House arrest

Every Monday I will post something related to babies: inspiration, craft projects, baby news, and discoveries I have made in this new and exciting world for me. I hope you come along on that rollercoaster ride with me.

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Elevator out of service

If you find this sign on the door of your elevator ...

... and you live on the 6th floor...

... and you have a little one who is too heavy to carry around for your poor back...

... it means you have house arrest!

Oh well – then I am staying at home today ;-)

Social Saturday

Today I have a wonderful busy Social Saturday:

picture found here

In the morning we are catching up with friends who recently build a house. Very exciting. I haven’t seen it, yet, so I am very excited. They have a little one as well and therefore we meet for breakfast (who else would be awake at 9.30am on a Saturday morning – just parents ;-)) Besides D. and I have great plans for a “crafting empire”. We hope to carry this big idea a bit further – as far as you can go in-between feeds and naps and nappies ;-)

picture found here

Then other friends of us come over for an evening full of pizza and board games. We had a game night last week, but as always weren’t able to do more than one board game (too much eating, too much chatting and a “school night” ;-)), therefore we decided to make it a regular happening. I don’t know why I haven’t played many board games in the past 10-15 years. They are so much fun. I love how everybody gets completely immersed in the game. How everyone gets competitive – even the ones who said they don’t care. How times flies. How you become a kid again. How much fun you can have with the oldest and simplest of games.

Hope you enjoy your Saturday!

Me made February

Next month I will take part in a brand-new, fabulous blog initiative: Me Made February. Catherine from Cat-und-Kascha invented and initiated it. And I am so excited to take part in it. The idea is to wear self-made things (clothes, accessories, handbags etc.) and post photos of them on your blog.

The best thing is that lovely Catherine set the challenge, but allowed everyone to make up her or his own rules. So it is really a fun challenge without any pressure, but full of creative energy and inspiration.

My Me-Made-February challenge will be:

a) wear one piece of self-made fashion or accessories every day in February (doublets allowed!)

b)make at least one new fashion item (clothing or accessories) for me every week in February

plus post a photo of each item obviously.

I am so looking forward to meeting the challenge, being inspired by all who take part in it and being my old fashion-addicted self again (despite being regularly covered in carrot mash and wet kisses by my 8-month old).

So, come on, give yourself a kick in the b... and join us. All you have to do is leave a comment here or at this post.

I promise you it will be good fun and full of great inspiration!

My creative space...

Another fun blog initiative. Every Thursday bloggers from Australia and all over the world show you their creative space and what they are currently working on. Join the fun at Kootoyoo . So inspiring to start a new project or finish the UFO (UnFinished Project) that has been lying about forever!

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... is full of wool leftovers, finished woollen strings and unfinished pieces in my “Strickliesl”. Yes, as you can see I am still obsessed with my knitting doll after I discovered how manifold it is and what cool things you can do with the strings.

It is the perfect craft project for young mums by the way. Whenever you get 5 spare minutes, or 4, or even just 2, grab your “Strickliesl” and off you go. And by the end of the day you will be amazed how much you crafted. Despite looking after a little one all day long. Very satisfying!!

Happy Australia Day!

picture found here

Happy Australia Day, mates! Please have a cold beer & something straight from the barbie for me. Enjoy the warm weather and the day off. Here in Berlin it started snowing again. Miss you, dearest Australia!

Ruby Tuesday

Keel’s Simple Diary by Taschen

Found here

What to do with all the Strickliesl strings

As promised I haven’t stopped looking for great strickliesl projects.

I found my favourite projects  in my favourite German craft magazine - Cut: really cool jewellery for people beyond the kindergarten age

pictures found here

I absolutely love these ideas. And I love jewellery! So I will definitely try a few of them. And show you then. Just wait and see ;-)

Other ideas included:

Lamps

Found here

And there are more ideas in a special magazine dedicated to the Strickliesl

Found here

Oh well, I think I start with the jewellery. :-)

Strickliesl Revisited

My latest crafting passion is nothing new...

... but I am totally addicted again. Like in kindergarten when nothing could stop me from producing meters and meters of woollen strings.

When I looked for inspiration what to do with all these strings, I was amazed how multifaceted my old friend is:

So many different names

created here

So many different styles

Even a male one

So many shapes

So many different sizes

Beautiful old ones

Wonderful new ones

And an automatic one, although that is cheating from my point of view ;-)

All pictures found here

Well, I still don’t know what to do with the products of my “Strickliesl” addiction, but I am sure there must be millions of projects out there. Since there are so many Strickliesl. I’ll be back with new from the Strickliesl universe ;-)

Teething Success

This is the results of all the lack of sleep, the crying, the drooling, the biting,...

