Happy Belated New Year! Thanks to all of you who subscribed to this blog in 2011. It has had about 3,000 hits since my first post in July last year, which is a rather nice figure. I have to admit, though, that many of the hits originated from kooky Google searches such as “fantastic breasts” […]

It’s a happy day whenever a new supply of Book Darts arrives in my letterbox. I’m a Book Darts addict. Gone are the days of slapping post-its throughout my books and making them all end up looking like this poor copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which also had the unfortunate experience of weathering a spilled […]

Planted a little vegetable garden today. It’s not quite the one metre square veggie patch that Lolo Houbein recommends in her book One Magic Square: ours is arranged in old styrofoam boxes and buckets. We have coriander, mint, basil, bok choy, silverbeet, radishes, capsicums, heirloom tomatoes and cream-coloured nasturtiums.

Dear Julie, Thanks for your gorgeous video and photos…they are amazing, I love all the ice cream vans! It reminded me of walks in the park. I loved the ice-cream vans and the ice-cream with the sprinkles and the flake sticking out of the side… but it always looked so much better then how it […]

Dear Julie, hello! bonjour! hola! Europe really makes you realised how small the world really is when you can drive 30 mins and enter a new country, language and culture. Being in the Pyrenees for 4 days without internet, slowed down our little life… I remember an old lady who lived around the corner when […]

Dear Yumi, Just heard you’re without wi-fi at the moment in an old chateau in the Pyrenees. Tough life! 😀 Hope you’re having a great time! Since you won’t have an opportunity to reply to my Day 5 post until tomorrow, I’ve put together this quick post to mark Day 6. Here are some photos from […]

Dear Yumi, I loved your little texta plates, particularly because the people are all so happy and the birds line up in a sky that holds on for dear life at the very edge of the picture. Your Pablo Picasso quote inspired me to make a tiny film out of some old (and new) footage. […]

Dear Julie, You are too cute…so cute that I was desperate to find some of my kindy drawings, but all I could find were these plates that I posted on my blog last year: http://dearplastic.blogspot.com/2010/04/textalove.html I wish I could look over my kindy activity books now, but sadly I didn’t pack them in my suitcase. […]

Your photos of those beautiful chalk drawings reminded me of idyllic childhood days. Here are some of my earliest short stories. This is Brent the community-minded ice-cream truck. And here’s a story about a very, very nice transexual wizard with great self-esteem. I lived in some of my imaginary worlds. This is a map I drew up […]

We’ve arrived at Day 2 of my collaboration with Yumi Takahashi. If you missed the post from Day 1, you can read it here. Today’s post is from Yumi. *** Dear Julie, I love stumbling by these gorgeous chalk drawings…usually you can spot them in the afternoon and close to a playground. I think they […]