It's beginning to look a lot like...

Yes! It's time for Christmas cards!

The Merry Sheep holiday greeting sets and the Let It Snow greeting sets are on sale now in the Pepperina Press shop at Etsy.

Start making that list and checking it twice...

Pause

My little boy and a big apple, and a happy spot in the afternoon...

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On the Dinosaur Train

"He's the craziest pteranodon in the Mesozoic Era," Berry says, and she's FOUR, so I wonder if she has any idea what she's on about?

Getaway

After finally reaching the finish line with my letterpress art prints, I gave the press last weekend off and we went to Pensacola.

You can't see the evidence here but trust me – Man-show tried to eat most of the beach. On purpose. By the handful.

Berry was busy making friends with Natalie...

...and with the Forgione boys... and she absolutely insisted on "swimming", despite the cold front which had just swept in. Hmmm, icy.

Good to have the sand beneath our feet again.

(and in our car, and in our clothes, and in our suitcases.....)

Art prints

How could I forget to post these pictures here? This week has been that crazy.

These, my friends, are the first limited-edition letterpress art prints from Sweet Olive Press, released on Monday.

You can read about them here, or buy your signed and numbered print from the Sweet Olive Press online store.

You can win these!

Hooray! At last, I've got the email newsletter system worked out for Sweet Olive Press! Now you can sign up for monthly(ish – depending how ambitious I get) email updates on new letterpress stationery and special offers.

Best of all, if you sign up before by October 16, you'll be in the draw to win two sets of these fabulous Pink Peony Letterpress Notes (above).

The winner will be randomly selected from all new email news sign-ups, and will be announced on the Sweet Olive Press blog on October 19.

{ In case the sign-up links above don't work for you, you can simply type this url into your browser: http://bit.ly/sweetsignup }

Taking care of business

Today, Berry helpfully crossed off all the items on my to-do list, before I'd done them.

If only it were that simple...

Pumpkin Patch

Berry's preschool class took an excursion to the pumpkin patch across the road from East Beach, and Man-show came along for the ride.



What happened here?

I have no idea.


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Hatch Show Print

On Friday I drove over to New Orleans to see American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print at Tulane's Newcomb Gallery.

I was so, so lucky not to miss it, because although it's been at the Newcomb since August I only found out about it on Wednesday. On Twitter, no less! I felt like I'd narrowly escaped massive disappointment – the chances are slim for getting over to Nashville any time soon to see Hatch Show Print "in the wild". This is the closest I'll get for quite some time.

I didn't want to be the obnoxious girl using a flash in the gallery, so yeah – these images are a bit on the blurry side. (Just call it atmosphere, will you?)

It was incredible, inspiring, fascinating. I looked at every print at least twice, while Berry ran around identifying the letter A and the number 4 and any heart shapes she could see. Those were her favourites for the day, go figure...

It was brilliant in every way. I came away completely zapped with happiness and admiration and wishing, for a crazy minute, that I had been born into a printing family that stretched back more than a century.

I absolutely loved it.

For more on the exhibition and Hatch Show Print, visit the Smithsonian site.

Biscuits and being busy

You might think, since I've been a bit quiet on the work-related-posts front recently, that I've been slacking. Au contraire!

I've been printing like crazy – often at midnight, 1am, 2am – and being so productive I have to pinch myself. But all the results are things I can't show you yet.

The most Top Secret thing is my first letterpress art print for Sweet Olive Press. It has been complicated in every way, and time-consuming, and incredibly exciting. Seriously, I'm finding it hard to refrain from posting progress pictures here, I'm that excited. But I'm keeping it all in check because I know the piece needs to be seen with all four colours printed, the whole image complete.

When it's finished, you'll hear all about it. I can't wait.

In the meantime, a little creative accomplishment that does have a picture to go with it... my lovely friend Kate in Paris sent me an amazing recipe for chocolate chip gingernut biscuits (cookies, Americans!). They were so great I had to send most of them home with my guests so they wouldn't later call me, in a fetching manner, from the kitchen...