outside

it looks like spring has come her as well. although they predicted snow again for this weekend..hope it's not true. i made these cushion covers just in between other activities. so easy and nice to do. they are actually for our chairs. but they look nice on the couch as well. I love the fabrics, the one with the pots I bought in a fabric store here in sweden and the grey linen fabric is from ikea (so also swedish ;-))

almost

yes, my sewing machine is back and working! so I could finish this zipperbag. while it was there unfinished on my desk, a mother of a friend saw it and was so enthusiastic about. I still had a piece of the embroidery left, so I made another zipperbag for her. they are almost twins.

once in a lifetime

this time no crafting but some images of our trip to Kiruna, in the north of sweden. we visited the icehotel, it was amazing! we even saw the northern lights two nights in a row, we were so lucky (no pictures of that, because it was very difficult to capture it, but soooo beautiful).

gift

while I was making this zipper bag for a little birthday girl, my machine got stuck on the zipper. I had to tear the bag out of my machine...grrrr. I has to be fixed, but in the meantime I can't finish the bag. the lining still has to be made. I hate that I can't take it with me on my trip tomorrow. the good news is that despite the failure of my machine, the zipper is in it properly...it was right at the end.

little girl

I'm so exited to go to the netherlands. I'm looking forward to it and will meet a new little girl, puck! a daughter of a good friend. I made her a name stamp. They had such a lovely card, printed on wood!

counting down

next week I will go to the netherlands, alone! nice, some catch up time with friends. Opa decided to book a flight and come to sweden for a boys weekend! the boys are looking forward to that and because they kept asking me how many days until opa would come I made this count down calendar. I quickly drew the frames, stije made the pictures inside. nice corporation, stije did much better than mum!

making fire

it's sportlov now in sweden, which means they have a week off and whole of sweden leaves for a ski trip. we decided to stay home and booked a trip to the sun in april, which I am looking forward to very much. it's still rather cold here. we had a nice walk yesterday in norra djurgarden near stora skuggan. in sweden you can make fires in nature everywhere. the boys decided to make one and it was quite a challenge, with wet wood and no matches..but they managed and I enjoyed looking at my boys getting fascinated with this fire making..boys will be boys.

birds

it definitely doesn't feel like spring here. tonight we had some nice snow again. but i felt like making a little zipper bag with this vintage embroidery with a spring image of birds. my parents brought me a big pile of new embroideries, and it keeps inspiring me. this one is for me for a change.

bowling

yesterday we had a really fun night. we bowled at this place in town. I organized the evening and made a medal for the winner. I added the real prize in an envelop and they didn't know what it was until the winner was known. the "real" prize was that he or she must organize the next competition, but in a game or sport of his or her choice. I'm very curious what it will be, we had so much fun, forgot how nice it is to play a game together.

birthday boy

our little one just turned 5! he wanted a knights party. so we invited a couple of knights, i made shields out of cardboard, ribbon and brads, very easy and they had the time of their live. we even build a snow castle outside, with minus 20! roel lighted up the barbeque and made all of the hungry knights some hot dogs....lovely sunny day!

the felt crown i made myself, with velcro the number is attached so we re-use it every year.

snowfun

a lot of creativity, but i just seem to forget to make pictures of it before i send it or give it away...maybe it was the darkness (in december and january it started to get dark at 3 pm!!), but anyway we have a lot of fun in the snow here and the days are getting longer quick now. the boys love skiing, ice skating and playing in the snow, nice to know since we moved here for at least three years ;-))

dutch school

every monday jilles and stije attend dutch school. jilles needs to bring books and was using one of my embroidery bags. It was time to make him his own bag for his birthday, more boyish. my parents gave jilles this owl embroidery and I found the fabric for the inside at a swedish loppis (a second hand market). A perfect match I think and he loved it!

busy sewing

these are some of the things I made for the fair. I like to compose with the embroidery.

