Beatrix Potter A Journal

This is such a beautiful book , I just had to share it with you. It was given to me recently by my friend Wendy who had shown me a copy of hers when she was here in the summer for an art day. I fell in love with the book, and well, she surprised me :) Thank you sweetie.

The book is based on Beatrix Potter's journal and letters and is really well put together, so enchanting :)

This is part of the first two pages, where she starts writing her diary at age 16, this is in 1882.
As you can see the page on the right has a little booklet with photos of Beatrix and her family.

I can't show you all the pages, but these are some of my favorites. Actually bats really creep me out but I love how they added a little copy of a letter to Beatrix from her brother Bertram, who had gone back to boarding school and left her in the care of his precious bat.

You can see a photo of Beatrix with short hair on this page. She was very ill and lost almost all of her hair so what was left was cut. She continued to be ill between the ages of 18 to 21, then went into the world of business, as she put it.
She had decided to put her art to use and created Christmas cards, seen below. There were 6 designs using Benjamin Bunny, look how sweet they are. The one on the right opens up.

I love this next page. Beatrix used to write stories to the children of her former governess, whenever she couldn't visit, and there is an envelope on the right page which opens and inside is
a copy of one of those letters. It is so sweet, 8 pages of her drawings with a little story. Love it!

1904 - 1905 , she now had 7 books in print and they were doing well. I just liked this page with her drawing of a doll house which she used in "The Tale of Two Mice", she was also it seemed starting to fall in love :)

July 1905 Norman Warne asked her to marry him, but her parents were against her marrying a man in "trade". They put off announcing their engagement for six months, then her parents took of for summer holidays.

Norman was ill for a while and sadly died of his illness before Beatrix got to see him again, she was heartbroken.

That's all I have for photos for now, but you get the idea of this beautiful book. In the back cover is a copy of the Tales of Peter Rabbit, which is a reproduction of her privately printed edition.

Wouldn't this make a special gift? It certainly was special to me :)

Inspiring Books

Two very different types of books but both very inspiring :)
This first book is a new, new, book by Sue Roddis of Jabberwocky, one of the blogs I love to follow. If you have seen Sue's work you will know how brilliant and how perfect it is, she has a lot of talent and if you love Decorative Books you will love this book.

Over here in Canada and the States it is not available until January but was published in the U.K last month. Sue was extremely kind and offered to send me a copy. I even have a signed copy :) Thank you so much Sue.......

So... inside there are detailed instructions with lots of photos on how to make several handmade books. That's what I like about this book, she goes through each step. Sorry to say I have not tried any yet, but I will, give me time, I have other projects to finish for swaps and gifts right now, but Sue if you read this, you will be the first to know :)

Don't you just love the heart book on the cover? There is a really neat house book inside too. You can find this great book on Amazon.co.uk right now or you can pre order, maybe add it to your wish list for Christmas if you are in Canada or the U.S


Ok, this next book is inspirational because it is full of heartwarming stories about Baxter the therapy dog and his friends at the hospice where he works. He only goes for a few hours a week these days because, and get this, it's not a typo, he is 16 years old........ I didn't know dogs lived that long but you have to see him on his blog (which I now follow) at Baxieboo's Web Log,
he is such an inspiration, and I hope my little Cooper can one day train to be just like him.

If you love dogs the way I do, you are going to fall in love with Baxter. I do not have his book yet, I only just found about about this little teddy bear, but I will soon. All proceeds from the book are donated to helping therapy dogs train and to hospice centers :)

He still looks very young for his age, he is such a sweetie. The sad thing about Baxter is he can no longer walk, but that doesn't stop him having fun. His mom takes him swimming for therapy to keep his legs strong, and he is still visiting and comforting hospice patients.

If you want to see him in action there is a video but I warn you to get out the kleenex, it is just soooooo moving, and sad. I really cried.
You will cry for Baxter and you will cry for the people at the hospice, but it is beautiful when you see them smile, and the music alone makes you cry, it's "Angel" by Sarah McLauclin, so I don't want to upset anyone, that's why I am leaving it up to you.
You can find the video on YouTube here.

One other thing, there seems to be a debate going on at You Tube as to whether Baxter should still be working, or should be at home relaxing. Well in my opinion he is relaxing when he works, and he is being loved and given comfort by all. Why would he want to be cooped up at home constantly?
I will let you decide for yourself what you think.

Chilly, wet day, I have the fire on and have been snuggling with Cooper, he say's he wants to grow up to be just like Baxter, but I told him he has to be calm with people like he is with me, so we have to work on that :) See you soon..... Lynn