A Mermaid's Blog

HAPPY 2008

2008-01-09T13:50:00.000Z

A new year already seems well on it's way. I've thoroughly enjoyed blogging, but I'm more a picture than word type of gal, so I've decided to quite blogging. Posting online is very much fun though, so I'll continue with my Flickr and Blipblog. I hope you'll continue to meet me there and of course I'll continue to follow your blogs. See you around.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-23T21:53:00.000Z

Thanks everybody for checking in. It's almost Christmas and I've been busy with all sorts of Christmas things. We've had friends over for dinner and in the Art department, I've been busy making all the swap ornaments, making snowglobes for all kids' classmates (they were such a huge succes last year and since we're in a new school...) and last but not least making our annual greeting.

Click on picture to see the animated version.

P.S. You can click on the pictures on the wall, if the right one doesn't work, please retry. It's worthwhile to see

London

2007-11-28T20:54:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to London and met up with Nancy. We saw so many nice things, I don't know where to start or what to show. I've put all pictures on Flickr, so anyone interested in all details of my London trip can see them there. I'll post my favorite photos

This little cake carrying elph

I love these santas

Christmas decorations

Just look at the candy

At Fortnum & Mason they had the best Windowdisplay. Unfortunatly there is some glare on them, but in all the windows they had displayed the song "the Twelve days of Christmas".

In Liberty I fell in love with the wallpaper they used where they have the cards

I splurged on Liberty fabrics. Four pieces of 30cm (12") each. That was the smallest they allowed.

I hope you enjoyed my London trip with me.

Nice friend

2007-11-26T22:04:00.000Z

Today Nancy from Belgium came to visit me. We know each other from way back when we were both in University and were able to stay in Leeds for 9 months, thanks to the Erasmus program which enables students to do parts of their studies in another European country. That is where I fell in love with afternoon teas. Nancy makes these beautiful jewellery

and I was so lucky to receive this gorgeous necklace. I love it soooooooooooo much. Thank you Nancy!

She's in the London area for 10 days, so tomorrow we're meeting up again to see bits of london. Of course I'll keep you posted on what we'll see tomorrow.

tagged

2007-11-25T23:10:00.000Z

I was tagged by wonderful Marnie to name 5 facts about myself, some random, some weird. I'll let you chose whether you find them random or weird.

i - my brother once said "there isn't anything Shin doesn't collect". It's true, there are a lot of things I like having and I start a collection. Only after a little bit I start thinking what to do with it all and stop collecting more. Yet I don't throw them out, so I have a lot of little collection of everything. The only collection I never tire of is my bookcollection, hence the picture, which is really only a very small part of my bookcollection.

ii - One day when the kids are all grown, I want to try Leonardo's sleeping rhythm, which I think was sleeping for 20 minutes, stay awake 4 hours, all day long, every day. You can get a lot done with all those extra hours of awakeness.

iii - I'm the exception to the rule, that a bi- or multilingual person is said to be able to pick up additional languages more easily than others. Even though my Dutch, English are in the range of very good an very fluent and my Korean is quite reasonable (this is what you get with Korean parents, who move to the Netherlands when you're one and your parents get by by using English), I've never managed to master any other language, even though they (German, French, old Greek and Latin) were offered to me when I was younger.

iv - I like having a skull in the living room. Not a real one, but one for drawing purposes. I've had a few weird looks from people from this unless it's near Halloween time. Funnily enough though children seem to think it cool regardless the time of year.

v - One day A Mermaid's Tale popped in my head to use as my website's name. I could hardly sleep that night, wondering whether it was still available as a website's name or not. The funny thing is that I don't even like swimming. So one day I'll write a book about a mermaid who can't swim. :)

I'm supposed to tag 5 new, but I'm not so good at that, partly because on pure mathmatics, chains would cover everybody with a blog within no time at all. So instead I'll give one two three four five of my favorite bloglinks

Saint Nic

2007-11-18T23:23:00.000Z

Last year I posted a picture about how the Dutch celebrate Saint Nic. He always arrives in the country around this time of year from Spain by steamboat and the kids are allowed to put their shoe in front of the fireplace and they get something. Anything ranging from chocolate letters (their first initial) to pepernoten. Our oldest two are in the age that they loooooooooooooove the celebration. So tonight was the first time they were allowed to put their shoe in front of the fireplace. Tomorrow they will find their initial in chocolate and a book. These are the drawings they made for Saint Nic this year.

