Happy New Year !!

I bought a great calender to start the New Year with. The Cupcake calender !!
Hundreds of recipes to keep you in cupcakes and muffins all year long. I'm not sure if I 'll try them all, but the best ones I 'll definitely share with you.

Thanks for visiting my blog last year and I wish you all a great and creative 2009!

Merry Christmas.

We all wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New year !!!

Almost Christmas.

Countdown to Christmas.

My Angel quilt.

Presents, presents and more presents.

Our tree with handmade love hearts from old tea towels.

decoration out of the girls tree.

Almost Christmas , unbelievable. We had a great but busy year and now we are almost at the end. I'm still not really in the Christmas mood but that is because of the weather. The sun is out every day and we are wearing skirts and shorts most of he time so not really a Christmas outfit. But we have a tree( two by the way) and some decorations and I love to share them with you.

Love is in the air.

On the Arts trail last November I met a group of great girls who invited me over to join their art club. Every time they are making something else and it's great to be part of their group. Over the last two weeks we made mosaic love hearts. It was great to smash all the old plates. And the result is great as well. I made two love hearts, my favorite one is the purple one, I'll hang it in my bedroom where is will match my lavender coloured wall.

On my table.

I love flowers, I think the best ones are from your own garden. We always have heaps of little vases around the house with fresh flowers from the garden. We have them on the toilet, in the bathroom, in the girls rooms and next to my bed. And we have always some flowers on the table.
This is what comes from our garden this week.

Lady... What's in the bag ?!?!

Lisette asked me what's in your bag? Here is the answer. I can tell you there was a lot of rubbish in the bag , so for me it was a good opportunity to give it a big clean out.
Do you really want to see it.......

An umbrella, because you never know. I'm not using it a lot because if it is raining in New-Zealand it a very windy as well, so it's better to run if you don't want to be wet.
My Phone, little Oililly mirror and a real dutch Jip en Janneke wallet. A small first aid kit in a nice little tin. Hay fever tables because it is that time of the year again , a very important coffee card (what are we without coffee),A measuring tape because you can always find me in a second hand shop and it is so easy to know if the basket will fit where I planed it.
And my own flyer's from my little " Party in a box " business. So I can always promote myself. If you want a theme party for your kids , you can hire a party box and I guarantee hours of fun.
There is much more so have a look yourself.


I'm curious what Margie carries in her bag. So please show us !!

Home made bread.

I love baking bread, specially different ones. I make the dough in the bread maker, because it is easy and saves a lot of time and hard work (so I have time to do other things in between) then I bake the bread in the oven.
Last Saturday I found 2 great bread tins on a garage sale. I never saw them before so I bought them and make some nice muesli bread.
I used the normal recipe for bread and added a big bowl of muesli and a hand full of sultanas. It turned out very nice and tasty.

Tonight we are having vegetarian soup for diner and I serve it with a home made cumin-bread. Just add some cumin seeds at the dough and bake in the oven. Great taste!

Sinterklaas.

At this time of the year everybody is celebrating Sinterklaas in The Netherlands. In New Zealand we still celebrate Sinterklaas as a family, but it is different. We are not really in the "Sinterklaas" mood because you don't see anything in the shops at all, but I brought some decorations with us from Holland and every year we put the on a nice spot. We always have our presents (have to be hand made) at 5 December and I made in all those years photo's that I put on a paper chain. It's always great fun to see what we made and got last year.

The paper chain is hanging in the kitchen above our kitchen table so if you want or not you will be in the "sinterklaas" mood soon.
My mum (who is coming over next week for 6 weeks) send us a lot of nice Sinterklaas goodies. It is hard not to touch them but we will save them for 5 December. Of course we will bake some pepernoten en speculaas next week.

