KissKus

New skirt

I made a skirt for myself yesterday. I used no pattern, I just measured my tum & bum and cut two A-shaped pieces. Sewed them together, put in some elastic and my skirt was finished!

For something that took so little effort it turned out really well. The fabric helped too. It's a stretchy synthetic fabric with a very busy print. Any mistakes (not that there were any ;)) are almost invisible.

You might be able to tell from this photo that there is a little bit of glitter on the fabric... nice!

At first I left the skirt long, ankle length, but when my Mum saw me wearing it she vetoed. According to her, it made me look like a deeply religious woman. Of course there's nothing wrong with deeply religious women, but that wasn't really the vibe I was going for. So I shortened it, which I must admit looks better. I'm now able to wear it with or without a legging.

My only problem is finishing the hem. Since I have no fancy sewing machine -let alone a serger-, I just don't know how to go about it. Any ideas? If not, then I think I'll just leave it like this.

I'm glad I have a new garment to wear... I hardly fit into any of my clothes anymore because I'm just so fat! I wished I could blame the pregnancy, but really that's only part of the problem. Chocolate and other unhealthy food are the real cause. I'm not very upset about this "new" fuller figure of mine, but finding clothes that fit properly (and still look nice!) is difficult sometimes. Also, I refuse to spend a lot of money on XL-clothes, because I do hope to get thinner again. Any tips on how I can work on my chocolate-addiction and get into better shape (without proper dieting because of the breastfeeding)? Any ideas on this would be very much appreciated.

By the way, I still have quite a bit of fabric left. Enough to make another skirt, except one is enough for me. Anyone else out there that can find some use for it? Leave a comment or send me an e-mail and I'll pop it in the mail!

One last thing... am I the only one that hadn't heard about Spoonflower yet? I must have been living under a rock! How wonderful to design your own fabric! I'm on the waiting list; I hope I get invited soon. There's a Flickr-group as well. Yummy!

Eye candy

I created a little eye candy to enjoy on this rather cloudy Sunday.

I took these photos last year when I visited the Kaffe Fassett exhibition in Belgium... it was simply fabulous seeing all these creations in real life!

I made a skirt today, which I'll show tomorrow... enjoy the rest of the weekend!

For all that shopping

We needed a new shopping bag. The one that I made about five years ago was slowly falling apart. We've used it soooo much! Half the time we're lugging our body weight around in shopping and this bag has never let us down. However, it was time for a new one!

I had some Ikea fabric that I had bought a while back with this particular project in mind. It's curtain fabric, nice and sturdy, like canvas. I love the print and colours (for a bag, I wouldn't like it so much as curtains I think).

I used my old bag as a template for this one. I just took the measurements and cut it. It's a very simple bag, but it fulfills all my needs, which are that it needs to hold LOTS of shopping and that it must fit around the pram like this (this is the old bag):

For me this is extremely important, because I nearly always do all our grocery shopping walking. I don't think that I've taken the car to go shopping even once since Linus' birth. I find walking more practical with a baby.

So even though I felt pretty awful today (I've got a nasty cold and I'd been up half the night... at one point all three children were awake!) I felt such a sense of accomplishment after finishing this bag. Creating something from scratch is so much more fun (and so much cheaper) than simply buying something new.

And just to give you an impression of how huge it is...

It looks empty, doesn't it?

Well, it's not! (ah, poor Linus!)

Thank you everyone for your kind and encouraging words about Simon! It's wonderful to be reinsured. Now I'm even more certain that this is a phase that we have to go through together. And the funny thing is that the past few days were almost without incidents! Also, on Tuesday he went to school to meet his teachers and classmates. He loved it; I think school will indeed be really good for him.

Growing & learning

Becoming a mother has been a life-changing experience for me. It has made me a stronger, less selfish and a much happier person. My children are undoubtedly the greatest joy of my life. I love them dearly.
However, being a mother is also by far the biggest challenge of my life. And at times it's difficult. I can honestly say that I try my best, but sometimes the best doesn't seem good enough.

Simon is going through a rough patch at the moment. He is not quite himself and perhaps he will never be as happy and naive and carefree as he once was.
He has become angrier, even aggressive occasionally. Impatient too, quickly losing his temper. At other times he behaves in a forced baby-ish way. And he is naughty, driving us mad sometimes by not listening to us.

