Jump over fire

Today we had a lovely day. Year's best feast in school was celebrated: St. Jan.
Flowergarlands on kids' heads, everybody dressed in white or light colors.

Sweet games in the forest, eating cherries and pancakes, singing songs, making music and above all jumping hand-in-hand over (and through!) a burning fire. To seal friendships. Between schoolfriends and familymembers. Once a year, so special.

Almost 10

Sweet M is going to be 10 soon. Today she invited her friends to join her party next week on the adventurous Island of Brienenoord.
We did a stamping job together with small letterstamps of great HEMA. It's clear that we couldn't find any numberstamps, but in the end the yellow numbers worked out just fine.

Some time ago my eye found this stunning idea here, which I saved on my Pinterest boards. I so love the combination of the neutral colored wrapping-paper with the colorful thread and sweets.

Published again!

Some weeks ago the great editors of a German family magazine called Nido gave me an assignment to contribute to their magazine. The job was hard to fit into our busy schedule, but finally it turned out great to do! By taking a quiet day off to exclusively make a sweet stick horse, together with plenty of step-by-step pics to show all crafty Germans how to make a horse like this. With a little help of F's mother tongue a German how-to was added.

Now finally the June item of Nido is published and arrived in our mail box last week. May all readers increase the stick horse family!

They planned to publish a large picture of M or L too, so that's why we had a photoshoot in our hallway, just like I was asked for. But hey, I'm not a photographer! Sadly for M and L the editors preferred to redo the shoot in Germany, so there the stick horse went by post.



This time the result was a slightly improved stick horse, note the bridle. Here are my girls, playing with the new member of our horse family.
Last Saturday all stick horses went for another photoshoot, this time for a Dutch magazine. To be continued after summertime.

Horse

Actually I tend to buy kids clothes second-hand. This principal of buying, wearing, selling, wearing by other children and so on, feels good to me. I like to discover nice pieces and love to combine them. Second-hand means more clothes in a financial way, another advantage :).
My daughter M loves it when I make her something. This year it's going to be a birthday dress, in the early morning of the big day hanging on her closet. I really haven't got a lot of experience, but just tell myself I can do things like that. That helps. This one is a test dress.

The simple fabric was found on the market, which I combined with an experimental sewed drawing...
It fits fine. M is happy (so me too).

Sunday morning

Sunday morning M only wanted to sew more and more, immediately after getting out of bed. And what would you recommend to make as a first sewing thing? Right, a doll's skirt.
So here it is. And she wants to make more. Yeah!

Father's day?

Yesterday I told you about the sewing enthousiasm of M. She couldn't leave the sewing machine that evening, coming home from Sofia's party (where all girls made their own skirt!).
There was a remnant of felt still laying around. This is what she made. For papa. After drawings and brunch were given, my mother called and did we discover that Father's day is not today but in a week... Could have known, on a 'Pinksterday'.

Sofia is 10!

Sofia -some of you might know her- is enjoying her sewing birthday party at this very moment. M, a ballet friend of Sofia, is having fun too learning some sewing basics from Erika.
My eldest is no big crafter. What she does like very much and prefers playing for years already is horse-riding. But she sure liked to be invited to Sofia's party, who is a talented teenager with a sewing machine. For the wrapping of her present (an easy sewing kit) M had her first sewing experience today. Look at it, we think it's a great result!

Update in the evening: M came home with the sewing virus! She only wants to sew. Thanks Sofia!

The Universe

Wow, this was not ment to be a month with blogsilence. It just happened to be. No craft came out of my fingers!
But certainly there was a lot going on. For instance the organisation of a feast in school with this theme: the Universe. Together with another mother we made a design for the schoolyard, just sitting half an hour on a bench watching our kids playing there. But how to realise it? I made a list with 40 tasks on which parents could enter their names. But none of them did! So one week later I just added their names randomly myself. And guess what, all parents were in!
For me there was some sewing to do: silver curtains for the stage background, to be painted black curtains after the gate and a rocket... I'm not a rocket expert at all, so I drew a simple one on a small piece of paper, based on standard fabric width to make it easy and asked our little boy next door if he liked it. After his approval I went to the market, bought an impressive amount of fabrics by meter and made this 8 meter high rocket! Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday were planned around this so-called Springmarket and we were having a great time.
Thanks F for being responsable for the ropes, fixed on two facades on a distance of 26 m, the bounderies of the schoolyard. You're my hero!

Pif

When M and L were newborns they wore this very cute hat in a beautiful green color. A former colleague did crochet it. Kristel of Vlijtig is another former colleague. She paid this hat at least 20 times (!) forward to several aftercoming babies.
Making a crochet piece of work myself was probably more than 25 years ago! But I wanted to pay it so much forward to one of my nowadays colleagues, who's becoming a father of a little girl. The other one will be given to some other sweet newborn in the future. The blue yarn appeared to be a very fine crochet yarn, but really every yarn will suit you. For today I like to posit following thesis: everybody older than 8 can make a hat like this. So if you like to pay it forward too, get started with an average crochet hook like 4,5 mm. Find a similar pattern via this link.

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.