My daughter of seven

My son of five (his skills have improved so much over the last year, both of them make me so proud)

The pictures are a bit crumpled because the youngest of almost 18 months walked away with them (he makes me so proud too!)

Oh and I managed to place my designs on Etsy

... and another

2007-11-17T23:06:00.000Z

I didn't think I'f finish this one tonight, but I did. So here is my third. I'm trying to get them in my etsy shop (which is empty right now) for tomorrow.

Another card

2007-11-17T22:26:00.000Z

Another Christmas design which I posted in the Moo group

Holiday card

2007-11-16T23:58:00.000Z

It's always so nice to brows around and see someone has read your blog. And before I forget, dear Constance and SomePinkFlowers, I haven't forgotten about these, but since I never managed to make them in time for Halloween, I thought you wouldn't mind if they got delayed a bit. I'm trying to get all the Christmassy things out on time for Christmas.

Like my intention to participate in this competition, which I finally did with this card. I'm making a few more and I'll post them on etsy. It might be a bit on the late side, but better late than never.

Busy times

2007-11-14T22:16:00.000Z

Main priority in my life is to keep everybody in our family happy. The three kidlings come first. Then comes the basic necessities of keeping a household going like cooking (which I actually enjoy a lot) making sure everybody can wear clean clothes etc. etc. After that I have time left to do anything creative. Right now my list of todo things is getting big. I think I'm no different than many of you when Christmas time is nearing. Of course I had to sign up for this

I'm really looking forward to this and I have a few ideas roaming my head. We'll see what they end up like.

My dear SIL got her PhD yesterday and I was working all last week on three collages. A triptych of her two daughters and her mother who passed away some time ago. I managed to take a glimpse of a corner of one of the collages, but then was so busy that I had them all wrapped up before I could take a picture of the finished three frames.

And after not having blogged a while, it makes me want to write about a lot of things. I'll pick just a few, because I still have so many things to do. One is that sweet Elsa posted one of my personal favorites as well. Then she also mentioned she used to have a Holly Hobby lunchbox. I still have mine, which I actually never used because when I grew up in the Netherlands, you'd get an hour to get back home and have lunch there, so a lunchbox was never needed. But I loved it and used it to carry all kinds of things in around. I loved Constance's post here.

fluffy goodness

2007-11-10T22:24:00.000Z

Today I received some wonderful fluffy goodness, Felicia gave out on the halloween party. It is wonderful and claimed by my son, who started playing with it immediatly. He asked if he could take it with him to school. Now that is a compliment. Thank you Felicia, we're enjoying your vampire rabbit a lot.

I also wanted to share some autumn goodness. Everybody seemed to be drawn to this tree, as was I, and I made a Hockneyish collage.

Calendar

2007-11-05T22:27:00.000Z

I always used to use my diary for any appointments, but lately I've found that I don't look at it often enough to remind me of the things I need to do. So I hope a Calendar permanently in sight will help me keep on track better. I've decided to go for one of those make your own. I ended up with the one Apple makes. It is the only one I could find that makes the picture go all the way to the end without a border. I am very happy with it and especially like how the cover turned this picture.

Initially I thought it needed some cropping, but I don't like cropping pictures and hardly ever do. By placing it on the template, it balanced the whole picture out and it doesn't need any cropping. Things like this make me happy

Oh, and I also like the spirals on top (this is just the preview, I still need to recieve the actual item).

crafts

2007-11-01T21:25:00.000Z

First of all THANKS to all who came over and talked to me during the party. I had a wonderful time and hope there will be one again next year hosted by the wonderful Constance, Gilian and Lisa.