Is this all due to the fact that he has got a baby brother? Is this normal behaviour... will it pass? Of course, his life has been turned upside down. He was always the youngest, the smallest and now his place is taken by someone else. All of a sudden he's become the middle child. His change in behaviour is very understandable.

 

But how do we handle it? Michel and I have spend many hours talking, figuring out the best strategy. We so want to help him to settle into this new situation, but occasionally we feel quite helpless.
Michel tries to spend some more alone time with Simon doing some "manly" things, such as going to the garage or the DIY. We both try to give him as much positive attention as possible, although this is sometimes hard to do. Extra cuddles and kisses are also on the menu and thankfully he is very open to that.
We also try to make sure that we don't push him away from Linus, either physically or verbally. I think this might be the most difficult thing, because he is quite rough when he's around Linus and we don't want him hurting him. He is very fond of his little brother though and most actions towards him are loving; he's just too loud or too rough.

None of this has changed anything about the fact that he is our gorgeous and fantastic boy. He makes us smile all the time. He is sweet and clever. Passionate about his cars, John Deere and strawberries. He'll start school in September and I firmly believe that he will love it there and that it will provide him with a neccessary life of his own. He's ready for it.

As he grows and learns, we grow and learn with him.

Hands up

Let me show you what I got Michel for Fathersday:

Aren't they cool?! They're soap hands!

Michel suggested that I just needed a excuse and that I really bought them for myself. Now seriously, would I do that?!

Oh how I wished I had a macro lens...

They are made using doll hands. Michel thinks they're creepy, but the children and I love them. Simon and Amber have both demanded one several for themselves, but I think they're just too good to use.

Phew, am I glad it's weekend! It's been quite some week. Yesterday was just a totally bizarre/exhausting day. It was just one thing after the other and I won't bore you with the details, but it were things like parking the car in human poo (not of anyone we know!! OMG!!! It was so disgusting!!) and having two policemen in my livingroom. Well you know... things like that. Let me just say again that I'm glad it's weekend! Enjoy it everyone!

PS I almost forgot... get your own soap hands here at Foliage!

Baby doll

Do other people take silly photos of their baby and then publish them to the world? Oh shameless!!
(Michel was my partner in crime... in fact he was the one who made him look funny and all I did was take a photo of it. Really, I wash my hands in innocence!)

Look at my biceps!

So what if I have a burp cloth on my head?! I'm cool!

In da hood... OK, not funny!

He was fine after this, I promise! Look!

(hmm, he still looks a bit p*ssed off...)

Anyway, on to something more serious: I let my lovely assistant draw the winners' names of the 300th post give-away:

She was a little confused about this strange name:

It was:

Congratulations, Nicolette and Thimbleanna! Send me an e-mail and we'll work out the details of your prize :)

The crafts that went with the birthday

There were a lot of things that I needed wanted to make for Amber's birthday.
In my life there is always that dilemma: will I go mad and try to make everything myself, or will I make it easy on myself and simply buy everything? In the end it's usually a mix of both these things. For instance, I can't remember ever having baked a proper birthdaycake. However, I do make it a point to always make Amber's birthday dress.

Another thing that I find important is to think up of something creative for birthday treats for school. Last year I made fabric flowers and the year before that we made boats. I was wondering whether it's a Dutch tradition to hand out treats at school? It's just that I can't remember ever having read about it on any of the international crafty blogs that I read.

Anyway, to my mind the best treats are unique, but also simple to make. This year Michel and I came up with the perfect idea: fish rods.

Now, I would love to tell what I used to make them, but I'm afraid I'm only able to do so in Dutch: soepstengels, rode en zwarte dropveters en snoepvissen. Thanks to Nichole I now know that I used breadsticks, red & white shoestring licorice and Swedish fish. All sweets came from Ikea, so you might be able to get them there.

This was so easy to put together. We made the fish rods on Sunday and kept them fresh in ziplock bags. We decorated a cardboard box with blue wrapping paper and fish stickers (both Ikea). Then we punched holes in the box and all I had to do the next morning was put all the rods in there.

This is how we tried to transport the whole thing to school:

Amber carried it when everything started to collapse on Linus.

It was a huge success with both children and teachers (and parents).

