How to Make a Wall of Books That You Read
Harry's Summer Project!
Like many 11yr olds, Harry is absorbed by the digital world; he's a YouTube aficionado and loves apps and gaming. Faced with two months of school-gratuitous, aimless summer days, I've been trying to recollect of creative ways to capture his imagination and too steer him gently back into his dear of reading. Traditional 'summertime reading list' challenges felt too reminiscent of the endless cocky-driven studying that kids take endured throughout this COVID-era, so I've fix Harry a new challenge;
Create your own private YouTube channel and mail reviews of v great affiliate books past the cease of the holidays!
Harry will not only exist reading lots, he'll exist learning basic videography and editing and polishing up his presentation skills and confidence. And all safely too; he can invite friends and family to subscribe to his channel or he can keep information technology entirely private, similar a diary – then he'll be learning about online security too and how to navigate his manner through the world and the web.
Hither's how nosotros went virtually getting started on the project; it's a cracking one for kids (or grandkids, or godchildren or any modest people in your life!) to try, at pretty much whatever reading age.
1.Create your 'project box'
I packed a fun box with two books to get Harry started (Pax and The Soup Motility shown above), plus a kids' guide book to creating your own YouTube channel. I added an inexpensive light band and stand up for the phone photographic camera and a notebook and pencil for making notes and capturing ideas whilst he reads. Libraries and second-hand bookshops are a great resource for choosing other books in due form, and many schools and libraries besides mail summer reading lists for inspiration.
ii. Practice some inquiry!
Harry and I did some online exploring and constitute links to other young vloggers who are already reviewing books, to see how they do it. We too institute resources on how to write bang-up volume reports (plot, character, linguistic communication etc) so Harry could think about how to structure his reviews and what elements to consider.
Resources:
- Two simple guides on how to write a book review from Bookriot and the National Literacy Trust, via Kumon
- Fun video inspiration to assistance find your own mode from different-aged reviewers The Book Brothers, Skitz Kids and Katie Tracy
3. Style your space!
A good rainy-day activity; choice where you'll be filming your reviews and work out how you want to manner it. Consider how the light changes during the day and what you want to characteristic in the background (and what yous don't!). How will yous make sure your family and cats don't wander endlessly in and out of shot? Practise you want to look serious or fun? How can you style your background in a way that reflects your personality or fifty-fifty the theme of the book, changing it up each time?
four. Experiment with fun prompts
When Harry made his first video, he wrote the things he wanted to remember on a large sheet of paper that I held up behind the camera. But following it was hard (and his assistant easily distracted), so instead I showed him how to use this fun, free teleprompter – if you have a laptop or an iPad you can type in what you want to say and information technology runs along the screen equally you lot speak, behind the camera. You can speed it up or down and pretend to be a newscaster. Lots of fun!
5. Set upwardly your channel – or simply record the videos for fun and share with family and friends
Part of Harry'due south projection is to design his own YouTube channel, but equally you could just spend an afternoon doing this for fun and keep the videos to replay in 20yrs time when the kids become married and you need some cracking archive cloth to embarrass them with. Consider it an investment!
Have a great week, wherever y'all are and whatever you lot're doing.
A Business firm of Books
Many of the projects I share here are spur-of-the-moment ideas; others take longer to ferment. This one is nearly 2 years in the making from when I first wandered along the landing and imagined a living, interactive entrance of books and when I really worked out how to practice it…
Regular followers will know that we love books in our dwelling house. We have them all over, from the orangery…
…to the kitchen (and just about everywhere else in between).
I've e'er loved book arches, and collect pictures of my favourites, similar this i at Burford Garden Company;
What I really wanted though (and why this took so long) was a book arch where you lot could still remove and read the books, rather than 1 where the books are speared in place and turned purely into a design characteristic. I sketched it, I thought about it, and I spent a few weeks building tottering piles of books… earlier I came across these invisible shelves.
Each shelf screws to the wall and you slip the cover of the bottom book over the shelf to disguise it. They're designed to be used individually, only I screwed mine into the wall at xviii″ intervals and shortly had a completely sturdy tower of removable books, scaling the 3m height of the hallway…
for the arch itself, I screwed 4 shelves into a fan shape, post-obit the curve of the ceiling. The books above it are wedged into place in undulating waves of color (slimmer books piece of work well for this function).