Book week has closed, so I'm late with this entry. Still I wanted to post it. I have quite a few Japanese craftbooks, and they seem to be much discussed already by other wonderful bloggers. I have the advantage of having a husband who studied Japanese and can read proficiently. I don't ask him to translate the instructions. I hardly ever follow instructions anyway. But he is very handy to have next to me when I want to order from a Japanese site, even though Amazon.co.jp has most of it's site in English too. This one I haven't seen yet (I'm sure it's out there) is what seems to be more a magazine than book.

It has lots of yummy images

Wouldn't you want to have a studio like this

great ideas for one of these, which I bought when we were still in the US here

I love this dancing pair

Another country with lovely craftbooks, especially crossstitch is France

I fell in love with the cover of this book

a little ladybug alphabet

with butterflies

And this one has pretty little motifs

with koi fish

and pretty monograms, which I tried to make for a second sail for a gift. This was just before we went to the Netherlands, but I had to abort this second sail and settle for a single sail ship, because I ran out of time

Haloween fun

2007-10-30T23:16:00.000Z

Joining the Halloween party as mermaid witch. The youngest has been somewhat restless, so I will be doing my craft books tomorrow

I'm back

2007-10-29T22:06:00.000Z

We came back late last night from a wonderful time in the Netherlands. Our main reason to go was that our very good friends had their son baptised.

After the church we went to Humphrey's to celebrate and this cafe/pub is absolutely gorgeous. I'll post more pictures of this magical place later this week

We also visited Blijdorp, a zoo which is 150 years old. This Zoo has a nice personal story, which I'll tell in more detail also another day

Pretending to be bulls

The beach

baking cookies at Tante Welmoet's home

This was in Naturalis, where you can see my little son's shadow on the wall

Visiting Opa in Veere, which is one of the oldest places in the Netherlands to be granted cityrights, but has hardly changed in size in more than 750 years, so in my estimation must be one of the smallest cities in the world

Nice walks with Opa

Seeing wonderfully Kitsch Postcards

encounter with a cow

**************

Now on a different note, I just caught up with a few of my favorite blogs and read onAbby try again that there is a wonderful bookreview week going on. I love books and though a bit late, I'll join today with two of my favorite art books.

Rik Wouters, a Belgian painter.

August Macke known for his gorgeous watercolors.

Both painters I like for their use of colour

I'll be back tomorrow with my favorite craft books

Art of Blogging

2007-10-18T20:51:00.000+01:00

I'm wondering after my last post got two reactions, whether a) my blog really doesn't get read that much, b) people do read it but don't like what I make. I know I'm not the best with words, so perhaps not the best person to keep up a blog. Anyway I'll give it one more chance after reading this post. So now with much pleasure I'll make something, but the question is who will want to receive it and take the challenge to put the same challenge on their blog. Because the condition of the challenge is the following

"I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog."

Sounds like fun to me. Another fun thing to do is going on holiday. We're off to the Netherlands for a week, so that means no blogging for me during that time. I'll be returning with much anticipation, to see who (if anybody) has signed up for the challenge). I should be back in time for the Halloween party

All snailmail is always welcome

Oh and not to forget, since darling Constance and Sparkling SomePinkFlowers left their lovely comment, both will get a pair of my halloweenies. Mail me your addy and I hope they make it in time before the 31st!

Invite to a ghostly Halloween party

2007-10-16T21:37:00.001+01:00

There is a stir going through Bloglandia. Everybody is getting ready for the Gasthliest, Ghouliest, Ghostliest party of the year

Everybody is invited. I'm getting into Halloween mood.

I made these last year, but they were all given away, now I'm going to make another series to keep. I'm making one extra boy and girl skeleton. If anybody is interested, leave a comment and they might be on their way to you

Babies

2007-10-11T23:56:00.000+01:00

I love blogging. I love the challenge I've set myself. However I find that too many people have been busy in the past and babies are being born around me. So now I find myself busy making things for little new world citizens. Also with the approaching holiday season it will be getting busier with making things in general. So I've decided to finish the challenge a bit earlier.

