A Mom's Year

Creating a comfortable life one moment at a time

90-Second Newbery Contest

“A Wrinkle In Time” In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

When author James Kennedy heard that the Today Show had canceled the traditional appearance of Newbery and Caldecott Award winners in favor of reality show star Snooki (ouch!), he decided to do something positive to promote children’s literature.

With librarian Betsy Bird and the New York Public Library, Kennedy is sponsoring a video contest called “90-Second Newbery.” The contest challenges book lovers to create a video that compresses a Newbery award-winning book (or Honor book) into 90 seconds or less.

As Kennedy says, “It turns out that any book, no matter how worthy and somber, becomes pleasingly ludicrous when compressed into 90 seconds.” To get us started, Kennedy posted a video of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 Newbery winner, A Wrinkle in Time. I love the tessering-explanation part.

Game on! Lexie checked out the list of winners and is leaning toward Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. You can find more information about the contest here. The winning video will be shown at a special 90-Second Newbery Film Festival at the New York Public Library in the fall of 2011. Good luck!

Birds and Bees Knitted Headbands

Oh my goodness. How adorable are these little headbands? My list of knitting projects is getting longer by the minute. But who could resist these? Not I, that’s for sure.

Wouldn’t they be amazing for Easter? Find the patterns at Never Not Knitting here.

Music + Typography

{seen on Design Mom}

If this doesn’t sum up what’s gotten Tim and me through nearly 16 years of marriage, I don’t know what does.

These posters were created by a London designer named Mico, who started the series because, as he puts it, “I like music and typography. So I combined them on this project because I had nothing better to do.” Oh, to be young with too much time on one’s hands.

So every week at Music Philosophy, Mico sorts through song quotes sent by fans and selects one or two to work his interpretive magic on. You can purchase posters at his Etsy shop here. Mico says that the posters look great as iPhone desktop wallpaper, too.

Lily and I have colds, so we’re lying low today. She wants me to snuggle on the sofa with her to watch A Cinderella Story. Sounds good to me.

Renovated Attic Inspiration

{Seen on Ohdeedoh via Say Yes to Hoboken}

I love this attic space that was converted into a girl’s room. We have a bonus room over the garage that has sloped ceilings like this and it presents a bit of a design challenge. All we’ve done so far is paint the room and put some carpet down, but this has me thinking about ways to make the space more interesting. We use it as a playroom, so half the room is American Girl dolls and the other half is Legos, trains, and Transformers. I’m inspired knowing that the parents who created this room found the majority of their building materials and supplies at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I’m liking the sky blue paint color, too.

  • Check out this birthday party in a box.
  • Suzonne at Urban Comfort put together these sunny images for those of us still buried under snow. Thank you! (I’ve been crazy about lemons ever since my first pregnancy. No idea why.)
  • Have you seen the latest online issue of Matchbook magazine?
  • Some cute ideas for Easter.
  • We have a weekend trip to D.C. to visit family and friends coming up. Wondering if Georgetown Cupcake would be worth a visit.
  • Imagine a cooking class at a restored convent in Louviers.
  • So true.
  • Day 89 of the 100 Push-Ups Challenge.