Everybody's books feature in the arch, and each plays a role; Harry's vibrantly coloured childhood favourites provide the majority of the rainbow, whereas my hubby's moody thrillers and crime novels give depth and darkness to the edges. Three junk-store copies from the '50 Shades…' serial anchor the very base of the entrance and threaten to expose anyone who whips them out for a stealthy read late at nighttime 🙂
The gloomy Feb winter light undersells this here; i of the most lovely and unexpected things is that when the morning sun filters across the landing information technology catches the colour spectrum of the books and beams a rainbow across the hallway; a living bookshelf that'south both beautiful and useful.
Have a great weekend when information technology comes!
DIY Numberless from anything!
Ok, not quite anything. but certainly from old calendars, newspapers and potato-chip tubes.
Terminal weekend I riffled through our overflowing recycling pile and extracted some paper to play with, experimenting with my sewing car. My favourite are these vibrant gift bags, made by simply stitching together two pages from terminal year'southward agenda;
The local supermarket weekly paper becomes a single-use tote or souvenir pocketbook when stitched on two sides and adorned with ribbon-scrap handles..
And a souvenir from our recent trip to Cape Town – a free weekly magazine from the winelands – becomes a fun pocketbook too!
And finally Pringles tubes covered in leftover gift-wrap go handy packages for cookies, sweets or one-half-bottles of Valentine'southward champagne (I write that in example my married man is reading; what is a blog for, if not to driblet heavy marital hints?)
To make calendar bags…
If yous yet have last year's agenda lying around (ours was from here), separate and trim the pages and and so stitch ii of them together on your sewing machine, using a basic running run up and staying as close to the edges as you tin. Brand sure both picture-sides are facing out, to avoid gifting someone the insight of your advisedly-detailed family events for the unabridged calendar month of June 2019. Employ a pigsty dial to make holes at the top and thread through scraps of ribbon or string to make handles. You could as well add together a pocket to the exterior of the bag (to concur a gift carte for example) by stitching on a square of card before yous sew the two sides together.
To make newspaper or magazine bags…
These are less sturdy (despite my styling higher up, I don't recommend using them for the weekly shop), but they're bully fun. Try using a strange linguistic communication newspaper, or a glossy magazine – they're the perfect size and weight to agree a book or other lightweight gift. Open up upwards your newspaper and remove any staples, and continue just a few layers of the pages. You can fold the top over to make a cuff every bit I did with the Waitrose paper, or merely go out them equally is. Run up around the sides equally earlier (brand sure yous leave the meridian open, of form..), and then you can either stitch on ribbon handles or employ a pigsty dial and eyelets as higher up.
For the gift tube..
Have an empty Pringles tin (I'm afraid this arts and crafts may crave you to eat a tube of Pringles first; consider it a display of your delivery to the muse), then roll it over a canvass of giftwrap to work out the dimensions of the paper you need. Cutting out the paper, paste information technology around the tube using watered-down white mucilage and so dial holes for handles when dry out. Don't be alarmed by the drying process by the way, in which the paper will look atrocious. By the forenoon it volition be beautiful.
p.south. from the athenaeum; book vases, stitched vessels and altered envelopes
Happy Th!
Book Social club Cookies!
I dearest to read. I love to swallow. Truly, I don't know why this idea didn't occur to me sooner…
Cookies that look like books!
I made these for a friend'southward birthday, and they stand for some of the best books we've passed back and forth over the years; a library of cookies, each ane generously sized (enormous, in truth; like a skillful book, these cookies will terminal more than than one sitting).
I've always wanted to try using photo icing sheets – the ones you usually find on a sheet cake at an office party, with the celebrant/victim supersized onto a cake as everyone gleefully slices them up. There are a myriad of online companies that you can upload photos to who will send you a advisedly packaged sheet of icing with your print on; I used this i and they were slap-up. For the cookies, I just took photos of book covers and and so collaged them onto an A4 size canvas of icing (if you're doing this, choose a site that lets you use multiple photos on your sheet).
When the sheet arrived I baked rectangular cookies, left to cool and so spread them with apricot coat to hold the icing in identify, earlier carefully cutting up the sheets and calculation a book-jacket topper to each cookie.
Task done!
In general, photo icing will last in its packaging for upto a month after you lot gild it, so you don't take to rush. When y'all first apply information technology, it will be beautifully glossy and sharply defined equally to a higher place; afterwards a couple of days the colours settle and fade a little (more if y'all have practical to a particularly sticky cake surface), but they withal look great. I slipped my cookies into plastic numberless (beneath), which is fine for transportation, but avoid covering them tightly.
