Tray tables

When I had my birthday this year, I decided to organize a little party. I made a plan of how my friends would stay in our living and decided that some side tables were missing. To avoid spending a lot of money, I came up with the idea of using the two baskets, that we use as storage for yarn etcetera. Storage is still in function, while two aluminium Moroccan trays were added on top. I did some effort to paint them nicely.
During my search for the right trays I was lucky: I measured the diameter of the baskets, which was 46 cm exactly. In the Moroccan shop I found these trays with a sticker on them, mentioning 46 cm :).

Anouk

Last Friday M's teacher invited international and national popstars on her birthday. M turned into her favorite singer Anouk and therefor she whipped up a proper t-shirt the day before, using sparkling leftovers from this craft.

Je ziet het aan de bomen

We celebrated St. Jan in school. What used to be a sunny feast, turned out to be cold, wet and cloudy. Fortunately we made some pictures on Sunday evening, when the girls made their own wreaths. And M and L didn't mind the rain; they just danced and sung!

Making girls happy

If you want to know some tricks to make nice sparkling boxes as a party favor, go ahead reading. These 'L 7' boxes we made as a treat for L's birthday and are a mix of this and this. Here and here you can read more on my blog about these boxes. In my case the pattern paper was made using these books. I did some photoshopping to achieve the desired colors, printed the paper and cut it into squares of 17 and 18 cm. But of course you could use any paper you want or even buy these kind of little boxes.

Because I wanted L (of 7) to be able to make her own treat, the tutorial can be used as a kids craft as well. We first made the bottoms of the boxes following this tutorial, using the 17 cm paper squares.

More and more

We made up this 'L 7' treat for school because L loves origami even more than M. She made quite a few of these boxes without any complain but wanted to play outside as well after a while ;) She was allowed. She joined again for the glitter topping. We made some photo's during the process, so I'll show you soon a how to.

The pattern paper I made with a Sinterklaas present. This and this book and two cd's full of nice patterns. Oh, there will be more pattern paper crafts!

We added a nut mix for her classmates and cookies after this afterlasting recipe (with the half of the sugar), found via Kristel, for the visitors at home. Inside I added a box of baking paper, which appeared to be a challenge to fold. Yes, I'm crazy, making about 50 boxes... But it worked like therapy for me, so it's fine.

A dear friend

L's friend Gaia is only three days younger than L. This is what L did bring along to her birthday party a week ago.

Just draw!

Last year I already wrote about how to mark 'those that are mine'. This weekend I was up to it again, using these textile markers. L loves the different shoes on both little feet.

HEMA

Here's another happy HEMA-tape-shopper! Look at M's presents, wrapped in the middle of the night... In reality the fluo tape is even more bright, it almost shined in the darkness!
Btw, in the large package on the right she found a chair (in almost fluo red), because next holidays we will make a new worktop in her room. More about that later. And later more about the little present on the left... Hope you feel as curious as M did ;).

Thank you!

L's teacher whispered in our ears that the class could use a strong new basket for wooden blocks. As L and other eldest kids are leaving her class after two years, we are going to give her such a basket, decorated with handmade flowers and butterflies. L and I based our creation on these flowers; we only made them a bit more colorful, in this case a better choice, I think. 

This week the other decorations will be added on the outside, and will it be filled with wood supplies for the hammer corner.

Our afternoon

 Making these the traditional way...

... by punching tiny holes, blowing the content out of it, breaking some when doing this, cleaning afterwards the egg yolk from the terrace, painting, dropping one, decorating and dropping another just before hanging them. Fun!
Just wanted to say: happy Easter!

Paper for L

As I told you L turned 6 last Friday! For this special day I suddenly came to this paper design. Wanted to use it for her treats in school (see later), but also used it for decorating our hall ...

... and wrapping her presents.

Wrap it!

Last weekend I had a full program. On Saturday afternoon our neighbors gave a really great party, so many people enjoyed our common garden. Then there was Rena's party and at night (till 4 a.m., that's late for a brave mother like me) I loved to join all neighbors and a very big crowd at De nacht van de Kaap. I like to mention this, because it's to be recommended!
This present was for sweet Rita and Jack. Here are the ingredients for wrapping a present like this: cheap brown wrapping paper, nice stamps (I used these, like I did before), and adhesive textile tape (found at Xenos). I stamped on the uncoated side of the paper. More stamping fun is following...

