WW: Cat in the bag... or not...

Mirror Monday

Just a fast one...

Crappy quality, since I didn't change any of he settings and my iPhone is out for repairs...

Oh, and PLEASE dont mind the mess in my bathroom... It doesn't usually look like that...

Love,

Caroline

Exclusive Under Construction Concert

Hubby won tickets to the exclusive UnderConstruction Concert Skunk Anansie gave, to promote the new Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam...

We just got home and it really was an exclusive concert...

Really small stage and really few people.. Fully catered... Also very nice... :D

And what a voice... When she speaks, it's like you hear a fairytale-princess, but when she starts singing... Damn...!

We had a blast...!

Love,

Caroline

Birthday-party

No not my birthdayparty, since my birthday is in Februari.

Last month my niece turned 9 and she asked me if I wanted to help with her birthdayparty.
All off my nieces are sort of creative and they alway pick something creative to do on their parties.

My sister-in-law found this great glass-mosaic workshop where the girls could make their own candleholder. But since there were 8 girls and she also had to take care of her youngest, it would be handy to have an extra set of hands to help the girls out...

So friday, after work I took a nap (being pregnant and working fulltime, is quite tiring ;P) and at 5.45PM I was at their house... The girls were still doing the hiding the gifts-thing, so I had a nice chat with my sis-in-law (Heidi).

After that it was time to drink "champagne" (non-alcoholic, of course) and eat french-fries and snacks (mini-frikandellen, kipnuggets en bitterballen).

When dinner was finally done (there was a LOT of chatting during dinner, and the subjectmatter was at times a bit mature...! ! !), the creativeness could start.

All of the girls got a small zip-locbag filled with broken glass and a bunch of nice square pieces of mosaic, a little glass candleholder (from IKEA) and a syringe filled with special glue.

It's really funny to see how the girls each had their different way of working. One was really confident and silent (needless to say she finished first), some were a bit unsure if they would have enough squares to make a full edge and others would chat so much we had to encourage them to work a bit faster...

The finished glasses have to dry 24hours before grouting, so my niece will bring the candleholders to school on monday, for the girls to take home.
There was so much glass and glue left, I asked Heidi if I could take it home. I have exactely the same glasses at home, and the could do with a bit of "pimping"... I had three, so I made my sis in law one to match hers (she made an example for the girls) and I can make my own set too...

I just have to buy some white grout, so I can finish them...

This is what the ungrouted glass looks like... As soon as I have grouted one, I'll show you...

Love,

Caroline

Celebrations...

We are celebrating the 5th anniversary of our school, so every classroom and the halls are decorated with all sorts of stuff...

I wanted to make a fabric flag-garland for a long time and last sunday I worked my ass off to fix it...

It's just short of 10 meters and hanging proudly in my classroom:

One of the thing we celebrate during the party-weeks is "meesters- en juffendag", a collective birthdayparty for all the teachers.
I got spoiled rotten by my kids. My class-mothers organised a collective gift, which consisted of a large daiper-cake, filled with little gifts the kids bought...
Here's the cake:

I got a few gifts just for me (some Rituals shower foams and a Toblerone-bar) and the rest of the gifts are for the baby. Socks, some cuddly-animals, rattling-toys, a few rompers, a couple of baby-pyjama's and lots more... Really cool stuff..
I won't bore you with lots of pictures of all te gifts so this is it for today...

Love,

Caroline



Mirror Monday

Mirror Monday is Roos' initiative...
Becced (my colleague) is participating and I thought... Why don't I...?

So this is me:

Me in my gardenmirror, tired as can be after a long-ass day at work. 29 weeks pregnant...

Love, Caroline

Fabrics and a Star

Today the fabrics I ordered at Dekkers Stoffen, came in the mail...

I ordered short pieces of each fabric, as I'm using them for a line of party-flags and I won't be needing very much of each color. It was a great way of testing this webshop and I was very VERY pleased with their fast service...

And I found one of the lights I was talking about in my previous post at Tante Truus.

Not really expensive and Earth Friendly (litterally!).

I looks great in our little boy's room...!

This is all for today!

Love,

Caroline

Nursery

I started putting together the furniture for our nursery yesterday.
Since hubby can be a little hot-headed :D when things don't go as he wants, we have a routine for things like this.

- I unpack everything, he nags me about putting things up against the walls like this:

- He goes back downstairs and I start assembling everything.
- In the meantime he comes and checks in on me, to see if I don't work too hard.
- I call him in to help tighten a stubborn screw and he checks all the screws and tightens them (duh, he's stronger than me, so ofcourse he can tighten them up a bit...)

In the end I do most the work (which I absolutely don't mind) and he is satisfied because we didn't have to argue and he got to help anyway...

This is how far I got, with a LOT of breaks and a little help hanging the doors, which really isn't a one person job...

Just the crib to do today and maybe I'll start the mosaic on the windowsill.

And I found the most amazing (ecofriendly) lamps for our boy's room online, now I just have to figure out where to buy them in Holland...

Love,

Caroline

Tools and Thriftstore finds...