After this there were still some things to make for her party on Wednesday. Of course I didn't start until the very last minute ;)

For the treasure hunt I made oilcloth letters that the children had to collect during the game. I used a cup to draw the circles unto the oilcloth. After cutting them out and sewing them together, I attached a letter sticker... finito!

For favours I made small oilcloth bags.

I used my girliest oilcloth... I actually love the pink gingham myself! Again, the bags were very easy to make, it's just a shame that I had to work on them so late into the night...

I made cupcakes to put in the bags. Although I don't think I can call them cupcakes...my cakes don't even come close to all the wonderful creations that I so often spot in blogland, but they looked cute enough and were tasty as well :)

In the end, this was the result:

Please notice that I re-used the letters from the treasure hunt to create bags with the girls' initials on them... pretty clever or not?!

And that was the end of that... I promise no more posts on Amber's birthday! Oh, by the way, I'll announce the two winners of the give-away in next post. Enjoy the last bit of weekend, everyone!

Girls girls girls

Yesterday we held Amber's birthday party for her friends. She had set some strict rules beforehand: she wanted princess cups and plates, she wanted a treasure hunt and she only wanted to invite girls.
So Michel and I knew what we had to work with.
We divided tasks: I was responsible for the food & drink etc. and Michel for the overall organisation and especially the treasure hunt.

 

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. After a long spell of beautiful summer weather, yesterday was supposed to be the first day of it being colder and wetter. But not over our house! It was mostly sunny and warm enough to have all activities outside.

We started with hotdogs and lemonade.

Then it was time for presents. I came up with the idea of using a dice to keep things civilised. The girl that threw 6 first was allowed to give her present. This worked very well; everyone stayed focused. No yelling or running around... that's my idea of party fun!

After this it was time for the treasure hunt. They read the instructions first... their quest was to find the silver teapot that we needed later for the tea party.

What followed was lots of exciting running:

Solving puzzles:

Collecting letters at the strangest places such as the local supermarket:

And then finally they had to put all the letters in the right order to find out where the silver teapot was hidden:

Under the slide!

After all that hard work it was time for tea (lemonade):

Please notice the princess cups and plates... when I told Amber that I didn't really like princessy stuff, she said: Well I do! And it's my party!" And that was the end of that discussion.

After some more playing it was time to take everybody home. Everyone had enjoyed themselves and Amber was very happy. Michel and I were pooped out (we've had quite a few late nights as well lately), but we were able to look back at a very successful day. Next party is in September, so we have some time to recover.

More photos are on Flickr. I really love these two photos of Simon. He kept a little distance between him and all these girls :)

Next post I'll show you the crafty bits!

Hmpf... I still don't get the photos to show up right since the Typepad-change. Any tips on how to get these photos published properly?!

All dressed up

I had bought the fabric for Amber's birthday dress more than three months ago in Amsterdam while I was shopping for fabrics for the nursery. I fell in love with it immediately and when I bought it I intended to start sewing right away, so that I wouldn't have to stress when her birthday was approaching. Well, yes, we all know how that went...

So that fabric, so very pretty I think, especially the 'main' fabric. And I still have a good bit left. Not enough to make clothing, but plenty to use for some future craft projects. (Sorry for the bad photos, but I quickly had to take some photos in the early morning before Amber put it on.)

The pattern came from Knippie, a lovely Dutch pattern magazine for children's clothing (there's also an adult version). I liked the 'country' feel to the dress. I imagine it's exactly the kind of dress you would wear while walking through a field of barley, if you were so inclined.

The pattern wasn't difficult to follow and I only made one mistake that I corrected quite well I think. The pockets were my own idea, because I felt the dress needed a little something extra.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and, more importantly, so is Amber. She likes long dresses and she didn't even mind that it wasn't pink.

Oh, and I made a matching headband after Heather Bailey's pattern. So quick and easy and lovely... I can't wait to make more of them. New mission: a matching headband with every outfit!

It was a very happy birthday

Our beautiful daughter is 7 years old today.
Happy birthday, Amber!!

We've had a truly lovely day. The weather was gorgeous, so we could sit outside all day. Family and friends came and brought lots of presents.
Of course we had cake too...

Amber was allowed to stay up for as long as she liked, so she only just went to bed.

I think that seven is a very special age, in between little and big. We can't wait to enjoy this new year in her life with her.

Tomorrow I'll show you her birthday dress! Here's a sneak peek: