Amelia Peabody

from the incredibly adventurous Amelia Peabody series, by author and Egyptologist Elizabeth Peters

..........

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”

“Your trousers are on fire. I would have told you, but you so dislike advice...”

“There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.”

..........

Unlike Alice and Ramona, I don't think Amelia Peabody is as well-known. I've written before about how the Emerson family is like a family of Indiana Joneses - if he was based in the Valley of the Kings and his mother and father went on adventures with him. The stories borrow a lot from Rider Haggard novels, and if you're looking for action and adventure with some romance and a healthy portion of Victorian sensibility, you are in for a treat. It's funny, too.

There are murders, mysteries to be solved, a Master Criminal, love, sword fighting, spying, and loads of information about Egypt and excavations at the turn of the century, as the author was an Egyptologist herself and made the series as historically accurate as possible. In Tomb of the Golden Bird, they are present at the discovery of King Tut's tomb and must watch as Howard Carter finds "beautiful things" as they work on their own excavation nearby.

If you're looking for a fun, adventurous book to read, give the series a try. There are 19 books, so if an early one isn't your cup of tea, try Lion in the Valley or The Last Camel Died at Noon. Then you can work your way up to The Falcon at the Portal and He Shall Thunder in the Sky (heart heart heart).

About the illustration: she carries a red parasol that's been retrofitted to hide a blade, and she has a belt she's rigged up with everything she may need in an emergency: "Pistol and knife, canteen, bottle of brandy, candle and matches in a waterproof box, notebook and pencil, needle and thread, compass, scissors, first-aid kit and a coil of stout cord (useful for tying up captured enemies)." Her hair is perpetually black, even when she has grandchildren, and her husband Emerson never makes the connection with the small bottle Amelia keeps on her table next to her hairbrush. I just love her.

This year's Valentine would be entitled, Boy, Those Kids Got Big.

What have I been doing since I last posted? A lot of designing, creating, crocheting, Girl-Scout leading, teaching, and oh yeah, raising these guys. I am trying to make more of an effort to get back to the blog and post more. But before the artwork and news, no Valentine's Day can go by without the traditional Nazzaro Family Valentine! (What you can't see behind Sophia's tight-lipped smile is her new braces. She is fabulous, natch.)


And now my favorite part... scroll down and turn back the hands of time!

















(2015)



(2014)



(2013)



(2012)


(2011)


(2010)


(2009)


(2008) - the first year I didn't have to photoshop together three separate images



(2007)



(2006)



(2005)

The t-shirt we made her for today, which matches the cardboard doodles we still have hanging in the kitchen. The Sophster is a sloth fan from waaaay back (remember the sloth Christmas painting?) so we knew she'd love it. Happy birthday, you awesome kid.

You know those funny pictures where someone posts a photo of some amazing craft from Pinterest, and then posts their not-so-perfect attempt underneath it, and then writes, "Nailed it!"

I used to laugh at those, because my efforts pretty much always looked like the before pictures. One, because I'm a perfectionist, and two, because I am a darn perfectionist, didn't you hear me the first time?

So I had this absolutely brilliant idea for Christmas that we were going to make a pretzel log cabin as a family. It was going to be freaking adorable and way better than gingerbread, which none of us likes very much anyway, but we do all like pretzels. And chocolate. And pretzels with chocolate attached.

I found perfectly adorable houses on Pinterest. Namely, this one: incredibly squee-worthy and something I thought would be both charming and tasty. So what if the person who made it used hot glue to hold all of the pieces together? I could use chocolate and we could eat it afterwards. Martha Stewart even had one (for Lincoln's birthday) that was much smaller and was glued by frosting to cardboard to hold it together. But clearly, I knew more than Martha, because I decided we didn't need to do any of those silly things. I was going to use chocolate!

Can you see where this is going yet?

I drew plans.
I photocopied the plans.
I did math.
I put the plans under waxed paper on cookie sheets.
I melted chocolate.
I spent tons of time sawing away at pretzel logs to get them all the perfect sizes for windows, doors, and the right pitch of the roof.
I made the cutest four walls of a log cabin you ever did see, while my kids went through leftover Halloween candy (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing) to decorate it with.
I put all of our work into the freezer so that we could easily frost all of it together with some vanilla frosting, which would not only harden but would look like snow too.

Happy Advent! The first week began yesterday, with the lighting of the first candle, which stands for hope. Lord knows everyone can use more of that.

My family and I have found an incredibly fun hobby thanks to this day's assignment: cardboard doodles! The process goes something like this: get thin cardboard (we used cereal boxes). Draw on it in pencil. Cut it out. Get the markers and pens out and go crazy.




My original sloths...and then they take to the trees. Because of course they do!





This dude takes requests.



My girls are so into this - so far we've had the cast of several Disney movies, flowers, and a certain girl has been making tons of germs to decorate a reminder for Paul's students to wash their hands before their lessons. And her sister's created an adorable sink for them to go with!

Those kinds of dinosaurs.