bookweek 2020

i loooove bookweek. well, i love books. i always have. i spent many of my years with my nose in a book - or really in multiple books. so when i became a mum and the reality of book week came around, i was so excited! until this year when madeline matter of factly informed me that she wanted to be rey from star wars. um what?! that'd not a real book. cue my eye twitching.

but as i have had a third child and started to learn not to care so much about things, i have been more okay with the random unexpected requests of my kids. cue the search for a rey costume, which was incredibly unsuccessful unless i was willing to pay more than $60. yeah nah.

thankfully uncle james came to the rescue with charlottes rey costume from a few years back, (complete with a light saber!) posted express to be here in time. then all i had to do was google rey's ridiculous hair do, which thankfully didn't end up being that hard!

ta-dah!

joseph's costume was so fun! i was amazed that he agreed to it so readily as he can be such a little fuss pot, but when i suggested the tin man from the wizard of oz, he was super keen.

every so often, my sister in law donna passes on things that belonged to her kids, my 5 nieces and nephews. this super cool suit of armour made from flattened out tin cans was one of them. it was actually so impressive, all connected and attached perfectly with snaps and pieces of leather to take it on and off. it was absolutely perfect for tin man, along with some grey clothes and a silver sprayed funnel with elastic through it to wear as a hat. he drew the line at letting us swear his face with grey eyeshadow, but happily carried the terribly misshapen axe that doug and i threw together at the last minute and i spraypainted in the backyard late at night. #mumlife. he looked adorable! he honestly is the cutest little thing sometimes.

the axe, inside to dry in the hopes it would be dry for the morning, made from an old plastic sword, some cardboard and a lot of tape. woo. 

bookweek 2020, done and dusted.

booklovers

blessed are the children of the bookworms, for they shall inherit books. 

we looove books in this family. we have so many and i love that my kids love them just as much as i do. i feel like i am winning at life when i see them with their heads in a book.

a few weeks ago, we went on a hunt around our local little free libraries and did some exchanging after i had cleaned out our bookshelves ( a regular occurrence withe the amount of books we have)... but then i posted on a local page talking about the ones we knew locations of - only to very happily be told of more!

we now know of the following in our area

- 172 hermitage dr, the vines

- avairy creek playground, aveley

- the jungle park, brabham

- 19 wexcombe way, aveley

- 33 highpoint blvd, ellenbrook

and the only one i am yet to see...

-main playground, whiteman park

we love seeing what is on offer and exchanging books - it is so much fun.

and the most wonderful thing happened the week after! joseph is reading book after book and can hardly wait to find a new one when he's done with the last. i was looking on our local free page and a very kind local posted a bunch of books suitable for him, which she passed on to me - only when i collected them, she had man more waiting for me! 

enough for both of the older kids... and then asked me if any of us like harry potter - only to insist i take a copy of the fully illustrated edition, which i have wanted for so long! thrilled doesn't even cover it. i was ecstatic. i can't wait to get into it. 

books books books. just give us all of the books!

lure of the thylacine

i have always been fascinated by the thylacine. the tasmanian tiger. although declared extinct in 1936 long before my birth, i along with many others hold hope that the species is still out there.

i bought this book for my dad sometime last year as a gift (i must admit, when i gave it to him, i made him promise once he had read it that he would give it back to me to read.) and he said he really enjoyed it. so did i. i finally got around to reading it and wow. in the opening information in the book, it's suggested that you do not read it unless you have plenty of time on your hands, as you're unlikely to put it down and i can see why.

the book is filled with tales old and new of those who have personally seen the thylacine, or know tales of those who did in their time. it was absolutely fascinating reading these eye witness accounts. a few bogus ones have been thrown in, but they are marked as such - and what good is a book without entertainment? i was definitely educated though, i had no idea the tiger had ever been found on the mainland!

it got me thinking again, why would someone claim to see one if they actually hadn't? what good would it do them? it's not going to bring them fortune or fame without solid proof, in fact, quite the opposite... i can only see people bringing ridicule upon themselves for claiming they've seen an animal declared extinct so many years ago. i am inclined to believe nearly all the accounts and genuinely hope one day they'll be roaming tasmania again. 

i thoroughly recommend this book for anyone who has a love for the tasmanian tiger. an excellent read.

the chronicles of narnia

when i was a child, i was introduced to the wonderful world of narnia. i am fairly certain my dad read the lion, the witch and the wardrobe to me when i was young... but however it happened, i was hooked. in year 4 i won the book award and was presented with a beautifully bound book containing the first three stories, complete with my beloved the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. that's when i gleefully discovered there was more books to be read. i received the next book in the set, containing books 4 & 5 for my birthday that year from my aunt and uncle, then used my christmas/ birthday (11 days apart) money to get the last book, with the last two stories. over the years i have read them so many times that i've lost count...  and never grown tired of that magical place, where there were talking animals, and woods and well, magic.

