A dog’s (Christmas) dinner never tasted so good by Milly Adams

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Picture the scene, it’s Christmas Day, you’re tucking into a piled-high plate of Christmas dinner, and despite doe-eyes from your beloved dog, it’s not until your belly is full to popping point, that the princesses get their lunch. 

Please, please, feed me, seems to be the call. Even the Parson’s Nose would be nice.

But Rosie and Polly know that if they wait quietly and look at us with those eyes, they’ll get their Christmas treat of Edgard & Cooper’s new festive game recipe instead.

 And if we’re tardy, they’ll remind us:

 

The message being, ‘For goodness sake, put down the wine and get these open.’

So Rosie and Polly like nothing better than this gourmet meal which is suitably festive and gamey with brussel sprouts and bacon too – (not that we let on about the sprouts). Like all Edgard & Cooper dishes, it’s natural, nutritious and has absolutely no-nonsense.

Put off by the rendered animal parts and carcasses, artificial flavours and genetically modified nonsense that goes into some dog food, Edgard & Cooper decided to make its own proper stuff using real ingredients and fresh meat. Rosie and Polly love it. 

Edgard & Cooper’s wholesome dishes for dogs are all about tasty recipes, and fresh really does mean fresh. Named after the brand owners’ family dogs; Edgard and Cooper, the makers believe that every dog deserves to eat well – and especially on Christmas Day.

Rosie and Polly gave the dishes their seal of approval, anyway. But don’t whisper a word about the sprouts.

www.edgardcooper.co.uk

Available now until the end of December in a 100g small tray (RRP £1.09) and 400g can (RRP £2.29)

2017 Landscape Photographer of the Year    Review by Cire Simone

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I had the pleasure to attend the awards ceremony for the 2017 Landscape Photographer of the Year on Monday 20th November at the Sports Bar and Grill in Waterloo Station.

The entrants this year were fantastic, with the winning images clearly displaying a huge degree of talent, focused on an array of locations around Great Britain.

The fabulous Ray Mears was in attendance to present the award for Overall Winner of the 2017 Landscape Photographer of the Year to Benjamin Graham for his stunningly simplistic image; Diminutive Dune: Sand Forms at Low Tide, taken in West Wittering, West Sussex. He took away a £10,000 prize as well as having his image published alongside the many other worthy entrants for this years’ prize.

The 2017 Young Landscape Photographer of the Year overall winner was Andrew Bulloch with his unique perspective of a well-documented event: Skatepark under the Northern Lights, Musselburgh, East Lothian.

Charlie Waite, Andrew Bulloch, Benjamin Graham and Ray Mears

photo by Paul Mellor

Network Rail, VisitBritain and the Sunday Times Magazine all help to support the annual Landscape photographer of the Year competition and each had a category in this year’s awards. The VisitBritain ‘Home of Amazing Moments’ Award was presented to the image judged to convey  the UK as truly ‘the home of amazing moments’. This award went to Graham Niven for his image: Dawn Patrol, Cairngorms.

 

Ray Mears, Jasmine Teere (VisitBritain Award) Graham Niven winner of the VisitBritain Home of Amazing Moments Award. Photo Paul Mellor

The Network Rail ‘Lines in the Landscape’ Award was for the photographer who best captures the spirit of today’s rail network as it relates to the landscape around it. This award was given to Jon Martin for his image, The 08:52 from Barmouth, Gwynedd.

Jon Martin Winner National Rail ‘Lines in the Landscape Award’ and David Biggs ( MD Property Network Rail)

The Sunday Times Magazine’s choice went to Julian Eales for his, Poppies in a Field of Linseed, Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire border.

AA Publishing have recently released their 11th edition of the Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection. The book presents a curation of this year’s beautiful submissions which were displayed on screens in the venue throughout the evening with a selection of the images being exhibited at Waterloo station until February 4th, 2018.

This beautifully presented book will make a perfect accompaniment to any coffee table collection. Each spectacular full colour print of all the winning and commended images is displayed together with a first-hand account of the story behind the image making this a lovely gift for all photographic enthusiasts.

The Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 11, published by AA Publishing, is available now, hardback, £25 RRP.

Cire Simone: Website: www.ciresimonephotography.com

Instagram: @ciresimonephotography

Facebook: Cire Simone Photography

 

A fabulous festive range from Great Ormond Street Hospital

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I’m a huge supporter of GOSH after they looked after my granddaughter so well. So I was interested to see their range of stocking fillers and gifts for the whole family to enjoy. So, it might be an idea to help someone else as well as find a great gift.

