Little lights

The whole week M and L are lustily singing all songs of St. Martin, who is riding on his horse and cutting his cloak in half to share with a beggar. He did this during a snowstorm to save and warm the beggar. Yesterday on St. Martin's Day the weather was almost alike. Luckily for all the children with their candles rain stopped shortly and most lights kept burning.
Traditionally I scooped out a kohlrabi and cutted what L had ordered: a sun, a moon, stars, a house and a heart.

Treat idea

A colleague said to me: nice blog, but it's always about parties... To confirm, here's another birthdaypost ;). But to be clear, there's no party going on in our house at this very moment.
Making this treat for school some time ago was good teamwork: F was busy backing the cookies in three sizes, while I was sitting at the kitchen table to cut and model the paper cones.

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.

Sleep tight

I can't resist making drawings on several wooden children's furniture we have. I'm showing you the bed of Zusje, the doll of L.
You see L long time ago on her third anniversary, playing with her just unwrapped new dolls bed and singing a song for Zusje.

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!

Inspiration

Do you love this image like I do? It's the wardrobe of the Hermitage for Children in Amsterdam, designed by Merkx + Girod. 

The image inspired me to make something in our house, but really not so beautiful as done here! I'm going to show you what I made, so stay tuned...

Tip for 'Sinterklaas'

On one hand I very agree with Petra. But at the same time I love to be an active mother when it comes to preparing for Sinterklaas. I early collect all kinds of presents and start from now on to make some of them myself.
For those other early ones like me I have a tip. Here you see our productive 4-years-old last sunday morning, sitting on my pillow. I don't know if you all know a knitting fork. L loves to make meters of cord with it. It is more easy than 'punnikken' (who knows the word in English?). If you think it's a great Sinterklaas present you can order it here. Together with some thicker yarn than L is using, it makes your child can start right away.

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.

Me too

The leftover thread was laying on the kitchentable and suddenly was into my good old scarf. To make it more easy I quickly handsewed the ends together with a colormatching sewing thread. The crosses are less easy to make than you would expect. To get a neat result on both sides you have to take a look on either side of your work to control where the needle is coming out. The circular scarf can be wrapped two or three times, depending the cold outside.
Now M and I are a visible set too!

Nightstands

I like to show you our nightstands, that actually hang about 10 cm above the floor... After sending the design to the furniture maker, he asked me: so you mean like a door, but it is a cabinet? Yes, that's what I mean.
The open side of the wooden cubes is against the wall (a wardrobe in our case). You can turn them for making the bed easily and for using them as storage. The outlet for charging the mobile phones is out of view.
Finally a detail for freaks like me: the direction of the wood is vertical on the sides; on top a piece of a wooden panel is used with no clear direction.