Tadah!  Our new collection is born:  we are proud to introduce Welcome Home Noah, published by the wonderful folks at C.R. Gibson.  I just received my samples, and they are beautiful!  We want to celebrate with a giveaway of three brand new pieces to one lucky winner next Friday.  (See photos and learn more at end of the post.)  The photo above shows our samples piled around the studio.  The baby books and several other pieces are covered in soft fabric and embellished with silky embroidery thread, which matches the artwork perfectly.  This is my fifth Noah’s Ark themed baby book collection.  I think the reason I receive so many requests for Noah’s Ark designs for babies is that the giver can feel as though he or she is giving a little blessing to a precious new child.

We designed this group to work perfectly for both boys and girls.  And, if you think the covers are pretty, wait until you peek inside.  The interior pages are so inviting that you will want to fill in every page … but lucky for you, a few wonderful years will need to pass before you record the First Day of Kindergarten page.  The picture below shows one of my favorite pages, the Family Tree.  New parents can fill it in before the new baby even arrives, which is a very good idea, since very soon their time will not be their own … for about the next 20 years!

We created unique patterns for each bordered page and lots of illustrations to help you tell the new story that is about to unfold.

One of my favorite coordinating products is the One-Year Calendar with Stickers.  I loved this product when I had new babies and I was trying to juggle work and motherhood, because the important happenings of each day were limited to one little square.  I could handle one square of info a day and I actually had a fairly thorough record of all those important milestones.  My idea was that later I could refer to it when I had a bit more time to fill in the baby book … I’m still waiting for that bit more time, but, at least I know I have all the info ready to go, one little square at a time.  And until you get around to finalizing that baby book, the Calendar is an excellent story-telling venue … when Julianna was little, she used to ask me to read to her right out of her calendar.  It’s usually a pretty satisfying read, with passages like, “Today, you were amazing.” and “Wow, you said your first word.  You are brilliant.”  I recommend this for an excellent self-esteem builder. Hey, I wonder if there is a calendar about me?

We hope you enjoy our new baby collection with your new baby or a special little one you are about to know.  You can find Welcome Home Noah online at C.R. Gibson.

To celebrate the birth of our new baby collection, we are giving away three new Welcome Home Noah products this week.  The winner will receive a bound Baby Book signed by the artist (that would be me), a First-Year Calendar with Stickers and a Grandma’s Brag Book!  Just add your comment to the comment box below, and we will pick a random winner on Friday, March 12.

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I love my book club.  When the meeting is at my house, I get all themey, and plan the menu around the book we are reading.  We just finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and today, I am happy to share my Coast-of-Maine-themed book club dinner, plus some Book Club Cuisine Toppers I designed for you to use on your own Book Club fare.  They can be used for any book.  For example, I served Basket of Trips Blueberry Crisps from the kitchen of Olive Kitteridge.  But, if you were reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, you might serve Minny Jackson’s Best Fried Chicken from the kitchen of Celia Foote.

Notice I used the words “you might serve” instead of “you might cook” … this is because, if you are like me, you might be speed-reading your last chapter on the day the meeting is to take place at your house.  For this reason, clever procuring of your thematic refreshments might be the only way to go.  In fact, if you listen to audible books, as I do, you can listen to your last pages while driving to your favorite food market.  How’s that for multi-tasking?

Here is a link to the printable Book Club Cuisine Toppers I made for you, a very easy DIY project you can make while listening to the end of your story.  They are constructed in the same manner as these Birthday Toppers.  Just cut one out, paste to a piece of card stock, tape a skewer to the back, and then tape it to a second piece of card stock to cover the skewer.  I added a raffia bow just because.  The fun part is creating the names for your dishes.  See below for some of the catchy cuisine titles I included in our menu.  (Well, they seemed catchy at the time.)  And I have included a link to the blueberry crisps that, in fact, I actually did make from scratch.  Thank goodness for fail-proof Alton Brown.

I decided to go with a seafood menu since the story takes place in a small town in Maine, combined with a few dishes of olives, in honor of our main character’s name.  I also wanted to offer a hearty fare because I knew Olive Kitteridge, who loved to eat, would have wanted it that way.  Due to some tight deadlines, I knew I could-not-would-not be able to actually make seafood anything, so I used my excellent hunting-gathering skills and came up with a book club dinner menu which might have been prepared in Crosby, Maine, but was easily gathered in Austin, Texas.  The perfect accent was provided by Mother Nature who gave us a very unusual blanket of snow on the day of our meeting, so we could even have a real fire in the fireplace without turning on the air conditioner.

This was our menu … feel free to steal any of these apropos titles if you are reading Olive K.  For appetizers, I served Olive’s Abrasive Yet Tender Olives from Whole Foods and Mother of the Groom Shrimp Appetizer from Central Market.

For dinner, we enjoyed Olive’s Clam Chowdah (an interesting-sounding title when uttered with my Texas twang) from Whole Foods.  I added some Half & Half to make it a little less thick.  I garnished it with some freshly ground black pepper and some chives.  Schoolteacher Salad with Maine Blueberries and Olive’s Big and Blunt Baguette (with Butter, of course) rounded out the main course.

After a lively discussion, individual ramekins of Basket of Trips Blueberry Crisps came out, which I actually made from a great and easy recipe by Alton Brown.  Here is a link to the recipe and to a little video that I found very handy when wondering if the “crushed ginger snaps” should be chunkety or crumbledy.  (It turns out they should be chunkety.)  I mixed half ginger snaps with half shortbread cookies for my cookie portion of the crisp, but you can make any kind of mix you choose.  The Maine blueberry mix was made with half blueberries and half raspberries, and, since it is winter, our Maine blueberries were actually from Chile. The nuts I chose were pecans (to lightly toast before adding).  I can also report that the recipe for the topping was more than enough and I have a large amount of the crumble left in my freezer, which I plan to pop onto any fruit any time we have a hankering for a fruit crisp.

So there you go. Happy reading with a Maine menu to match.
P.S. If you have a good book that your book club has enjoyed, please let us know in our comment section.  We are always looking for a tasty new read.