The princess and the pea

You need:

1. coloured construction paper
2. fabrics
3. a pea
4. glue
5. scissors
6. scraps of construction paper, including gold and silver
7. markers and/or colour pencils

Read the fairy tale 'The princess and the pea' of Hans Christian Andersen. Discuus after this what a princess bed would look like.
The students make the bed of the princess in this story. The bed has to be made of stripes of paper. At the bottom of the bed is a real pea, of course. Cut strips of fabrics for the matrasses (use special scissors for fabrics) and make a princess on top of this whole pile. Maybe the bed has even curtains or a little golden crown?

Made by students of grade 1

Ut oh, what to do?

Here I was happily journaling along when I found out that March's full moon was extra special. Ut oh, no room left on the moon's page and I already had a start on the next page.  What to do?

Laure and Kate had great suggestions but I read those too late, also :)  Do we see a pattern here?  Ha!

Here's what transpired in journal land:

Please click images for a large view

Roman Abramovich Does It In London

Ever wonder what's it's really like to live like one of the world's wealthiest globe-trotting billionaires? One need look no further than Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich who plays like a pasha and lives in the manner so haute it makes Saudi royals look like his country bumpkin relatives.

Mister Abramovich famously purchased nine apartments in two townhouse-style structures on patrician Lowndes Square in London's uppity Belgravia neighborhood that he's in the process of combining into one vast 30,000 mega-mansion. Your Mama has seen plans for the renovated property submitted by Mister Abramovich's people in mid-July 2009 and they are–to put it mildly–palatial. Submitted plans call for a swimming pool in the basement, multiple elevators, several staff apartments, a drawing room that spans the full width of the two townhouses and a full-floor master suite comprised of bedroom, two large bathrooms, two large windowed dressing rooms–one with walk-in safe–and a service kitchen/pantry connected to the main kitchen via a dumbwaiter.

With his London dream house under construction Mister Abramovich and his baby momma Daria "Dasha" Zhukova and their baby need a place to shack up and according the British media that will be an historic and Grade II listed residence on boho-chic Cheyne Walk in the Chelsea area of London last listed with an asking price of £25,000,000, a number according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption that translates to $40,487,300 at today's rates. That's right, chickens, forty million clams for a home he will only occupy until the construction and interior decorating is done on his massive mansion in Lowndes Square.
The aristocratic residence, according to listing information forwarded to Your Mama by Our Man in London, shows it measures 12,770 square feet over four floors that includes two ground floor sitting rooms and an office, a 50-floot long drawing room and a 900-square foot music room on the first floor–that's the second floor for all us Americanos–three kitchens, two-car attached garage plus a motor court an elevator, and half a dozen or more fireplaces. Altogether there are 9 potential bedrooms and–by Your Mama's count–6 full and 2 half bathrooms in the mansion plus a fully-detached two-story guest/staff annex with living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms.

Cheyne Walk has been home to a number of high-profile bohemian types including pre-Raphealite painter Dane Gabriel Rossetti, Rolling Stone Keith Richards who lived in a house once owned by John Barrymore, novelists Ian Fleming and George Eliot. Mick Jagger and his ladee-friend L'Wren Scott recently purchased a house on Cheyne Walk and Mister Abramovich's new (temporary) residence was once occupied by the über-famous American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler who painted his most famous painting–a dour portrait of his own mother–in 1871 in the music room of the house Mister Abramovich just (allegedly) purchased.

Mister Abramovich famously has a taste for lavish living and over-sized and frighteningly high-priced properties around the world. In addition to his London residences he is reported to own two mansions outside Moscow, a couple of spreads in St. Barts including one beach front compound that cost him around $90,000,000, a couple of pricey ski-pads in Aspen including the very contemporary Wildcat Ridge estate that he bought in 2008 for $36,375,000 and a villa in the glam Cap d'Antibes in the south of France.

Mister Abramovich's baby-momma Daria Zhukova owns a trophy mansion at the tippy-top of the of Bird Streets high above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles that according to property records was purchased in December of 2009 for $19,500,000. Last year, on the 15th of November, the property popped up on real estate listing site Redfin with an asking price of $16,500,000. Two days later the listing disappeared and a representative of Miss Zhukova contacted Your Mama and told us the property was "most definitely not for sale." Property records reflect that the property remains in Miz Zhukova's property portfolio along with a more modest 6,408 square foot mansion in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills that property records show she scooped up in late 2007 for $6,495,000.

