Christmas decorations

Time to show the Christmas decorations I made for family/friends.

I used (home-grown) walnuts, MrMojcek halfed (and ate) them, I glued them back together and MiniMojcek Nr. 1 and I spray-painted them.

 A lovely organza bag and voilà!

Merry Christmas!

Finished Christmas cards

And this is how this year's Christmas cards looks like.

Celtic knots.

Lots of them.

O Christmas tree...

My Dad used to buy Christmas trees usually a couple of hours before Christmas dinner and no wonder he usually got some miserable leftovers...

Now we learned to buy the tree a couple of days in advance. And we've got a wonderful fir.

Me happy.

Christmas cards

For the first time in years I needed to change the design of Christmas cards because I didn't have the time to execute them as well as I would want them to be.

So I'm back to the drawing board.

Blank cards, a pen, two coloured pencils, and a steady hand.

And a rather scientific approach:

Drawing is just pure relaxation.

Or should I say pure mindfulness :-)

12 days till Christmas

A shadowy sneak peak of the little presents I'm preparing for my cousins and aunts.

;-)

Reading

I managed to read quite a few books in the past few months. There is so much going on during the day that I need to relax my mind a bit before going to bed.

And reading is perfect for mind-relaxation.

So I've (re-)read:
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- Diamonds are Forever by Ian Fleming
- Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
- The Green Archer by Edgar Wallace
- The Feathered Serpent by Edgar Wallace
- Ralph's Party by I-dont-remember-whom
- How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
- Funny Girl by Nick Hornby
- Ich bin dann mal weg by Hape Kerkeling

Most of them are quite enjoyable. Oddly enough, Funny girl seemed to be the least funny... 

And I've just learned that Hape's book was made into a film! 

Just like all the good books I read.

Colour of the year

Rose Quartz and Serenity.

Really?

I used to love Pantone colours of the year for the last decade or even longer but this year... Nah.

I think my hompage will be in Marsala for another year.

Time flies ...

It's the end of November already and I cannot believe how quickly time flies. It's probably even consistent with the general relativity to say that the time flies with the speed of light, right? At least it feels this way.

Anyway, the Christmas decorations are up. The nativity scene is up. The Three Wise Men are already there! Ok, granted, Baby Jesus is still well in the womb but come on, people, it's Novemeber. NOVEMBER.

Another thing related to the beginning of Christmas season is the SILA charity bazaar where several countries sell typical produce/products/stuff. This year I bought - among other thigs - also some Japanese sweets.

 

My kids were not impressed. And honestly, neither was I. Sorry...

But that design... Seriously?

My home town

Usually it's pretty busy but this was a day before the marathon so all the streets were already closed for traffic.

I kind of like it this way.

Dedicated flower of fashion

Everywhere I look, everyone seems to be making apple roses. Simple to make, delicious and very pretty.

So - following the baking trends - of course I had to make them.

They really are very simple to make, very delicious and very pretty :-)

Movie time!

In my previous life (before kids, that is), I went to the cinema at least once a week. At least! I've seen all sorts of films, from blockbusters to the most obscure independent productions. Then the kids came and I couldn't be bothered with other people's problems any more. So in the last few years, I haven't seen many films that weren't cartoons...

So it was something special when I went and saw an "adult" film - A Walk in the Woods.  Katz would be proud by calling it an adult film :-)

It's not a masterpiece. But it is quite enjoyable. Especially since I've read the book and since I've actually walked a few stages of the trail when I was visiting my Dad at Virginia Tech ...

... 22 years ago!

Which brings me to the age of the actors... Robert Redford playing someone aged 44?!? This is a strong and obvious statement: when you're 44 Hollywood sees you as 79.

So I would be played not by, say, Kate Winslet, but by Judi Dench.

Oh well ...

If you can, read the book. It's not the "Wild" sort of book, it's enjoyable and informative and funny. And the writer really understands long distance walking:

"Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark you go to bed and when it is light again you get up, and everything is just in between. It's quite wonderful, really. [...] There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. [...] But most of the time you don't think. No point. Instead you exist in a kind of a mobile zen mode [...] Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breating."

Yes.

More fern!

Well, I turns out I wasn't absolutely happy with the previous photo of the fern. So I picked another leaf and made another ... 200+ pictures. Here are the ones that made it into the final selection

I'll (probably) use the last one. Hmmm ...

Late summer

Enjoying the last days of summer ...

I didn't take my camera, which I later regretted. Of course.

Fern!

For a while now I've been looking for a picture to hang in my bathroom. It needed to be bright and green and big and grassy and interesting ... As I already gave up hope on finding one, I found a wonderful fern leaf in our garden and photographed it.