Without really blogging about it, but inspired by SPF's stolen moments in time, and these beautiful photographs, that's how I've stumbled upon Blipfoto. This is my new challenge. I'm trying to upload a picture a day (you're only allowed one a day) and I'm making sure I don't overlap with this blog photowise (might do storywise). I love the community there. They are very supportive and the pictures everybody makes are amazing.

To round my design round off. I'm leaving you with this last design, which is actually a bit of a cheat, 'cause I made it already in March after stumbling on this gorgeous site and being inspired by the song, which ever since has been a daily listen on my ipod with or without kids listening with me. The design hasn't been on my blog before, so I feel I can use it today.

A little bit of spring?

2007-10-09T23:18:00.000+01:00

I'm thoroughly enjoying autumn. I think if I were to choose (quite happy that I don't have to) it would be my favorite time of year. I love it that the trees turn into bright colors, I love it that the weather turns a bit cooler, giving a sense of coziness when you're warm inside the house. I even like it when it rains, like it did today. So I don't know why today's design is something spring. Perhaps it's because my son was asking when it would be Summer again, which actually made me think about Spring and looking forward to be able to do some sowing of seeds.

To eat or not to eat

2007-10-08T23:10:00.000+01:00

When we had just moved here, the little one decided to take a bite out of mushroom from our new garden. I have a mushroom book, but could not identify it. So we rushed to hospital, they could not identify it either. So he was fed charcoal and it took 7 hours before we were back home. Luckily all was well and he was fine. Despite me having a mushroom book, I'm not too sure about identifying them. It's on my list of wanting to do, learn more about identifying mushrooms, so possibly I can go on a mushroom hunt in the forest and try to find some edible ones. This garden keeps being full of wonderful mushrooms. However I'm quite sorry that because of his eagerness to explore the unknown, I have to get rid of all the mushrooms in the garden, or I can't leave him unattended for a second to play by himself. It's quite a pretty sight.

Btw, this wasn't the mushroom he ate

And today another hearts inspired design

Garden Bliss

2007-10-07T20:52:00.000+01:00

Today I was browsing for things to do in the area we live and I stumbled upon the RHS Garden Wisley. Less than 5 miles from where we live, it looked very nice to visit on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I wasn't wrong. We had a wonderful time. We took a membership pack and received a wonderful book, which I didn't know I'd get as a gift by becoming member and almost bought. The kids received a backpack with some wonderful stuff. The best was a card with things they had to find in the garden, like lavender, sunflowers, tomatos, bumble bees together with a felt tip pen, which on the opposite side had a stamp with the image of a ladybird. So the kids had a lot of fun running around trying to find these things.

walking around

somewhere in the background you can see me walking with my son, trying to find the toilets

Isn't it beautiful

Being envious of such a gorgeous vegetable patch

My youngest also enjoying the garden

Savouring all the colours autumn has to offer

beautiful recycled (from pressed wood) and recycable wooden cutlery in the cafe

***********

On a different note, having moved from the US to here, it's fun to rediscover UK favorites. Somehow I don't remember which jam we liked best, so I thought it would be fun to do a test and test several jams. I bought five to try, I'll let you know the result

***********

And to finish today with a simple design

hearts

2007-10-06T23:35:00.000+01:00

Photoshop

2007-10-05T21:03:00.000+01:00

I can always kick myself if I forget to change the WB on my camera. Just a tip for someone like me who doesn't have a clue what white balance is, is to just take several pictures (hurray for the digital age) in different white balance settings (also the auto settings) during broad daylight and just look at what you like. Do the same when using a lamp at night etc. So since I haven't set it on auto, I have to remember to change the settings manually after I've taken evening shots into broad daylight, otherwise the pictures turn too blue. I never really tried to chance them in Photoshop, but just took another few pictures. Today I decided to try to change them. I'm very happy with the outcome. First I hit the autocolor button, which already improved the picture to an acceptable level. Then I highlighted everything in the background (actually selected the wee fellow + car he was driving and then hit the "reverse selection" button, which then is everything in the background) and lowered saturation in the background (yes the grass really looks this dull this time of year). This is the result (followed by the unchanged picture)

the adapted version

the before picture

And today's design is inspired by my daughter who desperately wants a fish as a pet

