Celebrating Mrs. Potter...

2016 marks 150 years since the birth of Beatrix Potter, one of the world’s best-loved children’s authors. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three original Peter Rabbit books between 1901 and 1913. She was an incredible artist, scientific illustrator, storyteller, botanist, environmentalist, farmer and impeccable businesswoman! 

But after the tragic event of her beloved Norman Warne death, she reinvented herself as a successful landowner and country farmer and became a conservationist in order to preserve the landscape that inspired her art. 

Thanks to her bequests to the National Trust, she saved whole areas of the Lake District of England for posterity.

Here is my collection of gifts inspired by her characters. I do love them so much! :)

'ONCE upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were

Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, 

underneath the root of a very big fir tree'

(from The tale of Peter rabbit) 

'ONE morning a little rabbit sat on a bank.

He pricked his ears and listened to the trit-trot, trit-trot of a pony.

A gig was coming along the road; it was driven by Mr. McGregor, 

and beside him sat Mrs. McGregor in her best bonnet'.

(from 'The tale of Benjamin Bunny')

'What a funny sight it is to see a brood of ducklings with a hen!

—Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck, 

who was annoyed because the farmer's wife would not let her hatch her own eggs'.

(from 'The tailor of Jemina Puddle-Duck')

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning till dark.

(form ' The tale of Glouchester')

Once upon a time there was a very beautiful doll's-house; it was red brick with white windows, and it had real muslin curtains and a front door and a chimne.

(from 'The tale of two bad mice')

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lucie, who lived at a farm called Little-town. She was a good little girl—only she was always losing her pocket-handkerchiefs! 

(from The tale of Mrs. Tiggy - Winkle)

Once upon a time there was a frog called Mr. Jeremy Fisher; he lived in a little damp house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond.

The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage.

(from 'The tale of Jeremy Fisher')