Wash your hands!

Let's talk about the smallest room in our house for a change. And washing your hands in there. I like to show you another cabinet that was designed some time ago, but that we enriched recently by adding some diy-music! Can you see it?

This basin unit was created in order to collect all needed items in only one piece of furniture, an all-in-one.

The inlaid mirrow above is as wide as the cabinet. The kind of used wood, birch plywood, is applied more often in our house, as you saw here, here and here. The wall lamp is this one. It's bigger brother you saw here and here already.
(Pics aren't fabulous, but you know it's wintertime...)

No time for crafting

Last weekend we lived outside... on the ice! Look at this Dutch scenery, we enjoyed it so much!
Well done, M, on your new 'noren'!

For Rita

This year no selfmade present for her little birthday daugther, but for my neighbour herself. She is so sweet... lately she lent me one of her beautiful necklaces. That's why she deserves a small surprise like this. I love the yellow of the beads, which is super intense and festive.
For those who want to give it a try: here is explained how to make it.

On the bias

Are you still curious after this post? To be honest, this dress was planned for L's birthday! Only the borders to go, I decided to quit this knitting to be continued after those busy days. A good exercise to let go!

Looking at the final result I was afraid L would refuse to wear it, but pfff, she loves it! She's wearing it now three days in a row. She may. It took quite some time to make it and you never know whether my youngest self-assured daughter likes or not, so I'm glad.
Thanks Saskia for the nice stay in your small shop and for inspiring me. Browsing through different kind of knitting books I really fell in love with this dress in this book. I used this affordable yarn. But my bag was filled with more...

Some changes I made: the description for the borders was way too complex, so I decided to do it my good-old-way. And I changed color on an even number of rows to take along the waiting thread and thus to avoid weaving in ends. Here I found the perfect rose pattern...
In my opinion the dress is a tiny bit too long right now, but she'll grow!

Sam and Julia

This is M, reading a book to her sister in the train last Sunday.
After our Christmas diner in the office we were invited to shop for a book in one of the meeting rooms: a Christmas present. Such a great idea. I chose some books; among them was this one: 'het Muizenhuis'. It's a book to be recommended and the Mouse Mansion is becoming a worldwide hit indeed! It's L's favorite.

Last Sunday we had a day off trip to Amsterdam. For M we went to see the Anne Frank House. To do L a favor we went to see another house: het Muizenhuis, exposed in the public library of Amsterdam. I'm talking about a sort of giant dollhouse, but populated by mice families and used as a scenery for the mentioned book. Look at this, get inspired by googling 'het Muizenhuis' or watch this video. This you can read on the blog of Karina Schaapman, the author/designer/creator:
'The Mouse Mansion - Sam and Julia' is based on The Mouse Mansion. An art project created by myself to form the scenery of this book, and many more following. The Mouse Mansion is made out of cardboard boxes and papier-mache and all kinds of waste material. You can actually walk around The Mouse Mansion because it has a front, back and side. The Mouse Mansion counts more than a hundred rooms, alleys and outdoor spaces. The story is written by myself and the mice are also created by myself.

When you are in the neighbourhood, you should go and take a look. We spent much more time then planned staring into all rooms filled with tiny details. Amazing!

M too

Sometimes M can be jealous, even when it's about a quite childish subject like this bag...

I studied Industrial Design, which is about designing serial products, but please don't ask me to produce products in a serie, even not a small serie. I don't like serial production (except for birthdays!). So I suggested M to sew this bag herself.

Last week after school she really wanted to and when she does I put all my own plans aside to be at her side. I always want to encourage her in making things. She chose fabrics from my stock and started. And finished that same afternoon! (She only asked me to sew the bird in white so it would be a bit embossed.)
Now her softy horse - what else? - can be carried with her. Compliments M!

Balloon peep

Today we had a lot of laughter with the camera. L asked me to make a photo of the high peep sound of a still-laying-around-balloon. Of course I did. Then we made these series.
No craft post this time (although M has been sewing in the afternoon), but just a funny post :).

Quickly

Just before F would bring the kids home from school for L's cats birthday party, I had some little time left to paper cut these whiskers. Inspired by this very often seen image on Pinterest.
Unfortunately no image with cats cap (see last post) and whiskers...

More fun!

We had such fun with the kids on L's cats birthday party! After putting these caps on their heads the kids immediately changed into cats, that means that they behaved like scratching cats and made a lot of noise together.

But after some games the caps were too hot to wear... Didn't mind, they looked like cats anyway during their milk licking from a little plate, climbing in a tree called F, testing their sense of smell and testing their cat ears, searching for another singing cat somewhere hiding in our house (a YouTube song on an iPhone...).

Sewing these caps reminded me of when M turned 6 and I sewed (very simple!) pink dresses and light blue blouses for all girls and boys on her birthday party. The pink insides of the caps are a fabric leftover.
Btw, I used the pattern of the hood of this coat.

Fun!

F has given L a pulley as a birthday gift. And she's loving it! It suits our house very much as we have a high void next to our stairs.

During her birthday party all kids tackled their presents to L. Here you can see them at work. Do you see M's head upstairs?