Dear Mice: I am off again, this time to the long-anticipated beach vacation with my mom. I will be posting as regularly as possible next week, although I anticipate my Mouse brain will be clouded with tropical drinks and sand. But I'll do my best to share it all with you!

In the meantime, welcome to the first ever Good Mouse, Bad Mouse giveaway! Yay! The people over at Paperwink, who have lovely and delicious things, are giving a customized rubber stamp. Mouse bought three Paperwink stamps recently, one for our address and one each for Boyfriend and Mouse to mark their books with before our libraries* get combined.

Our book stamps look like this:

And our address stamps look like this:**

But Paperwink has many other nice stamps in store for you. Look at this other book stamp they designed, for which I am now pining:

Plus, they have all kinds of gorgeous address stamp templates, like this.
So! Visit Paperwink, and leave a comment here by next Friday. I'll randomly choose one person to win a stamp of his or her choice. In your comment, tell us which of your books most needs to be stamped so that nobody else underlines it or folds down its corners.*** Or tell us which design you like best.

*Yes, I say "libraries." When Mouse and Boyfriend moved last year, we had about two thousand pounds of books and about two pounds of other stuff. Both of us treat our books as friends.

**Not Mouse's real name or anything. This is just the template.

And now, a parable from Cape Town, South Africa:
Pretty flower, named "Mandela's Gold."
Squirrels are eating Mandela's Gold.
Squirrels like this one. Where did they come from, one might ask?
As always: nice work, Cecil.

Mouse loved her Cape Town visit on many levels, but one of the things that made her giggle and flutter was the Beatrix Potter pasta. Presumably, it also comes in Hunca-Munca.

Mouse has something really lovely planned for Friday. Be sure to stop by and see!

At the Tate Modern, in London, Mouse found herself a present--a timeline that shows art movements through a timeline of artist signatures. Mouse now understands how things happened in sequence, and notes that most of the people she likes most cluster together in the 1930s.

This is the Tate. 

(Photos of the timeline by the Tate. Photo of the Tate by Mouse. You can buy a Tate Artist Timeline here.)

Hi Mice, here is a little more lovely London:
The Borough Market.
A Scottish Monkfish. My dear friend who lives in London says they are delicious, and I would love to try one. But not the mouthy part.

Yee! Mouse almost missed this post over at Tiny House about sheep wagons, which are sort of like Gypsy caravans except that they are built in the style used by Basque shepherds. Neat, right? Having just done some seriously long plane rides, Mouse is feeling just fine about a cozy, private, tiny space and would like to spend some time curled up reading in the roundness up top. She also wouldn't mind sitting on the steps of the second one, which happens to be located in Point Reyes, one of her favorite places in all the land.

Also, it would be a fun way to get around, a sheep wagon.

Mouse has a long-standing short-phobia. I think it goes back to my wrong-length shorts in the third grade or something. I haven't bought shorts in about ten years, preferring instead to cut my old khakis and cargos into knee-length Bermudas. But then I saw the J. Crew May catalogue and thought about the beach (where I am going with my mom on Friday!) and decided, whooee, I think it's time for some shorts. The kind that actually show thigh. After all, I am planning to have tan* legs pretty soon. 

Yep. Shorts, long cardigan, cheap white canvas skimmers, long necklace, new short haircut. Whee!

*By "tan," I mean "more freckly and slightly less pale."

(All those shorts from J. Crew.)

More London!
Alien thingie, for Kate. 
Did you know that this is not London Bridge, and that London Bridge did not fall down but is sitting happily in Arizona?
One of Mouse's feet on either side of the Greenwich Meridian (where latitude starts).
Yes, I think I will take courage. Thank you, London.

Remember when Mouse was all excited about that other lotion? Well, it's for beans. It caused tiny little bumps to sprout all over Mouse's nose. So the search continued, and I am proud to announce the greatest face lotion ever (for me): Origins A Perfect World. I'm very picky, and here is the scorecard:

1. Moisturizes (check)

2. Does not make me break out or get a rash (check)

3. Contains no ickiness like parabens (check check and check)

4. Does not smell like food (check, smells like the lightest hint of orange and bergamot)

5. Can be put around the eyes (check! no watering at all!)

6. Does not clog up Mouse pores (check)

7. Can go under hefty sunscreen* without suffocating my skin (check)

8. Reasonably priced (sort of check--$36 for 1.7 oz., but it only takes a little bit)

9. Does stuff for my skin besides moisturizing (CHECK! White tea antioxidants, which mean that it also doubles as a wrinkle-prevention cream at night and I don't have to buy two products)

10. Something extra (CHECK! They will plant a tree on your behalf for every one you buy until the end of April! HURRAY!)

Next product I need to find on my paraben-free crusade is shaving cream. Anybody know a good one?

Mouse always hears people talking smack about British food (and frankly agrees in the black pudding area). But look at these lovely and delicious tidbits she got to munch on in London:
Hot pies. What is the difference between a pie and a pasty?
Salt beef. I know it looks sort of weird, but the bagel is more like a pretzel roll, and there is this incredible hot mustard in there--this may be Mouse's second favorite food-to-be-eaten-standing-up of all time.*
Tea and crumpets. Why don't we have teatime over here? I'm going to start arbitrarily sitting down for a formal teatime, with crumpets.
And, of course, fish and chips. But these are mushy peas. Mushy peas, where have you been all my life?

* Mouse's very favorite street food are the hot sausages in Prague's Wenceslas Square, best consumed between 11:30 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.

Hello hello, nice mice! I am back from London and South Africa, and had a grand time I'll tell you all about. Hooray for being home!

First, I want to give a huge thank-you to Amanda from First Milk, who did lovely guest blogs for me while I was gone. I mean, EDDIE IZZARD, for one thing, not to mention a lovely yellow-and-blue kitchen collage, camp-out room goodies, and mouse houses! Plus stuff from Mouse's childhood favorite Stuart Little (I loved his car), and tidbits from Despereaux, which I clearly need to go out and buy right this minute.

If you didn't already know, Amanda is my fairy blogmother, the gal who got me going in blogland. She's also consistently lovely over at First Milk. Thanks, Ads!

(Image: Ads or similar fairy blogmother transforming mice into footmen, from here.)