Sakura snack

Here we are in the middle of Sakura, the cherry blossom season. I like how bloggers at this time upload new pictures of cherry blossoms — it's a nice thing the way we're compelled to reflect nature wherever we go.

(Sakura photo is from oh my! tokyo.)

Pink cherry blossom tea.

Pink milk for Auggie.

I like to look at the tea a bit more than I like to drink it. It has a very mild flavour, though.

This is some sweet cherry blossom-flavoured popcorn from oh joy! via pinterest. Recipe is at link.

tiny pink & gold lanterns

A few days ago I found some thin flourescent pink paper at the Daiso in Richmond. I bought it on impulse, and added it to my big box of scraps that I use to make collages. The next evening, I sat down to do some illustrations, but I ended up taking a break to play with it. Sometimes, when your work is creative, you can forget how fun it is to make things with no real goal.

I used a few little squares of it to make some tiny lanterns, using the same method as the big ones from a few weeks ago. Anything pretty that costs 50¢ and takes 1 minute to make is really satisfying. The next day Henry spotted one from across the room right away.

One is now living in a corner of Auggie's room, balanced on an old chopstick. The gold is from a scrap of gold tissue from a birthday present. It makes me feel cheerful when I raise the blinds on a gloomy morning.

Lanterns

This weekend we'll be at attending the annual New Year's parade. And we're making classic lanterns for the house.

There a many good tutorials online to make paper lanterns. It couldn't be easier. We didn't use a template, we just folded and cut. It doesn't matter if the cuts are perfectly straight or even. Ours were very uneven and wonky, but you can't really tell at all when they are folded.

Welcome to the Dragon

This beautiful book, What the Rat told Me, tells the story of how each animal came to visit the Great Emperor of Heaven on the Jade Mountain became part of the zodiac.