Our old gnarly trees were ressurected by a severe spring pruning and actually made reasonable apples this year.

This is what happens when apples are left for too long without supervision:

Yes, they get attacked by the Harry Potter cast. Tragic!

I had the good luck to be invited to the annual Highlights Illustrator’s Party this year. Yup – a whole weekend o’ fun, JUST for the illustrators who work on the magazines or on Boyds Mills books. Hot dog!

But first, we had to get to Pennsylvania. Now, I have been to Hong Kong, Taiwan, a dozen places in Europe, and all over Canada, but I have never been to Pennsylvania. Go figure. Well, we ALMOST got there before a tragicomic array of events occured to keep us from arriving at a reasonable time. I won’t go into details, but we arrived too late to properly figure out where we were supposed to be, and ended up sleeping six refreshing hours in the car.

The good news is, bright and early the next morning we figured it out and were back on track for a great weekend! Here’s where we got to stay:

SOOOO much better than the car!
(more…)

Here’s my “juggle” picture, based loosely on my kids’ school experience.
Only this version of school has goofier clothes, no one cares what time it is, and you are encouraged to play with your food.
And I can guarantee you, the only benchmarks the kids hit are with banana-creme pies.

Keene State College in New Hampshire has an excellent Children’s Literature Festival every year. The Festival mascot is an owl, so the college has been collecting illustrated owls (all done by children’s illustrators) for their permanent collection. In particular, they are trying to amass a parliament of 100 owls by the 100th anniversary of the college in 2008. Here’s mine:

Yep, that’s right- it’s the Great Horned Owl.
See you at the Festival!

Of course not!
Jenny H. posted this meme on her blog, and I couldn’t resist doing it too…give it a shot!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car),
Puty Grand Caravan

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie),
Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name),
L-Dub

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal),
Green Rabbit

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born),
Ellen Providence

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first),
Dub-Li

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink),
The Yellow Dr. Pepper

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers),
Frank Wilfred

9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy),
Lemon Squirrel Nut Caramel

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ),
Ann Wilfred

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter),
Echeverria El Paso

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower).
Spring Lavender

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Strawberry Sweatshirty

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree),
Cracklin’ Oat Bran Maple

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”),
The Beading Wind Tour

Clearly, I’d make a good hippy, and a BAD stripper.
Bah-ha-ha!

Check out this thing:

This lovely beast has taken up residence in my rock garden, just by our front door.
It’s close to 3 inches long, which just makes me cuss with wonder every time I see it, especially if it’s “working,” which it does a lot.
@#%$!!!
I think I’ll put off the weeding for a couple of weeks.

Well, at least the spring catalog is! A few weeks ago, just before we left on vacation, this showed up in my mailbox.

It’s the Simon and Schuster Spring 2008 catalog! See- there’s Jon Scieszka beaming at you from the cover. Now, open it up to lucky page 156 and there’s the page for my upcoming book What Kind of Rabbit Are You? WooHoo!

According to this, there’s a “feature” on my own website.
Whoops- my website’s a bit out of date- the book even has it’s old title there. Guess I’d better get on that- updates coming soon!

A few times a week on the way to my design office, I am enraptured by weird but beautiful towers of stones, perilously balanced on top of one another, and taking up a whole suburban front yard. It’s a tough location to stop at, so I have contented myself to view these creations in 5-second intervals while whizzing by on the highway.

This picture doesn’t do the work justice; picture stacks like this a hundred times over, filling up the front yard.

Clearly this person is either crazy or a genius, and I had decided a while ago that it was truly genius art.

Now I know who it is! Her name is Maria Alfieri, and the local paper ran a story about her and why she does this. Check it out.

As another person enamored of rocks, I tip my hat to you, Maria!