When I was working on my quilt, I discovered some of my sewing-tools magically disappeared... Not that thats really a bad thing, since the stuff that's missing came from a crappy, cheap box with sewing supplies.
So I thought I'd treat myself to some new tools:

I bought some patternpaper, so I could start tracing patterns from the Ottobres I borrowed from Becced. There's some really cute boy's stuff in there I really want try my hand at...

I also went to the thriftstore yesterday, looking for some baby's clothes and some other garments I could pull apart and make something else out of.

But no such luck...

I did buy these:

A book about kids-parties.

A crafting book I can use for crafting ideas for my schoolkids. And a really old and corny sewingbook from Burda... Could come in handy with the sewing basics...

Really happy with these finds...

Love,

Caroline

Wordless Wednesday: Food brings people (and cats!) closer together...

"Quilted" Bedspread...

For my bacheloretteparty in January 2010, my mom, mother in-law, sisters in-law and my best friend took me to a "quilting" workshop.
Very basic stuff, but soooo cool!

We did a High Tea and chose to make a large quilt.

When I got back home, hubby told me he loved it (who would've thought, with all the pink and flowers) and said  I should make a bigger one, to fit our bed...
Great idea, buth with the wedding coming up, lots of other stuff to do and sooooo little time, I didn't get around starting 'till last December...

But then I started with this:

And last week, I finished the top layer.. ! ! ! It's absolutely huge (2,5m x 2,5m), and I'm dreading to start on the finishing, but I want it done soon, since I have lots of other idea's for sewing projects...

This gives you an idea of what it's gonna look like when it's finished and on our bed...

I'm planning to make some matching pillowcovers, but that's not a priority at the moment.
If there's something you want to know, about how I made this, just ask...


Love,
Caroline

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have all these cravings and sometimes I just give in to them.

But I don't want all the store bought crap, I love to bake myself and I use as much Organic ingrediënts as I can. So today I decided to bake some Chocolate Chip Cookies...

This is what you need for 12, quite large, cookies:

150 gr plain flour

100 gr dark caster sugar

55 gr "normal" sugar
125 gr soft butter

2 sachets vanilla sugar (about 15 grams) or

2 tablespoons vanilla essence

1 egg

1/2 tablespoon salt

1/2 tablespoon bakingpowder

100 gr dark chocolate

Pre-heat your oven to 180 °C (my oven does 175 or 200, so I picked 175 and added 2 extra minutes bakingtime).

Stir the butter and sugar to a soft mix, add the egg and stirr again.

Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt, stir again.

This is what you should get.

 

Bash the chocolate to pieces and add to your dough.

Line a bakingtray with bakingpaper and spoon spoonfulls of dough on the bakingtray.

I made 12 big lumps, but when they went in the oven, they flattened and stuck together.
I guess you could bake two batches with 24 smaller ones, or freeze half of the dough and bake 12 smaller ones...
It's all up to you...
If you bake the big ones, bake for 20 minutes, the smaller ones should be done in about 15 minutes.

Let them cool on the bakingtray for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a cake rack to cool further.

 

I have yet to taste them, but they smell amazing..!

Love, Caroline

Fabric Spectacle

Last friday I went to Lelystad with two of my colleagues.
They had the Fabric Spectacle there and I wanted to shop for some stuff...

This is what I bought:

Filling for the bedspread I'm making. That would be a boring picture, so I'll post a picture of the quilt-like spread later on...

Plain white tricot to add to a skirt, so I can wear it during the rest of my pregnancy.
And this lovely tricot, designed bij Eline Pellinkhof. I'm making a "buikband" to spice up my plain tee's and accentuate my growing belly...

 

And then I spotted these:

And I just had to have them. They're gonna look so cool on our little boy... Now I just have to figure out what to make of them and how to do it.

As I'm kind of new to sewing (up till now I've only sewn straight lines on cotton), I'll probably screw up a couple of times. But my colleague is very handy! So I'll ask her for advice...!

I also bought new fabric scissors, since my other scissors were screwed up by hubby-dearest, some ribbon and bias tape for a garland I'm planning to sew...

This is it for now! More soon, I promise...

I'm already planning new posts ;-) ! ! !

Love,

Caroline

PS: making this blogpost took some time, 'cause of the placement of the pictures (I'm a sick perfectionist), but not too long... The new Blogger features for editing are great, so I have good hopes of keeping this blog updated...! ;-P

And Becced: thanks for welcoming me back...! You probably didn't think I'd do it, did you ???

New Blog

I decided to start all over, with a new fresh blog...

I'll probably update my other blog sporadic, with scrap-stuff.
But lately my scrapinspiration is very low...
And that's why I'm starting this new blog.

It's gonna be filled with alle kinds of stuff. My (veggie) garden, sewing, cooking and lots of oter bits and pieces.

I decided to keep the layout very standard, since that's what bothered me most about my previous blog: It took waaaaaay to much time to get every blogpost the way I wanted it...

So, clean and simple it is...
Maybe when summervacation and my maternity leave starts, I'll try something else. But that'll also have to be something easy to maintain...

And yes, you read it right:
I'm pregnant with our first... :D

This is it for now, but I'm planning on an update with lots of pictures, tomorrow...!

Love,

Caroline