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...