Really, the best guidance of all I can requite you is to eat them. They taste divine and actually, a good novel deserves a skilful cookie.
Accept a wonderful weekend when it comes!
Dream Business firm Renovation: The Orangery (at concluding!!)
At long last, the next grand-reveal of our home renovation… the orangery!
Formerly a lean-to PVC conservatory that let in not simply wind and pelting but also drifts of autumn leaves and occasional sheltering rodents, nosotros now have a serene and sunny reading room with the comfiest armchair imaginable. Here's what it looked similar before….
…and after
before…
…and after
before…
during…
..and afterward!
It's been a labour of love, which at times felt like the surest path to fiscal ruin and despair. With a firm this historic period, whatever project brings its surprises, but we certainly didn't look to find a deep 18th century well positioned straight below the conservatory (howdy, 25 tonnes of shingle to fill it in again), or the steady, unrelenting miscellany of quirks and mishaps and natural disasters that caused this 3 month-long projection to have well over a year. Just nevertheless, it was (nearly) worth information technology. My favourite role of the new room is the floor-to-ceiling custom bookshelves that business firm all of our favourite books and magazines. I can tell already that arranging and rearranging these is going to be my zen stress-relieving action…
One of the best rewards for the months of building piece of work and a full wintertime without reliable heating, electricity or weatherproofing was finally being able to choose sofas, accents and decoration for the room. These squishy sofas and deep-buttoned footstool have become the identify we retreat to every evening. The huge round tray was a splurge from here and is one of my favourite things in the room (the house, in fact!).
A large skylight fills the room with sunlight throughout the day and into the evening; nosotros filled the infinite with a beautiful, oversized verdigris copper mobile made by Ursula Scheffel; it sways gently in the breeze and the colours are picked upward by these doorknobs and in the books and framed prints on the wall, as well as the wabi sabi tray.
More than exterior pics to follow too as the new hallway – and do shout if you're after sourcing details for anything else y'all see hither. I have about 6 filing cabinets of invoices I can consult, merely the very thought of them withal makes me feel faint…
Hope you're having a great week (happy hump-day; it'southward a gentle coast downhill towards the weekend from here!)
World Book Day inspiration
March 8th is World Book Twenty-four hours, and anybody in Harry's school is allowed to wearing apparel up. Fortunately at the grand old age of eight, Harry still loves the opportunity to clothes up (remember Star Wars?), then we spent Sabbatum rummaging through our loft and local clemency shops to create Phileas Fogg, complete with hot air balloon and handbasket ..and seagull! Here's what nosotros did.
For the basket nosotros used:
- A willow Christmas tree brim from the loft (a cardboard box would work well too)
- Ii belts to act equally straps, attached with cablevision ties to the wicker (alternatively use lengths of string or a pair of braces if you have them)
- Spare curtain rings, attached with cablevision ties again
- Tasselled drapery tie-backs from the textile bin at a local charity store; whatever kind of rope volition exercise
- White balloons for sandbags, with the front ones tucked into paper bags stencilled '50kg'
And for the balloonist and charlatan himself…
- A brown jacket and trousers from Harry's existing wardrobe
- My favourite umbrella, from here
- Binoculars, a toybox top chapeau and flying goggles (actually, nosotros could supply a costume store with the amount of accessories we have collected over the years…)
- A imitation seagull from Amazon.com (try also www.dzd.co.united kingdom)
- A self-agglutinative moustache, that left a rash for 2hrs afterwards (try using liquid eyeliner instead; we did that the second time!)
- and non strictly role of the outfit, merely only because we both love them… these socks!
Happy World Volume Day for March 8th!
p.south. talking of books, thank you once more for all the great suggestions here; I took 2 of them on a work trip to the United states of america last week and they fabricated the long flying a treat rather than a chore
p.p.s. come and say hello on Instagram!
What are you reading at the moment?
What are you reading at the moment? As the month turns into February I am reluctantly emerging from a post-Christmas literary cocoon; having slipped each dark into the earth of one of the books I received (my Christmas list always includes 'a book that you've read and loved this year', and I've been introduced to to some amazing new authors this way).
In my beside pile of books I've finished…
I might have been the last person on earth to accept read A Little Life by Hanya Yanaghara, only I fabricated upward for that by beginning it all once again as soon as I finished. So sad, so beautiful, and and so completely extraordinary; one of those books where yous feel a sense of loss once information technology'due south over. Don't be daunted by the length, which chop-chop becomes reassuring… information technology's a story of lives you don't ever desire to stop.