Vicky’s first 2 teeth

Still very cute ;-)

I am off to bed now. Keep your fingers crossed that I have a few quiet nights before the next teeth are coming. As Christiane said: another 18 to go! Oh dear!

K.O. through teething

Sorry that it has been so quite here. But in real life I had a couple of quite stressful days (and nights). My little one got her first tooth on Sunday. And the next one yesterday.

Poor little thing! So much whinging, drooling, crying, biting, drilling,... :-(

Poor little mum! No time for blogging, reading, sleeping or doing anything by herself ;-(

See you when we are through this ;-)

Animalistic Wooden Blocks

Every Monday I will post something related to babies: inspiration, craft projects, baby news, and discoveries I have made in this new and exciting world for me. I hope you come along on that rollercoaster ride with me.

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I am really sorry that this is another shopping inspired post, but when I saw these beautiful wooden at my local chemist, I just couldn’t resist:

Found here

They are just 7 EUR and I think they are an amazing addition to any set of normal wooden blocks. I cannot wait for my little one to be old enough to play with them. In the meantime I “save” them on my window sill for her ;-)

Blog Plans 2011

After my first blog birthday and my little blog survey, I sat down and thought about what to do and what to change on this little blog of mine. Basically I am still quite happy with what I write about – as cluttered and all over the place as this blog is, it represents quite well who I am and what I am passionate about. Therefore no big changes, but a few new (hopefully interesting) additions. Voila, here are my blog plans for this year:

created here

As with any good plan – it might change, evolve or be updated from time to time. I might focus more on some things than on others, but in general this is what you can expect. Or hopefully look forward to. Otherwise please let me know.

I love feedback. And I appreciate any comment, suggestion, idea and even criticism (yes, I am still working on this one). So, even if I do not ask you specifically, please do leave comments or send me an email.

Happy Sunday to all of you!

TOP 5 Library Books

It is the 15th again – so it is time for reading. And time for sharing my favourite books with you.

Last week I borrowed a huge stack of books and DVDs from my local library. And I was amazed how much luck I had this time with the books I picked. Here are my favourite five:

Laura, Leo, Luca und ich – Stefan Maiwald
Very funny book about a young man (the author) who falls in love with an Italian girl – and has to survive as Tesdesco in her lovely Italian family. Heartwarming and even funnier than “Maria, ihm schmeck’s nicht”, I think.
In German only

Brick Lane – Monica Ali
Finally! I wanted to read this book for years now and somehow I didn’t manage to do so. Every time I was looking for something new to read, I forgot about this on. Anyway, it is amazing. It is even better than I anticipated. It is sad, happy, exotic, familiar... a brilliant story about an Indian girl who is married off to an older man in London.
In  English and German

Nacktbadestrand – Elfriede Vavrik
A wonderful book about love. The author describes her love stories when she was almost 80 years of age. Touching and inspiring.
In German only

206 Bones (Das Grab ist erst der Anfang) – Kathy Reichs
One of my favourite thriller authors. Her stories give me such goosebumbs that I still don’t dare to read them when I am at home by myself. This time her heroine is truly in the line of fire.
In English and German

Speaking in Tongues (Die Saat des Bösen )– Jeffery Deaver
Another master of thriller. I have read all his other stories so I was glad to find a new one – or at least it was new to me. Chilling as ever!
In English and German

Fabric Shopping Spree

Today I had a wonderful fabric shopping spree. I met with Catherine from Cat-und-Kascha at the market on Maybach Ufer. Besides wonderful fresh food, you can also buy there incredibly affordable fabrics. Catherine and I found out that we do not only share a passion for sewing, retro fashion and the colour red, but that we also have very similar fabric shopping behaviour: browse, strike whenever we see something beautiful and then buy a couple of metres, so that we have enough fabric no matter what we are going to make out of it (dress, skirt,...).And since I didn’t have anything on my shopping list – en contraire, I didn’t need anything at all – I found wonderful things:

bright pink lining fabric

beautiful ribbons

and wonderful thick jersey (grey with pink and turquoise graphic flowers), which was a perfect gift for my sewing-addicted friend N., who is expecting twins and doesn’t know whether they will be boys or girls or a boy and a girl.

After our successful shopping spree, Catherine and I dried our children (it was pouring with rain all the time and still we kept on moving from one stall to the next) and had a wonderful lunch. And chatted, chatted and chatted. Although we have just met once before. Amazing what interesting people you can meet through blogging. And if you are lucky, they live right around the corner ;-) I am looking forward to our next meeting, Catherine!