For toddlers:

  • GOSH penguin plush toy is the newest addition to the Christmas range. Suitable for all children from birth.
  • GOSH elf plush toy is really does look as though it will bring  cheer.

 

For Children: How about these arts and craft kits inspired by GOSH Arts. The hospital arts programme encourages children to experience the arts whilst staying at hospital.

These kits encourage creativity and guarantees hours of fun for all ages.

 The Christmas stocking pack contains candy striped pipe cleaners, tinsel, pom-poms and 3D stickers to help create a festive Christmas stocking. Suitable for ages five and over.

  • The Santa craft kit is filled with goodies such as DIY nativity finger puppets, a Santa advent set and a Santa letter writing set. Suitable for ages three and over.

For Adults:

  • The hats are perfect presents for warmth and winter walks, and we’ll need them this winter. 

 

GOSH patient Becky, has designed a beautiful Christmas card with a penguin design for GOSH this year. Becky was rushed to intensive care at GOSH over Christmas in 2015, and she spent time recovering on ‘Penguin’ ward at GOSH. She’s lent her artistic skills to help GOSH this Christmas. Might be and idea to buy something from the Charity’s Christmas cards and gifts range, as you’d be helping to keep families together this Christmas. 100% of the profits from sales supports the hospital and the children it cares for.

Gifts and cards from the range are available from GOSH online shop: shop.gosh.org

Frost Recommends: BabyBlooms For Christmas , Gorgeous Gifts For Babies

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babyblooms, parenting, baby gifts, christmas, personalised Frost absolutely adores Babyblooms. Babyblooms is an online baby gifting company who do gorgeous personalised gifts. They are always presented in a gasp-worthy way. We cannot recommend them more. 

Babyblooms, the UK’s online baby gift company, in conjunction with their friend, Bertie Bear, have launched a gorgeous range of Christmas gifts sets to make Christmas truly special. All gifts come perfectly packaged in beautifully illustrated gift boxes and will create magical memories for years to come.

Christmas morning is finally here and after all the excitement of opening his stocking, Bertie wants to sit down to a special Christmas breakfast. Create a family Christmas tradition with this fabulous, festive bone china, Christmas breakfast set that can be personalised with the name of your choice.
Bertie Bear Christmas Morning Breakfast Set – RRP £50.00

Also available from BabyBlooms.

Why not start a new family Christmas tradition with this beautifully personalised wooden Christmas Eve box? Complete with a luxury, cloth bound version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ and a personalised Christmas Eve plate for Santa’s snacks and Ruldolph’s carrot, this is a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas Eve.

Personalised Christmas Eve Box with ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas book and Personalised Christmas Eve Plate
– RRP £49.99

Preparing for Christmas Eve bedtime is a magical time and Bertie loves this soft and snuggly personalised bathrobe with bear motif. He will be there in his personalised jumper to hop into bed and cuddle ‘til Christmas morning.

Bertie Bear Christmas Bathrobe Set
– RRP £50.00

 

Babyblooms pride themselves on their unique and beautiful packaging inspired by their home town in the Cotswolds. Each of these gorgeous Christmas gifts will be sent in a beautifully illustrated box that, once opened, will make perfect keepsake boxes or nursery storage. Available from http://www.babyblooms.co.uk/

 

Ivy and the Inky Butterfly By Johanna Basford | Frost Loves

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This colouring book is just stunningly beautiful.The illustrations are sublime and we love the story too. Charming and wonderful. Frost Loves. 

Bring your own colour to the story

From colouring book queen Johanna Basford, a lavishly illustrated fable about a girl named Ivy who stumbles upon a secret door leading to the magical world of Enchantia.

A charming story that interacts playfully with beautiful, colourable artwork in Johanna’s signature style, Ivy and the Inky Butterfly is a one-of-a-kind adventure for the whole family and readers of all ages to customise, colour and cherish.

Johanna has picked a crisp ivory paper that accentuates and compliments your chosen colour palette. The smooth, untextured pages allows for beautiful blending or gradient techniques with coloured pencils, or are perfect for pens, allowing the nib to glide evenly over the surface without feathering.

Ivy and the Inky Butterfly By Johanna Basford is available here. 

THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS: IGNORING NOVEMBER – Jane Cable considers NaNoWriMo

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I have to admit to being a NaNoWriMo sceptic. Even their slogan – the world needs your novel – raises a wry smile. Does it? Really? Given the size of the ‘to be read’ piles of just about everyone I know, it probably doesn’t.

