new work: vitamin-rich refreshments for happi kids...

Well I need to let you know, it’s not quite new work, it’s just taken me this long to get around to posting it! This story came out in the Winter edition of Happi Kids in November, and it’s all about drinks that are focussed on the vitamin content, to boost the vitamins our kids need. It was as always, a lot of fun shooting food, and coming up with the recipes was as much fun as the rest of the production. And just for you, I’ve attached the recipes with each photograph so you can try them out, they’re also nice and easy for kids to join in making too - I have to say my absolute favourite was the carrot soup. In fact, I think I’ll make it this weekend again, it was a hit - both Laly and her friend Eloise loved it when I served up the left overs from the shoot that weekend. It’s delicious warm or cold.

Keep in mind that all my recipes are intuitive, which means you don’t need to follow them precisely - I tend to make them up as I go so you can do the same and I recommend it!

Also for this story I focussed on colour, so each recipe was as much about the vitamins as it was about the colour because colour is a powerful healer.

The first elixir above is of course, all about…

Vitamin C: dark orange/red

INGREDIENTS:

A bottle/half bottle of clear apple juice
Sparking water or plain water
3-4 citrus fruits of choice – orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime
Juice of one lime
1-2 cups beetroot juice

ASSEMBLAGE:

Place the beetroot juice into ice cube trays to freeze.
Put the apple juice, water and lime juice in a large jug.
Slice the citrus fruits and place into the jug as well as the glasses.
When the beetroot ice cubes are ready, place them into each glass and pour the drink over the ice cubes.

Vitamin A: orange

Chilled (or warm, your choice) carrot soup

INGREDIENTS:

A bunch of baby carrots, carrot tops removed or 3 large carrots, peeled and cut
½ onion
1-teaspoon turmeric powder
Drizzle olive oil
Salt
1-teaspoon honey
Coconut milk (optional)
1-2 Litres of vegetable stock

ASSEMBLAGE:

Preheat oven to 180C.
Place carrot and cut up onion on a baking tray and drizzle with the olive oil, honey, turmeric and salt – mix together so that the carrots and onions are well coated.
Bake in the oven until tender and roasted – about ½ hour.
Remove from the oven, allow to cool and then place in a blender with the veg stock – start with ½ litre of veg stock and then add as you go so you can check the consistency. Blend altogether until smooth.
Chill in the fridge and then serve! You can add a dash of coconut milk to serve if desired.  Bunny face created with micro herbs and edible flowers.
Makes 2-4 (depending on whether you serve it as an entrée or main)

Vitamin E : purple

 INGREDIENTS:

½ avocado
Handful of baby spinach  - optional
½ cup coconut milk (or try other non-dairy milks)
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 teaspoons honey
Beetroot powder – optional (makes it more purple)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1-tablespoon nut butter – optional

 ASSEMBLAGE:

Put all ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth. To make it thicker, you can add ice, to make it less thick, you can add more coconut milk.

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If you’re child is not keen on eating anything green, this recipe below is great, as the colour is so vibrant and making the animal faces on top makes it playful. I recommend starting with very small bowls, even if it’s 3 big spoonfuls of the smoothie and then they can enjoy the fruit shapes. Even if they only have a small amount, you can then gradually increase the amount of smoothie you put in the bowl when you make it again. Let them play with the fruit to make faces. You can make one of the bowls up for them to see (that one can be yours), so they can see the face on top for inspiration, then let them make up their own with their own bowl. Kids love assembling, so this is a great recipe for that.

Vitamin K: green

INGREDIENTS:

Bunch of kale
Bunch of baby spinach
1 banana
A handful of grapes
½ cucumber
½ lime  - juice
1 tsp. psyllium husk (optional)
½ cup water
1/2 cup apple juice

ASSEMBLAGE:

Blend on high until smooth, place in bowls and decorate with pieces of cucumber, lime wedges, or any left over fruit to make green monster faces.

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This one is another hit! Of course, it’s got chocolate. But it’s fantastic for adding some extra powders for added minerals, see below…

Vitamin B: brown/chocolate

INGREDIENTS: 

Small handful of cashews
Small handful of almonds
A teaspoon sunflower seeds
1 medjool date
½ banana
1 tablespoon cocoa powder or cacao
Small handful of baby spinach leaves
1 tablespoon unhulled tahini
1-tablespoon peanut butter
1-2 cups rice milk
Sprinkling of buckinis - buckwheat for the top

ASSEMBLAGE:

Soak the cashews overnight in water – simply put the cashews in a glass jar, and cover with water and leave on the bench. Do the same with the almonds and sunflower seeds.
Put all ingredients into the blender and blend on high until smooth and creamy.