Birthday weekend

On Friday our oldest daughter turned 15. It's always special to celebrate a birthday for the girls because it is there special day and for us to remember the day that they were born. I think you never forget such a special moment. And because she is the oldest, she made me a Mum, that's super!
I always make the birthday cake my self and this year I made one in a love heart shape with fresh strawberries. It's so strange because she is born in the Netherlands and we celebrated her birthday always in the winter. On the day she was born we had some snow and now we are living in New-Zealand and it is almost summer. We had great weather last weekend. It's hard to understand that it's November. But I can tell you fresh strawberries in November are great.

And with some fresh flower decoration next to every diner plate it looked great.

On Saturday we had the school fair, where we had a little stall. It was great fun . We are planning one more market before Christmas. If the weather is like last weekend we are more than happy!

Knitting and sewing.

It will be quite after the arts trail, that's what I thought. But no way. The school fair is this weekend and with just a few left overs from the arts trail there was a lot of sewing to do.
Then we have the annual dancing concert from the girls and of course I'm helping with sewing costumes. It's great fun but I still have to do it.

I tried to make some different items for the school fair then I did on the arts trail. The roll-up pencil cases were a big hit so I will sell those again and I made some note books. I love them, so I hope other people also will love them.
And last but not least I've got a pile of dutch magazines ( no time for reading yet , just looking through them) from a friend and I spotted some great house socks. With time in the evening when the sewing machine needs some rest I did some knitting , all the girls in our home love them so I have to knit a bit longer. I made the first pair for myself. That is not what I usually do but this time I gave myself the first choice. Sometimes you have to treat yourself after all the hard work!

What a weekend !!

The Quilts that I made were not for sale , just for display

Our little cat was the best visitor, she was around the whole weekend and loved all the attention she got.

My daughter Elle who did all the bead work and me

The veranda was our stall.

Some of the bead work

Bit more of the veranda.

A little corner.

We had the Arts Trail this weekend and we can say it was a big success! The weather was top, the sun was out the whole weekend , we had lots of visitors and sold heaps. It was great!
For us it started on Friday evening with organizing and putting everything where we want it. It was all in my head so we did it quite fast. Saturday morning at 10 am the Arts Trail went of and our first visitors came soon. We didn't have proper time for lunch and after 4 pm there where still a lot of people. I loved it to have a talk with everybody and everybody was happy because of the great weather. We got a lot of compliments about the garden and our little kitchen garden. We made liters of coffee and tea and served more than 100 home made muffins.
It ended on Sunday afternoon 4 pm but around 5 pm we had still some people coming.

I have to make one quilt for a lady and I sold a lot of things to a shop. (hopefully I'm in business). I'm running out of stock, so for the coming school fair (in 10 days time) I have to make a lot more. Today I was busy making more roll-up pencil cases for the school fair, but a friend who came over for a cup of tea bought them all already. The where still warm from the iron.
I was planning to stock up my Etsy shop with all the leftovers from the Arts Trail but we need it all for the school fair so later on I will stock-up my Etsy shop.

It was great and I hope to do it again next year!

New outdoor daybed.

This is the new (old) daybed that we bought on the last weekend garage sale as well. It suits well on our back veranda.

Garage sale or vintage shop???

Sometimes there are days that you think grrrrr. But than you go to a garage sale and your eyes are almost falling out off your head. This is not a garage sale, this looks more like a great vintage shop.
It was to hard to make a good choice so I bought everything I liked. When we came home we told the girls about the great bargains and after a quick breakfast we went straight back!
On the photo is just part of what we bought, isn't it great!
We bought a great wooden daybed as well which is now out on the veranda. Tommorow I'll make some photo's to show you all.

Creative week, part 5

This is the last part in the row. I like to show you the fabric postcards. The are made from a colour full cotton top with a calico background so you can wright you text on the back of the postcard. I made a lot of different ones and the come with a normal white envelop to send by normal mail.

It's to hard to show you all the things we made for the Arts Trail so if you are in the neighbourhood you are more than welcome to come over and otherwise I show you how our weekend was. Hope the weather will be fine , that's help full.