winterfair

together with other crafty moms at school I organized a winterfair last friday. It was a big success and I really enjoyed making things to sell for the fair. It's nice to see all cultures come together! a big variety in the things made.

a while ago

it's already a while ago, but I did a workshop with ten 5 year old girls for a birthday party. The theme was princesses (what else at that age?) they decorated a wand and made this headband. I underestimated the age a little bit, but luckily ellen en noor where there to help me. I was surprised with the results.

ornaments

I know it's too early, but I couldn't resist making these christmasballs. very simple. balls made of styrofoam, covered with felt (first needle felt and then wet felt) and added the sequins with little pins.

almost seven

jilles will turn seven in two weeks. unbelievable how fast it goes. he wanted to celebrate his party at home and I am glad about that, because most of the parties are at an indoorprlaygrounds. so he picked a theme, indians! made the invitations yesterday and it was so nice to see him so proud this morning at school to hand them out. two more weeks to figure out what indian games we can play. any ideas?

drawing

I wanted to do this for a long time. I saw the idea at vlijtig, and loved it. And the funny part is that i found the time now in the autumn holiday! things are really getting easier with their age. Jilles makes the most beautiful detailed drawings...so easy to pick one element. I liked this strange bird! love how it turned out.

moustache

I had a little left over stampcarving material and made this moustache. I made two faces and j & s found it so funny, they wanted to make one too. they asked me to stamp a whole paper full with moustaches so they could make their own moustache-men. so much fun with just a little left over.

haloween

hope everybody had a great haloween. this was our first one and my first pumpkin carving. j & s picked the images and I carved them.

experimenting

I have done a felting afternoon with some friends. for on of them it was the first time so I had to explain and help a little. that's why I could only manage to do a little project. I experimented with these small pieces and new colours. I like the colours but the contrast is not good enough, learned something for next time..

twins

I am preparing for a christmas market which I will attend and I made these two bags and a lot of stuff is in progress. I first had to make these bags because one of them is for my mum. She asked me this long ago. They bought a lot of embroideries in France and these two in particular were here favourites. Maybe because she always used to have chickens. finally I managed to make them. mum, one of them is for you and is coming your way!

children's party

tomorrow I will be doing my second children's party. the theme is princess.. (what else can be the theme with 5 year olds ;-)) and we are going to make headbands and fairytale wands. I am a bit nervous because this is the first time I will work with children this age. Hope it works out fine. I made an example of a headband and cut all the fabric and felt in advance...they only have to choose and glue.

loppis

a few weeks ago I went to a "loppis". it's a fleemarket, where people park their cars in a row, open their trunks and start selling. very entertaining to go to. I found some lovely stuff there. this nice fabric and some origami paper and also a lovely linnen sort of napkin from jobs (not the one from apple and it's not on the picture, sorry) with a print of smultronet. This week i was in a beautiful souvenir shop, with all kinds of handmade scandinavian products and there it was, my smultronet napkin for over 20 euros!! my neighbor surprised me with lovely scandinavian mittens, which I didn't buy and felt very sorry for, so sweet of her!

first birthday workshop

today i did my first birthday workshop and i am so happy because it was a big hit. It was fun preparing the workshop. I did some experiments with a heart punch and a butterfly punch. the girls made two things, cards and hangers from paper cut outs and a felt flower. they really enjoyed making the felt flower, playing with water and soap made it very interesting.

wrapping

i love to wrap presents. thanks to the lovely magazine flow, it's made very easy. the magazine has such beautiful prints! I made a felt iphone cover (forgot to take a picture before wrapping ;-) for a swedish friend and added some dutch sweets (muisjes and haagse hopjes).

eyecandy

the boys have two days off now, so we decided to go to the naturhistorisk museet in stockholm, only 8 km from our house! it was a beautiful museum full of inspiration and the boys loved it! I was amazed by the piece of art they made out of insects..

