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we are on our way to change (yay!), but the financial crisis still looms - kids and money go together like peanut butter and jelly.

looking to keep your kids busy this summer - look no further than your mailbox.

another idea for giving to charities on the web designed for kids (see "making your mark" on a previous post). 

Those of you who have been following the saga of The Bees over at the birdchick blog (http://www.birdchick.com/labels/beekeeping.html) will know that of the two hives we started out with, which we called Olga and Kitty, Olga has thrived, while Kitty did so well that she swarmed in late summer and took off to see the world. We got a new queen, but the remaining bees in Kitty never got her population back up in time for winter.

Which meant that when it got really cold this year, Olga had enough bees to keep the hive warm and Kitty simply didn't. I went out in January and noticed that the snow had melted around Olga, she was removing her dead and, on warm days, bees were nipping out and pooping yellow in the snow, whereas Kitty was just a green box with nothing going on.

So I did what anyone would do. I sent a few thousand dead bees to Lisa Snellings, to make into art.

A couple of days ago I noticed that someone -- probably a raccoon -- had tried to get in to Kitty, and clean out the honey, which meant it was time to do something. I called Sharon, who was down with hellflu, and got the greenlight from her.

Lorraine and I moved the empty kitty hive into the garage.

And then I had to decide what to do with the honey in Kitty. I went onto the Internet to find out if there was anything I could do that didn't involve buying centrifugal honey extractors, and learned that if it was honey I wanted, a bucket and some cheesecloth would do just fine...



So I mashed up the leftover comb and honey into a bucket, tipped the resulting scary-looking gloop into the cheesecloth at the top of another bucket...



Then nipped out to the garage every three or four hours to add more gloop as the honey trickled through the cheescloth into the bottom bucket.



And this morning Lorraine came over and we took the cheesecloth off bucket #1 and poured the honey into jars. Astonishingly, the cheesecloth had done its job, and we had wax and crud on the outside of the bucket and clear honey on the inside.



There's probably the same amount again still in the garage right now trickling through the cheesecloth into buckets.

The honey is wonderful. It tastes like wildflowers and spring. I'd rather have Kitty out there filled with bees (although the Kitty hive that swarmed is undoubtedly fine, in a hollow tree somewhere), but the honey's good too.

...

The Graveyard Book is pretty much ready to be copy-edited now. I was scared that my editors in the UK and the US would point out somewhere I'd messed up that would need a whole new chapter (much as Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury did when she read Coraline in manuscript and said, "It needs a chapter where she confronts the Other Father, who in what you've given me just goes offstage and stays off," and I said "oh Bugger it does, doesn't it?" and had to go and write it. I mean, I knew about the scene in the cellar. I just thought I could get away with not having written it.).

But nothing like that happened. Sarah's biggest concern was a scene where a fifteen-year old girl accepts a ride from a stranger (obviously, she shouldn't have, but Sarah wanted it to be convincing that she did) and Elise only had small points -- the biggest change was that she wanted a sentence removed that spelled out how ghouls got their names, which I'd put in slightly under protest because a few people had been confused as to whether the small, leathery corpse-eaters were the real Duke of Westminster, 35th President of the United States, Bishop of Bath and Wells, or not, and I was happy to see it go away again.

I got an email today from Diana Wynne Jones saying "It is FABULOUS, WONDERFUL, TRIFFIC. One of your best! I love it," which is better than gold and rubies (and if Diana doesn't like something, she tells me). Jon Levin at CAA, my long-suffering movie agent, is starting to fend off the phone calls as people call him wanting to see it, and we have to decide who we're showing it to, which is a good problem to have.

Everything's sort of accelerated right now. The book comes out in six months (30 Sept in the US, a month later in the UK), and there's not really much time for the normal routes of book promotion.

I'll see if we can get a countdown to publication date timer for the front page of the website. I don't think I've had one of those since American Gods.

sure your kids can whine all day, but encourage them to voice their concerns to the proper authority. if i were in politics (let's have a moment of thanks that i am not), the most meaningful letters i would pay attention to would have to be the ones which came out of the mouths of babes. this is yet another way to show your kids that they can make a difference. and they can write letters for just about any bee in their bonnet. even that crack in the sidewalk robbing them of a smooth bike ride home.

the lesson: to convey to our children that we are all a part of this society regardless of religion, race, color or AGE. we have the birthright to speak up for what we feel strongly about. imagine if the president received a letter from every child in this country!?!?!

***added bonus, once the envelopes are out, maybe you can get them to squeeze in that thank you card to aunt tizzy from last year's hideous xmas sweater.

here's a link: how to write to congress

some people think that community service is equal to or more valuable than sports. guilty as charged. the geniuses at THE LEAGUE WORLDWIDE are spreading the word and have set up school philanthropy as a team sport. here is where i break out the pom poms. teachers sign up online as the coach, each team (or class) earns points for each project. there is a learning lesson provided on the website for parents and teachers, there are rewards and awards. there are great ideas for each age group. this is my favorite thing EV-ER.

when your child wants to have a slumber party, this is the answer. yes, it will be a LATE night, and yes, they will be CRANKY in the morning, but this party is worth it. have the guests bring (in lieu of gifts) a pair of new pajamas. your child can then donate the lot to the pajama program. kids in need, living in group homes, get new jammies and books to make their bedtimes feel as cozy and safe as ours do.

raise your hand if the bottom of your purse is lined with change, crumbs and lint. yep, my hand is up, too. this is a project your kids can take charge completely. they may ask guests to contribute, but mostly they can help you scrape out the back of the all purpose kitchen drawer, dig through the pockets of the diaper bag, tote bag, purses, backpacks and cup holders in the car. it's an ongoing experience so don't let them fizzle out. when it has reached capacity, take it to coinstar and turn it into paper money which can then be hand delivered to the cause of their choice, or even better, spend on pet food, books, canned food, blankets - whatever! then they can take that to their cause.

clearly not the most glamorous nor innovative philanthropic event, but a can drive is true americana. invite your child to make fliers (or print out a dozen copies on your printer) and deliver them door to door amongst your neighbors. these fliers should look something like this:

The reason Lenny Henry isn't in these photos is that he took them on his cameraphone. Here's me, Doña (Mrs Noah) and Rudolph (Mr Nancy).

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Howdy! It is Madeleine the Great!! Okay, well nothing very exciting happened today so it will just be several pictures with captions.

Here is me supervising everyone.
I was talking to Doug Jones, and giving him advice on playing Abe, ("You're looking a little blue today, maybe you should get some cheering up before going on camera" ), when someone took this picture.

Now I am telling Guillermo del Toro and Guillermo Navarro what to do. GDT might be the director and Navarro may have won an Academy Award, but as you can see they do whatever I say.

Here is Doug Jones and some strange man. We got the strange man kicked off the set because he was scaring little children. :)

Tomorrow we are back in the studio, and I hear some pretty fun stuff is going to be happening! I shall report back in the days to come...

My best regards,
The Official Web Maddy

P.S. Sorry for stealing your saying, Official Web Elf.