vintage find

I rummaged through our "basement" and found this vintage beauty. There's a lot of old stuff there from former residents- mostly junk. My daughter bathed the doll carefully. Now she is clean and waiting for some clothes. Her old ones were torn apart, so I will have to make new ones and maybe even fix her legs and arms a bit- they are quite loose.

cookies

Neomi and I made some cookies yesterday. It was like a test-run for the christmas-cookies that soon will follow. She loved taking out all the frames from the tin-box. I guess I will buy some more next time I am in Basel. There's a shop I just love- called "la cucina" and I could always buy tonns of things.

I started playing with photoshop some more... found some great freebies through "lil blue boo"- now I can't get my hand off the computer :o)

box-game

I was so inspired yesterday by the blog of Joel- especially his Halloween Box, that I went home and made something similar for Neomi. We are not celebrating Halloween, so I just made small figures connected to our everyday-life. I could also imagine robots and space-ships :o)
To make the figures stand I used corks cut in halfs. We might decorate the box today.
I remember when I was a child we made aquariums from boxes and hung fishes inside.

new blog discovered

Just discovered the wonderful blog of "Joel". I am all excited to read the nice projects he's posting! You can also read his "dad story "over at bloesem kids. So nice to read about a creative dad for a change :o)

simple toys

How I loved to play with my mothers clothespins myself! She has a huge amount in all kinds of colours and shapes, from plastic and wood. Even today- when I am at my parents house and help her to hang the laundry- I choose always the matching colour to the item I want to hang :o)
My daughters love to play with my clothespins too- allthough I don't have so many (our laundry is mainly washed, dried and folded in the local "laundry-store").
So many things you can do with them- sort them by colour, put them in tins and boxes and take them out again, hang them on the line, make rows with them, put them in a jar and shake....

tuesday's handmade: in the woods

my absolute favourite from pilli pilli!

hairclip from ribbon candy.


wooden teething toy from buddy and jojo.


ceramic tile from kristin.

and some lovely owls from mapleshade kids.

embroidery

I am starting to do some embroideries- not something I did a lot in the past. I found in the second hand a simple dress for Neomi and decided to add red flowers. I quite like the result and my daughter too.

autumn

How come weekends are always so terribly short? I enjoy so much to be with my family. Over the last weeks I started to have a hard time (again) with the fact that I am working full time. I would so much like to stay at home with my girls and work only part time. But it is unfortunately not so easy to do. So I enjoy the weekends even more. And now we have beautiful autumn-weather so we can be outside a lot.

Yesterday I had some time to make nice beatles with my older daughter- inspired by "lovely design". Last year I made nice apple cards with Neomi. It is fun to stamp with potatoes and apples.

Besides this I had some time to be creative. I always start new things and have different projects running at the same time. One reason is, that I have no crafting space for myself. If I want to sew with the machine I need to do so on the kitchentable- and this is not something I can do during the day since we need the table for cooking and eating... so I prepare things and once in a while get the machine out to finish/ continue everything.

Above a picture of the beginning of a pillow case for my sister as a christmas present.

simple toys

I never went crazy buying toys for our daughters. There are people whose houses overflow with "junk-toys". I prefer few toys with high quality.
And after all- they like to play with the most with simple things.
Last week we collected a lot of pine cones. Helen- the younger daughter (10 months) is busy taking them into her mounth or taking them all out of the pot and waiting for us to put them back. The older one (Neomi, 3 years old) is throwing them as high as she can or is trying to throw them from a distance into a bucket. She also uses them as trees when playing with her cubes. So many ways to use them and I am sure they will discover more.
I will post from time to time some more "simple toys".

here they are!

I got my parcel from Japan today with the stamps I ordered from Mayumi. She has a shop called karaku on etsy with gorgeous things. I already have a lot of ideas in my head of what I want to do with the stamps... mostly for Christmas.

creative weekend

My older daughter wanted to sleep at her grandparents place, so we had a quiet saturday morning with only our younger daughter. She played nicely with a pot full of pine-cones and my husband and I had time to continue our project with the wooden toys. I painted the blocks and he finished the little car and prepared some more blocks.

I like the car like this- I won't paint it.... the next one will already be an improved version :o)

first rain

The summer finally came to an end. The first rain fell on Friday- a real heavy rain with thunder and lightning and that left a wonderfull smell in the air. Before the rain I went for a walk with my husband and took some pictures. In a few weeks hopefully the first green plants will start to grow in the fields and hills!

I miraculously also had time to finish some pants for my daughters (don't have pictures yet) and try my new "button-maker"- I will upload some pictures later.

stamps

I was looking for nice stamps and came across the wonderful shop of karaku on etsy!
I think I will order something for myself... If I would have a bigger budget, I would buy half of the shop :o)

"lost & found"

I did not really loose them, just forgot a bit about them- cards and bookmarks I drew some time ago. Now I found the scans again and I still like them. I need to buy new pens and then I want to make some more. Especially the bookmarks are nice as a small present.

Wish you a nice day!