Do you enjoy reading your children's books as much as they do?

Introducing a new weekly feature! Something that has been on my mind for a while, and although it's still the work in progress and not perfect, I thought I would start. The biggest part of my identity is being a mum, and I wanted to also share some of the things that are important to me outside the camera :) We love books, books are a big part of our daily routine. So, here is a start of a weekly book feature.

One thing I'm very curious about is how do you choose the books you read to your children?

Some of our books are in Russian, sent to us by my mum, my friends and what I bought during our visits. Some of the books in English were given as gifts and some books I have bought.
But most of the books we read are from the library. We often take out 10-15 books at once. Our local library is in a leisure centre where we have swimming lessons and we always stop by the library after the lesson. Also, our library runs the most fantastic rhyme time and story time so we are visiting it at least a couple of times a week. We browse through the shelves and look for something that looks interesting. We also look for the familiar authors/illustrators and series. I thought I would share with you some of our favourites.

So... Book club week 1 (can anyone help out with a better name for it?)
I want to start off with Emma Chichester Clark's "Melrose and Croc" books. After we extended them in our library numerous amount of times and collected most of them I thought it's about time other children have a chance to read them and bought the books.

Lucy loves the nice stories, Klara just likes the crocodile and the dog and I absolutely adore the illustrations. Emma Chicherster Clark's style is so recongizable, she created this perfect world. - vintage, cute, bright... Reading the books to my girls is a visual feast for me! The stories are short and very kind, about friendship and happy things.

I won't be describing all the individual books, but here is one of them. This book should be very timely right now, seeing it's the middle of "summer" and all (sigh):

Books about Melrose and Croc:

Friends for life
Beside the sea
Find a smile
Go to town
Together at Christmas
A hero's birthday

I have a list of books I would love to share with you, but I also would LOVE to hear from you all - what do you read to your children, how do you find new books, or what are our old favourites, maybe from your own childhood?

Going away... with children!

Travelling before children - have a nap, read a book, watch a movie, listen to some music while relaxing, chat to people next to you, catch up on some work...

Travelling with children .... is very different to put it mildly. Not a relaxing experience for sure, takes a lot of planning and attention. Having gone away recently and realising many of you are still yet to travel to your holiday destination, I thought I would share what has helped me.

1. Snacks! Food always improves the children's mood, it's magic! Plus while they focus on the food, they can't do much else. Hopefully! That's how it worked for us: Carton of apple juice each -  5 minutes of peace. Pack of Organix cheese and chive puffs each - another 5 minutes. A biscuit each - 2 more minutes. Another great thing about snacks is that the more is eaten, the lighter is your bag. Magic, like I said!

2. Things to do - colouring books (don't forget the crayons!!!) sticker books, sketch boards, books to read, "Find Wally" books.

3. New toys. The key is that it has to be something new. I think wrapping them might be a nice touch. And might keep the kids busy for another couple of minutes. Of course, there is a space/weight to consider. I have bought little wind up caterpillars so that my girls can have races with them. They are small and move which makes them interesting!

4. Give your children their own backpacks/suitcases. Adds to the excitement for the kids and you will have less things to carry! Win-win!

5. iPad, DVD-player with a trusty favourite cartoon.

6. Window watching. When Lucy was telling about our holiday, it became clear that she remembers the most were cows, horses and sheep they saw from the train windows!

7. Why not to team up with other parents who are trying to entertain their children. It will be clear from the first couple of minutes if they are interested or not! New friends and new toys work magic as well.

8. I have recently read this great idea about scavenger hunt on Creative Mama blog, which I thought was fantastic - turn the travel time into a game: http://thecreativemama.com/traveling-with-young-scavengers/

Please share in comments if you have more ideas, for me and other parents who might be reading this!

Our celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

Every little girl of a certain age that I know dreams about being a princess. I have one of those, well, with her younger sister copies everything she does, makes them 2! She loves watching princess cartoons when her mean mum (me!) lets her once we are done with our endless activities, Mulan being current favourive for the last couple of months. She knows what colour hair and eyes every Disney princess has, and never misses an opportunity to show off her tiara, wear beads, bracelets and rings and of course sparkly shoes! So I knew my little creative session would be very welcome.
Seeing lot of bunting everywhere has created a lot of questions so I have tried my best to explain to my little princess what will be celebrated very soon and she is very excited about the coronation and the Queen.

Family session, horses, caves and .. bluebells again!

Where do I even start!
I wanted to share some highlights from a session I had recently. The family wanted it to happen in one of their favourite places to spend time at. The mum has done an amazing job coorditating everyones outfits. We were super lucky to have sun, not rain, though it was still rather chilly! With all those things aligning perfectly I was able to focus on the beautiful family connections. But I feel I need to step away and let you enjoy the story.
The super sweet little brother who loves horses (from a distance!), loves picking flowers and enjoyes riding pretend "horses":

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, let me introduce the big sister who enjoys running and does it very well, but would stop for a cuddle with a mum or dad:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More bluebells!

It's been raining non stop recently, so pretty much every outside session that happened was almost like a miracle! So was this one. We have been on standby, constantly checking weather forecast, hoping for a sunny day. Or at least for a part of a day to be sunny! It was so worth waiting... We even found a dry path to stand on without the wellies. Stunning bluebells, gorgeous mum with a beautiful girl whose eyes matched the colour of bluebells.






































One of my favourites - beautiful moment between mother and daughter:

Again, had to really restrain myself from posting the entire gallery! So many of the images that I LOVE. Almost the same place as the shoot from the previous post but very different images. This is some kind of girly heaven - girls in lovely dresses picking pretty flowers. But I promise you I'm editing a session with a boy in it.