pink books

You know how nice it feels when friends and family give you gifts that you really like? Gifts that they give with you in mind that capture your tastes and interests and surprise you with the intimacy of their knowledge of you.

My friends and family amaze me with how spot-on their gifts to me were. Among all of the really great things I was given some very cool books.

Handbags book, a paper lantern journal, ‘A life by design’ and Mum got me a ‘Book Of Birthdays”. The Book Of Birthdays is quite unique, I’ve never really seen anything like it before. It’s filled with lovely old fashioned illustrations accompanied with quotes, proverbs, facts, recipes, excerpts from books and journals all relating to birthdays, plus many interesting tid-bits about the history of birthday rituals.

For example, did you know that in the eighteenth century a peasant woman from Russia gave birth to sixty-nine children, consisting of sixteen sets of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets???!!!!

Or that it was the Egyptians who are responsible for the custom of celebrating birthdays, but it was the Greeks who added cake to the ritual. The writer Philochorus noted that followers of Artemis, goddess of the Moon and the hunt, commemorated her birthday on the sixth day of each month by making a cake of flour and honey. Her cakes were also adorned with candles, which represented the moonlight and her radiance.

…just in time to give me some ideas for this week’s illo topic “cake”.