i also love that as i have reread the books as an adult i have noticed more and more of the christian symbolism that c.s. lewis wrote into the stories. my favourite part still remains as the conversation susan and peter have with professor kirk in his study about lucy and her "lies". he looks them square in the eyes and says, "either she is mad, which you can see plainly she is not, she is a liar, or she is telling the truth." it is such a huge thing for us in these days with our belief in jesus christ. we are mad, we are lying, or we are telling the truth, that jesus is the christ. i'm not crazy, i'm not lying and i know that he is!

at school we watched the bbc version of tltwtw, which to be brutally honest, wasn't great. people dressed up in animal suits, walking about... giant beavers the size of humans? pass. so, as an adult, i raced off to the movies to see the movie adaption of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe in 2005, then jumped for joy as they brought out prince caspian and then the voyage of the dawn treader in the years that followed. not so secretly i hoped that one day, they would do them all. i loved them. every minute. being able to be in narnia for those few hours was amazing for me! (yes i am a big fat gigantic nerd)

last week, netflix put up the voyage of the dawn treader and i was all over that! watched it that day, then busted out the lion, the witch and the wardrobe the next day, then prince caspian the day after that... then spent that evening complaining to my lovely husband that i just wanted to see the rest. i even went on imdb to see if they had made some terrible 90s version of any of the others, in desperation, hoping for a fix! what i did find, was a listing for the silver chair, which i shrugged off thinking, oh yeah, this is someone's wishful thinking. but. it. wasn't! a little more googling the next day had me come across an actual announcement that another trilogy was indeed set to be made, meaning that all the books except for one, will end up on the big screen! (i can only assume that the one that won't be made into a movie is the horse and his boy, being that it doesn't have any real effect on the outcome of the series as a whole) being that they are being made in order of publication, the silver chair is next and i am so excited! i can hardly wait!!

if you haven't read the books, please do! you will absolutely not regret it!

the secret garden

a few months ago, i was approached by one of the young womens leaders in our ward, asking me, along with a few other women in our ward, to write something about a book i love (which, it should be noted, was not allowed to be the book of mormon) and provide a copy of it for the girls to see as they listened. i have loved the secret garden from the first time i read it, when my mother bought me a copy as a teenager (i still remember it was from the mundaring bookshop, which i now wonder, is that even open anymore?) and can't seem to help myself buying it again and again every time i see a copy. i am now up to 20 something copies, all different, and have no plan to stop any time soon. if you haven't read it, do yourself a favour and get a copy, it's the best!

but... here is what i had to say:

A book I love, in fact my favourite book is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was written over a hundred years ago and was first published in 1910. I have read it so many times and love it as much as the first time I read it. The story tells of a young girl who has lost her family and been sent to an old friend of her parents to be raised. She begins as an angry child who wants no love from anyone, but over time learns that friendship is one of the greatest gifts that life has to offer. 

The reason I love it so much, all stems around one particular quote, "where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow." I think this is a very important reminder of keeping the gospel first and foremost in our lives. Where light exists, darkness cannot enter. When we keep our thoughts and lives pure, we will live a life of joy in the gospel. 

literary love

i am in love.

 i am a bookaholic and today these babies were finally anchored to the wall and ready for me to fill with my loves. big love to doug for assembling them and dad for doing the hard bit of anchoring them (that did not look like fun...) this sight makes me so incredibly happy... and i am loving all the little changes we are making here to make this house our home.

♥

blessed are the ...

oh inherit books she will! niques took these ages ago and just gave me a copy. i am addicted to books and it looks like she's heading in the same direction!  

this kid loves books of all shapes, sizes and subjects.

just when i though i couldn't love her more...

breaking dawn: part 2

so... last week i went to see breaking dawn: part 2 in gold class with lisa, as i have all the others and i am pleased to report that it does not suck. sure it had it's fair share of cheesy moments, as did the others but i was more than impressed with the ending - and just how they did it. it was not just tolerable but really quite good. after loving the books so much (but despising the movies - gah) i was glad that one of them was doable - i'm just kind of sad that after all these years there's no more of them to watch - but we've had such a great time. we'll just have to move onto the next phase now haha. :)

harry potter love

i totally get this.

 there are some books that you read and love.

 that will stay with you for always. 

the forgotten garden

it has been a very long time since i am have been totally and utterly consumed by a book. but it has happened again... thanks to kate morton's novel - the forgotten garden. mum bought it a few months ago and loved it - passing it on to me who popped it on the shelf and promptly forgot about it... then after much nagging got it out and starting to read it. oh mum... you know me far too well...

it was... incredible!!

back and forth between london in the 1900s and brisbane of the present day as the mystery is solved... i cannot tell you enough just how good this book was - and hope you'll all run off and buy a copy to read!

now - back to my petition to have it made into a movie! haha