leftover bracelets

I saw this nice idea at vlijtig (she got it from between the lines) and i liked it so much, that I started experimenting as well. I made one with buttons and one only with dmc thread and one small bead. It's a fun way of making bracelets.

new little ones

a lot of babies have been born this summer, but i didn't always find the time to make something personal. kate and benne can stamp away with their name stamps...

speaking of fruit

we picked a lot of fruit, in the wild, in friend's gardens and even in or own garden. so jam and juice needed to be made. I also made drottning sylt (queens jam) which is a combination of hallon (raspberries) and blabar (bleuberries)...hmmm. yesterday picked all the apples and plums in our garden. I made (again) jam and dutch appelflappen. our swedish neighbors loved them. good to know because we had so many apples...more appelflappen to come.

fruitbag

after a 10 week holiday with the kids and lots of visitors in sweden. I finally managed to finish this bag. it was staring unfinished at me for a long time...

nyckelviken

sweden keeps surprising us. every time we discover new beautiful places. our Swedish friends told us about nickelviken. we went there with my parents and it was beautiful! lovely nature, very nice cafe with great cakes, a super playground with a stunning view and the children could ride a horse and see a lot of animals. this is definitely worth another visit.

guest towels

this week our first guests will arrive in sweden, yes! I wanted to make something for all the guests to take as a souvenir, but because the boys have holiday and we have a lot of nice activities i didn't have much time, so I made these simple guest towels with the swedish horse on it.

midsomer

we celebrated midsomer for the first time and were invited by swedisch friends...we loved it! to thank the lovely host of this party I made her this bag. Thanks Caroline and Jan for the lovely day!

light

two of my best friends in holland made me this lamp just before I left. To help me through the darker days...so sweet. I love how the felt filters the light. I really miss them, but hopefully they will visit sweden in september.

dalhast bag

as a goodbye present I made this bag for a belgium "shopping" friend who will move to the netherlands. I will miss her very much because we had a fun time.

my friendly neighbor gave me the nice dalhast fabric. I love it and think there will be more dalhast bags coming. For the first time I made the handle with leather my father gave me...so a nice cooperation project.

first swedish fabrics

Eline and kate took me on a very nice tour. we visited a lot of thriftstore (which are great here in stockholm, because they combine it with lovely cafes where you can have lunch! I will show you pictures of this great concept). but we also visited a lovely fabric store, which was nice after a long time without doing this. my love of course asked me why on earth I needed more fabrics... :-) but you never can have enough fabrics. the fabrics made me make something new right away ;-))

nice gift

let's start by saying I didn't make this bag, but got it as a birthday gift from our very nice swedish neighbor. I just love it and could use it right away because yesterday I had a margaritha evening with some ladies and my bag was a hit!

do it yourself mom

because jilles is six he gets pocketmoney and he loves it and does really well. he saves up money to buy something. this weekend he went to the toystory with his dad and returned with a revolver, sherrif badge and a holster. but stije was of course a little disappointed that he didn't get to buy something, maybe we should start giving him pocketmoney, but they advise to start with the age of six...any suggestions on this matter are more than welcome.

so I promissed him to make a holster for the wooden revolver he got from sinterklaas. I wanted to pimp it with a felt star, but he didn't have the patience, can't blame him for that. He was so happy with it and they played the whole afternoon chasing each other in the garden.

charity

I thought I would have a lot of time, especially since the boys go to school every day, but it's the opposite. despite from making some felt i phone cases for all the very helping people we just met and an extra curtain for stije's room (because of the early sunshine here, the sun comes up at 3.30 a.m.!) I haven't had very much creative space. but no complains, a lot of nice activities. last friday we had a charity market and there was a bake table so I made date cakes for that reason and guess what, they didn't sell. so I bought almost all of them back. I know the date cake doesn't look that attractive, but the taste is really really good. I gave my neighbor a piece and luckily she was very happy with it and loved the taste of it. next time I will also make colorful attractive cupcakes.