The Magician’s Nephew is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, and I’ve always thought that it’s my favorite. “It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.” (Though every time I start reading any book from the series, I think this one is my favorite!) Can you tell I’ve got Narnia on the brain? Let’s start at the very beginning….
When I first thought of having a Narnia theme around here, I thought: a display. Then I thought: baking. That’s how my brain works. How to display something edible with a theme. That’s what it’s all about, people!
So in today’s post I have our first display, for the first book, The Magician’s Nephew. The book starts out with two children named Polly and Digory exploring an old house, and accidentally ending up in Uncle Andrew’s study. He is a magician, or magician wanna-be and has supposedly found a way to travel to a different world. Or at least he thinks it’s possible, but has only tried it out on a guinea pig, who unfortunately can’t tell anything about his experiences in the other world! So Uncle Andrew needs someone else to try it out! But not himself, of course! He offers to let Polly have one of the lovely shiny yellow rings that are humming on a red wooden tray on his desk….
I love the image of the red wooden tray with the shiny green and yellow rings! I knew that it had to be a part of my display. I had already decided to start off with things that would remind me of Uncle Andrew’s study. I dug around in our basement and found some old-looking and even just large books. Some old candlesticks, an ancient globe, anything that looked old. (I wanted sealing wax and an old microscope, but didn’t have them on hand!) My old wooden “treasure chest” with safari animals on it was perfect, representing the secret box where Uncle Andrew first found the dust from another world, and the safari animals were perfect graphics for the animals who burst out of the ground in the new land of Narnia! There are a few other symbols in here that weren’t from the study, but just appeared in the rest of the book (like the golden apple, but more on that later!)
Back to the red tray….I thought a lot about it. How to do it? I didn’t want to buy anything for this project, (except the special plastic animals, in this case, the winged horse). A picture frame could work as a tray….yay, found one from an old school award. Next step: to paint. My son was happy to help me out with this project and painted the frame and a piece of cardboard red. After that, we added some wood-look lines and a few sprays of glimmery paint, then a bit of distressing with brown paint. I really really wanted to make handles for this tray, and spent a lot of brain power on it, but didn’t end up having the time. Assemble the frame without the glass, presto, a tray!
Next: the rings. That took a lot of thought, and it wasn’t till the last minute that I thought of making cookies. But how perfect (much better than another idea of cutting up paper rolls from toilet paper). Here are the cookies, step by step. Many of the photos were taken by my son, as those are my awkward-looking hands in the photos. For the cookies, I used the End-All for chocolate cookies recipe from Lilaloa, so yummmy, and melted Wilton candy melts for the icing.
Cut out small circles cookies. They are about 1 and 1/2 inch cookies.
Melt up some black candy melts in a small baggie and snip off a corner. Outline 2 circles per cookie.
(When I saw these photos I realized how strangely I hold the icing bags! ha! And don’t worry, that is fresh chocolate candy melt under my fingernail!)
With yellow candy melts, snip off a bigger corner and fill in outlines that have already set. Then go for the green!
Before the “icing” on each cookie had set, I added a small white line for a bit of a “shine” on one side of each ring. Then later when they were set and hardened, added a white asterisk to make it look like a sparkle. Can’t leave well enough alone, I wanted more shine. I painted on a bit of silver sparkle, too. It went faster than it sounds. Really.
All that spiffing up and you can hardly notice…. !
Set out the rings in pairs of yellow and green on the red tray! We’re ready to travel to the Wood between the Worlds and on to Narnia…
(My son was practicing some fancy photography techniques…) This is how Polly must have felt when she touched the yellow ring….
“They were no bigger than ordinary rings, and no one could help noticing them because they were so bright. They were the most beautifully shiny little things you can imagine. If Polly had been a very little younger she would have wanted to put one in her mouth.” (I have always loved that description!)
I think the “funnest” part about these ring cookies, was sending them to school in my kids’ lunches, then asking them if they had whisked off to Narnia during Math class!!! 😉
A few years ago I invested in a wicker cornucopia basket, so that always comes out of storage, to be filled with flowers or fruit for our Thanksgiving table. Started with some fake flowers, then added some small red lights, some dollar store grapes and free picked nature!
Mr. Squirrel and his friends were a hit!! But he didn’t stick around very long…..
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