Countdown – 1 month to go to tick off my Birthday to-do-List

Last February, shortly after my 34th birthday, I put together a list of things I want to do before I turn 35. Not to put more pressure onto myself, but more to remind me of things that are really important to me. Big things and small things. Easy tasks and hard ones. Now 1 month before my 35th birthday it is time to look back and see what I can tick off my list of

34 things to do before I turn 35:

1. take more photos of everyday life (not only of ‘special events’) – DONE, e.g. here, here, here, here , here, here, here and here

2. embrace change – DONE as best as I could

3. have a healthy, happy little daughter – DONE see here

4. think more about what I want and act accordingly – I made a good start but need to practise more

5. cycle a lot – aehm, maybe next year

6. have more parties – DONE

8. invest in art – DONE, e.g. here and here

9. be less impatient – well mostly, my little one is a great teacher for patience though

10. go to Italy – not just for the food, but also... – NOT YET, but planned for next year

11.make my first pork roast – oh well I still have a month left

12.spend more time outside – DONE

13. find an alf (alternative living form/ alternative Lebensform), which makes work and life and love and baby compatible – still working on that one

14. wear high heels more often – maybe next year?

15. become a child again – DONE

16. move back to Berlin – DONE see e.g. here

17.keep the love magic – well, if I would have more sleep and feel more sexy, but I keep trying

18. manage to be a happy person with less sleep (see no 3) – DONE somehow

19. pay someone to do my taxes for me – a must for next year

20. enjoy living near the beach while it lasts – DONE, e.g. here, here or here

21. realise more of the amazing craft ideas I am collecting – well, another thing I have to keep on trying

22. keep on blogging – DONE (with the exception of September)

23.spend more time with my family – DONE

24. cook an amazing polenta –nope, I haven’t even tried it :-(

25.buy less, recycle more – yeah, but there is still room for improvement

26. turn my new apartment into a beach house – hmmm, working on that one, but first I have to finish unpacking the boxes
27. be more open to (justified and constructive) criticism – hard one, but I keep on trying

28.enjoy the pleasures of ‘real ‘winter – DONE see here

29. live more in the now and worry less about the future – DONE, surprisingly my little one helped me a lot in achieving this goal

30. make more fashion myself – sew & customise – oh well, top on my to-do-list for next year

31. travel to countryside Japan – not yet, but still dreaming about it

32. finish my baby quilt BEFORE the little one is born – DONE, I will show it too you soon

33. be more courageous – sometimes yes, sometimes not

Actually I am surprised how many things I really have changed and achieved in the last year. The power of birthday-to-do-lists . It still works ;-)

12 on the 12th in January

My favourite blog initiative ever. On the 12th of each month, bloggers around the globe take 12 photos of their daily life and post them. Not only great for getting to know other bloggers but also as a personal visual diary. So please join the fun with Caro here:

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Finally asleep

Finally awake

Grey skies

Colourful art

Orange flowers

Red flowers

Berlin for locals

Berlin for tourists

Berlin for fan of (fake) Russian military equipment

Christmas tree cemetery

Foxy lady

Bedtime story

Hope you had a great Wednesday!

What happens when you open a box of clothes which have been in storage for 3 years?

You laugh!

Today I started something that I had on my to-do-list for quite a while now. I started unpacking the boxes with my clothes. The clothes that I put in there before we moved to Australia. We left them here in Berlin in storage for 3 years. Then we moved them into our new apartment and there they have been sitting for more than 3 aehm 4 months now. So it is really time to open them. Have a close look at them. And then decide what to do with them. This is not an easy job: a) because I love clothes and it is really hard for me to give things away even if I don’t wear them and b) because I had absolutely no clue what was in these boxes (well apart from some treasures which I missed dearly in the past 3 years).

Anyway, it took me even longer than anticipated to empty these boxes, because I kept on asking myself...

Have I really been that “spießig“ (middle aged-middle class) in my 20s?

Have I really worn this dress to a bar? Repeatedly?

Have I really worn size 36 (Size 8 )? Anyway, I am not going to in the future...


Why on earth have I kept this and not thrown it away 3 years ago?

How many red coats do I really need?

Why are all my pullovers so short? Have I also grown in height and not only in size in the past 3 years?

I am going to take some pictures of the clothes I have mentioned in this post tomorrow morning. At the moment it is too dark. Plus there are 5 more boxes to open. To discover. To laugh at. - Done. Done. Done ;-)