Catching up

It's quiet on my blog, I know. I'm quite busy both professionally as privately. M and L are into a lot of activities: yesterday we all attended M's circus performance, this morning she was playing her violin in a childrens orchestra. It was the first time for M feeling nervously. Furthermore I'm organising with a group of parents the so-called Springmarket, a feast in school on a Saturday in May. We made a design for the schoolyard, but to get it realised we need a lot of hands... I'll get you posted about the result in a few weeks.
A few weeks ago I got an invitation to contribute to a German family magazine called Nido. It's my first time this is happening through my blog. This week I took a quiet day off to get the work done. Of course it's still top secret ;), but in a few weeks I'll get you posted about that too.

Ordering

Our kitchen has a high ceiling. While sitting here behind the computer, you can look into the kitchen, smell the cooking and ask for a coffee easily :). It's a great spot to make pictures during birthday parties too.
Actually this furniture consists of three parts: a cabinet you see in front, a tabletop and a floating cabinet above the tabletop. Because our house is our own design we made the opening in the wall as wide as the tabletop we had already. This week we mounted the floating cabinet again. For years it was standing on the ground, filled with Lego. As our girls are no Lego lovers, we decided to use the cabinet again where it was designed for in our former house.

Furthermore I made new labels for the folders to make them a bit more attractive. Covered each paper label with adhensive foil, slightly bigger than the label itself and sticked them to the folder. I'm happy, because it took some time to administrate and order the folders. Now it's up to date again, pfff. The view on the folders will hopefully stimulate to do the administration on a more regular base.
Btw 1, do you see that hole in the side of the cabinet? It's made for the printer, which is housing together with the hard disk inside the cabinet. And btw 2, do you see that little hole in the corner of ceiling and wall? I'll write about that later...

Well done!

Here I met some family members of the stick horse:

1. Betje on the Jip & Janneke forum
2. Under the pecan tree
3. Ik heb een bep
4. Practically perfect Polly
5. Vanmarieke.

Well done, isn't it?

Keep on trying

Yesterday evening I was exhausted from work. Once I had decided to make a bag for my birthday neighbour I got soon in a better mood! I loved to combine different fabric samples for the front. The small stripes are Paul Smith's. The bag was almost finished, I thought.
Today only the zipper had to be added. Do you recognize this: party started at 1 p.m, would last till 5 p.m. I, again, 'only' had to add the zipper. But actually I didn't know how to. And, as a like-to-be-autodidact, just started and tried out. Due to timepressure it didn't work out. In the end I searched for a how-to on internet. Still, at 3 p.m. I sadly declared this bag for failed. And quickly went for a cold glass of white wine in our common garden. Dear Cariene, please be patient. There will be an improved one soon. Wine and food were delicious.

Trula

And (after Tord) do you know Trula? Oh, I would like to meet her! She's having a great blog straight from Barcelona. Look at her pics! When she posted these, I was in love.

Lucky ballet dancer M. To be honest, I didn't like to make this tutu and it wasn't simple. I made six layers of supple bridal tulle (2x white, 2x beige and 2x black) and a lycra band and waistband. These unnatural materials are not ment for me. It takes a lot of time to cut them straight and to control their slipping.

Mama, it works! Then she disappeared to play outside with tutu and summershoes.

My sweet niece

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in my sister's sunny backyard. Every year when my niece Janneke is having her birthday, there're plenty of first sunbeams. What a gift to let all the kids play outside and us lazy sitting in the garden!
My niece turned thirteen. In this age there's no more playing, but more hanging around. It's was quite hard for us to think of a nice present. So I sat down and started to sew. I changed this free pattern a bit, one of my saved tutorials on Pinterest. I'm quite satisfied with the result, especially how the striped piping detail turned out to be. Striped fabric is from Ikea. M+L added drawings they made for Janneke in the bag.

Tord

Who (except the Dutch among you) knows Tord Boontje? He's a Dutch designer, known for his floral designs on textiles, furniture, tableware and so on. If you're triggered you could go here to read more about him.
In the office I often use his floral textiles by Kvadrat, but I'm not an overall admirer. We have one little item of him in our sitting room: this long metal garland of flowers that is wrapped around a light bulb. You buy it as a flat metal sheet in which the garland is punched. We had to break it out of the sheet. Love this genius idea, so great job Tord!

Good-looking

Wannahave-beads are best found in a not-being-internet shop. I think you should feel beads in your hand to make the right choice. And nosing around in beads shops is a feast to the eye! This tutorial brings you to a necklace to show the beauties you've bought.
If you like to read more about pictured necklace, just go here. And if you like to read about different possibilities, just go here, here, here and here.

This is what you need to make a single wired necklace.

1. a handful of beads you have fallen in love with
2. wire. Length, thickness and color fully depend on your personal preferences. The wire I used was 3 meter long, estimated 0,5 mm thick and green colored. You could even lengthen the wire during the process by connecting one wire to another, using a tiny squeezable metal ring. You can get the tiny ring out of sight by positioning it inside one of the beads.
3. a small lock
4. 2 tiny open rings
5. 2 foldable end pieces.

In case the length of the necklace is that long that you can put it over your head, you don't need the tiny pieces mentioned at 3, 4 and 5. All you need then is one tiny squeezable metal ring to attach both ends of the wire.

Published!

Today I got a special email: my blog is mentioned in the April issue of an Australian lifestyle magazine, called Home Beautiful. How about that?!

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...