I love it.

Update: see this post.

Procratsinating

What do you do if you're really behind with your work? And about a year behind with your correspondence? And several months behind with renovation/decoration of the house? And have about 50 important things on your  to-do list?

You buy yourself a jigsaw puzzle. But of course.

Not just any puzzle. A 3D optical illusion puzzle. You see a white piece but when you pick it up, it turns totally dark. Highly psychedelic.

 

But pretty.

Secret garden

While I do spend a lot of time in my own garden, I still find some time to disappear into my secret garden ...

I just noticed the really bad white balance. Oh well ...

And another "monochrome" one:

A new Poirot!

Where did August go?!?

I did lots of things (painting windows, making window shutters, sewing, writing textbooks, nothing ...) but also a lot of reading.

And of course I read Sophie Hannah's Poirot murder mystery. Since it kind of qualifies as an Agatha Christie novel, I'll rate it as usual.

84. The Monogram Murders (Poirot by Sophie Hannah)
A new Poirot novel. Yey!
However, I must be honest, I did not really enjoy it. It included way too much explaining, too many lies and too much repetition, basically just too many words. There were not enough clues for the reader and yet I guessed the murder about half way through the book. The mystery was good enough but the book should end about 100 pages earlier with a simple explanation. What I also missed were the witty one-liners by Poirot.

Oh, and the name Patrick Ive is a total miss. Everytime I saw it, I thought it was missing  an apostrophe. Annoying.

Favourite Guest Character: Margaret Ernst
Mystery: ****
Final Solution: ***
Entertainment: **
9/15

Away

Time for some holidays.

We escaped the insane heat and spent some time in the heights of Italian Dolomites.

Gorgeous places.

And while we're at it...

I think the last time I was in Cortina was 22 years ago!

Still watching ...

... the Tour and still reliving old memories:

Col de la Croix de Fer.

About 14 years ago.

Oh well ...

Le Tour!

It's this time of year again ... when I actually watch a sports event.

Le Tour, of course!

And it's not just because of the sport, or the admiration for the riders, it's also because of all the beautiful places they visit.

Like today, Étretat.

I can't believe it's 18 years since I was there.

18?!?

Arco, again...

I've tried to count the number of times I've been to Arco (Lago di Garda).
I can not.

Despite being there so often, we still manage to find places we've never been to. Or take photographs of the same old thing in a different way. That's one of the reasons why we keep coming back.

 Castello di Arco

  
Sentiero panoramico da Busatte a Tempesta

Monte Baldo

Silver vase

Maybe I read to many Buzzfeed DIY articles but I just needed to do something to a plain white vase. So I got a silver spray paint and two minutes later I had a lovely shiny unique vase.

I feel like spray-painting everything now :-)

Tiger pillow

Friends of mine moved and I needed to come up with a housewarming present.

First idea was a tiger rug. But the soft fabric was too soft and I didn't have anything sturdy and nonslippery to glue/sew onto it.

So I made a tiger pillow.

What else :-)

Thread spool rack

Say you have plenty of thread spools (semi)-(dis)-organised in a box. 

Say you're cleaning your office and somewhere under your desk you find an old paper rack.

You stare at it for a while and - eureka!

You just have to cut the wires to an appropriate height and hang the rack on the wall.

Happy.

Very happy.

Now I just have to make a dust cover.

Door stops

We've finally got interior doors.

And with the doors, one needs door stops.

I didn't want to drill holes into wood flooring or ceramic tiles, so I decided to make some "bean bags". Well, rice bags. 

 I first made  a cotton bag and filled it with rice.

And made another faux leather bag so that the bags would be easy to dust or wipe clean.

Repeat four times.

Springtime!

It's springtime!

This year I actually managed to get some photos  of cherry and sour cherry blossoms.

Gorgeous.

Digital Detox - Secret Garden

I really needed some distractions, a"digital detox" so I bought myself a colouring book!

It's the bestseller among the coloring books, the Secret Garden.

No need to say I love it.

This is the first picture, with many more to come.

Staring at the sky

... just like the rest of Europe.

The first bite!

It's getting serious ...
 

...but not serious enough as we live too far south.

Oh well... Still a nice experience.

Kremšnite!

For reasons unknown, we had a lot of eggs in our fridge. A lot. So I decided to  make cremeschnitte. Kremšnite!

Puff pastry with custard and vanilla cream.

They may not be the best looking but they were very very good. Probably the best I've ever eaten. And I've eaten quite a few...

Even MrMojcek was impressed and admitted that they were surprisingly incredibly heavenly delicious :-)