaries Online's Word of the Day.

Playing with this week's words!

• She seems reticent but is really only timorous
• He was too timorous to try tobogganing
• After the heat and stuffiness of the office, she was pleased to escape into the coolth outside

Fairy days

Sometimes

Some days are fairy days. The minute that you wake
You have a magic feeling that you never could mistake;
You may not see the fairies, but you know that they're about,
And any single minute they might all come popping out.
You want to laugh, you want to sing, you want to dance and run:
Everything is different, everything is fun:
The sky is full of fairy clouds, the streets are fairy ways -
Anything might happen on truly fairy days.

Some nights are fairy nights. Before you go to bed
You hear their darling music go chiming in your head;
You look into the garden, and through the misty grey
You see the trees all waiting in a breathless kind of way.
All the stars are smiling - they know that very soon
The fairies will come singing from the land behind the moon.
If only you could keep awake when Nurse puts out the light, ...
Anything might happen on a truly fairy night.

From The Rose Fyleman Fairy Book

The Months, by Sara Coleridge

The Months

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

By Sara Coleridge, taken from Harry Golding's book Verses For Children

Illustrations by Margaret W. Tarrant

Toy dogs playing

I love these wee toy dogs because I think they look like my dog Henry (on the left) and my sister's dog Jake (on the right) :-)

The longest ever woolly scarf

It's getting very chilly - definitely time to cosy up in a woolly scarf!

Who wore the longest ever scarf?! Well...

Taken from My Very First Poetry Book

The Mistress of the Little House

The Mistress of the Little House, edited by Flora Klickmann, is a 1915 housekeeping guide.

The introduction says:
"This book is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise on household management. It is merely a collection of practical talks on domestic topics for those educated women who cannot afford to keep a properly trained servant, and have to do most of the housework themselves."

It's really interesting, and definitely makes you appreciate all the mod cons we have these days that make things so much easier - and mean servants are thankfully a thing of the past.

Here are a couple of advertisements from the back of the book, showing pre-electric kettle and toaster solutions!

Feed the birds

Winter is the time of year when birds need our help the most, as their natural food sources become more scarce.
Please help them out by putting some food and water out for them.

Robin

If on a frosty morning
the robin redbreast calls
his waistcoat red and burning
like a beggar at your walls

throw breadcrumbs on the grass for him
when the ground is hard and still
for in his breast there is a flame
that winter cannot kill.

By Iain Crichton Smith, taken from My Very First Poetry Book

Words of the Week: Week 11

01/12/14 to 07/12/14

Monday: syllabub - A whipped cream dessert, typically flavoured with white wine or sherry

Tuesday: bemire - Cover or stain with mud: e.g. 'his shoes were bemired from travelling on foot'

Wednesday: émigré - A person who has left their own country in order to settle in another, typically for political reasons: e.g. 'Soviet émigrés and defectors'

Thursday: Pollyanna - An excessively cheerful or optimistic person: e.g. 'what I am saying makes me sound like some ageing Pollyanna who just wants to pretend that all is sweetness and light'

Friday: disconsolate - Very unhappy and unable to be comforted: e.g. 'she left Fritz looking disconsolate'

Saturday: controvert - Deny the truth of (something): e.g. 'subsequent work from the same laboratory controverted these results'

Sunday: sangfroid - Composure or coolness shown in danger or under trying circumstances

Words and definitions from Oxford Dictionaries Online's Word of the Day.

Playing with this week's words!

• She was disconsolate that her outfit was bemired
• Even being bemired couldn't stop her being a Pollyanna
• Despite those determined to controvert her work, she retained her sangfroid

The last full moon of 2014

It's a full moon tonight, the last of 2014!

In honour of the occasion, here's a moon themed poem from My Very First Poetry Book :-)

Humpty Dumpty went to the moon

Humpty Dumpty went to the moon
on a supersonic spoon.
He took some porridge and a tent
but when he landed
the spoon got bent.
Humpty said he didn't care
and for all I know
he's still up there.

By Michael Rosen

The pen is mightier than the sword!

A.k.a. ... Knight vs. Shakespeare!

Sir Winter, by Jean Kenward

Sir Winter

I heard Sir Winter coming.
He crept out of his bed
and rubbed his thin and freezing hands:
I'll soon be up! he said.

'I'll shudder at the keyhole
and rattle at the door,
I'll strip the trees of all their leaves
and strew them on the floor;

'I'll harden every puddle
that Autumn thinks is his -
I'll lay a sparkling quilt of snow
on everything that is!

'I'll bring a load of darkness
as large as any coal,
and drive my husky dogs across
the world, from pole to pole.

'Oho! How you will shiver!'
And then I heard him say:
'But in the middle of it all
'I'll give you
CHRISTMAS DAY!'

By Jean Kenward, taken from My Very First Poetry Book

Words of the Week: Week 10

24/11/14 to 30/11/14

Monday: prepotent - Greater than others in power or influence: e.g. 'Frankly, the prepotent title he goes under isn't enough to lend his argument any legitimacy'

Tuesday: sacerdotal - Relating to priests or the priesthood; priestly

Wednesday: Sprachgefühl - Intuitive feeling for the natural idiom of a language: e.g. 'it’s not genes or culture but Sprachgefühl that sets the French apart from the Finns'

Thursday: peart - Lively; cheerful: e.g. 'the man was right peart in his walking'

Friday: jaunt - A short excursion or journey made for pleasure: e.g. 'her regular jaunts to Europe'

Saturday: boscage - A mass of trees or shrubs: e.g. 'the view from the house is obscured by boscage'

Sunday: astrogation - (In science fiction) navigation in outer space: e.g. 'I need you to run the astrogation computers for the descent'

Words and definitions from Oxford Dictionaries Online's Word of the Day.