Day three and much needed sleep

2007-10-05T14:52:00.000+01:00

Of course already on day three I miss a day of my own challenge. I don't mind, that's life with three young children, with the youngest still full time to be taken care of, which means during the day I hardly get a chance to do anything done on the computer, so everything I do is limited after the kids' bedtime. When I fall asleep while putting the youngest to bed, that means the whole evening is gone and I don't do anything but catch up on sleep. :) Right now I'm lucky and the oldest two are in school and the youngest is taking a nap. So this afternoon is catch up time. This is my design, which as supposed to have been yesterday and tonight I'm back on track for day four. Now I'm off to pick up the oldest two from school. See you later

stars

2007-10-03T23:28:00.000+01:00

Day 2 of the challenge. Not my best, but I'm enjoying the challenge.

challenge

2007-10-02T22:18:00.001+01:00

Thanks everybody for the well wishes. The ball was wonderful. It was so much fun meeting so many new people. I thank everybody who left a comment. Lately I've been wanting to set myself a challenge. I've been playing with several ideas, but this one won. I want to make a graphic design for the next month. Since it is the 2nd today, I'll continue till November 1st. Reason for me to do so is because I always like making my own cards for any celebration or mentionable event, but most of the time I run out of time. Partly because I don't have a "library" of my own designed things, even though they are roaming inside my head. So hopefully by doing this challenge, I'll end up with my own library of patterns, I can use whenever I need them. I actually made a few designs last year and I've been using them with great joy (if you look closely at the background pattern). I had the vague intention of doing more, but to my surprise today, almost a year has passed and I haven't. So another incentive to start doing things.

The "Chinese" character actually means new and is pronounced Shin, which is my name.

The Ball

2007-09-26T18:50:00.000+01:00

I hope I'm not too late for the ball. I so anticipated it, but fell ill and slept all day & night yesterday. Today I feel all better and now finally have time to let these two sisters go to the ball for me.

Thanks dearest EB for inviting me along. The moon has passed, but I hope everybody is still dancing, so we can dance along

Pink Roses

2007-09-24T22:26:00.000+01:00

I wanted to send my dear blogging friend SPF Some Pink Flowers. One of the joys of being back in Europe is having access to not only cheaper, but also somehow fresher flowers. I love having flowers in the house, so today I bought some pink ones. SPF seemed a little bit taken aback by the arrival of autumn, so I thought these would cheer her up. She always makes my day with her poetic posts. These are for you

2007-09-22T21:55:00.001+01:00

Today we saw

Big Ben and we were so lucky to be able to see the London Eye in the background.

Then we saw Buckingham Palace

and we were even lucky enough to see the Queen

Oh well, this was all in Legoland where it's always an amazing sight what they have done in miniland with a lot of attractions from over the world. 35 million lego pieces in this miniversion of the world's attractions. As I mentioned a earlier, my son is a big lego fan, so he was extremely happy to be here.

Moo

2007-09-21T22:50:00.001+01:00

I absolutely adore the little Moo cards, like so many others, but I think I like these even more. Can you imagine these

sticked on absolutely anything

Afternoon tea

2007-09-20T21:34:00.000+01:00

When in England, the first thing that comes to mind is afternoon teas. Actually I spent some time in Leeds while I was in college near the Yorkshire dales and I visited a little cottage near Bolton Abbey where they served afternoon tea. I think I was in cake heaven. They had the yummiest scones and Meringue Pie. That's what started my non-official (for friends and family only) cake baking career. Today, although in the morning, I had the local Mum (notice my English spelling) and Toddler group round for coffee and cake (about 15 mums + kids). I thought it would be a good oppertunity to bake some

NY style cheesecake

paired with some

Scottish shortbread

and not to forget the

raisin scones

topped up with

jam and cream

You can tell from this and yesterday's post that I'm really into baking just now. I think it has to do with the weather turning into autumn. The body needs more comfort food. Well enjoy, while I dive into some left over scones.