This is a great recipe to add any extra powders to boost the immune system – you could add maca powder, zinc, pea protein, slippery elm, psyllium husk etc.

I hope you try some of these recipes and for the full story, it’s in Winter edition of Happi Kids (the issue before the latest).

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Production, styling & photography: Pia Jane Bijkerk
Publication: Happi Kids for Happinez

My next post is going to be all about the power of colour!

xx

PS There is a new post on Patreon too, for the Wandering Hearts Collective, and another delicious recipe there for this month as we strengthen our immune systems for what’s happening in the world. I’ll be writing more about what I’m doing this year on Patreon soon X

Creative Women in Conversation, February 29, 2020

…turned out the beautiful Mistress of Ceremonies Cynthia and I were wearing the exact same colour combination, even with loop earrings and high bun! Nothing like sweet synchronicity to know you’ve met a kindred spirit. X

Last Saturday, I was honoured to be one of the guest speakers at this year’s Creative Women In Conversation event held at the fabulous North Sydney Community Centre. I’d heard so many wonderful things about it from past speakers and audience members, and it certainly lived up to its reputation, I had a fabulous time! I felt so completely nurtured while up on stage, and I’m so grateful to everyone for sharing their enthusiasm for all I had to share, and for the incredible feedback I received throughout the day. This was Shona Smith and my first official live event together which we eagerly announced on our podcast at the end of last year, and we had such a great time. Having been in dialogue for a year now on It’s All Up From Here, we were ready to try our hand at opening the dialogue with a live audience, it was such a treat…

snapshots with thanks to Cynthia Sciberras

We talked about what it means to live a creative life; how ideas form; what some of the most common creative blocks are and what mine have been; how to manage being a multi-passionate creative; the importance of mentoring and using our intuition; and how global events affect the creative flow. We had so many great questions from the audience, each one sparked new ideas and topics that we’d love to extend on in future podcasts and live, intimate events.

I absolutely loved listening to the other speakers, learning more about their work and how they manage their own creative blocks and life experiences while still engaging their creative passions. Sharing this day with them was a wonderful experience.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Joanna Goodwin, the centre’s director, for inviting me to participate this year, she truly is incredible at connecting people and bringing creativity into the everyday, not just through this fabulous yearly event in celebration of International Women’s Day, but also through the centre’s workshops, hosted by incredible artists.

The talks were recorded for the North Sydney Centre podcast, and Shona and I will be adding our talk as a special episode of It’s All Up From Here too, so you can listen then, I’ll let you know on social media when it’s live.

Thank you again to everyone who bought books on the day, and those who expressed interest in mentoring, you can check out the mentoring packages here, or send me an email.

xx

new work: unique symbols of friendship for happi kids...

wax drawing with watercolour as message: give someone a secret message that they have to discover by painting over the top of it: A beautiful version of those secret message pens that children have.

Loved creating this collection of photographs for the Autumn edition of Happi Kids which is well and truly out now in The Netherlands! The story is all about ways of expressing friendship and love. I’ve captioned each image so you can learn more about the ideas in the visual storytelling. I love how conceptual this is, and how the focus is once again not on purchasing things but creating things - making something from ‘nothing’, truly alchemical in process, it’s what I love doing! Aside from the backdrops and a few little props, everything in each image are from objects and foliage around my home. Each tells a story within a story.

a new take on the family tree - select a beautiful branch and add photos as well as significant textiles and objects that tell stories. It can be added to over time to create a stunning feature in your child’s room.

I especially loved creating this photograph, because the three women in the polaroids are my grandmother (top left), my mother (middle left) and me with my mother in the bottom polaroid. My grandmother died earlier this year, and my mother passed away four years ago. Creating this tree was a beautiful way to reflect on the gift of life and how I now share that with my daughter. I added the emu feathers as the emu is a significant symbol for my daughter, and there is a piece of indigo-dyed textile made by my dear friend Nat. Messages, memories and stories can be written on pieces of card and hung over time to create layers of meaning.

The Native Indian symbol of friendship which you can paint in red as the colour of connection, love, and strength on each other’s hand.