And those, puppies, are just the couple's known property holdings. Presumably there are other posh properties and, of course, there are also the high-flying couple's armada of giga-yachts that includes the 530-plus foot long Terence Disdale-designed Eclipse said to include cabins for 24 guests, a crew of 70, two helicopter landing pads, two swimming pools, a disco, a submarine, a sophisticated missile-defense system, a master stateroom with bullet-proof glass and armor-plated walls and–allegedly–an anti-paparazzi laser shield. Some reports suggest that the ocean-going mega-mansion cost Mister Abramovich well over a billion dollars. It just makes Your Mama feel like puking to think of dropping a billion bucks on a boat. Yikes! Interestingly Mister Abramovich's cruise ship-like Eclipse–as well as his other giga-yacht, the 375-plus foot Pelorus–can be chartered for an undisclosed price.

And that, children, is how a jet-setting nouveau riche billionaire really does it up big time.

photos and floor plan: Savills

More Vacay Mish-Mash

Sorry for the delay, buttons, but Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter–and our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly–are actually on a wee getaway vacay with all the grays and gays out in Palm Springs, CA. We spent the better part of today day with our almost-famous artist pal Henny Penny during which we went t0 the Palm Springs Art Museum. We had a look-see at a print retrospective of John Baldessari, passed through the permanent contemporary collection, had our photos taken with a bone-chilling Duane Hanson sculpture andtoured a small and incomplete but still interesting look at the architecture of noted Coachella Valley modernist architect Donald Wexler appropriately called Steel and Shade. Then we had a crappy late lunch. Now we're back at our home base sitting by the pool thinking we should probably think about getting back to our real home. Anyhoodles poodles...

There has been heaps and hordes of hoopla and hoo-ha the last few days over a proposed 80,000-plus square foot compound an as yet unidentified property owner wants to build on a 5.2-acre property in the upscale Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, CA. The proposed plans call for an opulent 42,681 square foot mock-Mediterranean-style main house, a double-winged 27,000-plus square foot "son's villa," a 4,400 square foot guest house, a 5,300 square foot structure for housing staff and a 2,700 square foot gatehouse.

The Los Angeles Times revealed earlier this week that the proposed monster mansion is to be built for a single man with three children. Ownership of the property is shielded through a serious of LLCs, attorneys and the like but there is much speculation that the property owner may be a Saudi royal, specifically Prince Abdulaziz ibn Adbullah ibn Abdulaziz al Saud who happens to be divorced man with three children.

The massive–and some might say utterly preposterous–scale of the project has the dander up of Benedict Canyon residents who have formed an ad hoc group to stop the construction of the compound that will rival the square footage of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA. Interestingly, one of those who oppose the colossal compound is Hollywood honcho Michael Ovitz who himself recently completed his own humongous and über-contemporary crib in the 'hood.

There are many hoops and hurdles for this unnamed property owner to hop through before he can break ground on his mini-mall sized mansion but iffin Your Mama were the betting type–and we're not–we'd wager this real estate size queen will get his way even if he has to scale things back to a more modest but still elephantine 50 or 60,000 square feet. For more information on the group opposed to the development visit their website Save Benedict Canyon.

It's come to our attention via a well-connected Los Angeles real estate-o-phile that the possibility of an 85,000 square foot compound in the Benedict Canyon area isn't the only possible construction of a mega-mansion that's working the last nerves of concerned citizens in some of L.A.'s priciest zip codes.

Over in the Franklin Canyon area of Los Angeles, another angry ad hoc group staunchly opposes the efforts of controversial Ritz-Carlton hotel developer Mohamed Hadid to construct a huge and palatial residence–that he claims is for his own use–atop an unspoiled peak much cherished by urban-dwelling hikers and nature lovers.

Mister Hadid, the children surely recall, is the same man who famously sold his Bel Air mega-mansion Le Belvedere in the summer of 2010 for a gut-punching and record-setting $50,000,000. There is at least one person Your Mama knows who believes that fifty million dollar deal was shady and presented us with some documentation that indicates that Mister Hadid's (former) Bel Air estate is now bank-owned, but that's another alleged scandal for another time.

Mister Hadid has already begun to bulldoze the mountain to create a large flat pad for the sprawling spread he wants to erect but he was presented with a "stop work" order in late February. Those who want more information should visit the Save Franklin Canyon website.

Finally, there have been many queries from the kids as regards to the real estate history of two-time Oscar winning actress Dame Elizabeth Taylor (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, BUtterfield 8, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and etc.) who went to meet her maker earlier this week at the too-young age of 79. Your Mama could spend hours recounting each of the many homes around the world she's owned but it's already been done and done well here and here.

The world lost one of it's last great Tinseltown stars with Elizabeth Taylor who championed AIDS funding and research at a time when it was simply not socially acceptable to do so. May she rest in peace.

Full Pollen Moon

Full Pollen Moon, a photo by PJBee on Flickr.