I've merely finished Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles, which is an extended ode to winter, packed with recipes, memories and reflections; it crackles with warmth and you lot can near smell the woodsmoke, molten candle wax, freshly-baked bread and melting Taleggio cheese; if (like me) you nonetheless have a couple of winter months ahead of y'all, read this now; it's divine.
1 older novel that I finally read and loved; Arundhati Roy'due south Booker-prize winning The God of Small Things plunges you straight into monsoon flavour in India and the babyhood of twins Rahel and Estha, vividly charting the dramas big and small that unfold around them at home and across the state as political unrest grows.
For a visual feast, In Detail by stylist Hans Blomquist did not disappoint – it'southward packed with beautiful pictures and room sets, and communication on how to use colour and objects to create different moods. If y'all're forever scrolling through other people's living rooms on Pinterest or Instagram (how-do-you-do, kindred soul) then this is for you.
And in the pile to read side by side…
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, The Surreptitious Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, and – finally! – A Human being Called Ove past Fredrik Backman.
Have you read anything good lately? Please add some more than recommendations to my pile!
What are you reading?
Are yous a reader?
I grew up in a house of books; obscure and familiar, high-forehead and low-forehead, trashy and treasured. An egalitarian wall of bookshelves meant that at that place was always something to read, and new discoveries to be made. The collated volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica informed numerous homework assignments, Judy Blume navigated me through adolescence and later a diverse collection of philosophers fuelled my existential malaise and earned me a university degree. Even now whenever we come together as a family, someone will always enquire on the first evening 'what are you reading at the moment?'.
Discovering new authors is e'er a joy; exhausting the works of others always a sombre moment; Nora Ephron and Ballad Shields feature prominently in my drove.
This Christmas and New year break, I seized the chance to grab up on some great reads, old and new. The Rocks and Fates and Furies were novels I'd read rave reviews of and which didn't disappoint; both span decades and navigate the intricacies of marriage and friendship. As a contrast, Julia Kid's autobiography of her years living in Paris and discovering – nay, Mastering! – the art of French cooking was a mesmerising read and fabricated me immediately want to relocate to France and modify career (p.s. take you lot seen this film? I lookout information technology over again and again…).
I was given some beautiful books for Christmas, including this one…
I'm smitten – and also completely outclassed – past the beautiful, complex recipes and preparations outlined in The French Laundry Cookbook, which is substantially a java-tabular array cookbook, if such an thought were non intrinsically absurd. Most of the cookbooks I read finish in phrases like '… Fabricated Uncomplicated' or brainstorm with 'How to Crook at…', and so this was a delicious and aspirational read. Apart from posing with the book above, I take so far only mastered the important stride of learning how to fold a napkin with a clothes peg, of which I am very proud. Sauces and soufflés tin await for the springtime. Or peradventure never. We'll see.
Some other souvenir; this gorgeous interiors volume which celebrates imperfect homes and the contrast of sometime and new; flawed and smooth. It'south made me wander thooughtfully around the house and motion things around, to the keen consternation of my husband, who finds nothing where he expects it to be these days. 'Wabi-sabi' I whisper to him confidently every bit I waft by. 'Transcience is the essence of beauty'. I would best describe his expression as Unconvinced. Two other recent, covetable reads; this book on colour which makes me want to paint my walls a deep, inky blue, and this ane past stylist Sibella Court that's an escapist work of fine art in itself.
The last volume I bought – ii copies in fact – I oasis't yet read. Harry and I have a new tradition; whenever I am travelling for work, I send him an iphone audio clip each twenty-four hour period of me reading a chapter from a new story book, so that he can mind at bedtime each night, hearing my voice and post-obit along at home under the covers. Information technology connects u.s.a. and spans the distance of oceans and timezones. Concluding time we read Jeremy Thatcher: Dragon Catcher (boys and pet dragons; what could exist meliorate?) and this time it will exist James and the Giant Peach. I'one thousand looking forward to it every bit much equally he is…
Simply now I need a new novel; my bedside pile is running low. What are you reading correct now; practice y'all accept any recommendations?
p.southward. The ten virtually cute libraries in the world; I desire to visit them all…
p.p.due south. Pinnacle photograph of Nigella Lawson in her library at home c.James Merrell for Firm and Garden 2004; all others my own.
Accept a wonderful calendar week!
jamisonwouturairim.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.katescreativespace.com/category/read/
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