Cooking with delight

2007-09-19T23:09:00.000+01:00

While we were living in the US, we lived in an area where we had no gas. So that meant for the first time in my life to have to get used to electric cooking. Since my oldest two were quite little still and were very fussy eaters, that combination electric and fussiness, made me kind of not really cooking anymore. I did gather lots of cookery books, 'cause I still loved looking and reading about it. Now in the UK we're back to gas and I'm enjoying it thoroughly. I always like it when people use a plate to put their spatula and other cooking accessories on. I like it too, but the dishwasher was always so packed that it didn't warrant the use of an extra plate. Somehow the dishwasher here manages that slightly more, extra plate kind of thing. So that's what I did while cooking today. The fact that the picture is a bit unclear is because of the steaminess in the kitchen while cooking.

So today we ate "baked" potatoes. I always preboil them and I love it when I manage to get them out at the just right moment to finish them baking to a golden glow.

And we had pork chops with sage, which I saw Jamie do on his new show. I bought the new book which is as always very nice. Especially the sage is superdelicious. I think it's the first time I've used fresh sage and I can definitly recommend it.

After dinner we heard a sound as if glass fell off the shelf. We went to have a look in the kitchen, but didn't see anything on the floor. When I later was tidying up, I suddenly noticed that a glass had spontaneously broken while stacked on top of another. Very strange

Well as they say in Dutch glass shards bring luck.

From the outside looking in

2007-09-18T22:06:00.000+01:00

Gasp, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted something. Obviously we've been a while without internet, but we've had some since end of August and now we're in the second half of September. I've been buried in boxes because of the move, but finlally I'm getting to a point where it's not too bad. In our new house I'm so lucky to have a studio of my own, which used to be just scattered little bits of corners with a lot of my art stuff in our old house. A few people have been so kind to ask how I've been doing. The nice thing about blogging being able to look from the outside inside into other people's lives, but also being able to share and let other people from the outside looking in. Right now this picture represents this joyful mood I'm in. I'm so happy to have a decent windowsill, so I can keep my favorite herbs in pots. This is what it would be like if you'd pass my house and look inside this window into our kitchen. I love having all my pots, pans and other kitchen stuff within handreach instead of drawers, so this is where they hang.

Meanwhile my son had his Birthday party, which was great for getting to know his classmates. He wanted a knights' party, since his favorite is Knight's Kingdom, so we started with an empty treasure box. They had to find the gold (chocolate) coins. I also made a treasure hunt for helmets, swords, shields and axes, all cut & forged from the empty boxes (from our move). They also had to hunt down a dragon and pin the flame (instead of the tail). They had fun, my son was happy and now definitly settled in his new school.

Great mail

2007-07-26T04:34:00.000+01:00

I don't know if anybody had noticed that I was one of the lucky winners over at Jennifer's site. I won a set of beautiful decorated frappo bottles filled with goodies. The weather was great and the kids were playing outside, so I opened my parcel outside. Being on my doorstep reminded me of the old milk bottles we used to get when I was teeny tiny.

Displayed on my windowsill, you can tell how lucky I am with such gorgeous contents. I feel especially lucky with the trim. I only got Amy's book a few days ago and saw a wonderful headbank described in it, and these vintage trims are perfect to try to get that "Amy makes it look so wonderful" look.

Oh and not to forget to mentioning the keys. I love old keys and my wonderful parcel didn't just contain one beautiful key, but TWO. My daughter told me today she likes keys too (she didn't even see me play with them) and decided that since there were two, we could each have one. (I think I'll have to hide the keys...)

So Jennifer, thank you very much for sending me such wonderful mail!

Busy doing...