I gave March's full moon a new name but can't help but think the long ago Native American tribes of this area probably called it Full Pollen Moon too :)

My nose has been so close to the grindstone lately I didn't hear about this moon being so special and called, by some, the 'supermoon' - I'm going to have to figure out how to add a note about this on an already full page!

Day Pretties

Watercolor, Ink and Stamps
3.5 x 8.5 inches
Handbook Watercolor
Sketchbook

Have you ever created a page and it seemed lacking, like something was missing? Maybe it didn't have the oomph you thought it would have or it just looked unfinished?

This page was suppose to sizzle with all that fun, bold yellow pigment, but when I finished (before I added any background) it just didn't have it.

The most obvious fix seemed to be to add a background, but what? I had just created a page with amaryllis (here) and used text as the background and I didn't want to repeat myself. I let the sketchbook sit open on my desk so that I could see it each time I walked by.

Finally, I decided to go with stripes to help emphasis the long stems. As Kate says, "meh." I didn't much like the stripes. So out came the black pen and then I added black stripes. Still didn't like it.

Leaving the book open and continuing to study it, I had about decided it was going to have to live as it was. A little later, I was prowling around in my study on the hunt for an unrelated item when I stumbled across some stamps......and a light bulb came on.

I retrieved my sketchbook and went to work. I used tracing paper as a "shield" and stamped the background. In a few places, I drew in the stamp shape rather than try to cut a shield.

There are things I will do differently next time, but I really had fun with the process and evolution of this piece. Sometimes, we have to get outside of "normal" solutions and reach for something new to make a page successful!

My big fat black journal

I’ve long been a fan of the kind of beautiful illustrated journal that Kate Johnson and others, like Roz Stendahl, Pam Johnson Brickell, and Danny Gregory, to give a few examples, produce.

Theirs are visually arresting books---almost art objects in themselves. They feature well-designed pages and handsome lettering. Often the books themselves are handmade, the paper of good quality.

While there may be entries of a personal nature, they are not so private that no thought is given to the appearance of the page for possible public sharing, even if the sharing is of a limited nature. In general, text and image are both important. The pages themselves may not be pristine. In Roz’s, Kate’s and Danny’s books, there’s lots of experimentation going on and many quick, quick sketches, but the overall effect seems to be of a well-made, nicely designed artifact. (I say ‘seems,’ because I have only seen these journals on line.)

My own illustrated journals, until recently, were different from these. They were more sketchbook than conventional journal, without a strong textual presence.

In those pages, I’ve practiced drawing because I LOVE it and so that I could become better at it. I’ve taught myself how to use watercolor, and, in more conventional journal-writing fashion, I’ve tried to get down on paper, in images, the important events and people in my life.

From the time I was about 8, though, I’ve written in diaries and journals. My sketchbooks were a thing apart from those written records of my life. For the past 6 years, my concentration on drawing and producing my blog Laurelines put an end to my journal keeping.

A few months ago, I turned to writing in a journal again. In taking up journaling once more, I remembered the lessons I learned years ago from the powerful, transformative book, The New Diary by Tristine Rainer. Rainer advocates journaling as a means to communicate with oneself, to develop creativity, to solve problems, to enrich the inner life.

Emphasis is on freedom of expression, expanding consciousness, finding a state of flow ---and getting all of this down on paper any way you can. Well-designed pages? Good paper? Nice lettering? Well, unless you operate that way instinctively, intuitively, with your eyes closed, without censors or brakes... no.

When I restarted my journaling life, I had not planned to include imagery. Or not planned NOT to.
I just bought a big blank book (big enough to allow me to scrawl across a page) with mediocre paper (something that the sketching me would not have been happy about) and started writing.

And images appeared, there, along with the words!

Not as illustrations, but more the rough lineaments of daydreams or nightmares, the quick capturing of something my eye fell on as I paused in my writing, time outs from hard thinking, notes for paintings and projects, sometimes plain old documentation, too. The images are more fleshed out than doodles, yet only rarely are they anything close to polished art pieces!

The more the images appeared, the more I gave way to their flow. Now, I can hardly wait to see what will happen next!

Why I don’t KNOW what will happen next is because this new journal of mine is about process and not product. It’s about communication with the self, not with others.

And it’s about pulling together the various aspects of myself---myself the artist, myself the writer, myself the mother, wife, friend and all the rest... all in one place, between two covers of a regular old, big, black, blank book.

It’s an illustrated journal, but it doesn’t look like Kate’s, or Roz’s, or Danny’s, or Pat’s. It’s rough-hewn, private, with buckled and splattered pages, loaded with crossed-out words and wiggly arrows. It works for me. I write about it here as a way to show there are many ways to make this thing we call an illustrated journal and to say that maybe something LIKE this may work for you, too.