Nails

We have this nail wall in our house. It's ment for temporary expositions of pictures and drawings. The first years we lived here, we did change the wall on a regular base. You can see that it has been quite some time now! But these pics are still so precious to us.
The idea was so incredibly simple: just make a grid with nails (can you see it?) on an empty wall, to hang wooden boards. I promise you the realisation wasn't that simple. The nails couldn't be hit into the concrete wall just like that. At first we drilled holes in the wall, entered plugs inside, hit the nails and plastered the rest of the holes around the nails. Long time ago...

Staring at leaves

M loves this tree on the wall of her bedroom. She has a loft bed with direct view on this tree. Often we just cosily stare at the leaves to discover objects in the patterns of the used fabrics.
Last year I couldn't decide whether to buy this (in the meantime everywhere spotted) tree of Dutch Inke or not. But because of the high and sloping ceiling, it was clear that this tree wouldn't work out. So it became an own version made of different fabrics instead of wallpaper. To be honest, this way it turned out to be such a hugh project, that I wouldn't recommend to copy my idea. Although the final result is well succeeded and sustainable. The honours of the design of the tree and the detail with the bird go to Inke.

Forgotten...

Last sunday my jogging friend told me about the arrival of Sinterklaas in Rotterdam. I think it's because we were still in St. Martin's atmosfere, that we totally forgot to go there!
But since that day there are plenty of Sinterklaas activities in our house: M and L put their shoes next to the terrace door (we have no chimney) in great expectation, are wrapping fake presents (each of them got half a roll of Sinterklaas wrapping paper in their shoes), wore Sint and Piet costumes, made this Sinterklaas table (autumn disappeared in a box again...), read big red books again and again.
And I? Yesterday I was drawing, while M was watching, and this morning I added the drawing to the table. Next week we'll take our children to another entry of another Sinterklaas.

Precious

One of the first well-beloved items I made for baby M was a mobile, which is nowadays still hanging in her room. It is made by wrapping handspun wool around a wire. I added some green felt leaves and made some spirals of green wire. The little wooden gnomes are simply dressed in felt. A cristal is hanging in the middle, like a treasure of the gnomes, that is breaking daylight and can make beautiful light projections on the wall.
By the way, these lovely chubby little arms are belonging to baby L.

Dear Molly of Remedial Eating, I hope you enjoy this post :).

Counting balloons

I told you before about birthday traditions in our house. Our house is high and has a lot of stairs. Here you see how we use the high void with our stairs. In the late evening we tend to blow about 30 balloons and decorate the house at once from top to bottom. Depending the child who's having birthday we choose the colors of the balloons.
The pics are showing the moment just after birth of L. We used balloons and plenty of birth announcements for decoration.

One knob, two knobs

Oh yes, the girls got a pink wall in their room. But their mother had to like it too! And she certainly does. The wall became this color (for those very interested among you: it's Dutch Sikkens D6.07.77 or NCS S1010-Y70R).
When finished we painted more. I bought plain wooden knobs in the local diy-shop and sprayed them in the same color. Unlike the Hermitage, but we are very happy with the result.

Addition: Today I had so many visitors and sweet comments on my blog... 600 visitors and 1500 pageviews... pfff, it makes me shy. Thank you so much for passing by!

Autumn inside the house

This week we heart Sinterklaas (the old man behind our typical Dutch childrens feast) on the radio! He said he is packing for his boattrip right now. And this week I did a lot of shopping for the 5th of December too... So our daughters are getting excited (including still believer M of 9,5!), and I started preparing.
Before we exchange it into a Sinterklaas scene, I'm showing you the autumn scene we made in our hall. Plus are we leaving tomorrow to enjoy the autumn outside the house.

In the early morning

One of our traditions is to make a beautiful birthday table. The following elements should at least be displayed on this table: off course all presents (wrapped with love), posts, little flowers, the yellow birthday circle with little candles and in the middle the little light woman and some sweets in the same quantity of the number of years.
When my eldest turned 5 the whole table (and present!) was very pink. Off course L's table should be blue. I allways take time to make a nice composition of everything what's on the table. And to make a picture in the late evening...