Sweet Little Things About Me - My Favourite Children's Book

I like to play along with Lisa at her Sweet Little Things About Me meme, because I can write all about my favourite things!

This week we are sharing our Favourite Children's Book. I've blogged about this before, but I can't resist saying again that my favourite children's books were the Chronicles of Narnia.

I remember sitting in class in grade 5, and saying to my teacher, "I really want something magical to read", and she was so excited to lead me to the book shelf and let me borrow her treasured copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which I adored from the first page! I felt so privileged to read that book and then was thrilled to find that there was more to the story, six books more! I was fascinated by all the connections between the books (for example, the magic tree in the first book was chopped down and made into the magic wardrobe in the second book - so cool.)

I love everything about these stories: the narrator's voice, the illustrations by Pauline Baynes, fur coats, portals, lanterns, medieval castles, talking animals, elves, ships, sword fighting, archery, magic creatures, snow, wardrobes, Aslan the Lion, and the terrible White Witch. What a villain! I remember having to read the final chapter of the seventh book to my Mum, because the ending was so devastating!

When I discovered Robin Hobb's Live Ship Traders fantasy trilogy as an adult, it took me right back to that wonderful discovery of C.S.Lewis's work, and I have enjoyed fantasy novels ever since. I just love the possibilities that magic creates in stories.

Did you ever read the Narnia Chronicles? Or see the movies?

They are so wonderful!

Come and share your favourite children's book at Sweet Little Pretties:

xx

St Kilda Adventure

I've been to St Kilda many a time, but never actually been inside Luna Park. Well, this time, we went in! 

It was a rainy afternoon, which was a bit annoying, but with the help of instagram I managed to produce some pretty pics of our day in St Kilda:

There is something so magical about fairgrounds, rain or shine!

xx

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Hello, bookish friends!
Hope you have all had some good reads this week!

Jean Harlow

While on the plane back from Melbourne I read this book on my iphone, which I was excited about because the sample from ibooks was so interesting and I usually love ghost stories.  But the story ended up being a bit blah, and nothing amazing happened, other than a tree falling on a house. Oh well...

I also finished reading Little Women, after finally putting all other books aside 

and concentrating on just this one! 

I really loved all the little lessons about relationships and character that were taught in this book - I had so many aha! moments. After about 8 weeks of reading this book in snippets, I will quite miss this little family!

Now I am looking forward to reading these books about night creatures by Marianne de Pierres:

and 

I'm loving the book covers!

Each Monday I head over to Book Journey to link up with Sheila's weekly meme, 

as there are so many lovely people there: 

Come and join in!

xx

Pretty Shops - Chadstone

We went to a lot of shops in Melbourne. A lot. The city, the Victoria St Markets, Chadstone, DFO, Docklands, and Highpoint. One of the best things about those shops was all the pretty shop displays. 

So I thought I'd share them with you!

These first shops are all from Chadstone Shopping Centre - the biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere! 520 shops took us 6 hours to go through!

Jasper Junior

Zetta Florence

Crabtree and Evelyn

Sportsgirl

Children's fashion store

Alannah Hill

Chanel

Children's fashion

 Carbon

And there were some gorgeous window displays in The Block Arcade in the city centre, but, because there was no natural light, this was the only display I captured that wasn't blurry:

Defal

If you get the chance, go visit both of these shopping venues. You will find even more eye candy!

xx

The Hunger Games - Film Love

I'm back from my holidays in Melbourne!  I couldn't work out how to post from our iPad while away, so I'll be catching up on some pre-planned posts before I give my travel report. :)

Firstly, a film review for you:

After reading The Hunger Games series I had to watch the film. This film had a greater impact on me than the book. After watching years of  reality TV like Big Brother and Survivor, The Hunger Games made me realise how cruel it is to celebrate competition for our own entertainment, especially when people are placed in difficult circumstances, under the watchful eye of millions. Okay, so with normal television shows, the contestants volunteer, and they are trying to win prize money or fame, and they do not have to kill anyone, but the entertainment-at-other-people's-expense element is still there. 

And there are still moments of torture in those shows; ridicule, isolation, embarrassment and physical trials.

I had felt the Nazi Germany references in the Hunger Games book, but these became more apparent in the film, especially in the chilling, and deathly quiet reaping scene. 

It was sickening to see the people from the Capitol dressed in their outlandish costumes, congratulating the contestants, or tributes, for being chosen

and it was devastating to see the Gamemakers and technicians happily manipulating the games arena to add dangerous elements for more exciting viewing.

The terror felt by the contestants was more apparent in the film, the running and running to avoid fire and wild animals was heart-quickening, especially when their fast breathing and panic were so evident.

I felt the romance actually growing between Katniss and Peeta in the film, while in the book it was pretty much all fake on Katniss' part.

Jen Lawrence played the part of Katniss perfectly. Determined, but terrified. 

She reminded me of Emily Blunt, heaps.

You might remember Jen Lawrence as Mystique in X-Men:

Peeta Mellark was played by Josh Hutcherson, who was kind of hard to relate to, in a way, because I've seen him in so many kid's movies, that he still seemed like a kid to me.

Liam Hemsworth's role as Gale was short and sweet, but, by gee, he is good-looking!

Woody Harrelson played the role of the eternally drunk Haymitch to a T:

and the tyrannical Professor Snow was impressively portrayed by Donald Sutherland:

I hadn't heard anyone mention anywhere before that Cinna was played by Lenny Kravitz!
That was pretty cool.

The Effie Trinket costumes were spectacular, in a Lady Gaga kind of way:

But, ultimately, I didn't like the way this film made me feel; disenchanted and chilled. 

It is a powerful visual piece, that made me reflect on megalomaniac leaders from our past, 

and hope for a future that will be as far from this as possible. 

And I would recommend everyone to see it, for that reason.

Just don't expect to come away with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

xx