2007-07-23T04:02:00.001+01:00

Constance kindly asked if I was OK. Doing very well, just very busy with arranging things for the upcoming move and ... reading Harry Potter of course. I didn't go to any fancy party but Some Pink Flowers tells wonderfully about one she went to. I just got up early and got a copy from Costco, where a man before me walked away with 5 full boxes. I feel an extra connection, since we used to live in Edinburgh. Not that this has anything to do with potter, but we lived near the Botanic Gardens.

Change of address

2007-07-17T04:56:00.000+01:00

This is the card I designed to send to everybody, to let them know our change of address. It will all be offset printed in a nice heavy cardformat like these.

London

2007-07-14T11:38:00.000+01:00

As I wrote we went to London. We didn't do any sightseeing at all though. Luckily I've been there many times already when I did and in the future I'll have lots of oppertunities to do so much more, because we'll be moving to London (or officially the greater London area).
I'm very excited. To give a little more background about myself, I was born in Korea. My parents moved to the Netherlands when I was one year old. I grew up there, so Dutch is my first language. After our marriage we moved to Edinburgh, where our oldest two kids were born. Then after four years, we moved to the US, where our youngest was born and now we are headed back to the UK. We're aiming to have all our stuff shipped end of this month, so I'll be a little sparse and even disappear a bit from blogland, but as soon as we're settled, I'll be back full time.

Since I always carry a D70 around, I would hope to take these type of pictures soon (all taken with a D70 by Phil Askey)

I've been tagged

2007-07-07T02:58:00.000+01:00

How wonderful to be tagged by Some Pink Flowers with the award.
I feel so honoured, I feel like I'm dreaming

The only thing is that I'm supposed to pass it on to three others, but there are so many wonderful blogs out there, that I find it hard to choose. Another thing is that we'll be flying to some place in Europe for a week, so I'll happily postpone this decision till after I get back. For now I have to announce another blogging break, but hope to be back with new nice pictures.

Florida

2007-07-03T04:12:00.000+01:00

They call it the Sunshine State, unfortunatly we had two whole mornings of rain! Still we had a very good time and the hotel we were in at Boca Raton was beautiful with lots of nice things to photograph.

You'd think I'd come back rested, but I was so tired I fell asleep while putting the little one to sleep, so didn't have my usual evening time to do things for myself. But now I've managed to put the pictures up.

NY city

2007-06-26T02:54:00.000+01:00

We went into Manhatten yesterday and saw this Chinese Dragon at the Museum of Natural History. The drums were so loud, they woke up the baby, but the big kids loved it.

We're off to Florida till Saturday

2007-06-20T17:06:00.000+01:00

Emma went for a walk. After buying some flowers in a vase, she needed a little rest.

Back home, the flowers looked lovely on the table.

Our "Hortensia" can never decide which colour to be, blue or white

Doily

2007-06-19T01:54:00.000+01:00

After much thinking about it whether I should get it or not, I finally did today. I love it! I feel like I'm making my own doilies if I go around the paper

I've also finished another dollie with a different hairdo. My DD whom I made this dollie for, and which looks like her, said this new dollie looked like me (I have shorter hair and she has long hair).

Tomorrow is the last day of school and as a thank you I made this Zoë bird for the teacher. I hope she likes it.

I've won

2007-06-15T17:00:00.000+01:00

I just had a delightful e-mail from Jennifer, saying that I had won. I'm receiving some wonderful frappo bottles, which look beautiful. Thank you Jennifer.

I made Marylinn for a friend who is expecting a little girl at the end of this month. Of course as usual I worked against a deadline, finished it just as I really had to leave for the shower party, so didn't have time & forgot to take pictures of her. So here is another dolly, which I named Emma

Jousting

2007-06-10T04:13:00.000+01:00

Today we went to the Renaissance Fair at Dundee. They had all sorts of things related to knights and dragons. The best part was the Jousting.

I enjoyed the decorations hanging about.

and the Queen's dress was done beautifully

Suits of cards

2007-06-09T03:27:00.000+01:00

I was browsing blogs and saw Claudine Hellmuth's entry for Illustration Friday. The first thing I thought of when thinking of was a suit of cards. I'm trying to make more patterns, which can be used as illustrations.