But this year – the scheme’s 19th – I couldn’t ignore it. Writers I respect are taking part so was I missing something? The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days with help, support and motivation from the calculators and community on the NaNoWriMo website.

A better slogan for the programme – and one which has come up more than once in conversations with authors taking part – would be ‘don’t get it right, get it written.’ Now that, I can relate to. As RNA New Writers’ Scheme member and veteran of NaNos since 2014 Jan Baynham says: “In 2014 my attempts to write my first novel were taking an age. When all the publicity for NaNo came around, I thought I’d give it a go and set myself a goal of getting up a couple of hours earlier than normal and to try and write every day. Having NaNo buddies was a wonderful support. Seeing the tally of words written each day was another huge motivator. Apart from checking through what I’d written each day, I left serious editing until after NaNo was over. In 2014, I exceeded the 50,000 word goal by a couple of thousand. Did I make that editing stage harder by just writing non-stop for the whole of November? I don’t know but NaNo was one way for me to complete the initial draft of my first ever novel.”

Fellow RNA NWS member Kirsten Hesketh agrees and is making good progress with her first NaNo: “21 days and 34k words and still going strong. I made about every mistake going with my first book, faffing around, editing as I wrote and spending hours polishing passages that didn’t made it into the final cut. So Nano has been very helpful for getting the bones of my second novel on paper. I particularly like three things about Nano (1) committing to writing each day rather than trying to fit it around everything else and thereby not doing it at all; (2) not vetting as all as I write which I think has made me a braver writer (3) the camaraderie, support and shared purpose.”

The camaraderie point is an important one and typical of the writers I know it’s peer motivation rather than peer pressure. Susanna Bavin, author of The Deserter’s Daughter, a saga published by Allison & Busby, has particularly valued this: “What I have specially enjoyed and appreciated is the companionship of a group of online friends. In the November Nano, you can message your buddies through Nano one at a time, so we all got together via Twitter to share one another’s angst.”

The more I look at NaNo, the more I can see that for some writers support and a target over a limited period of time plays a big part in making it happen. However in 2016 less than 10% of those taking part reached the target. Does that necessarily matter? I leave the last word to Choc Lit author Laura E James: “When I discovered the updates that Nano provide, I smiled. After a couple of days of managing 500 words, as opposed to the 1660 plus required to hit the total, Nano informed me I would finish in January. What did I take from that? The fact I would actually finish. I celebrated. I high-fived my daughter. I’d reached a point where I was in danger of never again completing a project, but to see the statistics in black and white helped restore my faith.”

My thanks go to Jan, Kirsten, Susanna and Laura for sharing their thoughts with me.

janbaynham.blogspot.co.uk
 www.susannabavin.co.uk
www.lauraejames.co.uk

IS LIFE INHERENTLY UNSATISFACTORY? By Paul Kwatz, author of Conscious Robots

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Ask a parent “What’s the most important thing in your life?”, and they’ll say “My kids”. This pleases a biologist, who believes that, because humans are the product of evolution, “having children” has to be the most important thing in our lives (after eating and breathing). If it wasn’t, our genes wouldn’t get passed on, and evolution simply wouldn’t work.

But ask a parent “What do you want for your kid when it grows up?”, and the biological angle might be less obvious. “As long as she’s happy…” doesn’t seem to have much to do with survival.

Until we realise that “happiness” is the mechanism that evolution uses to control our choices.

Maybe you didn’t realise that evolution was controlling your choices. Maybe you thought your conscious mind was the thing that was in control. But consider our daily battle to stay thin. “Eat a donut, or go for a run?” The donut gives you pleasure. The running hurts. Why does the donut give you pleasure? Because your brain evolved when calories were scarce. And the running hurts because running uses up those scarce calories.

Pain and pleasure arise from a non-conscious part of your mind that you can’t control. If you could, you’d simply choose to feel great when you were running, and, well, life would be a easier if a donut tasted like a kale shake, wouldn’t it?

We want a nice house because we think it will make us happy, we want to be thin because we feel good when we’re thin, and we want our kids to be happy because, although we encourage them to work hard at school, we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that a great career is no easy ride: it’s only satisfying in direct proportion to the hard work we put in every year.

And we’re right to be suspicious. When humans were evolving, the most successful ones were the ones with the “never-happy-with-what-I’ve-got” gene. They didn’t sit around as soon as they were full of berries, they carried on picking until the bushes were bare, made jam and designed bows and arrows to protect their bounty. It’s why millionaires become billionaires and why movie stars chase another Oscar. They, like all of us, are the descendants of hunter gatherers that were never satisfied: regardless of what we have achieved in life, regardless of our mobile phones, air-conditioning and indoor toilets, life, as Buddha observed, is inherently unsatisfactory.