The friendship necklace - find a little bottle and fill it with tiny treasures and a miniature note telling your friend what you love about her. Attach a piece of string and gift it to her any day of the week. Or you could make each other one as a gift for Christmas. My wonderful stylist assistant and model in the above images is my daughter Laly, standing in the dappled sunlight in our back garden.

Friendship code stones - do you and your friend live in the same neighbourhood, and walk the same streets but go to different schools? Gather a bunch of stones and create your own symbols for each letter of the alphabet, making sure to double or triple up on more common letters. Or create symbols for special words. Be sure to memorise the code or write out the symbols together. Leave the pile of stones in a safe place you both walk past often so that on your way to school or to the park, you can leave each other a message. Ask a question and then find out what they will answer! It’s a beautiful way to connect.

I absolutely loved making these friendship code stones! It’s the best idea, I can imagine kids loving doing this. It would be such a fun thing to do with your own child or grandchild - a collection of coded stones that you can create messages for them to find in places in the garden.

Keys to a special place - this idea got me thinking about the different spaces that could be shared - a treehouse, a beach shack, a creative space. And then I realised that’s what my studio is - a place I share with creative friends who come and stay, it’s truly is a wonderful way to connect!

I really wanted a compass for this photograph, as a way of symbolising direction to each other. I could not find one anywhere on short notice and it was driving me crazy. I sat for a moment of quiet, thinking about the present moment, which lead to me thinking about my family. I wondered how Laly was enjoying her day out with her friend Mya and Mya’s Aunty Tash, who lovingly takes the girls out on fun adventures together. I thought about their day out on this particular day, as Tash had taken them to the Maritime Museum. I wondered what they might be doing, and if they were on one of the ships, or were they looking in the shop? Then it dawned on me: they are at the Maritime Museum!! Surely there are compasses there! I called Tash to ask and when she got to the shop., they took a photo for me - there were over 3 dozen beautiful, old style compasses to choose from! I couldn’t believe my luck, I would never have thought of the Maritime Museum if the girls were not there at that very moment. So Tash helped me choose the one I wanted for the shoot and Laly brought it back with her. What a successful prop scout! A big thank you to Tash for her input on this photograph, the compass is the star of the shot. The piece of textile is from my friend Nat, who comes to stay in the studio whenever she’s in Sydney. And I realised this is what I have with her, this special bond of sharing my creative space with her.

With love,

Pia xx

It's All Up From Here, Season 4: empowering women, empowering families...

Season Four is in full swing on the podcast, I can’t quite believe it, we are already up to episode 5! We have gone deep on lots of fantastic topics already like finding your purpose; the importance of self-belief; healing through connection…unless you’re dealing with a narcissist (funny but not funny! we’ve both had quite some dealings with it this year!); and feeling lonely. It’s such an incredible season of conversation, there is so much more to come. As usual Shona & I are raw, unscripted and honest. Here is a little snippet from the first episode of Season Four so you know what’s happening this season…

Shona: “Season Four has a new tag line!  This season we are getting to the core. Our tag line was ‘helping bring the joy back to families’. First, it was ‘helping bring the joy back to parenting’, now it’s still about the joy, but we’ve decided that our new tagline is ‘empowering women, empowering families’. Really what we’ve been talking about all this time is supporting women to a point where they can be more whole; emotionally healthy; be themselves; and feel inspired & empowered which then in turn they pass on to their children, their families and their partners and friends.”

Pia: “As women we birth the next generation, and we need to be empowered to support that, that sense of thriving and learning – if we don’t give it to ourselves, we can’t offer it to anybody else. So it’s the core of what we are doing – bringing out that female energy and empowering it, for everyone’s sake. Some of the topics are going to be: intuition; a journey with self belief – a deeper exploration from self-acceptance which we spoke about last season, and also what external validation has to do with it; creativity; feeling not good enough and unworthy – we are going to work a little deeper with that because again we end up reacting from that place without realising it, without being conscious of it; and we will be talking deeper about intimate relationships….”

If you are interested in living intuitively and are eagerly awaiting my next book then I encourage you to take a moment to listen in as every topic we open up in discussion this season is part of the book, The Alchemy of Intuition. So by listening in on the podcast, you’re getting a glimpse of my creative thought process in conversation with Shona as I write the book.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been listening, sharing, reviewing and messaging us about each episode, we are so thrilled you love it and are looking forward to a live event early next year! Details to come soon.

Pia xx