HAPPY 2008

A new year already seems well on it's way. I've thoroughly enjoyed blogging, but I'm more a picture than word type of gal, so I've decided to quite blogging. Posting online is very much fun though, so I'll continue with my Flickr and Blipblog. I hope you'll continue to meet me there and of course I'll continue to follow your blogs. See you around.

Merry Christmas

Thanks everybody for checking in. It's almost Christmas and I've been busy with all sorts of Christmas things. We've had friends over for dinner and in the Art department, I've been busy making all the swap ornaments, making snowglobes for all kids' classmates (they were such a huge succes last year and since we're in a new school...) and last but not least making our annual greeting.



Click on picture to see the animated version.

P.S. You can click on the pictures on the wall, if the right one doesn't work, please retry. It's worthwhile to see

London

Yesterday I went to London and met up with Nancy. We saw so many nice things, I don't know where to start or what to show. I've put all pictures on Flickr, so anyone interested in all details of my London trip can see them there. I'll post my favorite photos

This little cake carrying elph


I love these santas


Christmas decorations


Just look at the candy


At Fortnum & Mason they had the best Windowdisplay. Unfortunatly there is some glare on them, but in all the windows they had displayed the song "the Twelve days of Christmas".


In Liberty I fell in love with the wallpaper they used where they have the cards


I splurged on Liberty fabrics. Four pieces of 30cm (12") each. That was the smallest they allowed.


I hope you enjoyed my London trip with me.

Nice friend

Today Nancy from Belgium came to visit me. We know each other from way back when we were both in University and were able to stay in Leeds for 9 months, thanks to the Erasmus program which enables students to do parts of their studies in another European country. That is where I fell in love with afternoon teas. Nancy makes these beautiful jewellery

and I was so lucky to receive this gorgeous necklace. I love it soooooooooooo much. Thank you Nancy!

She's in the London area for 10 days, so tomorrow we're meeting up again to see bits of london. Of course I'll keep you posted on what we'll see tomorrow.

tagged

I was tagged by wonderful Marnie to name 5 facts about myself, some random, some weird. I'll let you chose whether you find them random or weird.

i - my brother once said "there isn't anything Shin doesn't collect". It's true, there are a lot of things I like having and I start a collection. Only after a little bit I start thinking what to do with it all and stop collecting more. Yet I don't throw them out, so I have a lot of little collection of everything. The only collection I never tire of is my bookcollection, hence the picture, which is really only a very small part of my bookcollection.

ii - One day when the kids are all grown, I want to try Leonardo's sleeping rhythm, which I think was sleeping for 20 minutes, stay awake 4 hours, all day long, every day. You can get a lot done with all those extra hours of awakeness.

iii - I'm the exception to the rule, that a bi- or multilingual person is said to be able to pick up additional languages more easily than others. Even though my Dutch, English are in the range of very good an very fluent and my Korean is quite reasonable (this is what you get with Korean parents, who move to the Netherlands when you're one and your parents get by by using English), I've never managed to master any other language, even though they (German, French, old Greek and Latin) were offered to me when I was younger.

iv - I like having a skull in the living room. Not a real one, but one for drawing purposes. I've had a few weird looks from people from this unless it's near Halloween time. Funnily enough though children seem to think it cool regardless the time of year.

v - One day A Mermaid's Tale popped in my head to use as my website's name. I could hardly sleep that night, wondering whether it was still available as a website's name or not. The funny thing is that I don't even like swimming. So one day I'll write a book about a mermaid who can't swim. :)

I'm supposed to tag 5 new, but I'm not so good at that, partly because on pure mathmatics, chains would cover everybody with a blog within no time at all. So instead I'll give one two three four five of my favorite bloglinks

Saint Nic

Last year I posted a picture about how the Dutch celebrate Saint Nic. He always arrives in the country around this time of year from Spain by steamboat and the kids are allowed to put their shoe in front of the fireplace and they get something. Anything ranging from chocolate letters (their first initial) to pepernoten. Our oldest two are in the age that they loooooooooooooove the celebration. So tonight was the first time they were allowed to put their shoe in front of the fireplace. Tomorrow they will find their initial in chocolate and a book. These are the drawings they made for Saint Nic this year.


My daughter of seven


My son of five (his skills have improved so much over the last year, both of them make me so proud)

The pictures are a bit crumpled because the youngest of almost 18 months walked away with them (he makes me so proud too!)

Oh and I managed to place my designs on Etsy

... and another

I didn't think I'f finish this one tonight, but I did. So here is my third. I'm trying to get them in my etsy shop (which is empty right now) for tomorrow.

Another card

Another Christmas design which I posted in the Moo group