But the good news is that life is also inherently satisfactory. Because sometimes there’s a drought and the berries don’t grow. And it’s not going to do our genes any good if we sit around moping. Our evolved brains reward us when our situation improves – regardless of how low we have sunk. As long as we’re moving upwards, our brains are happy to hand out the pleasure. It’s what allowed your grandparents to be perfectly happy without phones and why the plains of Africa rang with the laughter of our ancestors. `

‘Conscious Robots: If We Really Had Free Will, What Would We Do All Day’ is out now in print, published by Peacock’s Tail Publishing and priced £4.99 in paperback and £2.99 as an eBook. Visit www.consciousrobots.com or Amazon UK

Four Great Children’s Books For Christmas

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Four wonderful books for children this Christmas. Frost loves them all.

Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz By Michael Morpurgo.

From master storyteller MICHAEL MORPURGO, and illustrated in stunning colour by the award-winning EMMA CHICHESTER CLARK, comes a surprising, charming and uplifting twist on The Wizard of Oz, told by a very special and unforgettable character: Dorothy’s pet dog, Toto. A perfect, collectible gift for all children (and children at heart).

“I was there,” Papa Toto said, and those magic words sent shivers down my spine. It was going to be the Wizard story. “Dorothy and me were both there.”
We were all silent, snuggled up together, waiting, waiting.
Then Papa Toto began…

When a twister descends on their Kansas farm, Toto and his owner Dorothy hide in the house – only to be plucked into the air and whisked away!

Coming down with a crash in the mysterious land of Oz, the pair meet a series of extraordinary characters: a scarecrow who believes he has no brains, a tin man without a heart, and a cowardly lion who may not be as cowardly as he thinks he is.

But Toto and Dorothy are desperate to return home – after all, home is home, and home is best! So they set off with their new friends on a journey down the yellow brick road to find the only person who might be able to help them: the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

But what they find might surprise them. And on the way, all of them will learn that what they think they are missing might have been there, all along…

Beautifully illustrated throughout, this is an unforgettable telling of a classic story, and a must for every bookshelf.

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth By Oliver Jeffers.

The exquisite and thought-provoking new book from the multi award-winning, internationally best-selling picture book creator of Lost and Found, Oliver Jeffers.

Well, hello.
And welcome to this Planet.
We call it Earth.

Our world can be a bewildering place, especially if you’ve only just got here. Your head will be filled with questions, so let’s explore what makes our planet and how we live on it. From land and sky, to people and time, these notes can be your guide and start you on your journey. And you’ll figure lots of things out for yourself. Just remember to leave notes for everyone else… Some things about our planet are pretty complicated, but things can be simple, too: you’ve just got to be kind.

Here We Are is the utterly heartfelt new book from Oliver Jeffers. We’re glad you found it.

Father Christmas Heard a Parp By Olaf Falafel.

The side-splitting festive follow-up to Old MacDonald Heard a Parp, from hilarious picture book superstar, Olaf Falafel.

“Father Christmas heard a parp … E-I-E-I-O!”

Father Christmas is getting ready to deliver the presents – but he keeps getting distracted by some VERY rude noises! Who keeps PARPING?!

Could such a big noise actually be coming from someone rather small…?

More windy fun is in store in this brilliant picture book by the sensational Olaf Falafel. Featuring helpful do-it-yourself instructions so you can parp along to your heart’s content and drive your family nuts during the holidays, it’s set to be the ultimate stocking filler for Christmas 2017! Fans of The Dinosaur That Pooped series will love this tongue-in-cheek Christmas tale. Perfect for ages 4 and up.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas 60th Anniversary Slipcase Edition By Dr Seuss.

The one and only Grinch from the iconic Dr. Seuss gets a brand new look for his 60th birthday, in this collectible slipcase edition with a special introduction all about your favourite Christmas character.

It’s the Grinch’s 60th birthday – and you’re invited to the party.

“The Grinch hated Christmas!
The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why.
No one quite knows the reason…”

With a heart two sizes too small, the Grinch is the meanest creature you’ll ever meet. He hates Christmas and the whole festive season. But when he hatches a dastardly plot to
steal Christmas, he’s in for a big surprise!

With hilarious rhymes and beautiful illustrations, this classic seasonal story has become a favourite for good reason and teaches readers the true meaning of Christmas.

Now in a very special foiled slipcase edition with extra material, this classic story is the perfect gift for boys and girls of all ages.